On Saturday, I traveled to Ann Arbor to take in the Michigan football spring game.  I’ve been to several spring games in the past, and I’ve gotten used to their being sparsely-attended affairs with little excitement or fanfare surrounding the scrimmage; it always felt like the program staged the event because they felt they had to, not because it really wanted to.  But as part of the culture change Rich Rodriguez has brought to Michigan football, the spring game has been drastically upgraded: in addition to bringing in the band and dance team for a taste of the game day atmosphere, they added a flag football game featuring former Michigan football players.  And if that wasn’t enough, they also opened up the locker room to the fans for two hours in the morning.

The locker room was open from 8:00-10:00; we showed up shortly after 9:00, thinking that would be plenty of time to get in line.  Uh … not so much.

The large structure poking above the stadium fence in the background on the right is Crisler Arena; the locker room entrance is on the other side of Crisler in this photo, which means the line snaked all the way around the arena and along the south end of the stadium (and, when it was at its longest, halfway along the west side of the stadium).  We took one look at the line and decided we’d rather enjoy coffee at the nearby Caribou than stand in line and maybe make it into the locker room.

After our Caribou visit, we headed into the stadium in time to see the last couple minutes of the flag football game … and to gape at the new structures towering over the stadium.

Don’t worry — I didn’t take pictures only of our gaping at the new structures.  I turned the camera on the new construction towering over the old press box, too.

The scrimmage itself wasn’t unusually thrilling, but it was good to have an oasis of football in a season featuring sports that aren’t football.  And now that the program is trying to make the game more of an event, it’s more fun to spend a spring Saturday at the stadium.