Michigan Fan Day

Jake with his favorite player--Jake Long



Look at all those signatures on that football--so cool!










Every year right before the excitement of the fall football season gets underway, the University of Michigan Football players sign autographs and take pictures with their fans. They call it Fan Day. We discovered it last year when Estee was just 3 weeks old and had so much fun. Well, this year, Fan Day was last Saturday. Dan, Abby, and I all had prior commitments so we couldn't attend. Luckily, Aunt Lindsay was able to take Jake and Andy. They had so much fun and got pictures and autographs with some of their favorite players and play football on the field. The lines for autographs were so long they couldn't get every player's autograph! We love the excitement of football season here.






In case some of you don't know the following facts about Michigan football:







1) The stadium, although it doesn't look that big, is the biggest football stadium in the world.







2) The population of Ann Arbor nearly doubles on game days. The stadium population itself on game day makes Michigan Stadium one of the 200 largest cities in the U.S. The official capacity of the stadium is listed as 107,501. The one "extra seat" in its capacity was "reserved" by former head coach Fielding Yost for the then athletic director Fritz Crisler, although its location is not specified.







3) The largest crowd in North American stadium history was 112,118 on November 22, 2003 for the game against Ohio State (Michigan leads the all time series with a record of 57-40-6). Michigan won this game 35-21 on its way to its 41st Big 10 championship. As an interesting side note, many Ohio State "traditions" were actually started by the University of Michigan. The script Ohio that the OSU marching band performs was created by and initially performed by the University of Michigan marching band at an Ohio State football game. Also, the Ohio State Alma Mater "Carmen Ohio" was written on the train ride home to Columbus following the 1902 contest, which saw Ohio State losing to Michigan 86-0. The lyrics and melody (Spanish Chant) have remained largely unchanged since its conception.







4) Since 1975 - Bo Schembechler's seventh season as coach - the stadium has held over 100,000 fans for every home game.







5) Ohio State and Michigan have a huge rivalry going, which has resulted in a bit of a rivalry with my sister's family, who are Ohio State fans (her husband did his oto residency at Ohio State, don't ask me why!!).







6) Michigan will play Utah next year! We can't wait!







7) On September 9, 2006, attendees of the Michigan vs. Central Michigan game had to endure the first weather delay in the Stadium's history, after a lightning strike occurred shortly after 12:30 in the afternoon. The game was delayed approximately 1 hour.







8) Michigan is UNIVERSALLY regarded as having the best fight song, "The Victors."

Get ready for another great year and look for a Michigan victory this year assuming the city of Columbus finally figures out a way to stop Buckeye fans from starting their couches and tires on fire, rioting, looting, and throwing batteries if the Buckeyes lose (so says Dan). Here's a link to prove his point http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/news/story?id=2997669.







I'm expecting a full, although certainly inadequate (Really, how can one defend Ohio State?), rebuttal from the Blotters. I can't wait to make the switch from NPR to sports radio now that football is here again.







Go Blue!





This is truly disturbing: