Irish Creed throws it back to the days of yore every Thursday
by giving you a sample from Daniel Collins' behind-the-scenes book
This week's throwback comes from Chapter 5, in which Collins recalls his first visit to that filthy rotten skunkbear nest they call Ann Arbor:
... I paced back and
forth behind Stepan Center as dusk set in Thursday night, hoping at least a
couple hundred students would choose our rally over pregaming Club Fever. They didn’t exactly pack the house, but
the thousand or so diehards who did come made up for their classmates’ lack of
spirit with war paint, Irish flags, and enough toilet paper to blanket the
whole state of Indiana...
... After jumping on stage I held up an old #21 Desmond Howard
Michigan jersey. With the whole
crowd booing and throwing toilet paper at me I slowly tore it in half, tossing
the tattered pieces to the angry mob below...
... Brian Smith didn’t want
to give up the mic. That was
okay. The crowd loved the story he
told about how his dad, a fullback for the Fighting Irish back in the early
1980s, refused to buy him any Skunkbear swag as a kid. For some reason Brian happened to like
their colors when he was young, but his dad sat him down to tell him that no
son of his would ever wear a Michigan jersey. His ten-minute epic tale probably would’ve gone on much longer
if it weren’t for the frenzied chant he incited. With no adults around to scold them, the students felt free
enough to belt out “Muck ‘em up! Muck ‘em up! Michigan Sucks!” Except they
didn’t say “muck.”
... After a swift three-hour drive we pulled up to a sprawling
campus dotted with horrid pee-yellow t-shirts. ... A multitude of middle fingers pointed
our way as our police escort brought us up to the Big House. They only pumped us up even more. The spirit leftover from our sendoff
rally juxtaposed against so much hatred concentrated in one place would surely
help our boys in blue and gold flatten the Skunkbears like road kill.
... Every time someone
yelled “Go Blue!” in my face I quickly added “…and Gold!” The usual response I got consisted of nothing
more than a blank stare. To every
“Where’s your pot of gold?” or “Where’d you hide your lucky charms?” I
responded with “They’re safe back home in South Bend. Where’d you leave your dignity?” The puzzled looks continued. Whenever anyone did anything especially obscene I just blew
kisses back at them. That did the
trick by making them all the more irate.
I continued blowing kisses until kickoff.
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