Nancy Eubanks’s job isn’t 

one that lends itself to social 
distancing. She’s the catering 
director 
for 
Zingerman’s 

Delicatessen, a job that like so 
many in Ann Arbor, is made 
possible by large groups of 
people. Especially every other 
Saturday in the fall.

Eubanks 
has 
a 
routine 

on 
those 
Saturdays. 
She 

wakes up to the sound of the 
400-member marching band 
practicing at Elbel Field, a few 
blocks away from her house. 
She traverses her way through 
throngs of tailgaters to the 
deli, where dozens of workers 
prepare upwards of 2,000 
sandwiches, just for catering. 
Then she goes out to deliver 
those sandwiches to tailgates, 
some of them with hundreds 

of fans, all preparing to watch 
a football game with 110,000 
more.

It’s a routine that makes the 

deli $250,000 in an average 
season. It’s also a coronavirus 
nightmare, which is why it 
won’t be happening this fall. 
That’s a decision Eubanks 
understands. She wants Ann 
Arbor to stay safe and knows 
that desire is incompatible 
with football.

But for Zingerman’s, and 

countless 
other 
businesses 

in the region, the financial 
impact 
is 
catastrophic. 

According to a 2015 economic 
impact 
report 
performed 

by the Anderson Economic 
Group, the average Michigan 
football season brings roughly 
$82 million into the Ann Arbor 
economy.

And while that’s only 0.16 

percent of the Ann Arbor 
GDP, 
according 
to 
Stefan 

Szymanski, a professor of 
economics at the University, 
it’s concentrated in a handful 
of 
industries. 
The 
overall 

economy, 
Szymanski 
says, 

is propped up by big money 
makers, 
like 
University 

tuition, the medical center 
and major technological and 
manufacturing 
companies. 

Those revenue streams won’t 
be affected much, if at all, by a 
lack of football season.

For others, though — think 

hotels, restaurants and apparel 
shops — it’s an unmitigated 
disaster.

“A lot of these businesses are 

facing absolutely catastrophic 
financial 
situations 
and 

many of these businesses are 
likely to go bust,” Szymanski 
said. “In the long term, these 
businesses or other businesses 
will return to these locations 
once the crisis is over. So we’ll 
come out of this one day. But 

that’s not much consolation if 
your life savings are tied up in 
a business that’s going down 
the tubes now.”

And that’s where the real 

problem lies for Ann Arbor. 
The pandemic, now in its sixth 
month, has already brought 
a “pain point” Diane Keller 
has not seen in her 18 years 
as the president of the Ann 
Arbor/Ypsilanti Chamber of 
Commerce. Now, for many 
local businesses — and their 
workers — the loss of football 
serves as a calamitous cherry 
on top.

“It’s going to be devastating,” 

Keller said, letting out a deep 
sigh. “And the thing is it’s 
going to affect certain levels 
and some types of businesses 
more than others.”

Rishi Narayan owns one 

of those businesses. When 
he co-founded Underground 
Printing 
in 
2001, 
it 
was 

exclusively a custom printing 
venture. And while that’s still 
its biggest revenue stream, the 
chain relies on college towns 
more than most.

Of Underground Printing’s 

24 brick-and-mortar stores, 21 
are in towns with FBS football 
teams, including every Big Ten 
city except Columbus — out 
of principle. In Ann Arbor, its 
downtown location shuttered 
over half its floor space last 
year when a new MDen moved 
in next door. Now, the future 
of its remaining locations is 
in peril. Five months after 
originally 
shutting 
down, 

those locations have yet to 
resume full hours — a move 
that 
will 
be 
indefinitely 

delayed by lack of a football 
season.

“On a face level, you would 

say, there’s (these) sales from 
gamedays,” Narayan said. “But 
on a much more macro level, 

there’s an overall economy 
that’s spurred from football. 
It’s the local businesses that 
are gearing up and those 
businesses are customers of 
ours.

“…Maybe one day, we’ll look 

back and try to quantify it. But 
it is unquantifiable.”

The impact for Underground 

Printing is such that football 
season rose to the forefront 
of Narayan’s concerns back 
in April, as soon as it became 
apparent the pandemic wasn’t 
going to end anytime soon. For 
a while, he found comfort in 
the belief that there would be 
a season, even without fans. 
While that would have done 
little for the brick-and-mortar 
locations, custom printing still 
sees a boost during football 
season.

Now, 
like 
Eubanks 
and 

so many others, he’s left 
scrambling again.

“Things 
are 
constantly 

changing,” 
Narayan 
said. 

“… It’s really hard to make 
committed plans. So for a 
lot of businesses in the area, 
it’s all about having variable 
plans and plans that can flex 
pretty easily or having a lot of 
iterations of plans. Everyone’s 
got their own strategy.”

On 
a 
larger 
scale, 
the 

persistent uncertainty terrifies 
Keller. Back in March, she 
says, each business concocted 
its own plan to stay afloat. But 
as the pandemic mows down 
each window of economic 
activity in its path — first 
graduation, then summer, now 
football season — those plans 
have 
become 
increasingly 

untenable.

“Every business is different 

and I don’t know how all 
businesses are going to be able 
to pivot,” Keller said. “And 
so that’s why I’m worried 

that we’re going to lose, or 
that we have lost, businesses 
that have been mainstays of 
our community that may not 
be able to make it through 
depending 
on 
how 
much 

longer this pandemic lasts.”

With football’s cancelation 

comes the added devastation of 
lost tourism dollars. According 
to the AEG economic impact 
report, 87 percent of ticket 
holders at Michigan games 
come from outside Washtenaw 
County. And each dollar those 
visitors spend, Keller says, 
recirculates through the local 
economy 17 times.

The effect of lost tourism is 

especially profound at hotels, 
such as Weber’s Boutique. 
Almost every night, hotels like 
Weber’s offer their rooms at 
steeply discounted rates. Those 
nights keep Weber’s afloat. 
Football weekends — complete 
with packed rooms, a Saturday 
tailgate and a pregame brunch 
buffet — are what have helped 
Weber’s thrive for 83 years.

“If football came, it’d be 

great, we could start making 
money again,” Michael Weber, 
the company’s vice president, 
said. “But right now, we’re 
planning for the worst and 
just trying to stay afloat with 
all the regulations and lower 
demand that’s in place,”

Weber, though, is among 

those who greeted the Big Ten’s 
decision to cancel fall sports 
with a glimmer of optimism. 
Football season without fans, 
he says, would have provided 
minimal benefit to the hotel. 
Now, he can hold out some 
hope, however faint it is.

And maybe, just maybe, 

come March, Nancy Eubanks 
can hop in her truck across 
town, 2,000 sandwiches in 
tow, and make Ann Arbor 
smile again.

18 — Monday, August 31, 2020
Sports
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

‘It’s going to be devastating’:

In Ann Arbor, businesses stare down a fall without football

ALLISON ENGKVIST/Daily

Zingerman’s Delicatessen is expecting to lose $250,000 in catering revenue without football season.

THEO MACKIE

Managing Sports Editor

T

here’s this 
moment I can’t get 
out of my head. 
I haven’t been 

able to for five months — not 
since mid-
March, when 
COVID-19 
shut down 
college 
sports. 

It’s 
Duncan 

Robinson, 
and he’s 
standing in 
the far cor-
ner, poised 
behind the 3-point line. There’s 
a little over two minutes left 
and Michigan, in a packed 
maize and blue Staples Center, 
is close — so close — to the 
Final Four. From where I’m sit-
ting, up in the auxiliary press 
box, up near the ceiling, you 
can see Robinson’s defender 
leave him, the ball come to him 
and then float towards the net. 
All those fans down there in 
maize and blue, they lose their 
collective minds. Robinson 
turns to the bench and yells. 
The game is all but over, and 
that weird, improbable run is 
going to go for another week on 
the sport’s biggest stage. 

In that singular moment 

back in March of 2018, it feels 
like the whole world is coalesc-
ing around Michigan basket-
ball and every character on 
that team, Duncan Robinson 
chief among them.

That singular moment, it’s 

why we love sports.

Robinson’s story has been 

told again and again. You’ve 
almost certainly heard it 
before, but as a quick reminder 
we’ll rehash it here. Robinson 
started his college career play-
ing Division III ball at Wil-
liams College. He transferred 
to Michigan and, after sitting 
a year, worked his way into 
the rotation as a 3-point spe-
cialist. In his senior year, he 
struggled and got replaced by 
Isaiah Livers, then a freshman, 
in Michigan’s starting lineup. 
He came off the bench the rest 

of the year, found a key role on 
a team that went to the Final 
Four, and it seemed likely that 
the story would end there. Out 
of college, he signed a two-way 
contract with 
the Miami Heat 
and seemed con-
signed to basket-
ball purgatory. 
Then he started 
hitting threes 
for them, too 
and now he’s in 
the NBA bubble, 
playing a key role 
on a playoff team. 
When his con-
tract is up, he’s 
going to make a ton of money. 

That’s cool as hell.
I’m not telling you this 

because you didn’t already 
know — this is probably the 

100th time you’ve heard Rob-
inson’s story. I’m talking about 
this now for the same reason I 
can’t get that snapshot out of 
my head:

When I think 

about why it’s a 
shame the Big 
Ten postponed 
fall sports, I 
think about 
Duncan Rob-
inson.

Hold on a 

minute. Don’t 
laugh. I know 
Duncan Rob-
inson plays a 
winter sport. 

I understand there’s bet-
ter reasons to have sports or 
not, there’s more at play here 
than one guy’s human inter-
est story. Playing sports right 

now might not be the smartest 
thing. Having students back on 
campus — especially if, like a 
lot of schools, your coronavirus 
mitigation plan amounts to a 
shoulder shrug 
and an eye roll 
— might not 
end well.

The Big 

Ten’s decision 
puts moral and 
public health 
obligations 
over financial 
gains and, 
all told, it’s 
the right call. 
The U.S. has 
done a terrible job at fighting 
the coronavirus. We’re reap-
ing what we sowed, but that 
doesn’t mean we can’t lament 
it. So let’s get back to Duncan 

Robinson and all the other 
stories that make sports worth 
watching.

Remember when Jordan 

Poole hit the shot? If you’re 

this far into this 
story, you prob-
ably remember 
where you were 
sitting and who 
you were with. 
I’ll never forget 
talking with 
Duncan Robin-
son after Jordan 
Poole hit the 
shot.

Robinson had 

fouled out of the 

game. He thought it’d be his 
last college game, thought he’d 
been partially responsible for 
a crushing loss. The look on 
his face, the tone in his voice 

when he spoke in the locker 
room. That was something to 
remember.

“I don’t think I’ve ever cried 

tears of joy,” Robinson said 
that night. “But I was damn 
close.”

Forget, for a minute, about 

the fact that Robinson is now 
an NBA player with an NBA 
career and all the amenities 
that come with it. Because 
right then, he was a college kid 
and the best thing he’d ever 
been involved in had just got-
ten improbably extended for 
another week.

Now think about all the 

athletes at Michigan (and 
elsewhere), all with their own 
stories and hours of work and 
breakthroughs to get to where 
they are, and what they all 
must have been on Tuesday 
when the announcement came 
down.

Think about Nick Blanken-

burg, a junior defenseman on 
the hockey team who plays 
every game for his grandfa-
ther, and Nick Granowicz, his 
teammate, who’s playing for 
his mom. Think about Moham-
med Zakyi and Omar Farouk 
Osman, who started their soc-
cer careers playing with paper 
bags and folded clothes, and 
now likely won’t have their 
senior years. Think about 
Paige Jones and all the people 
in New Bremen, Ohio watch-
ing her play volleyball for 
Michigan. Think about Maddie 
Nolan working her way back 
from a microfracture to play 
basketball for Michigan.

Think about what they’re 

feeling now, after their fall sea-
sons got canceled. Those that 
play in the winter can’t be feel-
ing good about their chances of 
having a season either.

The Big Ten made the right 

decision. But as long as we can 
acknowledge that, let’s also 
take a minute to appreciate all 
the stories, all the players, all 
the games and everything else 
we won’t get to have this year, 
because it’s all improbable, and 
at any moment it could all be 
over. Now, more than ever.

The stories we’ll miss without a fall season

ETHAN
SEARS

ALEC COHEN/Daily

Without fall sports, we will miss out on the stories that sports bring, such as tight end Nick Eubanks playing in memory of his late mother.

We’re reaping 
what we sowed, 
but that doesn’t 
mean we can’t 

lament it.

Think about all
the athletes at

Michigan

(and elsewhere),

all with their
own stories.

