Archie Crawford is gearing up for his seventeeth consecutive season of attending every University of Michigan football game–home, away, and bowl games. Crawford’s streak started with the opening game of the 1994 season against Boston College, and he’s attended all 212 games the team has played since–a span in which the Wolverines have compiled a 145-67 record.
The closest Crawford has come to missing a game was the 1995 Alamo Bowl against Texas A&M, when he went to the wrong airport–Southwest Airlines had just moved its operations from Detroit City Airport to Metro. Fortunately, an Avis worker gave him a lift, and he made the flight by twenty minutes. Another close call was the January 1998 Rose Bowl, which, with its national championship implications, was a hard ticket to find. Crawford says even getting a flight was difficult, and he was preparing to drive to California and try to buy a ticket on the street. However, three days before the game his miracle ticket and flight materialized–although he didn’t have the ticket in hand until one hour before kickoff.
It’s hard to find a positive side to the Wolverines’ miserable record since Rich Rodriguez took over, but Crawford knows one: it’s much easier to obtain tickets. This year, for the first time in sixteen years, he had all his seats before the start of the season.
