Michigan victory over Bucks one for the ages

Try to hold on to as much as you can.

Remember ignoring the conversation at the bar for a second and watching mute highlights on the TV behind the bartender. Remember when Brady found Shawn Thompson and you just knew he was about to tie the score as long as he didn't drop the pass - and he didn't.

Rick Freeman Freeman of the Press

Remember that moment at breakfast, when all conversation - and even the world it seemed - stopped, just before one of your companions said softly, "So are we out of here?"

And you were up and moving again, on your way to a day you knew you'd remember.

Remember it all, because this game happens every year, but it will never again be like this. It might be a bigger game next year; the Rose Bowl - or more - could be on the line. It could be worse.

But it will never again be the way it was yesterday.

Two years from now, when the Buckeyes come back to the Big House, you'll be older. You'll have different friends. You'll have laughed more and you'll have cried more. When you watch it again, you'll be different, and so will the game. Two years from now, when Ohio State comes to Ann Arbor again it won't be like this.

You might be fatter. You might have different priorities. Things will have happened to you that be conceived of right now.

Maybe you won't even be here. You could very well be out in the real world, where people don't wake up at 9 a.m. to grill meat and drink beer. You, like all but a lucky 111,000 or so, will have to watch it on TV. You, like all but the luckiest, won't be able to go to bars on South U. or Main Street afterward.

If you live on the West Coast, the game will end just after lunch. It will be weird, not at all how it was meant to be.

Saturday was how it was meant to be.

That's why you should remember as much as you possible can. So you can tell other people what it was like to be there as Michigan scored on Ohio State.

You'll try to capture the way it feels to teeter on the bleachers and the way the red numbers look when the sun is obscured by clouds.

If you're a decent storyteller, you'll be able to explain how the stands look different in November, when everyone is wearing coats instead of T-shirts, and how the temperature still never seems to matter.

Make sure you remember it all now, because it won't always be this good.

Nothing lasts forever, even if John Cooper's is under contract through 2003. The Wolverines can't always own this rivalry the way they have for the past five years. And you can't always live within walking distance of such magic.

It's easy now to move on, to pay attention to the papers and tests that are clamoring right now for your attention. It's easy now to fret about what's next, what bowl game Michigan will go to, and who needs to win and lose to make which bowl happen.

It's easy to say this season was lost a month ago, when Michigan lost to Illinois. But Saturday's game is the kind of thing that gets a season back on track.

And it's the kind of game you remember forever, if only because you were there, you didn't sell your ticket. It's the kind of memory that makes you still long for college when the thought of drinking beer through a funnel loses a bit of its luster.

It's the kind of memory that's too good to experience just once.

- Rick Freeman is sad that he will never again see a Michigan-Ohio State game as a student, unless he flunks Philosophy class. Console him at rickfree@umich.edu.

11-22-99