University of Michigan - Michiganensian Yearbook (Ann Arbor, MI)

Page 30 text:

The Football Saturday Experience Electrically charged static is becoming generated. . It crackles in the air The senses sense it. the bodies feel it, and the mind keeps it. Every anxious step multiplies itself. Many are the impressions, merging, diverging. Upon the broken pavement. Solid streets, of plasticized concrete, become continually molded a living and breathing mass of art. Curbs covered now. now exposed. Voids between lampposts fill to the brim then overflow and spill past the learned structures, the architectural feats of cherished weekly vacancies. The throng migrates. Excited sounds vibrate from the ground upward and from the center forward. Always forward The flow flows. The great tide occurs The prediction begins . . . Overcast dullness of shadowy blues disappear. It is a weekend oppostion, a consumed dwarf. v irtually eclipsed by the golden haze. The sun is out. It drips a maizen shellac Upon the blurred expressions an easy cohesion. A thickened, excited, undulating wall, a loud composition of faces, goes round and round. The end becomes the beginning, As the division evaporates and the connection occurs Now a huge circle, it surrounds and to the core, it touches down. Here, the action is neatly packaged waiting . . . only to burst open. Spurts of tension cut through the heavy wind to detonate the precious parcel Explosion.

Page 32 text:

The field moves, strategy surfaces, players design, adrenolin flows, fire burns . . . Lighted numbers flash quick, automatic. Time flies in passing give or take a clocked quarter. Less becomes more, as yards elongate, ignorant of true dimension. Energy shoots throughout. The arena is alive. The Saturday noon and after ritua l happens. Bright sounds double, triple and swirl higher with the breeze. The crowded people ' s indistinguishable voices blend, with brassy drummings and bottled highs. The noise travels fast, faster . . . approaching the speed of sound, becoming the speed of sound- passing the speed of sound. And success begins to smell. It is sweetly near and fragrantly close. So very close. Almost in reach are its scented crimson petals. They have been caught and now hang suspended in the still chaotic breeze. They are ours for the taking. Straining to grasp the flowered parts isn ' t necessary, for they gently fall down and magnetically float into the sweaty palms of our hands. The sweaty beads of human exertion do not overwhelm the petals ' delicate scent though, but rather, the fragrance becomes stronger. I he tide now ebbs. The flow subsides. And, the prediction comes true.