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Forget Nostalgia. The Glory Days Are Now.

Memory, as we know, is fallible, heavily influenced by context and our experiences. Still, it does offer us a version of the past, a certain truthiness. But nostalgia? Nostalgia is a big fat liar.

Nostalgia makes you believe that what you’re remembering was good — better, even, than whatever it is that’s happening today. You are nostalgic for the foods you ate as a child (though it turns out that I don’t like baba ghanouj nearly as much as I thought I did), the movies you loved as a teenager (even though they are objectively terrible, all of them) and the way the city you live in today was definitely more pleasant and dignified 40 years ago. (Phone booths! Fewer people!) And that con job can serve as a replacement for reality, one that might be too unpleasant to confront.

This week, the former Michigan football coach Gary Moeller died at 81. As head coach from 1990 to 1994, he compiled a record of 44 wins, 13 losses and three ties (until 1995, college football games could end in ties). He was a very, very good coach who was responsible for not just some of the greatest moments in Michigan football but for the way that the team carried itself for years after he left his post.

Or, perhaps, for the way that my nostalgia, as an alum and superfan, led me to believe Michigan carried itself — as a swaggering monstrosity (in a good way) of Midwestern beef and brawn. But the nostalgic ideal was always more powerful than Michigan football ever was.

Yes, there were moments of human perfection. In 1991, there was the Heisman Trophy winner Desmond Howard stretching his entire body across the end zone and catching a touchdown against Notre Dame on fourth and one. That same year, there was Michigan dropping 45 points on Michigan State in East Lansing, as the Lord (probably) intended.

Michigan wins, the sun shines and everyone is happy. That’s the way it was in Ann Arbor, and that’s the way it should be forever and always.

Wiped clean of the sepia tint, the truth might tell a slightly different story about the early ’90s era of Michigan football — of teams, yes, so reliably very good at being good but too cautious to achieve transcendence. In 1992, Michigan went 9-0-3, with ties against Notre Dame, Ohio State and Illinois. (In 2022, tying two of our biggest rivals and a team I shouldn’t need to contemplate would have driven me to complete and utter madness.) In that game against Illinois, Michigan fumbled the ball 10 times and yet somehow had the chance to win the game with a touchdown, perhaps getting a chance to play for a national championship.

But Gary Moeller decided to kick a field goal instead, to sacrifice a victory for the sure thing — a spot in the Rose Bowl. Fans were understandably furious. As The Chicago Tribune’s Andrew Bagnato detailed at the time, “Michigan became probably the first team to be booed off its field after clinching a Rose Bowl bid.” That’s not the kind of nuance that gets a place in the nostalgiafied memory bank.

And then there’s how Gary Moeller’s career at Michigan ended. In April 1995, Moeller and his wife went to the Excalibur restaurant in Southfield, Mich., where, according to the police and witnesses, he had at least seven drinks, threw a lampshade at the restaurant manager and punched a police officer in the chest. Moeller was so drunk that rather than be admitted directly to jail, he was sent to a hospital to be evaluated for alcohol poisoning. Shortly afterward, he resigned as head coach and later pleaded no contest to misdemeanor charges of disorderly conduct and assault and battery.

It’s amazing to me, looking back now, that even this story of a man losing the job and the team he loved in one night of abject stupidity can’t touch our image of this era. When I talk with older friends about it, or discuss the team on Twitter, there’s a sense that this was the Good Time, this was when Michigan was Michigan. Nostalgia has turned the early 1990s of Michigan football into a story of victors valiant (per the fight song), but that just wasn’t true.

Not that I’m always so cleareyed. In 2007, the summer before my junior year of college, I lived in an apartment with a roommate who owned the entirety of “Saved by the Bell” on DVD. I had vague memories of enjoying that show on Saturday mornings as a kid. So with nostalgia doing its work on me, I sat down one day to watch it again.

I’m proud to report that I did, finally, realize that the show that I held fond memories of was in fact garbage (and Zack Morris was a sociopath). I’m less proud to report that it took five episodes to get there.

That’s the thing about nostalgia — what it tells us isn’t real. I also understand we can’t go back. And if it came down to it, I don’t think most of us would want to. (I, certainly, do not want to be a kid again.) I didn’t long for “Saved by the Bell.” I longed for Saturdays full of possibility, void of any adult responsibilities.

And I don’t long for the Michigan football of the early 1990s. I’d rather see it honestly, to recognize Gary Moeller as he was and his teams were — the highlights and lowlights and everything in between. I think Moeller, and I, deserve that.

All that matters, really, is that Michigan wins, and wins a lot — no, wins most (if not all) of the time, so that I can feel invincible for three hours every Saturday. It doesn’t get better than that.

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