Wisconsin Still Must Beat Michigan, But Honestly I Just Hope Everyone Is OK (Even the Wolverines)
By: By Jason Gay
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Traditionally, this is my most obnoxious column of the year—and, yes, I know that’s really saying something.
Saturday delivers the Wisconsin-Michigan football game , and under normal circumstances , I’d be standing in my red-and-white Badger overalls, loudly thumping on a keg of contraband out-of-state Spotted Cow as I oafishly taunt the Wolverines, their lavishly-paid coach/khaki model, Jim Harbaugh, and, most of all, my wonderfully talented and abundant Journal colleagues who are very, very proud of the fancy university they attended in Ann Arbor.
But these are not normal circumstances. To say the least.
This is 2020. A pandemic continues to tromp, tromp, tromp around the country, and yet another thing we adore is routinely going sideways. My beloved Badgers are 1-0, and if that seems like a tiny number of college football games to have played by the middle of November: you’re right! Wisconsin missed its last two games because of an outbreak that sidelined a number of staffers and players.
Though its football team hasn’t been forced to reschedule a game, Michigan has had Covid issues on campus, too. Saturday’s contest versus Wisconsin will be played in the Big House—capacity 109,000 or so—with only a scattering of family in the stands.
So while I’d looooooove to ridicule the Wolverines for being 1-2 after losses to Michigan State and Indiana—I prefer Michigan to be swaggering and undefeated before a thumping by the Badgers—it doesn’t feel the same this year. (Indiana is 3-0, my friends, it’s definitely not the same this year.)
It isn’t the same in Ann Arbor, or Madison, or any number of great American towns attempting the complicated if slightly daffy feat of playing a college football season amid a public-health crisis in which the entire college experience has been disrupted. Games are under way, available for consumption on TV, but the vibe sounds…muted.
“It’s been really dreary,” Kalli Anderson, the co-editor-in-chief of the Daily Cardinal, the Wisconsin school newspaper, told me the other day. She described the scene around the Badger season opener against Illinois on Oct. 23: “Usually, you have so many people in town, tailgating throughout the day, and the bars are all packed, but it’s just…dead. I saw a couple of people walking around campus with Badger gear on, but for the most part, everybody’s staying in their apartments.”
Staying in sounds like the status quo in Madison. Earlier this year, a couple of dormitories were briefly quarantined. Anderson’s class schedule is almost entirely remote.
Michigan Daily editor in chief Elizabeth Lawrence described a similar, subdued feeling.
“I live pretty close to the stadium,” Lawrence said. “I look out my window, and I can imagine what it was like when there were people streaming through the streets. Now it’s very relegated to each house and each unit, at least on my block. People are still doing tailgate-stuff like beer pong, and [bringing] TV screens outside. There’s still kind of a festive atmosphere, but from afar.”
The Badgers and Wolverines are lucky to be playing at all. This year’s college football schedule looks like a restaurant menu that keeps 86’ing appetizers. Ohio State’s Nov. 14 game with Maryland is canceled due to an outbreak with the Terrapins. This weekend, a remarkable four games in the we’re-just-gonna-plow-through-this-pandemic Southeastern Conference—LSU vs. Alabama, Texas A&M vs. Tennessee, Auburn vs. Mississippi State and Georgia vs. Missouri—are postponed.
The situation has made life strange for college football’s campus correspondents, who suddenly have to minor in epidemiology along with the X’s and O’s. Ordinarily, sportswriters at the Daily Cardinal and Michigan Daily would be focusing on player recruits, coaching moves and bowl bids—now they’re keeping pace with positives and protocols, too.
“Instead of calling high school coaches, you’re trying to talk to doctors,” said Michigan Daily co-managing sports editor Ethan Sears.
“It’s gotten really repetitive,” said Daily Cardinal co-sports editor Simon Farber. “The virus is definitely not getting better, especially in the Midwest.”
At least there are games. Farber’s co-editor, Joe Rickles, recalled saying in August, when the Big Ten season appeared to be kaput: “We’re going to do this, we’re going to do it well, and it’s going to be on our resumes forever, that we were sports editors without sports.”
The push to play amid a pandemic underlined the obvious: athletes in high-revenue sports provide enormous— essential —monetary value to these schools. The professionalization is naked at this point; I don’t know how anyone could argue otherwise. Players are beginning to recognize and deploy their leverage—and good for them.
I freely admit I’m still capable of removing the part of my (hamster-sized) brain that worries about the existential quandaries of college sports, while keeping in the part of my (hamster-sized) brain that simply wants to yell WOOOOOOOOOO WISCONSIN BEAT MICHIGAN I NEED BRATWURST NOW.
This year’s different. There’s beer and bratwurst, but it’s quieter.
Please don’t get me wrong: I definitely want the Badgers to beat the Wolverines—hopefully by 40 points or so—and I wouldn’t mind it if they kept it rolling undefeated into playoff time. But mostly, I want everyone in Madison, Ann Arbor and every other college town to keep safe, finish out the academic calendar, and try to have as much of the college experience as they can still have. They’re not getting the full, beautiful thing. It’s a raw deal.
So go Wisconsin. Go Michigan. Yeah, I wrote “Go Michigan.” It’s 2020. Give me a break. You’ve already witnessed crazier.
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