John U. Bacon

Remember Field Day? For most of us, it was a hallowed year-end school tradition, right up there with ice cream socials, and signing yearbooks. The kids loved it, of course, and looked forward to it every year.

But not at Burns Park, one of Ann Arbor’s oldest, most desirable and most educated neighborhoods – and occasionally, one of its kookiest. There is a reason many townies jokingly refer to it as “The Republic of Burns Park.”

The Burns Park PTO might be the most active one in the state. In the late ’90s, some parents, led by a social work professor, decided the competitive spirit of Field Day was too much for the kids, and changed “Field Day” to “Friendship Day” – replacing foot races, long jumps and tug-of-wars with games that emphasized cooperation over competition.

A noble notion – but the kids hated it. During one event, a cross-section of students from all grades had to walk together on two long boards. The big kids kept yelling at the little ones to lift their left foot, then their right – but the first graders didn’t know which was which. They all fell over, and the first graders burst into tears.

I suspect that’s not exactly what the parents had in mind.

For the students bused in from the less affluent part of town, canceling Field Day really stunk. All year, they had to compete in class against some of the nation’s most privileged students, where success is publicized in every way imaginable. But on Field Day, many of these students were, for the first time all year, winning the medals.

Well, no more of that, either.

I grant the parents had good intentions. I’ll also take a wild guess that some of them wanted to spare their kids the specter of not being at the front of their class for the first time. But few parents seemed to object when their kids got gold stars for reading, writing and arithmetic.

In trying to protect some students from finishing last, they not only denied the bused-in kids their day in the sun – quite literally – they denied their own kids the chance to learn some humility, to realize losing a foot race is no big deal, and to discover the next morning that the sun still came up, right on time, and they were going to be just fine.

Instead, we confuse competing with bullying, which schools are rightly focused on eradicating. But the two could not be more different. Competition, properly taught, teaches respect, fair play, and good sportsmanship – the exact opposite of bullying.

Friendship Day lasted only a couple years – the new P.E. teacher has brought a nice balance of the old and the new – but the effects still linger. A few Burns Park parents and teachers have told me too many kids don’t know how to accept losing – especially the boys. If they get knocked out playing four-square, they simply yell, “Do over!” and that’s exactly what they get.

As one of my friends said, “My kids need to learn how to lose. Without me there. Or any parent. And get over it.”

If you can’t learn these important lessons on the playground, they won’t be any easier during auditions for the high school play or tryouts for the band.

We are raising a generation of domesticated kittens, then throwing them out into the Serengeti. We might feel better about it – but in the long run, they won’t.

About the author: John U. Bacon is the author of the New York Times bestseller “Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football.” He also co-authored “A Legacy of Champions,” and provided commentary for “Black and Blue: The Story of Gerald Ford, Willis Ward, and the 1934 Michigan-Georgia Tech Football Game,” which has been airing on various stations in Michigan and nationally.

The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our publication of columnists like John U. Bacon. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle. And if you’re already supporting us, please encourage your friends, neighbors and colleagues to help support The Chronicle, too!

John U. Bacon

Teresa Bloodman’s son was thrilled to pass the first two tryouts for his Maumelle, Arkansas, high school freshman basketball team, which allowed him to play on the team for the first two months of the fall. But, when the football season ended, the coach held a third round of tryouts so the football players could come out for the team, and he cut Bloodman’s son.

Teresa Bloodman was so livid she sued the school, the district and the state. She claimed cutting her son was arbitrary, that the lack of a formal appeals process was a violation of due process, and that her son has a constitutional right to participate in school sports.

I can appreciate a mother’s pain seeing her son suffer a setback. And certainly, coaches make plenty of arbitrary decisions, even unfair ones. But if Bloodman wins this case, the rest of us will lose – especially her son.

Her lawyer wants the coach to use a quantitative evaluation system for tryouts – rating each candidate’s skill in dribbling, passing, and shooting, for example – to make the process more objective.

But only an idiot would pick a team on stats alone.

In 1980, U.S. Olympic hockey coach Herb Brooks decided the key to beat the all-powerful Soviet team was speed, not scoring. And that’s why he cut two-time All-American Ralph Cox, one of the nation’s leading scorers that year, for players with fewer goals but more speed. Brooks’s team won the gold medal. Guess he picked the right guys.

Any coach with a heart will tell you tryouts are the worst day of the season. When I coached the Huron High School hockey team, “cut-day” inevitably ended with a lot of long, private conversations and plenty of Kleenex, but almost all the players and parents handled it extremely well. One mom, however, I will probably never forget.

Before I became head coach, her son had been accused of stealing money from the locker room as a freshman. Unsolicited, he told me he didn’t do it, and I believed him – and even if he had, any ninth-grader surely deserves a second chance.

After my first team finished the season, we let him join our spring team, which was normally reserved for guys who’d already played on the varsity, and our summer team, and our fall team. He asked us to move him from defense, to offense, then back to defense – and we did. But he didn’t play very well at either position, and did no better in our tryouts. With dozens of good players trying out for the team, I felt I had no choice but to cut him – and many others.

It wasn’t fun. I had grown to like him quite a bit, and admired his attitude.

But I thought that was that, until I received a long letter from his mother. She misquoted something I had said to the players in August, when we were running outside. “I can tell even now what kind of team we’re going to have,” I said, praising their dedication and hard work. She wasn’t there, but claimed I’d said, “I can tell right now who’s going to be on the team.”

Not quite the same things – the latter being something only the dumbest coach in the country would ever say.

She added this kicker about her son being cut: “Others have committed suicide for less.”

Wisely, I did not respond then. But I will now. First, some advice:

• Don’t automatically assume your child is telling you the whole truth.
• If your kids have a problem with their teacher or their coach or their choir director, let your kids approach them first. If they don’t learn how, now, who’s going to approach their professor, or their boss?
• If you must write, wait at least 24 hours. And don’t write anything you wouldn’t say to their face. Email gives false courage to cowards.
• Even better, don’t write anything at all, or else you’ll deny your child a vital lesson: Life is tough, and not always fair. But you have to keep going anyway.

In eighth grade, I had had a great spring hockey league, scoring five times more than the other center. But that fall, he made the travel team, and I didn’t. I was crushed. But my parents did something wonderful: Nothing. The next year, I realized a lifelong dream when I made the high school varsity.

A few years later, when some colleges rejected me, I could handle it. When I started out as a writer, and received literally hundreds of rejection letters from magazines, I could handle that, too. And if I couldn’t, you would not be reading this right now.

And I would not have the chance, in print, to thank my parents, for not fighting my battles for me, and giving me the great gift of growing up.

About the author: John U. Bacon is the author of the New York Times bestseller “Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football.” He also co-authored “A Legacy of Champions,” and provided commentary for “Black and Blue: The Story of Gerald Ford, Willis Ward, and the 1934 Michigan-Georgia Tech Football Game,” which has been airing on various stations in Michigan and nationally.

The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our publication of columnists like John U. Bacon. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle. And if you’re already supporting us, please encourage your friends, neighbors and colleagues to help support The Chronicle, too!

John U. Bacon

This week, the University of Michigan celebrated the 40th anniversary of Title IX, with a host of speakers and panels discussing the historic legislation and its impact on girls, women and the United States itself.

It all started pretty quietly. Just a sentence buried in the back of the Education Amendments Act of 1972.

“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any educational program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”

Just a sentence – one that seems pretty straightforward to us, even self-evident. But that little line stirred up our society in ways that few pieces of legislation ever have. We call it Title IX – and perhaps only the Civil Rights Acts changed our nation the past century more dramatically – or did more good.

But nowhere in that powerful paragraph do the authors say one word about sports. It’s not really about sports, but educational opportunities. It says a lot about Americans’ unequaled belief in the value of school sports, that we consider them essential to a comprehensive education.

Unlike the Civil Rights Acts, Title IX didn’t even register with most Americans when it passed. But the NCAA’s leaders recognized its potential immediately, and did everything they could to stop it. They were joined by congressmen, school presidents, principals, athletic directors and coaches coast to coast, all trying to limit it, or kill it altogether. But the durable Title IX has survived every attempt to cut it down.

Still, it seemed like just an arcane legal issue, until a year later, when a seemingly meaningless tennis match – just an exhibition between an old man and a woman 26 years his junior – made it very real, very fast.

The man happened to be a 55-year old guy named Bobby Riggs, a Hall of Fame player who had won six major championships, and swept Wimbledon’s singles, doubles, and mixed doubles titles – in 1939.

He was also an incorrigible hustler. When he first challenged Billie Jean King – who would win 39 major titles in her career – to an exhibition match, she declined. But after Riggs crushed top-ranked Margaret Court, half his age, to earn a Sports Illustrated cover story, King felt she had to accept. They would play the “Battle of the Sexes” for the biggest payday in the history of the sport – and bragging rights that would be shared by half the country’s population.

King had no illusions about the stakes. “I accepted the challenge,” she said, “so that girls and women could feel positive about participating in athletics.”

On Sept. 20, 1973, in front of 50 million Americans watching on TV, about a quarter of our population, and a Houston Astrodome packed with more than 30,000 spectators – both still American tennis records – King stayed strong and focused, and won emphatically. In the process, so did millions of American girls, most of whom had not been born yet.

“There should be nothing,” King said, “to stop them from pursuing and fulfilling their dreams.” Before Title IX and the Battle of the Sexes, one in 30 girls played high school sports. Today, more than half do.

Contrary to urban myth, Riggs wanted to win that match, and badly – but his theatrics were mostly promotional. He had been taught the game by a woman, won many mixed doubles titles, and fervently believed women should play sports. It was an act – but a hell of an act.

Over the years, Riggs and King became close friends, and talked often. The night before Riggs died of cancer, King called him to say, “I love you.”

It all started with a single sentence – and it ended with one, too.

In between, everything changed.

About the author: John U. Bacon is the author of the New York Times bestseller “Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football.” He also co-authored “A Legacy of Champions,” and provided commentary for “Black and Blue: The Story of Gerald Ford, Willis Ward, and the 1934 Michigan-Georgia Tech Football Game,” which has been airing on various stations in Michigan and nationally.

The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our publication of columnists like John U. Bacon. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle. And if you’re already supporting us, please encourage your friends, neighbors and colleagues to help support The Chronicle, too!

Local artist Alvey Jones is a partner in the WSG Gallery, at 306 S. Main in downtown Ann Arbor. The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our occasional features like Bezonki, which in turn help support a local artist. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle. And if you’re already supporting us, please encourage your friends, neighbors and colleagues to help support The Chronicle, too!

John U. Bacon

While I was writing “Three and Out,” the Michigan football players challenged me to join their workouts in the weight room. They were surprised when I was actually game – one of the dumbest decisions of my life.

I’d heard so much about these modern gladiators and their weight room heroics that I wanted to find out for myself just how much harder it really is compared to what the average weekend warrior puts himself through just to avoid buying “relaxed fit” jeans.

The plan was simple: I would work out with these guys three times a week, for six weeks – “if you last that long,” said Mike Barwis, Michigan’s former strength coach, in his famously raspy voice. But before I even started, there were four signs that I shouldn’t be doing this.

When I asked Barwis if I should prepare by lifting weights, he said, “No, it’s too late for that!” Well, that’s one sign.

“Okay,” I asked, “what’s it NOT too late for?”

“Running.”

“Why running? We’re not going to run.”

“Because your heart is going to give out before your muscles do.”

That was the second sign. I got the third sign when I finally showed up for my first workout and they gave me a clipboard with a half-dozen legal waivers on it, each one describing in great detail a new way I might die in the weight room. If you drop the bar on your neck, sign here. If you’re just standing there and your heart explodes, sign here.

The fourth sign came a moment later, when Barwis paired us up with our workout partners. “Bacon! You’re working with Foote!” That would be Larry Foote, the former Michigan All-American linebacker-turned-two-time Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steeler. He is paid millions to snap quarterbacks in half.

Hi Larry! I’m John!

I started my first set of squats. I’d done this hundreds of times before – but never like they did it. They’re fascists about form, so each set feels twice as hard as it would doing it your way. After a few reps, I was dying for Barwis to yell, “Rack it!”

Finally, he said it – and I thought, great. Time for a break while I watch Larry Foote do his squats. Nope. It was time for me to take my pair of ten-pound weights off the bar, and put on Larry’s rack of reds and blues and yellows – a veritable Lifesavers’ roll of a few hundred pounds. Doing this was actually harder than what I had just finished.

Okay, but now I got to take a break, right? Nope. Next, they made me do plyometrics like lunge jumps, abdominal crunches and inclined push-ups. It was actually worse than the squats. After a few of those, I was dying to get back in the rack. And after a while, I was just dying.

Barwis was right: Just 15 minutes into my first workout, I was sweating like a pig and panting like a dog. You could have taken my pulse by touching my hair.

After 30 minutes, I was in deep trouble – mouth breathing, head back, eyes half closed – when it occurred to me you might actually be made to throw up just from lifting weights.

I realized I had to find a trash can, and fast. Barwis had seen the look before, so he just pointed, “Trash can’s over there!” then calmly went back to loading Foote’s weight bar. I started walking – then running. I made it just in time to lose my breakfast, repeatedly and loudly. With my head in the dark trash can, I was hoping that, just maybe, no one saw me.

Fat chance. I lifted my head out of the trash can very slowly – and a great cheer went up. The Michigan football team was giving me a standing ovation – for puking in a trash can.

“Yeahhhh!”

“Go, Bacon, Go!”

“Get rid of the poison!”

“We have a winner!”

Yes, there is a snobbism in the Michigan weight room, but it’s not based on your stats or your weights, just how hard you’re working. I was the oldest, weakest and fattest guy there by a long shot, and I was fully prepared to take a lot of crap for all of it. But I never took a single shot for any of that. So long as I was sweating like they were, the players would yell and urge me on, and high five me after each lift.

In their eyes, I now had the same status as every other guy who’d puked in that trash can – which is to say, everyone. After that, the interviews for the book were easy.

Puking in that trash can proved to be the greatest career move of my life.

About the author: John U. Bacon is the author of the New York Times bestseller “Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football.” He also co-authored “A Legacy of Champions,” and provided commentary for “Black and Blue: The Story of Gerald Ford, Willis Ward, and the 1934 Michigan-Georgia Tech Football Game,” which has been airing on various stations in Michigan and nationally.

The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our publication of columnists like John U. Bacon. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle. And if you’re already supporting us, please encourage your friends, neighbors and colleagues to help support The Chronicle, too!

John U. Bacon

Everybody knows Mike Wallace was one of the best journalists of his time – and his time spanned nearly a century.

But he also had a great love for his alma mater, the University of Michigan, where he wrote for the Michigan Daily, and got his first taste of broadcasting. Back then, that meant working for the student radio station.

Sadly, Michigan cut its department of journalism in 1979. But it was survived by something called the Michigan Journalism Fellows – a program that brings a dozen mid-career journalists to Michigan’s campus for a year to give them a fresh start. Basically, you’re a glorified grad student, but they pay you, and you have no tests, no papers and no grades – and you share the year with a fraternity of people in your field.  Yeah, it’s that cool.

It’s a great idea – one shared by Harvard and Stanford – but Michigan’s program seemed to be entering its death rattle when Charles Eisendrath took it over in 1986. The program was down to a mere $30,000, with no place to call home. The fellows met twice a week in a campus classroom. The future wasn’t bright.

Eisendrath had a vision for the program, but he knew he needed help – and he knew where to go, too. Mike Wallace didn’t hesitate. He gave his money – one million dollars, for starters – but he also gave his time, his energy, and his unequaled influence. When Mike Wallace told you Michigan had a first-class journalism fellowship worthy of your support, you probably were not inclined to argue.

A friend of mine graduated from the Wharton School in 1989. Twenty-three years later, he still remembers Wallace’s commencement address, in which he reminded the graduates – many of them on their way to becoming millionaires – to “Do good while doing well.”

Wallace did both.

After getting the program off its death bed, Eisendrath wanted to give it a permanent home of its own. Mike Wallace and his wife Mary agreed, and bought the Fellows a beautiful house near campus. Ask any former Fellow about the Wallace House, and you’ll hear the kind of stories people usually tell about their family cottages.

Charles and company have since built a $50 million endowment for 18 journalists every year. The program – now called the Knight-Wallace Fellows at Michigan – will outlive us all.

I wanted to get in so badly, I applied twice. Both times, Charles asked his signature question: What is your dream?

I didn’t dream of wealth or fame. My dream was simple: I wanted the creative freedom to tell the stories I want to tell, and to tell them the way I want to tell them. In my business, it’s a rare luxury.

Well, my second time was the charm – and I didn’t waste a minute getting started on my dream. I wrote a pitch to teach a course at Michigan on the uniquely American phenomenon of college athletics, which I’ve been teaching now for six years.

I also started interviewing former UM football coach Bo Schembechler every Tuesday for a book on leadership. We didn’t have a publisher. We didn’t have an advance. The fellowship was my advance. A year later, we had a book contract – just two months before Bo died. I’ll always be grateful for that.

At one of the many meals the Knight-Wallace staff hosted, I happened to chat with Steve Schram, who had just been named the director of Michigan Media. A year later, when Schembechler died, Schram remembered our lunch and called me to come down to Michigan Radio and talk about Bo’s legacy – and that’s how Schram got the idea to run my sports commentary every Friday morning.

The Knight-Wallace program made all these dreams possible.

Every year, Wallace came back to speak at his eponymous house, and he captivating, even in his nineties. Unlike most donors, he made his millions doing what we do – and doing it better than anyone.

It’s usually a mistake to meet your heroes – they too often disappoint – but some men, as they say, are like mountains: The closer you get to them, the bigger they are.

Wallace was like that. He loved chatting up the Fellows by the fireplace, and he would never leave without saying goodbye to the staff, his friends.

When I asked him to endorse the Bo book he helped make possible, he not only read the manuscript – and agreed to help – he called me up to leave a long, enthusiastic message on my machine. “John Bacon,” he started, in his famously dramatic manner. “Mike Wallace.”

Yeah, I saved it.

When most people saw Mike Wallace on TV, they saw a hard-hitting investigative journalist. Others saw a loyal alumnus. I saw someone who helped change many lives forever – including mine.

So, one more time: Thank you, Mr. Wallace.

About the author: John U. Bacon is the author of the New York Times bestseller “Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football.” He also co-authored “A Legacy of Champions,” and provided commentary for “Black and Blue: The Story of Gerald Ford, Willis Ward, and the 1934 Michigan-Georgia Tech Football Game,” which has been airing on various stations in Michigan and nationally.

The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our publication of columnists like John U. Bacon. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle. And if you’re already supporting us, please encourage your friends, neighbors and colleagues to help support The Chronicle, too!

John U. Bacon

Ann Arbor’s Parthenon Restaurant closed last week after almost 40 years at the corner of Main and Liberty. For me and my friends, it marked more than the passing of a favorite spot, but the end of a time-honored ritual.

On our last visit, we filed in, and walked to our favorite table in the back. A little warmer, and we’d sit outside, but it was still March, so whatya gonna do? The owners and waiters nodded. They’ve seen us more than a hundred times. When I needed to sell ads for the Huron Hockey program to help fund the team, the Parthenon signed up every time – something the chain coffee shop across the street would never consider.

BW and I started coming here in the fall of our sophomore year in high school. We both ran cross-country – a near-death experience – but that meant we could eat anything, and not gain a pound. For us, that meant a jumbo coke, a basket of fries, and two gyros – each.

We’ve since added a few friends from our high school days: Scotty, a hockey teammate of mine; TP, the tennis captain; Sevvie, a soccer star; and Barney, whom I was nice enough to drive to practice every day, so he could take my job. I was cool like that.

We have no need for menus, but no need for two gyros each anymore, either. The lightweights get salads, and we all get gyros. TP once made the double mistake of looking at the menu and ordering a shish-ka-bob – who knew they even made those? – for which he is still roundly chastised. Mainly by me.

The highlight, always, is the saganaki. The waiters know we tip in direct proportion to the height of the flame they create, so they douse the cheese in brandy. Then the poor guy lights it, it goes “whooof!” and creates a mini mushroom cloud. I know a few waiters who no longer have eyebrows.

Ostensibly, we meet to celebrate someone’s birthday, but being guys, we’re lucky if we get together within a month of the actual day. I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who knows even half the birthdays, anyway.

We still recognize the division between the four former high school seniors at our table, and the two lowly juniors. We’ve been doing this for well over a decade, but it only occurred to us about five years ago that the juniors might also have birthdays. And, as it turned out, they did – but we usually fail to remember them. Because they’re juniors.

Think that’s ridiculous? It gets worse. We often debate the merits of Tappan Junior High versus Clague, which is – and I say this with complete journalistic objectivity – the greatest junior high school of all time. The Tappan guys do have an ace: they played with quarterback Jim Harbaugh, who went on to become Michigan’s Big Ten MVP, an NFL star, and the San Francisco 49ers’ head coach. BW and TP were his tailbacks at Tappan, ultimately replaced by NFL Hall of Famers Walter Payton and Marshall Faulk.

We can still recount football, baseball and basketball games we played against each other years ago – the most pointless conversation anyone is having anywhere in town.

Well, almost. We also repeat stories so many times, everybody at the table can finish them, like an ancient tribe passing on its oral traditions.

Take the homecoming queen who rejected both Scotty and BW in the same month. Scotty was kissing her on her front step when – pardon me in advance – he farted.

“Could she hear it?” we asked.

“I could,” he said. “And my ears were just four inches from hers.”

A few weeks later, BW dropped her off, and didn’t make any moves. But when he tried to drive away, his car got stuck in the snow. He had to ring her doorbell and ask her to come help dig him out – thereby erasing any question whatsoever that it was, indeed, their last date.

The stories go on and on, and in this way, we share our innermost feelings.

Women never join us, but it’s not because they’re not welcome. Our girlfriends and fiancés and wives all wonder about these lunches, and what we talk about, until they come see for themselves, and discover that we’re morons. None of them have ever asked to return.

The baskets get removed, the bill comes, and it’s time for us to say goodbye – not just to each other, but to this old friend, the Parthenon, forever.

We could go somewhere else, and I suppose we’ll have to soon enough, but it won’t be the same. Where are we going to find a place that plays lyre music and ignites dairy products? There are fancier restaurants just down the street, but none will be more comfortable for us.

So, no. Wives and girlfriends, you’re not missing out on anything.

But we will.

About the author: John U. Bacon is the author of the New York Times bestseller “Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football.” He also co-authored “A Legacy of Champions,” and provided commentary for “Black and Blue: The Story of Gerald Ford, Willis Ward, and the 1934 Michigan-Georgia Tech Football Game,” which has been airing on various stations in Michigan and nationally.

The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our publication of columnists like John U. Bacon. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle. And if you’re already supporting us, please encourage your friends, neighbors and colleagues to help support The Chronicle, too!

Local artist Alvey Jones is a partner in the WSG Gallery, at 306 S. Main in downtown Ann Arbor. The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our occasional features like Bezonki, which in turn help support a local artist. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle. And if you’re already supporting us, please encourage your friends, neighbors and colleagues to help support The Chronicle, too!

John U. Bacon

Two years ago, Michigan’s hockey team was in danger of snapping its record 19-straight NCAA tournament bids. They finished seventh in their league – unheard of, for Michigan. So, the only way to keep the streak alive was to win six straight league playoff games to get an automatic NCAA bid.

Oh, and they had to do it with a back-up goalie named Shawn Hunwick, a 5-foot-6 walk-on who had never started a college game until that week.

It didn’t look good.

But the kid caught fire. Michigan won all six games, stretched its streak to 20 straight NCAA tournaments, and Hunwick won the league tournament MVP.

This never happens.

The next season, head coach Red Berenson alternated goalies until he had to pick one to play in the Big Chill game at Michigan’s football stadium – which was going to be the largest crowd ever to watch a hockey game, anywhere. He picked Bryan Hogan, but in warm ups, Hogan pulled a muscle, so Berenson put Hunwick in the net at the last minute. The kid beat Michigan State, 5-0, and a star was re-born.

Hunwick took his team on another wild ride, finishing with eight straight wins to steal the conference crown on the last night. Michigan made it all the way to the NCAA finals – where the Wolverines lost in overtime, once again. Hunwick finished with the best statistics of any goalie in the league – but the league voters inexplicably left him off the first and second All-Star teams. That never happens, either.

His coaches and teammates were smarter. They knew, going into this season, Hunwick was the key. The Wolverines won just one game in November, then won 80% of the rest, to earn the NCAA’s second overall seed.

There was no Cinderella talk anymore. Hunwick set school records for goals-against-average and save percentage, the two most important measures of goaltending. Most jobs in sports are hard to measure, but not this one. Who’s the best free-throw shooter? The guy who makes the most free throws – doesn’t matter how tall he is or what his form looks like. Who’s the best goalie? The guy who keeps the puck out of the net. And that’s how you’d think they’d measure goaltending. But the league once again snubbed Hunwick, keeping him off the first All-Star team.

A year before Bo Schembechler died, he said the best player he ever coached was not one of his dozens of All-Americans, but a 5-9 walk-on named Donnie Warner, who rose to become a starting defensive lineman. Bo said the kid took what God gave him – “which, frankly, wasn’t very much” – and used it to cover everything He didn’t. Warner simply would not let anyone – not even Bo Schembechler – talk him out of his dreams.

Using Bo’s yardstick, you’d have to conclude Shawn Hunwick might just be the greatest hockey player in Michigan history.

Yet, last Friday night, Michigan got knocked out of the NCAA tournament in overtime for the third straight year, ending Hunwick’s college career. When he saw the puck in the back of his net, he told me, “two years ago I would have pulled it out and shot it into the crowd.” Instead, as first reported by the Michigan Daily’s Zach Helfand, Hunwick picked up the puck, and skated it over to the other team’s bench. The head coach called Hunwick’s gesture the “classiest thing I’ve seen in 25 years of coaching.”

On Tuesday night, I interviewed Hunwick about his plans. He hadn’t been drafted by anyone – which also never happens for a player of his caliber – and thought he might play a year or two in the minors or Europe, “then move on.”

But a funny thing happened. The very next morning, the NHL’s Columbus Blue Jackets’ starting goalie injured himself in practice, so they called to see if little Shawn Hunwick could be their back-up goalie that night – against the Red Wings. Hunwick decided to skip his astronomy class, and drive to Columbus.

This never happens.

Another impossible dream had come true. Still more could follow.

Care to bet against him?

About the author: John U. Bacon is the author of the New York Times bestseller “Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football.” He also co-authored “A Legacy of Champions,” and provided commentary for “Black and Blue: The Story of Gerald Ford, Willis Ward, and the 1934 Michigan-Georgia Tech Football Game,” which has been airing on various stations in Michigan and nationally.

The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our publication of columnists like John U. Bacon. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle. And if you’re already supporting us, please encourage your friends, neighbors and colleagues to help support The Chronicle, too!

John U. Bacon

Two weeks ago, I wrote about one of the University of Michigan’s lowest moments, when athletic director Fielding H. Yost scheduled Georgia Tech for a football game in 1934, which required Michigan to sit out its star player, Willis Ward, because Southern teams would not take the field against African-Americans.

The attention Yost’s decision received surprised and embarrassed him. In his limited view of the situation, Yost thought he was simply providing a courtesy for a friend, not making a racial stand. National newspapers, radio programs and even Time magazine featured the controversy prominently. It also sparked bitter debate among students, and created a morale problem on the team. By all accounts the players felt Ward was intelligent, hard-working and well-liked.

That was the bad news – very bad news. The good news, as I wrote, is that the press, the alums, the students, and particularly Willis Ward and his roommate on the road, Gerald Ford, had the courage of their convictions, and derived lasting change from the incident.

But I feel it necessary to fill out this story, to give it more depth, and perspective.

Although former athletic director Don Canham felt it’s generally unfair to judge his predecessors without considering the times they lived in, he was convinced that “Pulling Willis Ward out of the [Georgia Tech] game was bad. [Yost] should have known better by then. I think Yost got caught up with his friends in the South. But the negative PR from that incident opened up opportunities for blacks in the future.”

Despite Yost’s error in judgment in 1934, Ward believed Yost had successfully “flip-flopped from being a segregationist” two years earlier when Ward made the team.

Ward recalled his first trip to Chicago with the team in 1932. At the time, black players usually stayed with local families because the pricier hotels still did not accept black guests. Sure enough, when the team tried to check in, the hotel manager told Yost they did not admit blacks, and they weren’t about to start now. According to Ward, Yost became outraged.

“‘We’ve been staying at this hotel since 1900,’” Ward recalled Yost saying, “‘and we’ll pull every [Michigan] team and I’ll get other Big Ten teams to not stay here!’”

The angry appeal to their financial interest was enough to desegregate the hotel for one night. Ward became only the second African-American to stay in the hotel, the first being the singer Marian Anderson.

There are other examples of Yost’s surprising change of heart from his racist past. He successfully lobbied to get black track star DeHart Hubbard into the university; he volunteered his influence and field house to support an athletic exhibition to raise funds for the Dunbar Center, a local organization that promoted social betterment for African-Americans; and he started Benny Friedman, a practicing Jew, at quarterback in the mid-1920s, then helped him become athletic director at Brandeis University.

This is not to suggest Yost became a pillar of social justice. But, for the son of a confederate soldier born six years after the Civil War, the examples above do indicate Yost at least recognized the changing times, and had begun to change with them.

For better or worse, everything about Yost was larger than life. His ego was as big as the field house that bears his name. When Yost applied for the Michigan job he sent a collection of his clippings and reference letters that weighed 50 pounds – even though Michigan was courting him. But he got away with his excesses because he had the uncanny knack of balancing each vice with an equally strong virtue.

Yost’s immodesty may have run counter to society’s norms, but he didn’t smoke, drink or swear in an era that cherished such restraint. Yost occasionally played up his rural West Virginia background, but this “hay-seed” managed to earn a law degree, run four companies at one time and write a scholarly 300-page book on football – all on the side.

When he arrived at Michigan Yost didn’t worry much about recruiting guidelines, but by the 1920s he had become a stickler for NCAA rule-adherance. In 1907, Yost forced Michigan to leave the Big Ten, but changed his mind 10 years later and became one of the conference’s stalwart proponents.

Yost was driven to create his athletic empire, but he also took pains to construct state-of-the-art buildings for non-revenue sports, women and intramural athletes. For years Yost was an undeniable racist who never had a black player on his team, but he showed clear signs of enlightenment later in his life – representing a rare, if not complete, transformation among older Americans.

Yost’s ego was almost superhuman, but so was his charm; his ambition was grand, but so was his vision; his stubbornness was remarkable, but so was his ability to change.

Yost’s most prominent quality, however, had no counter force: his love for Meeshegan, and all it could be. That love drove everything Yost did.

At one of the various banquets for him near the end of his life, Yost said, “My heart is so full at this moment and I am so overcome by the rush of memories that I fear I could say little more. But do let me reiterate… the Spirit of Michigan. It is based upon a deathless loyalty to Michigan and all her ways; an enthusiasm that makes it second nature for Michigan men to spread the gospel of their university to the world’s distant outposts; a conviction that nowhere is there a better university, in any way, than this Michigan of ours.”

Yost’s greatest legacy might be the people who are still attracted to his vision of Michigan, people who keep coming here to be a part of it years after his death.

When Don Canham became athletic director in 1968, one of his first tasks was to find a new football coach. He called Bo Schembechler, who was making $20,000 a year at Miami. Canham offered $21,000, and Schembechler took it happily. Canham realized Miami could have thrown more money at Schembechler, “but they couldn’t compete with Yost’s hole in the ground, or with the prestige of Michigan.”

Canham knew he was offering something special, and so did Schembechler.

When Schembechler and his staff first arrived in Ann Arbor, they dressed in the second floor locker room of Yost Field House. They had to sit in rusty, folding chairs and hang their clothes on bolts in the wall.

“My coaches were complaining, ‘We had better stuff at Miami,’” Schembechler recalled. “I said, ‘No, we didn’t. See this chair? Fielding Yost sat in this chair. See this spike? Fielding Yost hung his hat on this spike. And you’re telling me we had better stuff at Miami?! No, men, we didn’t. We have tradition here, Michigan tradition, and that’s something no one else has!”

It all started with Yost.

About the author: John U. Bacon is the author of the New York Times bestseller “Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football.” He also co-authored “A Legacy of Champions,” and provided commentary for “Black and Blue: The Story of Gerald Ford, Willis Ward, and the 1934 Michigan-Georgia Tech Football Game,” which has been airing on various stations in Michigan and nationally.

The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our publication of columnists like John U. Bacon. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle. And if you’re already supporting us, please encourage your friends, neighbors and colleagues to help support The Chronicle, too!