An email poured in. "Hey, take a look. Black and white footage of Michigan playing Ohio State". Ok. Truth: I thought "oh, yeah, back when Michigan won a game like that".

I remember having a conversation with Kathy about her dad, who passed in the late 1990's. He was an avid reader, about just about anything. But he died just before the internet exploded to what it has become now. From time to time one of us will just say, he would so have loved this. He'd lock himself in a room with a computer, and we'd probably not see him for days. I know I can do that for hours at a time.

Applets like Macromedia Shockwave and Adobe Flash revolutionized the possibilities of what we have now. It made YouTube possible.

(King Rose Archives via YouTube)

I was thinking about that when I got that email promoting some black and white footage about Michigan sports from a hundred years ago. For people like Bob, and for the curious trivia buffs like myself, every so often you have to step back and think in awe of what we have here. Any hour of any day, we have at our fingertips or at the click of a mouse, darned near anything. A question pops in your mind, it. Read about an old failed TV series, click, there's a clip on YouTube.

Which brings me back to this email with the link to old Michigan related sporting events. Now a lot of this stuff is just that, old footage, with really, no context. But other videos are specific to an event.

If you grew up in Michigan, but aren't ancient, you've heard the old-timers talk about the '68 Tigers, and sure enough, you can watch the entire Game 7; Mickey Lolich in all his glory. (And BTW, notice the how fast the game is played; the pace of play people - take note)

(Detroit Tigers via YouTube)

But back to the U of M footage. I was just reading about the history of the Big Ten Conference, and not that long ago, up until 1946, in fact, one of the schools in the Big Ten was the University of Chicago. They were a major college football power, but the university's president at the time, thought the school spending so much on a sport like football was "undignified". The University of Chicago is still a great school (a close buddy of mine went to med school there) , gave us atomic energy, but because they have no big time football program, who knows about them? (And while looking for a link, I found out Johns Hopkins in in the Big Ten as an associate member, for lacrosse.)

(BigBretHarris via YouTube)

Which brings all this meandering to back my amazement of the internet. I was going to close with "If you're at all curious, spend a little time poking around your computer. There's a whole world out there". But chances are you are probably ahead of me on this, so let me just say, wow, this is cool, and sometimes you need to step back and just appreciate it.

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Famous Michigan Athletes and Their Jersey Numbers