'M' Stadium renovations defy memories of games past

On the eve of the first home football game, think about which Michigan football memories have sunk in your head. Think about football weather, tailgating, watching the Ohio State victory last year scrunched closer to your friends than ever before. Think about how the Michigan tradition grabs hold and refuses to let go, forever. Think about the sheer energy of more than 100,000 people wearing maize and blue.

Beware traveling bleary-eyed to the game tomorrow. You won't know what to think.

Welcome to the new Michigan athletic department: bold, brash and bright. Welcome to the new Michigan Stadium, redesigned for a new era. This Michigan Stadium, once known as the largest college football stadium in the country, was out-seated by Tennessee a few years ago. To right that wrong - or officially to provide tickets for all students who want them - the Athletic Department began renovations after last season.

Megan Schimpf Prescriptions

While this "new" stadium is most likely the only building in the world with the word "VALIANT" tattooed on its halo in big letters, we should wonder why the football team now plays in something that resembles an amusement park, something that seems more likely to have been built by Nike than by Fritz Crisler or Fielding Yost or Bo Schembechler.

It is a garish embarrassment to a rich tradition that does not need the constant reassurance of big letters and big video screens. This is a tradition that can be truly great while still being reserved, proud without being braggardly.

The "new" stadium shows none of the humble greatness we previously sought. None of the magic, none of the mystique.

Instead, it is a tribute to the brashness and showboating that now permeate athletics, the look-at-me neon flash that blinds the older, strong hero who never needed "HEROES" on yellow aluminum to be successful. It screams, "We're back - the biggest and baddest!" without answering why stadium appearance and size matter. Does writing "BEST" on the wall make it come true? Champions are not crafted by walking under letters. The Rose Bowl does not read "GRANDDADDY."

My sentimentality follows a summer of games at Camden Yards watching Cal Ripken hit home runs. Magic happens there, night after night. And yet Ripken, one of his sport's best ever, is not the flashiest player. He simply plays well every day.

Ironically, across the harbor from Oriole Park is a new restaurant, ESPN SportsZone, that celebrates the new type of sport, that of the swaggerers and boasters. Television screens flash hip-hop highlight reels. The paradox is telling.

Returning to Ann Arbor, we find nothing of our home these last few falls, nothing we've come to expect during years of attending games in Michigan Stadium. It is as if someone decided to compensate for the lack of noise inside the stadium by creating walls that scream. History is now relegated to spliced highlights during time outs.

Welcome to androstenedione athletics, easily elbowing out yesterday's humble heroes.

Athletic Director Tom Goss is excited about the additional space to move around and the additional bathrooms (sure, but add 6,000 or so people and it'll feel just as crowded). He is excited about the technological leaps.

Perhaps Goss should have met with Kevin Sedatole, director of the Michigan Marching Band. The band is celebrating its 100th year and the 100th anniversary of "The Victors" this year, despite the terrible burden of a building still entirely made of brick. Yet instead of jazzing up the fight song with guitar riffs or writing a rap version, Sedatole and the band pay tribute by continuing to perfect the same version that has been played since 1898.

The legacy of those athletes and fans who built the tradition - and whose names now encircle the stadium on bricks under a strange temple-like structure near Crisler Arena - also never needed to be jazzed up. It just needed an expansion.

But regardless of what the Athletic Department builds, they will come, just as before, to watch what transpires on the grass below. This is what matters - not the flash, not what can be posted on the Internet.

This is the legacy of the names on the bricks, and it, thankfully, can never be completely rebuilt.

- Megan Schimpf can be reached over e-mail at mschimpf@umich.edu. "Happy birthday" messages can be addressed there today.

09-11-98