Helmet stickers are back, and it seems like the fans are pretty pumped. Sure, they're going to start off innocently enough. You had a pick-six today? Sure, take one. A sweet TD catch? Peel one off.
Seriously, look at the woman at :35. She absolutely loses her shit:
Come on. She went from zero to 100 real quick. Too quick. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's back up.
Let's talk about our protagonists for a second here, suburban moms. Everyone knows that moms in the suburbs put up with an unbelievable amount of bullshit from their families. Crayons on walls. Poop everywhere. Husbands. You name it. Seriously. Take me, for example. When I was barely three, I was so agitated by the thought of being told to come over to the couch and eat some wholesome snack food that I bolted screaming from the room, immediately into the corner of the wall in the hallway. I split my head open right down the middle of my forehead. Blood everywhere, like a water balloon was thrown at the wall. And my mother stood up, blinked a few times, (probably) duct-taped my face closed, and took me to the hospital. Just shrugged, put me in her lunch pail (car), and took me to work (the hospital). And that was pretty standard for a Tuesday. Moms are the Danny Woodheads and Wes Welkers of the world (before Wes Welker started being a little you-know-what and messing with Gisele, who's also a mom. Go Gisele).
Point is, moms are completely and utterly unflappable after the first six months of Facebooking pictures of their babies. Nothing can get under their skins anymore. "That's nice, honey" is actually the most potent weapon in their arsenal, because it can be used in literally any circumstance and mean nothing or everything, every single time. I guarantee you that if you're reading this article you've got a mom. It's a fact. And you've come home bearing something useless you were really excited about and you didn't even ask your mom - who busts her ass for you every single day - how her day was. You, you little shit, just immediately launched into making your mom guess how your coloring assignment got you an A-minus. And she told you it was nice, honey. Without blinking an eye. You make me sick.
Every single person reading this post needs to pick up the phone, call their mothers, and do the following things:
- Call your mother
- Ask her what she'd want more than anything else in the world
- Immediately do that for her, repeating as many times as necessary
- Apologize for everything you did ever (including that thing with the toilet paper roll and rubber bands - she knows about that, because she knows everything) and thank her for allowing you to survive to this day, because it's by HER grace that you are living and breathing
You will do this because moms aren't like other people. They put up with your shit long enough to get you to a place where you're reading a blog about football and hopefully beer. (If you are a recent father, look over at your wife and very slowly put down your remote. No sudden movements. Walk over to her, immediately prostrate yourself at her feet, and do whatever she asks.)
There were many, many battle-hardened moms in that audience that fateful day in Oprah's studio. All of them lost their shit because they just got cars.
And being the daytime TV aficionado we all know Jim Harbaugh is, you've gotta believe he was in the audience for this one, driving home his shiny new Pontiac G6. And we all know how that turned out for Pontiac. Thanks, Oprahbama.
And you, dear reader, are just sitting here thinking that Michigan's football team -a bunch of 18-22 year olds will be able to handle the CRUSHING EMOTIONAL BURDEN that helmet stickers are going to provide? Give me a break. For every sticker, you might as well take a sledgehammer to their emotional ACLs. They're toast. And we're all accomplices.
It's pretty clear what Harbaugh's doing - he's breaking his team down to build them up again. But he's playing a very dangerous game. The dam's gonna break, and he's going to be dealing with a bunch of quavering emotional gelatin in uniforms. And this isn't even counting the safety risks to these kids, here.
These emotional disasters-in-waiting do things like eat olive oil in smoothies to bulk up and sit in hot rooms to sweat off weight. Are we to expect that just carelessly slapping some kind of polymer-based plastic on their helmets - the only thing protecting the players' fragile emotional cores - and affixing it with an adhesive that's undoubtedly high in gluten isn't going to mess with them? Color me concerned.
This isn't going to end well. But the NCAA's top concern has always been the welfare of its student-athletes, so I expect them to step in with a measured, effective response to this developing crisis. I'll get off my soapbox now and just tell you what to drink instead.
Without further ado, here's what you should drink this weekend with your Beer of the Week:
In the last week, we've seen the weather cool down and fall is in full bloom. The students are back, the schoolbuses are out, and it's time for octoberfest beers! This means a trip to Bellaire, or your local Meijer, to pick up one of the best festbiers Michigan has to offer: Short's Noble Chaos.
It's a maerzen, which in short is a beer brewed for fall drinking traditionally brewed in March. Back when electricity and refrigeration weren't a thing yet, those crafty Germans would brew their fall beers in the cool spring. You couldn't brew beer in the summer because the heat meant it'd spoil quickly or make you sick. So the Germans would brew in spring to give them time to get tasty in the summer, storing them in underground barrels (ever wonder where "biergarten" came from? The trees in the "gardens" kept the beer cellars cool.)
Noble Chaos is Short's Brewing's excellent attempt at a Maerzen. It's crisp, with a deep amber color and a caramel finish. Like most Short's beers, this one tends to be on the slightly hoppy side, and I think they use Noble hops in this to give it just a hint of citrus. It's really good, and you should absolutely go buy a case for your Friday/weekend/month. Should be pretty easy to find, and it's better than Sam's also good Oktoberfest yearly release. Buy local, chums.
Until next weekend, Cheers, Michigan Faithful!