Patriots Deflategate: How You Play The Game Matters! (1329 hits)
I was fortunate enough to see Tom Brady, the quarterback for the New England Patriots, play in college at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 1998. Going to a Michigan football game was very memorable for me. I left the game singing the few words of the Fight Song I could remember, “Hail….Hail….Hail!” Truthfully, I think I was more excited about ‘cursing on the sly’ than anything else. However, a few things I will never forget about that experience are:
How big the stadium was. It seated well over 100,000 people and I believe it was at that time, and still is, the largest football stadium in the U.S.
Michigan fans are super FANatical. They’re really into their football.
Tom Brady was a very talented college quarterback.
I was in Detroit for an MBA conference and met some guys who were going to the Michigan game that weekend. I suddenly remembered that a young man who attended my church in Washington, D.C. was a freshman running back on the Michigan team. Walter Cross was the 1997 offensive player of the year as a senior at Oxon Hill High School and with 5,227 rushing yards, he set a Maryland Public Schools’ record as a running back. I called back to Maryland got his number and made plans to tag along with my new friends to support Walter at the game. (I’m happy to say that Walter is married now and a very successful IT professional working on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.)
It was at that game that I got a chance to experience Big Ten Football. Having grown up watching the...
