Back in Ann Arbor

Last month I found myself back in Ann Arbor for a long weekend. Several college roommates and friends made it back to where we all met for a bit of golf and a few good times. We got an AirBnB right next to The Blind Pig/Circ/8-Ball. A great location to enjoy AA nightlife and relive some of our glory days.

We all arrived on Thursday. Some got in early enough to get hooked up with a tour of Schembechler Hall and Crisler Arena. I missed out on that. But once we all arrived, we proceeded around the corner from the AirBnB to Grizzly Peak for dinner. We all thought it wasn't as good as it seemed when we would pick it as the "fancy" place to have our parents take us when they visited us while we were in school. Afterwards, we drank at the AirBnB and then went to the 8-Ball for beer and darts.

The entrance to 8-ball saloon

I went to the 8-Ball a handful of times as a senior at Michigan. I didn't make it over to Main Street often while in school, but when I did, the 8-Ball was a place I liked to pop into. I always remembered it as a townie bar, and a little rougher one at that. Leather jackets and guys who had turned a wrench or two before. However, I didn't see too much of that this weekend. It was mostly college kids and no longer seemed like a bar for the working man anymore. Maybe those folks can't afford to live in AA anymore?

Friday morning we played the U of M Golf Course. We did a scramble, and the losing team had to pay for hibachi that evening. My team won, mostly because Zola decided to show up this trip, and it turns out he is an absolute stick, despite not having played for 2 years. I wasn't much of a golfer in college and had never played that course, but I really enjoyed it. It was so much more interesting than the other Alister MacKenzie course that I play regularly near my office in Sacramento.

Teeing off at the U of M Golf Course

After golfing we were going to go to a CIAYCELB (Cottage Inn All You Can Eat Lunch Buffet) but were dismayed to find out that Cottage Inn stopped doing their lunch buffet years ago. Instead, we decided to get some pepperoni styx from Charley's. On the way we decided to grab some sangria from Dominick's. We had the whole courtyard to ourselves. The place was pretty dead, which surprised me for 3 p.m. on a Friday.

We made it to Charley's for some snacks and a few pitchers of Labatt Blue. Charley's was also pretty quiet. From there we headed over to the Brown Jug for a Hairy Bitch. They were delicious as ever, but it was odd that there was nary a student in there, just a few older couples eating an early dinner. I know it was spring term, but even when I was a student there would usually be a bit of action at one of the campus bars on a Friday afternoon during the spring. And I know they weren't at the Blue Lep because that apparently had closed.

After leaving The Jug, I took stock of South U. All the small shops and little buildings had been replaced by mid-rises. From in front of the Raising Cane's at East U, all of South U looked like every other generic mid-sized American city. Middle Earth never stood a chance against the developers. We argued as we walked about where things used to be before it had all gotten bulldozed for fancy apartments catering to students who didn't want to have the college experience of living in a shit house with all their friends doing dumb shit and loving it.

Speaking of dumb shit - a polar bear fight

From there we went to the Garage Bar for a lively round of Polar Bear Fights, which I gladly refrained from. This led to one participant passing out at hibachi (the 2 sake bombs didn't help), which makes 2 golf trips in a row in which this person has passed out at a restaurant. After hibachi, we went to the Heidelberg for beer boots. The basement was basically empty, which is strange to me since the Heidelberg was always such a fun spot. Maybe it fell off once they stopped serving the free hot wings on Fridays.

Most everyone having a memorable time at Hibachi

From there we went to the Circ Bar, which everyone we talked to said was the place to be. I remember going into it once or twice when I was a student and it was called Circus Bar. I remember it being a kind of odd second-story circus-themed bar. I was a bit surprised it was still open. I was even more surprised that the place was packed. A few beers and games of pool later I was fading fast from 12+ hours of drinking, and things got a little fuzzy.

Saturday was the main event of the golf trip. My buddy Dan had worked a connection to get us onto Radrick Farms, which is the university-owned golf course that is just for regent and staff use. The course is a Pete Dye course set on the rolling hills just outside the city. It is a beautiful course and was an absolute gem to play. After sleeping in and a late breakfast at Fleetwood Diner, we headed over to the course for an early afternoon tee time. I didn't play my best golf, but I made 5 pars and broke 100. Not bad when going up against a Pete Dye course. I couldn't help but splurge a bit in the pro shop on some gear.

Radrick

By the time we got back to the AirBnB it was nearing time for dinner and we were all hungry. We had seen a Detroit pizza place on our way back from the course and headed over there. It was just us in the restaurant besides 1 guy at the bar in a bright red fishing vest. The bartender/server said he didn't even work there. He was an odd dude. But he got us drinks and our pizza, which was surprisingly good, although not good enough to attract a crowd on a Saturday night.

Then we headed over to Ashley's, which was pretty quiet. After a beer, everyone else headed back to Main Street. I decided to take a bit of a walk around campus. Maybe it was the alcohol, but it felt like a bit of a fever dream, where there were things I recognized but everything seemed wrong at the same time. South of Ashley's, where there should have been a Jimmy John's, was a Dunkin'. I walked down State Street towards my old house. I stopped to see what failing restaurant was at State & Packard and laughed when I saw the "Restaurant Space for Lease" sign in front of the business de jour which happened to be Pizza Cat Max. I continued down to my college house, but instead of it being there, there was a ginormous high-rise apartment building under construction in its place. Around the old neighborhood where there should have been house parties with beer pong in front yards, there was quiet. The houses were there, but the porches were devoid of life on a nice May Saturday night. Elbel Field had a dorm on it for some reason.

Where my old house was

I went into Campus Corner to pay my respects to Joe and saw that they didn't sell 40s of malt liquor anymore. Joe's nephew behind the counter said that after COVID the kids stopped drinking it, and they stopped stocking it. I stumbled out to the street wondering if kids were going through their entire college careers without drinking a single 40 of malt liquor. As I walked I remembered how the first time I ever got drunk in Ann Arbor was off a 40 of Mickey's. About how we would make brass monkeys with Olde English "800" my sophomore year. About sitting on the porch my junior year drinking Colt 45s. About senior year participating in the CSI (Camo Silver Ice) Challenge and coming in second place. These kids would never have the joy of cracking a 40 of malt liquor with their homies.

Olde English "800"

I continued walking, stopping in at the Union for a hearty poop (I still remember all my favorite dumping grounds on campus). Then I went to spin the cube only to realize that the Fleming Administration Building is now a grass field. I walked back, past the Original Cottage Inn, only realizing that it's no longer Cottage Inn and now just another pizza place. I walked past Pinball Pete's only to realize it was in the wrong spot too, and had probably been pushed out by some developer on South U.

I found myself very relieved as I walked back into the friendly confines of the 8-Ball Saloon to find my friends playing darts and drinking beer. It felt like my friends were still the same, even if the town had changed, and the college students had changed, and Cottage Inn had changed. We were still the same dumb kids, just stuck in 38-year-old bodies.

NATIONAL CHAMPIONS

For the second time in 3 years, and for the second time in 29 years Michigan is National Champions in Football or Basketball.

The nature of basketball and football has changed the way championships are won, with rosters being constructed out of NIL money -  especially in basketball. But I still believe there is some underlying force between past program success, fan commitment, player interest, booster money, and ultimately program success.

When asked, Dusty May first said this championships is for the past players, which is very admirable for a coach who has only been at the school for two seasons. But I couldn't agree more. This is for the guys who came in and gave their all, with no real hope of getting to the top of the mountain, but paved the way for the guys who came after them to keep inching closer. Two championship game losses in 2013 and 2018 made me really feel for the guys who came so close but didn't make it.

To the guys who bled for this program.

This championship goes out to these guys.

To the guys who I watched as an underclassman under Tommy Amaker:

Daniel Horton
Courtney Sims
Dion Harris

To the early Beilein guys who made the first NCAA Tourney in a decade:

DeShawn Sims
Manny Harris
Zack Novak
Stu Douglass

My post on attending that NCAA Tourney.

To the 2013 team that got so close:

Trey Burke

Glenn Robinson III

Nik Stauskas

Tim Hardaway Jr

Jordan Morgan

Caris LeVert

Jon Horford

Mitch McGary

Spike Albrecht

Win the game.

To the in-between guys who missed both championship runs:

Zak Irvin
Derrick Walton

To the 2018 who again got the to the championship game:

Charles Matthews

Jordan Poole
Zavier Simpson

Isaiah Livers

MAAR
Moritz Wagner

Jon Teske

Duncan Robinson
Eli Brooks

To the Juwan Howard Era Guys:
Caleb Houstan
Franz Wagner

Hunter Dickinson

I loved the guys on that 2018 team. Besides my love for Zack Novack, Stu Douglass and Jourdan Morgan, I wish that team could have won it all. 

I'm happy for this team, but I don't feel the same way for these players in particular. Besides L.J. Cason, Trey McKinney and Will Tschetter, it's all transfers. Most of these players came to Michigan because the money was good, and they thought they could win a championship here. But I love the guys who came here because they loved the University of Michigan, and gave it all out of love for their school. I realize that is a antiquated belief, but that's what makes college sports special to me.

But this team was truly special and was one of the best college basketball teams ever assembled. It was a joy to get to watch them in person in DC this February, despite losing a close game to Duke.

Go blue!

Sorry for any typos, the champagne has been flowing.

Loris "Sunshine" Caplan (1927-2025)

My grandmother, Sunshine died this fall at the ripe old age of 98. She lived a pretty incredible life, and she lived through some very interesting times.

She was born in Detroit at the tail end of the roaring twenties as the second eldest of four and the only girl. The daughter of a foundry foreman she spent her youth on the east side before relocating to the west side. Her house on the west side at 5756 Hamilton Ave. would eventually be torn down as part of the expansion of the Lodge Freeway. She grew up in a Detroit that was booming. It's population would double between 1920 and 1950 as it became the 5th largest and the wealthiest city in the country.

Graduating high school at the end of WWII, she enrolled first in Alma College in Alma, MI, and eventually graduated from Michigan Normal College (now Eastern Michigan) in 1949 after training to be librarian with a minor in spanish, a language which I never heard her speak. She would often tell of hitchhiking between Ypsilanti and Detroit.

Quiet possibly Sunshine in the Bookmobile

After college she began working as a librarian for the Detroit Public Library. She soon began working on the city's bookmobile riding around the city distributing books. She then began working as a research librarian at the GM Research Laboratory where she met my grandfather. She had turned down two marriage proposals from other suitors before eventually accepting my grandfather's hand in marriage. 

She chose wisely. Living first in an apartment near the GM research lab, they eventually moved onto a modest home on Derby road in Birmingham where they would have their children. Sunshine would settle into life as a 1950's housewife. Eventually as my grandfather rose the ranks within the GM research laboratory they would move to a more stately home at 2515 Covington Place. During these years I have to imagine they lived the stereotypical suburban life with sunshine rearing three daughters while my grandfather went off to work each day.

As her children got older she was able to travel more with my grandfather who often traveled for his work as the executive director of the GM research laboratory and as a member of the National Academy of Engineering. 

The only known picture of Sunshine wielding a machete. Taken at my place in Poulsbo, WA.
In the background is a picture of us, and a wooden box she gave me.

After my grandfather's retirement from GM in 1987 they downsized to a condo in The Heathers, less than a mile from when I grew up. This meant they were always around for birthdays and school plays. When my grandfather died in 1998, Sunshine became my only grandparent left, an honor which she would hold for another 27 years.  It was around this time that me and my siblings were getting old enough for our mother to let us ride our bikes alone to her house. In the summer we would often ride over to her house to play rummy, drink Big K pop and eat Drumsticks ice cream cones which I think she always kept in supply just for us. Otherwise her fridge was mostly empty as she would boast about making a Wendy's salad last for two meals. Not that she particularly needed to pinch pennies as the wife of an auto industry executive, but I think as a child of the great depression she always valued frugality. Those are some of my greatest memories of Sunshine.

Sunshine was always a big believer in a quality education. That shows in all three of her children graduating college and two of them getting advanced degrees. I think she was extremely proud when my siblings and I were inducted into the National Honor Society, got accepted into the University of Michigan, and graduated from college. She helped pay for all of her grandchildren's college educations.

Sunshine and I the night I found out I got accepted at U of M

She was also quite the traveller. I remember asking her if she was excited about visiting Russia on an upcoming trip and her response was that she'd already been there twice! Even after my grandfather died she travelled extensively with friends through her seventies.

In 2012, after spending her entire 85 years in the state of Michigan she moved to Pacific Palisades in California, right on the beach to be near my aunt. When my aunt moved to Tampa Bay a few years later she followed as well, spending the rest of her life in Florida, near where she and my grandfather had vacationed every winter after his retirement. She lived in a condo looking out over the Gulf of Mexico. When COVID hit, she hunkered down being at higher risk due to her age and being in Florida. It was during this time that her memory began to decline, which was a surprise to me since even in her early nineties she could remember little details of my childhood that I had long forgotten. Whether her memory loss would have happened at that age anyways, or if the prolonged isolation of COVID had something to do with it... who knows. But she spent her last few years in memory care before dying peacefully in her sleep.

Sunshine was a bit particular in some ways. She hated surprises. She also had a strong sense of what was prudent, and if you strayed from that she would tell you. She cared deeply about how she, and by extension her family, presented themselves. In later years she would talk to me often about the legacy of my grandfather, and his work. I think she really wanted us to know what a great man he was. She deeply loved her family, although she could seem ambivalent to her children's and grandchildren's partners. She also loved to tell me how proud she was of me and the person I became. That always meant a lot to me. She was someone I was very close to growing up, and I'll miss her always.

Going Out on Top

Two years ago Michigan won their first National Championship since 1997. I was in 3rd grade when they won in 1997 and not yet a huge college football fan. The 2023 Natty was the culmination of years of ups and downs and a long journey back to the promised land.

It was also the last real national championship before the sport changed forever. The opening floodgates of player payments, unbridled commercialization of the sport, free agency via the transfer portal, NIL collectives, additional TV timeouts, playoff expansion and private equity all have changed the sport to the point where it is vastly different than the sport I fell in love with as a kid. The sport where amateur athletes played for the pride of their school. Some of these changes - player compensation - were needed, however they still changed the sport.

When Michigan won their National Championship two years ago I told friends that I could ride this high for a decade, and even if they were bad for a long time, I could hang my hat on that one special year. I had seen friends who were Alabama fans win the National Championship and immediately start talking about if they could win another one next year. I'm not that greedy, and with that Natty came a deep exhale.

No longer does every game seem of critical importance. I still cheer, I still go to at least 1 game each year, and I still really enjoy us winning, but being a casual fan is so much more enjoyable. I no longer worry each offseason if our coach will leave, or if a player will transfer/go pro.

This step-back timed with the degradation of the sport overall has caused me to care less about the college football. I still watch a ton of college football, but with less intensity.

Tomorrow Michigan will take on Ohio State. The best rivalry in sports. And one that Michigan has won 4 in a row. Each of those wins were special with their own storyline, but this edition is is essentially the same story as last season with Michigan playing a spoiler. It would be fun to upset them again, but if we get beat by the better team it's not going to ruin my day.

We got to the top of the mountain just before it started crumbling. I don't care who is at the top of the rubble. 

Go Blue!

20 Years Since I Went off to College

20 years ago this week I moved into the dorms to begin college. It made me wonder what the 18 year old version of me would think about how my life unfolded over the next 20 years. But I'm not sure I was looking that far ahead at 18. I think my focus was on college and what came immediately after over where I would be at in life at 38. 

What an exciting time that was, and I have many fond memories of living in the dorms. When I lived in the dorms (or anywhere for that matter), I've always wondered about the people who lived there before me. So I decided to write a letter to the current residents and share with them my memories of living in the same 10x11 room 20 years before them.

September 1st, 2025

Dear residents of 4320 Elliot,

Congratulations on your matriculation to the University of Michigan.

20 years ago, I found myself in the same spot you are in today, residing in 4320 Elliot. I had roomed blind, and while my roommate and I soon realized that we wouldn’t be best friends, we got along just fine.

The rooms still had a landline phone in them which was wild even for 2005 since by then everyone had a cell phone. In 2005 only some rooms had modular furniture, so we had a company build a loft, which is what most residents did. Under the loft we had a futon. On the weekends my roommate would typically sleep on the pulled out futon with his girlfriend, while his friend who lived on north campus would sleep in his bed. 4 people in a 10x11 room was a tight squeeze.

My roommate, his girlfriend, and his friend in our room

There were a few events that year that I vividly recall. I was playing NCAA ’05 on Playstation 2 in the room next door and won on a fluke play. My friend who lived in the room ran out and kicked an air vent leaving a big dent. I’ve always wondered if that dent is still there. If so, that dent is my legacy.

In March of that year our RA was unjustly fired. Despite the residents’ efforts to come together and overturn this, we spent the last month without an RA, which certainly led to some chaos amongst the men of the floor.

No amount of Save Forest posters can redeem an RA who gave out their master keycard to a resident

On the weekend of St. Paddy’s Day several us of snuck a keg into the hall lounge that had been converted to a triple due to overcrowding in the dorms. When the RA showed up, instead of shutting it down and writing us up, he joined in for a few beers. I think this is when the hall really started gelling together.

On that topic, winter semester is when friendships started to really solidify. Fall semester was such a blur with meeting so many new people, football season, and then thanksgiving and finals. When I went home for winter break, I remember thinking that I had met tons of people but didn’t really feel like I had made any great friends yet. That all changed during winter semester when the cold & dark days of January and February meant a lot more hanging around Markley. Most people I know tend to agree that friendships were really made during winter semester.

Friendships in progress at 4230 Elliot

Many of the friends I made in Markley I still consider amongst my closest friends. Next weekend I’ll be meeting up with a bunch of them at the Oklahoma game and we’ll reminisce about our days in that crappy dorm. While you should study and make sure you get a good education, don’t forget to enjoy the social aspects of college. The friendships are what I cherish most from my time at Michigan.

Please do not feel the need to respond to this letter. It was mostly a self-serving endeavor.

Go Blue!

Brian Russell

Diversity

I’ve benefited tremendously from diversity throughout my life. I grew up in one town, a relatively affluent suburb of a city that had seen its share of racial conflict. Most of the kids in my Kindergarten class ended up graduating high school with me, and 98% of us went on to college. While my school classes growing up were mostly white, I’d estimate that my classes in school were 80% white, 15% asian and 5% black. Regardless of race, all of my classmate grew up in the same subdivisions, had parents with corporate jobs and had roughly the same experiences that I did. When you're a kid you don't think about racial diversity as much. I remember thinking that the white kid who moved into my neighborhood from Alabama was way more different than me than the black kid who lived in the next subdivision over and also loved the Lions.

It wasn’t until 7th grade when I became friends with Sagar who had just immigrated from India that I really knew someone with a vastly different upbringing than myself. As most would kids do, I peppered him with questions about what life was like in India. I'm sure some of my questions were ignorant, but through that friendship I learned about him, India and Hinduism. I've carried the benefit of that throughout my life whenever I've met someone from India.

 

When I was 15, I decided that I wanted to get a job. Some of my friends had jobs and I wanted some extra money beyond my allowance. My friend Kyle worked at a Quiznos Sub shop and put in a good word for me and got me a job. The staff there was about half high-school kids and half the type of people who had a career in fast food. The assistant manager was from the indigent suburb next to mine. She drove a beater, chain smoked and lived in a trailer. The manager and franchisee was a gay man who was worldly, smart, funny, and I can't leave out handsome. He encouraged me to go out and experience the world and not end up like Ryan, who had graduated from my high school 8 years earlier and was still living at home and working at a sandwich shop. This was really my first foray into spending serious amounts of time with people from a vastly different background than my own, but again I took something away from this. Mostly an empathy for the assistant manager whose close mindedness I attributed to her lack of opportunities for education and a general frustration with her own place in life.

 

In college I got a job as a bus driver. Much like working at Quiznos, the staff was half students and half career bus drivers. But the other drivers now weren’t all people who grew up in the same few towns. My co-workers spanned ages, religions, races and sexual orientations. It wasn't uncommon for the conversations in the break rooms to be about race or sexuality, and I took much away from this as well.

But nothing expanded my worldview as much as the course I took my senior year  called Intergroup Dialog. The point of Intergroup Dialog was to split up into groups of 10-12 students and meet each week to have a very deep discussion – typically about race, gender, or sexuality. The groups were divided up to be as diverse as possible across many different areas like religion, race, urban/rural/suburban, poor/wealthy. It was eye-opening to hear kids who grew up 10 miles from me in Detroit talk about how many of their high school classmates ended up getting shot or joining street gangs.

I think everyone in my group grew as a person during class, but none more so than a freshman who I'm pretty sure was named Kelly. Kelly had grown up in a tiny town in west Michigan. She was a petite blond girl, and in the cold months at the beginning of the winter semester she always wore her little silver cross necklace outside of her sweater. She was one of just a few kids from her graduating class to go to college. During conversations on race she was usually pretty quiet but eventually opened up near the end of the term.

 

She said that before taking this course she had never had a real conversation with a black person. Her only interaction with black people in her 19 years of life were as cashiers or as wait staff at restaurants. There were no black kids at her high school, and everyone she knew told her that she should be wary of black people and that they were dangerous. But as she had listened to the 4 black students in the group talk about their lives and experiences and as she got to know them she said that she realized that the things she had been told were wrong. She realized that the people back home who told her those things had probably never had a real conversation with a black person either. It was amazing to watch the fear that she had been conditioned with disappear over the course of the semester. All it took for her to change her views was getting forced to have a real conversation with someone different.

 

I was left wondering about all of her peers back home who didn’t go to college, and were likely going to spend their whole life on the same path she was on before taking this course. Those people will probably spend their whole life fearing people who are different and never getting the chance to have a conversation that could change that. And if that is the "liberal indoctrination" that some people accuse colleges of doing, I couldn't endorse it enough. I often think back to that course and I hope Kelly kept growing as a person.

 

I think being open to others and their life experiences has helped me tremendously throughout my career. When I worked for the Navy I worked with people from all sorts of backgrounds. The military really draws from a cross section of America, and even beyond. There are a surprising number of foreign born individuals in the Military, and working for the DoD. At one point my 7-person team had people born on 4 different continents. Being able to work successfully with people from different backgrounds and cultures is key, and the diversity of ideas and approaches to problems is a huge boon to the US Military. 

 

One of the best bosses I ever had was a Commander who was a black man from Tennessee. His Naval career had taken him all over the world. I asked him what he thought he would be doing if he hadn't joined the Navy. He said that he assumed that like his siblings he would have stayed in his hometown and probably would have never left the country. If we had each decided to stay within our safety nets or where we grew up, we would have never met.

I sometimes reflect on how common it must be to miss out on that diversity, like Kelly almost did. I think it’s very easy to grow up in a homogenous town, go to a local college made up of kids mostly from similar towns, and then move to the nearest big city and work with people who all went to universities in the surrounding states and all look, talk, think and act just like them. 

I also often think about Daryl Davis, and how through just befriending someone, he was able to convince them that their hate for him was misguided. All it takes is having a good conversation with someone different from you to grow into a more welcoming, better person. If it's that easy, shouldn't we all be doing it?

Different Mindsets I Suppose

My last post was an ode to my college house, and my college years still occupy a significant portion of my thoughts.

Earlier this week I met up with a college acquaintance for a drink and to catch up on life. we were talking a bit about Ann Arbor and what a great town it is. I asked him if he ever gets back to campus. He said he visited once a few years after graduation and hasn't been back in 15 years. I then asked him if he kept in touch with any of our mutual college friends. He said he hasn't talked to anyone from Michigan since he graduated. I was flabbergasted.

For me, college was such a formative and important time in my life that I'll cherish forever. For him, it was just 4 years of something he had to go through and walked away after graduation and never really looked back. Sometimes I wish i could be like him and not carry around this nagging nostalgia for those years, but then I shudder at the thought of just moving through life without the shared experiences to relive with life-long friends until we can't remember them anymore. What a pity that would be.