Getting a ticket at the UM/MSU game

Technically, by the peach fuzz of their maize and blue chinny-chin-chins, the Michigan Wolverines somehow managed to scratch out a last-second, come-from behind win over Michigan State. Yet, if there was any justice, this game should have been declared a draw. Why? Because neither team deserved to win.

It was terrible. They stunk it up. Both of them. Somewhere during the course of the second half, the "mercy" rule should have been invoked and the game stopped -- for the benefit of the fans that were watching it. Please, show us a little mercy. You're KILLING us with this yawnfest.

Besides being supremely boring, it was flat-out ugly. Between those two teams, there likely hasn't been that much sloppy execution since Henry VIII was going through his wives, or maybe the French Revolution.

Good grief. If this is supposed to be the epitome of college football in the state of Michigan, then we've got a lot more problems than just the economy.

Though State fans won't agree, the only positive thing that came out of that game was UM QB Dennard Robinson finally getting the monkey off his back to beat his green nemesis at least once, so good for him. Not that he deserved it, because his play was erratic at best, as well.

State had lots of chances to seal a victory, but they bumbled them away, particularly at the end. And Michigan? Hey, if they couldn't even score one single touchdown in their own house, then they didn't deserve to win either.

It should have been a draw.

Nevertheless, sometimes miracles happen. Yours truly had been invited by a beautiful woman to not only watch the game in a private club, but spend those hours in her company. In my world, that sort of thing happens about as often as the Detroit Lions winning the Super Bowl. To boot, it was only $3 for all-you-can-eat of delicious food and my drinks were comped -- courtesy of the BW mentioned above. It doesn't get any better than that, right?

Ah, but there was a catch. There's always a catch. While the game was going on, the club was raising money for charity, always a good thing. Besides a few 50-50 drawings, they had some pretty cool stuff to raffle off, including some UM and MSU gear. Problem was, it seemed like just about every time UM or MSU did something dumb on the field, which was a lot, here would come another ticket lady. Five bucks here, five bucks there, another five bucks..... I'm telling ya those folks had a thing about pieces of paper with Abraham Lincoln's picture on them. If you didn't have one, they'd take a Jackson of course, and give you back 3 Abes -- which they would be coming back for right soon. Geez, they even had an ATM inside. ATMs only dispense Jacksons, right? Though thankfully I never had to use that ATM, I had this very strong suspicion that if I had tried to get a hundred bucks out of it, it wouldn't spit out 5 Jacksons. Oh no, it would have been 20 Abes. And the Lincoln sharks would smell blood and go into another feeding frenzy. More tickets. It must have cost them a fortune just to buy the damn tickets. I'm surprised they didn't sell me more tickets to pay for the tickets.

I'm unlucky when it comes to raffles. I NEVER win anything, but that's OK. You get used to it after a while. Incredibly, this time I actually had one of my tickets drawn, and I won -- the only thing out of all that cool stuff that I didn't really want. Figured.

So yeah, it was a boring game, and maybe my wallet's a little thinner, but it was for charity, and I got to hang out with a BW. All in all, a terrific day.

And I drove very safely on the way back home.

The LAST thing I wanted to see was ANOTHER ticket.