[23 Days To Go] Lloyd Wants Your Mustache To Be Well Rounded

We're now 23 days away from the first game of the 2009 Wolverine football season (hell yeahhh!). And as this rock we call Earth hurdles its way through time and space, on an inevitable collision course with September 5th, we find it appropriate to take a moment and provide a brief contextual background on the history of the mustache. Because we all know, as Michigan alumni and fans, that the bonds that tie us reach deeper than the superficiality of the win/loss column. They cover a larger base and fit into a grander scheme. At the University of Michigan, academics play just as important a role as athletics, and perhaps no single coach exemplified this notion more than Lloyd Carr.

He was known for being an avid reader, a well-read teacher, and a coach who understood that there is more to life than winning football games. We're talking about a man who was paid millions to run a football program, yet kept books by Doris Kearns Goodwin inside his office and a dictionary just outside it so that players would have to choose a new word and use it in a sentence upon entering. He brought a certain gravitas to an already storied program and for that, Mustaches For Michigan is grateful.

So as you prepare a lustrous lip sweater in anticipation of September 5th, feel free to regale your friends and family with these follicly based morsels of truth...

• The word mustache comes to us from the French language (moustache), which in turn comes from Italian (mostaccio), which comes from the Greek word, moustak.
• Shaving began during Neolithic times with stone razors
• The oldest known portrait of a mustached man is a Scythian horseman from 300 B.C.
• The mustache has been widely used in the military as a symbol of unity, much like the army uniform conveys organization and power.
• The mustache hit its apex during the series Magnum, P.I.
• Hungarian cuisine is rated by its ability to cling to the upper lip
• Women with an aversion to lip sweaters have latent issues with their father
• There are several styles of mustache, including (but not limited to): Hungarian, English, Imperial, Natural, Dali, Freestyle, Handlebar, Fu Manchu, Pencil, Toothbrush, and Walrus
  Wilford Brimley: I am The Walrus.

Armed with these introductory facts, Dear Readers, you may thoughtfully ruminate on the style that will suit your face best, so that on September 5th, when you shave down from a beard, you will do so with a sense of purpose. Lloyd Carr would like it that way.

[Editor's Note (yes, we have an Editor): 1. Some unfounded opinions have been misrepresented as "facts". 2. Join the Movement and send in your photos to mustaches4michigan@gmail.com. 3. Progress photos go up each Friday].