When life gets a little hairy, lose yourself in Michigan hockey

CHRIS FARAH Farah's Faucet

It's done. It's over with. It was tough - almost painful, even - but I did it. After all, I had no choice.

I rinsed off the cold razor, washed my face and lathered it up. And what was left after I finished? A year's worth of my life, it seemed, everything I had gone through, everything I had experienced - all it amounted to was clippings of hair stuck to the bottom of my filthy sink.

I shaved my goatee.

But as difficult as it was to cut away what had been part of me for so long, I didn't really regret it. In fact, I enjoyed it. I relished it.

After all, imagine the repercussions had I not been forced to shave it off. A whole team of Wolverines, a whole group of hopeful hockey players - freshmen with wide eyes, seniors trying to leave a legacy - would've been disappointed. More than disappointed, they would've been crushed. Their season would've been practically ruined, for heaven's sake.

Oh, don't get me wrong. They didn't really care whether I shaved or not. But they did care about the NCAA championship. And if the Wolverines hadn't won, I wouldn't have shaved.

I know, I'm the media. Technically, I'm not supposed to care if the Wolverines win or lose. But let's be honest - if you're a sports fan, whether you're writing for a paper or not, you're going to care who wins. I've always been a Michigan fan, ever since I was born in Ann Arbor 21 years ago, and there was no way I couldn't want the Wolverines to win. I had to. It's in my blood.

Which is why, before the championship game between Michigan and Boston College, I did something rash. I made a deal.

The Wolverines win, and I shave the goatee. Plain and simple.

In what was one of the most thrilling games I've ever seen - of any sport, hockey or otherwise - Michigan beat the Eagles, 3-2, in overtime. And that was that.

The Wolverines won, and I had to shave.

And I couldn't have been happier.

Because as much as I've always been a Michigan fan, as much as I've always cheered for the maize and blue, this hockey championship meant even more to me.

I'm not your average, generic "sports guy." I love sports, of course. But I'm not one of those guys who can rattle off Jim Harbaugh's pass-completion percentage when he played for Michigan, or Steve Shields' goals-against average when he was a Wolverine. I've never made an effort to memorize sports trivia, and I've never called in to a sports talk-radio show.

I just love the games. I love the stories of the athletes who play in them. I love all the clichés - the never-say-die attitude, the ability to sacrifice it all for your team, to rise above being human for a fraction of a second and almost become divine. I love the intangibles. The purity of sports.

And this hockey team, more than any team I've ever followed, brought that out for me in a lot of different ways.

It could have been Marty Turco making the most impossible glove-save you've ever seen, just when New Hampshire looked like it was going to make a rally in the NCAA semifinals.

Or maybe it was Mark Kosick, the college freshman who looks like he could almost be a high school freshman, scoring two goals to send the national championship game into overtime.

Or Bubba Berenzweig, scoring and holding up the defense while playing more than seemed humanly possible.

Whether it was Turco, Kosick, Berenzweig or any of the other Wolverines, there was something special about this team.

I actually had a hard time deciding to cover hockey before the school year started. All of last year, I wrote about the Michigan women's track team, and I enjoyed that immensely. I liked the people I wrote about, I liked the sport and I liked giving good coverage to a team that usually didn't get the recognition it deserved.

Why would I want to write hockey when I was so happy with track? I didn't care if hockey was a "bigger" sport than track, or if more people read about it. I liked what I was doing, so why would I want to change?

Somehow or another, I decided to go with hockey. And it was probably one of the best decisions I've ever made.

Hockey manages to maintain the excitement of a "big" sport with a lot of fanfare, while keeping the intimate, more personal feel of a smaller sport.

The practices are open to anyone who wants to watch them. The players are more accessible - to fans and media - and they're genuinely friendly people. Coach Red Berenson comes off as tough and hard-nosed, but he'll surprise you with a joke or wide grin when you least expect it.

Maybe those qualities meant as much to me as the sport itself. Maybe that's why the Michigan hockey team attracts such ardent, loyal fans.

Somehow, the Wolverines make you feel like you're part of the team. Whether they're signing autographs, giving interviews or skating around the ice and thanking their fans after winning the NCAA championship - the Wolverines bring you into the game.

You feel like you're on the ice with them. With every flubbed shot or missed pass, I always flinched. With every goal that Turco gave up, I shook my head. But with every victory, every perfect pass or amazing save, I always cheered - at least on the inside.

I've never been very good at playing sports. But the Michigan hockey team could make me feel like a winner. The Wolverines could make all their fans feel like winners. After all, Michigan wasn't supposed to be that great this year. The Wolverines definitely weren't supposed to win a championship. But they did win. They won the whole thing.

Think about that for a second. How often does anyone really win it all? Sure, we see that kind of stuff in the movies all the time. Whether it's karate, hockey, baseball or whatever, the little guy always wins. Dreams always come true in the movies.

But how often do dreams come true in real life?

When we're little kids, we want to be astronauts or rock stars, then somehow we wind up selling our souls to be accountants or advertising executives.

But the Michigan hockey team did reach its dream. The Wolverines outdid the movies - they won in real life. Somehow that makes me - that makes all of us - feel like we can win in real life, too.

Maybe that's why I had to shave. Maybe I had to do something concrete to feel like I was really a part of the championship. Like I had a stake in the amazing heroics and the purity of the sport.

Somehow this hockey team brought us all closer to the game, to the action, to the winning.

I don't exactly know how the Wolverines did it. But I do know, for some reason, I won't be growing back my goatee for a long, long time.

- This is Chris Farah's last column as a Sports editor. E-mail him at cjfarah@umich.edu

04-21-98