In wake of the disappointing football season, Michigan football fans reportedly wished for a return to a “better and simpler time,” namely when the team was decent enough that fans’ only concern was a covered-up rape charge.
Engineering senior and self-professed diehard fan Ben Snider told reporters, “Man, I wish we could just go back to my freshman year. Sure, alleged rapist Brendan Gibbons kicked the Sugar Bowl’s winning field goal, but come on. We won the freaking Sugar Bowl!”
Snider was referring to the incident in which former Michigan kicker Brendan Gibbons was accused of sexually assaulting a fellow student, something he was never punished for by the University. When asked what he was thinking about when he kicked the memorable field goal against Virginia Tech, Gibbons infamously replied (in what is commonly thought in reference to his victim), “brunette girls,” which has become, in hindsight, one of the ickiest things ever said by a Michigan Football player in the program’s 135 year history. Yet students seem to have largely forgotten about Gibbons, as well as a time when the football program was good enough to effectively chill the issue.
“Imagine having a football team that was so good, people went out of their way to defend their heinous and deplorable acts,” sophomore Alexander Acter excitedly explained. “I’ve never had the opportunity to root for a team that good in my time here. Like instead of hearing coaches and players monotonously explain how and why we lost so badly, every press conference would be an adrenaline filled thriller. Would a reporter ask someone to address the awful rumors going around campus? Will a player acknowledge that his teammate is an awful person? God, that would be amazing. Just like Florida State.”
Many hope that following Athletic Director Dave Brandon’s resignation, the program will return to its successful and corrupt ways of the past. “Brandon’s tenure included the Gibbons fiasco, but that’s about it as far as real scandals go,” Acter continued. “We should try to poach an AD from a school that might be outperforming us a bit now, like UNC. Then we can return to the glory days: allegations of illegal recruiting strategies, paying players, and even enrolling them in fake classes.”
At press time, the University administration was continuing their search for Brandon’s replacement by developing a series of ethical questions to test where a candidate’s priorities truly lie: upholding moral standards of how good people should act, or winning football games. Potential questions include “It is three in the morning, you are awoken by a call from your star QB who has been arrested for a DUI, how do you effectively suppress this information and keep it from the press?” and “Which does not belong: Wins, Money, Academics, Beat Ohio?” A source who is close to the situation and wished to remain anonymous said, “I think we all know what the right answer is.”
