Okay, so no comment on today's game against Ohio State. On the entire second half of the season, in fact.
I wasn't a football fan before coming to Michigan and, to be honest, I'm still not much of one. But there is something extraordinary that happens in Ann Arbor on Football Saturday.
Michigan Stadium (The Big House) seats over 108,000 ... and every home game since November 1975 has been played in front of 100,000 fans. You may not love the game, but it's pretty darn hard not to catch the spirit.
Incoming MBA1s are given the opportunity to buy football season tickets for an impressively low price over the summer. It's bleacher seating -- and in reality you stand the whole time! -- but the Athletic Ticket Office tries hard to maintain a designated seating area for MBAs and law students (right behind the end zone).
I live about a block from the stadium, which means every Football Saturday this season I've awakened at 7:00am to the sounds of tailgaiters staked out on the small patch of grass in front of my apartment building. (Those sounds, in case you're wondering, are the blare of '80s rock with a faint undercurrent of sizzle from the grill.)
Ross students generally tailgate at The Bus. Hard to describe, but here goes: a painted school bus, a lumber yard, a bottomless keg and about a bijillion red Solo cups. I know, that sounds odd. Just trust me, folks do hang out there, both before and after the game. The Bus is a uniquely Ross venture, with ownership passed on from year to year to a select group of MBAs. As far as I can tell, the great privilege of being a Bus shareholder is being able to dance on top the bus. The drawback is you have to set the whole thing up -- in a lumber yard, remember -- every Saturday at 6:00am.
Occasionally there are additional, corporate-sponsored tailgates, which are popular primarily because they involve copious amounts of food in addition to the aforementioned keg beer. ConAgra sponsored the tailgate before today's game. Ostensibly these are times to connect with recruiters in a casual setting, but how much serious networking goes on is debatable. Some people are perfectly comfortable talking about their career aspirations while holding a hot dog in one hand and a red cup in the other. The rest of us are just grateful for the opportunity to unwind for a couple hours.
Even if you don't particularly care for football (yes, there are actually people at Michigan who don't), you can get some free-rider benefits off the weekly frenzy. It's pretty much guaranteed you will not have a group meeting, review session, or other academic-related activity too close to that block of time. Even our Finance midterm was rescheduled this week because it followed too closely on the heals of the OSU game.
Football Saturdays are kind of nice that way ... a built-in release valve for the stress of each week. Kinda sad that the season's over :(
