This past weekend, I went to Homecoming at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. A mandatory part of this experience is football Saturday.
Game day preparations start many hours before kickoff. Tailgate partiers arrrive in fully equiped RVs and set up camp near Michigan Stadium. And did I mention that flying the Block M flag is required?
Closer to campus, U-M students add their own festive touch. Some dress up as superheroes…
and others skip the costumes and head straight to the beer pong tables…
Then there was the game itself. Michigan jumped out to an early lead over Illinois…
Ah, the first quarter. The one quarter where we had plenty to cheer about…
Alas, Illinois built a sizable lead, and then there was no joy in Wolverine Country. Toward the end, we stood in shocked silence and watched as things fell apart on the field…
The fellow in the Illinois orange cap is my father, who earned his undergraduate engineering degree at Michigan and his graduate degrees at Illinois.