Divorce and Reconciliation on the Gridiron

Hail to the Victors! 

As a lifelong Michigan football fan and a graduate of the University of Michigan, let's just say that the last couple of months have been an awful lot of fun for me. Watching my team fight their way through a season of adversity and win big games versus THE Ohio State University, Alabama and Washington, told me everything I needed to know about the resiliency of the group of men who brought the national championship trophy back to Ann Arbor earlier this month. There will always be those pundits who point to the sign stealing scandal and former head coach Jim Harbaugh's idiosyncratic personality as detractors from the team's accomplishments, but even Michigan's most harsh critics seem to agree at this point that the Wolverines were by far the best team this year and that they deserved to win it all. 

If that isn't enough to satisfy the visions of gridiron merrymaking in my head, I charge into this weekend ready to cheer for everybody's favorite losers, the Detroit Lions, as they play in the NFC Championship for the right to go to ..... GULP...... the Super Bowl?! It feels like everyone in the country who follows football and is not from San Francisco is rooting for the Lions this week. Never in a million years did I envision the possibility of either the Lions making it to a Super Bowl or the Wolverines winning a national championship in my lifetime, much less the near total impossibility that BOTH things could happen within a month of each other. Let us not forget that the Lions are a mere 15 years removed from the year that the team went 0-16, becoming the first team in NFL history to record such an ignominious feat. 

In one of the more interesting tidbits of Detroit Lions' trivia, their current head coach Dan Campbell played as a back up Tight End on that 2008 team which became the first NFL team ever to lose 16 games in one season. I can only imagine the immense feeling of satisfaction Campbell will feel should he pilot the Lions to their first ever Super Bowl appearance. It gives me chills just thinking about it. 

So by now I guess you may have drawn the conclusion that I am a football nut and that I spend the entirety of my fall and winter weekends glued to the television set watching college and pro games from noon until the end of the night. In truth, that is not who I am at all. I tend to think of my relationship with football as more of a love/hate relationship. It is a relationship that has brought me great joy and agonizing pain. It is a relationship on which I have squandered countless resources such as time, money, love and even my health. It is a relationship that at one point not too long ago I had to divorce myself from, only to circle back more recently and learn how to become friends again. In reality, my relationship with football is a relationship that has effected almost every aspect of my life in some way and more recently it has even helped me learn more about masculinity in the most curious and surprising ways. As the late Paul Harvey used to say, "And now for the rest of the story." 

When I was three years old my parents moved from Northbrook, Illinois to a little unincorporated township outside of Detroit called Farmington Hills, Michigan. Our home was the only completed home in a newly developed subdivision. The yards around us were nothing but clay, mud and empty foundations waiting for a new homes to be constructed. Basically it was a parents safety and cleanliness nightmare. My father traveled for business quite a bit and my mother didn't drive at that point, so the first couple of years in Michigan we were pretty isolated. As more houses finished construction we gradually got some neighbors and even some grass as we settled into a nice midwestern, middle class lifestyle. As a side note, that little unincorporated township I moved to 56 years ago now has a population of almost 100,000 people. 

My Dad was a huge Notre Dame football fan. When we moved to the Detroit area back in the summer of 1967, the college football landscape was less than a year removed from the "game of the century" where the #1 ranked Notre Dame Fighting Irish and the #2 ranked Michigan State Spartans played to a late season 10-10 tie and wound up splitting the national championship. To this day I still have a cassette recording of the end of that game that my father recorded. As a three year old, I imagine I was relatively unimpressed with the outcome and by the time I was old enough to tote a football around the backyard, I somehow knew that maize and blue was in my blood and I became a Michigan Wolverine fan despite my dad's Notre Dame loyalties.

A big part of my becoming a Michigan fan was due to the fact that my father started taking me to games at the Big House in Ann Arbor when I was about seven or eight years old. We only went to one game per year and it was usually an early season tilt against the likes of Tulane, Purdue or some other poor school that would get trounced by the Wolverines by 50 points or more. I have very few images in my brain from those early childhood experiences at the Big House, but I do remember driving through the campus and marveling at the old buildings and sensing the culture of the University. I also remember how cool it was to drive on the golf course where we parked to go to the games. 

When it came time for me to go to college about ten years later, I only applied to two schools. I applied to the University of Michigan and Boston College. To this day I have no idea what made me choose Boston College, but it didn't really matter because I was totally going to U of M if I got in, and in my mind there was no doubt that I was going to be admitted. When I enrolled at U of M in 1982, I finally had the chance to go to ALL the home games at the Big House, including a seven week stretch of uninterrupted home games where the Wolverines went 7-0, only to lose in Columbus to Ohio State to end the season. A young freshman quarterback named Jim Harbaugh rode the bench on that 1982 Michigan team while I too was a freshman. Harbaugh and I never really hung out, but we did at one point both date the same girl named Wendy from West Virginia, so that's one of my football claims to fame. 

As a young boy toting a football around the back yard, I would also often don my Detroit Lions helmet. On Sunday afternoons when I got tired of watching the Lions repeated struggles towards perpetual mediocrity, I would go behind the house and throw passes to myself pretending to be Greg Landry on one end and Charlie Sanders on the other end. If I'm not mistaken, I think I even had a #88 Charlie Sanders jersey. That particular Sanders was one of the most famous players in Lion's history long before another Sanders, named Barry, came along and had his career ruined by the franchise where players go to see their careers die. Names like Lem Barney, Alex Karras, Calvin Johnson and more recently Matthew Stafford all spent their careers playing for a team that has only won one playoff game in the last 67 years until two weeks ago. And there I sat through all of those years watching or listening to games until the bitter end with the hopes that someday, somehow, something might change. It never did. 

When I first moved to Chicago in 1990, I could have become a Bears fan. The Bears at that point were only  few years removed from the Super Bowl shuffling likes of Mike Ditka, Jim McMahon and William "The Refrigerator" Perry. I instead decided go to a local sports bars nearly every Sunday so I could watch the Lions play. It also gave me a good excuse to have a few beers or a glass or two of wine in the middle of the day which would then lead to me feeling dejected with both the play of the Lions and with myself for getting tipsy in the middle of the day.

With the advent of fantasy football in the early 2000s I had even more reason to follow not just my Lions, but all NFL teams. Each year our fantasy league would gather on Labor Day morning for a live draft accompanied by wings, pizza, bloody Marys and later in the day, more wine. When I made friends with a local Chicago bookie, I started wagering on football games just for fun and would often get together with fellow fantasy league mates for poker, cigars and other debauchery during the NFL season. Football and hedonistic lifestyle choices just seem to go hand and hand. Look no further than the sponsors who spend millions on TV commercials to know exactly which products and services the average football fans desire. 

Somewhere around 2010 the Detroit Lion's fortunes started to swing in a more positive direction. The team had hired an upstart defensive minded coach named Jim Schwartz who brought a culture of discipline and aggressiveness to a team that had lacked those things for the entirety of the time that had rooted for the Lions. Future Hall of Famer Matt Stafford was rookie the first year that Schwartz was coach of the Lions and you could feel the momentum building, but even as the Lions started to win more games, I noticed that my interest had started to wane a little bit. At first I couldn't figure out why I was suddenly less interested in football, but over time I figured out that there were two primary reasons. 

The first reason that I started to lose interest in football in general and the Lions in particular, was that I really didn't like the way that Jim Schwartz operated as a head coach. I know nothing about him as a person. I am sure that Schwartz has many wonderful skills and qualities, but I often found his demeanor to be arrogant and entitled, which by the way are parts of my shadow that I find the least desirable aspects of my own self. It's no surprise that I found those aspects of Schwartz's behavior so offensive because it tapped me into the things that I was starting to realize that I hated about myself as I was just getting started on my journey to greater self awareness. 

The second reason that I started to lose interest in football over the next few years from 2010 until about 2017 was because I became aware of just how toxic some of football culture can be if it runs unchecked. I have never been in a college or pro locker room so I will say nothing about what happens in those environments, but I have been in fantasy football leagues and going to weekend football watch parties for years so I have my own personal experiences to draw from. The amount of misogynistic jokes, homophobic smack talk and general toxic masculinity I encountered in football circles became so increasingly distasteful to me that I eventually wound up quitting the fantasy football league that I founded over a dispute between members turned ugly. That was the last straw for me. 

When my daughter Emma was born on Super Bowl Sunday 2018, the only contact I had with the big game was when I turned the TV on in our recovery room for one minute to check the final score before running out to get some Noodles & Company for my dinner after supporting my wife Christiana through 30 hours of labor. In my mind, no two-a-day workouts in the hot August training camp sun could ever compare to what she had just gone through. Whatever need and desire I previously had to admire tough men in uniforms was replaced by admiration for my wife and love for being a first time dad. Over the next few years I watched almost no football. When the Covid 19 pandemic cancelled large parts of the college and NFL seasons in 2020, I hardly even noticed. For all intents and purposes, football and I had gotten a divorce because our life paths were no longer in alignment. 

In the fall of 2022 I decided to stick my toe back in the water of football fandom. I watched a few early season Michigan football games and they got onto a nice roll. The Lions struggled early, but wound up finishing the on a tear and nearly made the playoffs. As the season continued, my Michigan Wolverines ran the table and headed into Columbus to face the also undefeated Ohio State Buckeyes in an end of season matchup for a guaranteed spot in the college playoff. It would be the most exciting game to watch in many years except for one thing. My lifelong best friend Randy's dad died suddenly in the week leading up to the game and the funeral was scheduled for that Saturday in metro Detroit. We missed the first half, but were able to watch the Wolverines pull off an impressive 45-23 victory while attending the funeral luncheon that afternoon. We ate chicken and mostaccioli like we used to do at Randy's house when we were kids. To me, the best part of all of it though, was standing arm in arm between Randy and his son as they began to forge a new relationship in the wake of the death of the man called Papa Wayne. When that season ended, I officially declared myself football curious again and looked forward the year ahead when both of my favorite teams had promising prospects. 

This year I have watched nearly every University of Michigan and Detroit Lions game. At the beginning of the year, I gave myself permission to just enjoy it and have fun. Having fun is something that has not come so easily for me over the last few years. I am somewhat famously sober now. My current eating protocol has no room for pizza or wings. I haven't bet on a football game in years, yet I am having more fun following the games than I ever have before. How is that possible you ask? 

Once again, it comes down to two things. First, I have changed. Second, in my mind, the game of football has changed. 

I no longer feel threatened by things that I previously would have labeled toxic masculinity. I am more grounded in who I am as a person than I ever have been before. If I encounter behavior that I find distasteful, I either do my best to respectfully call it out and ask for it to stop, or I just walk away quietly without needing to confront it. I do enough work with intentional men who are trying to help change the world these days that I don't need to try to fix everything that is broken or wounded in every man's life. 

I also can't help but notice how much football has the potential to do to be part of the change that I am looking to help foster in the world. The MenLiving organization which I have become a big part of in the last year has five suggestions for men to live more fully. They are: 

~ Live Consciously
~ Live Curiously 
~ Live Emotionally 
~ Live Candidly
~ Live Intentionally 

On my two favorite teams alone, I see men who are modeling those exact behaviors for other men to feel more comfortable embracing. Interim head coach of the Michigan Wolverines, Sherrone Moore wept openly when his team went into Penn State and knocked off the home team while Harbaugh was suspended. Moore took it one step further by saying in reference to Harbaugh, "I love the shit out of you man" to which Moore later apologized to his mother on national TV for cursing in public. For a man to openly say "I love you" to another man and to honor his mother in the same arena is exactly the type of behavior I would love to see modeled more frequently. 

Michigan's star quarterback J.J .McCarthy sits on the field against the goalpost during pre-game warm up meditating and doing his visualization practice. Even a few years ago that sort or woo-woo behavior might have been mocked by peers and the media, but now his intentional practices are revered as trailblazing. It's not surprising that working to be more conscious by accepting one's role in co-creating the outcomes of life is an effective tool in becoming a high level performer in any field, whether it is a playing field or any other field of life. 

And last but certainly not least, we have the one time back up Tight End from those 2008 Detroit Lions who went 0-16, Mr. Dan Campbell. Campbell has become a national darling for his candor and emotion while still being as tough as nails. As a player Campbell was a fierce workhorse who inspired teammates to push themselves harder because it was the right thing to do for the collective. He seems to be able to do the same thing as a coach, all the while being as real as a man can be and deflecting praise to everyone around him. That is a model of mature masculinity that our world needs more of. 

When and if the Lions win the Super Bowl this year, I will be a beautiful weepy mess in my living room. Even more important than that will be the fact that Dan Campbell will probably be doing the exact same thing on national television as we as a society continue to demonstrate that men who are in touch with their emotions are the healers of the world. In fact even if the Lions don't win the Super Bowl, I am content in knowing that it has been a great ride and that times they are a changing. The Michigan Wolverines are national champions. The Detroit Lions are legitimate Super Bowl contenders. Men are being given a chance to heal from centuries of repressed emotions men and football is an ally in that great cause. My heart is full in so many ways. 

Well that's it for this time. Thanks for reading all the way to the end. Please share this with anyone you know who might be inspired by the message. Love and blessings to you all, and GO LIONS! 

Jim