For actual coverage of the announcement that the Fuller Road Station project has been suspended, see: “UM, Ann Arbor Halt Fuller Road Project.”

John U. Bacon

It’s been five days since the Super Bowl, just enough time to give us a little perspective on the whole thing. Was it a football game? A concert? A competition for the Clio Award? Or some bizarrely American combination of all three?

Let’s start with the least important: The football game. You might have caught bits of it, squeezed between the ads and the show. How could you tell when the game was on? Those were the people who ran really fast, and wore clothes.

For the Super Bowl’s first 30 years, most of the games were boring blowouts. I suspect even the players can’t recall the scores of those snoozers.

But the ads and the halftime shows were hard to forget, and often featured a member of the Jackson family having his hair ignited or her wardrobe mysteriously malfunction.

But lately, it’s been the other way around. Ten of the past 16 games have been barn burners – and the rest of the stuff is putting us to sleep.

This year’s Super Sunday delivered another exciting game, showcasing two big-time quarterbacks battling to the last second. The game even featured a first: one team scored a touchdown against its will. The New York Giants had the ball on New England’s 6-yard line, but they wanted to kill more time off the clock before they scored, so New England wouldn’t have any time left to mount a comeback.

But the Patriots didn’t want the Giants to do that, so they got out of the way like matadors avoiding a raging bull, and let Ahmad Bradshaw run into the endzone untouched. But he didn’t want to score, so he stopped on the one yard line, turned around, all but begging the Patriots to tackle him, and fell backwards into the endzone like Jacques Cousteau flipping into the ocean.

It was almost as strange as the halftime show, when Madonna put forth even less effort.

As a commentator, one of my favorite subjects to address is anything but Madonna. I’ve always considered her a mediocre singer and songwriter, whose main talent is somehow becoming rich and famous with less actual talent than the karaoke singers at your local bowling alley.

So it’s given me great pleasure to ignore her. But this time, I just can’t.

I used to think the worst Super Bowl halftime show had to be the one in 1989, when an Elvis impersonator and magician named Elvis Presto – get it? – managed to both befuddle and bore the crowd at the same time. Which, it now occurs to me, is actually a pretty difficult trick.

But no, Elvis Presto’s musical magic show was positively scintillating compared to Madonna’s performance. I discovered something worse than Madonna singing, and that’s Madonna lip syncing her way through her worn out repertoire and dull dancing. Let us never speak of it again.

The most authentic element of this year’s Super Sunday extravaganza – when the team with the ball did not want to score and the team that didn’t have the ball did not want to stop them, and the women paid millions to sing didn’t sing at all – was an advertisement, of all things, that they’d filmed weeks earlier.

Once again, Chrysler came through with the best two minutes of the entire event, this time thanks to Clint Eastwood.

When Eastwood said, “People are out of work and they’re hurting, and they’re all wondering what they’re gonna do to make a comeback. People of Detroit…almost lost everything,” he delivered the most honest line of the day – then followed that up with an equally convincing declaration: “We find a way through tough times. And if we can’t find a way, then we’ll make one…. This country can’t be knocked out with one punch. We get right back up again and, when we do, the world is gonna hear the roar of our engines.”

When he finished, I was so riveted I was ready to do some actual riveting.

So, a year from now, if you want to see a heartfelt performance, you’ll have to skip the game and the halftime show, and wait for the Chrysler ad.

For the second year in a row, no one did it better.

About the author: John U. Bacon is the author of “Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football.” 

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

The most important day of the year for a college football coach is not the home opener, the big rivalry game or even a bowl game. It’s national signing day, which falls on the first Wednesday in February.

On signing day, the end zone is not grass or Astroturf, but a fax machine tray. Only when a signed National Letter of Intent breaks the plane of that tray does it count.

Sounds pretty simple, right? A couple years ago I got a chance to see the sausage get made at close range – and it’s a lot crazier than you imagined.

The coaches start by collecting information on more than a thousand players years in advance. Then they watch hundreds of hours of film, and make dozens of trips across the country – from Pasadena to Pahokee – to meet with hundreds of high school players, their parents and their coaches. They follow that up with thousands of calls, emails and text messages – all in the hopes of getting the 25 players they think will help them win a title a few years later.

That’s bad enough, but now, thanks to ESPN and the Internet, recruiting has become a full-blown season in its own right. It lasts all year – and it’s harder on the coaches than the actual football season is.

The night before signing day, every coach in the country makes his final round of calls to his recruits, just to make sure they’re still on board. If a player flips at the last minute, all the coaches have is air.

They’re also paranoid about sleeping in. One coach I met set no fewer than eleven alarms: two clocks on the left bed stand, two on the right, and two battery-powered clocks on his bureau in case the power went out, plus three cell phone alarms spread around the house, and two more alarm clocks downstairs – all set at five minute intervals.

That’s how important this day is to the coaches – and how exhausted they are when it finally arrives.

They drive to the parking lot long before the sun comes up, open a silent building, turn on the heat and the lights on their way to the meeting room, then put ESPN-U on the big screen, and drop boxes of donuts and huge bags of McDonald’s on the table, plus plenty of coffee for everyone. It ain’t healthy.

During the final six weeks of recruiting season, most of the coaches gained 10 to 20 pounds. “You see what this does to us,” one told me, “and you figure this has got to wear the kids out too. Got to.”

Bleary-eyed and exhausted from six weeks of non-stop, no-days-off recruiting hell, the coaches settle in, waiting for 17-year old kids to determine their collective fate. Some of them go so far as to drag desk chairs into the copy room to babysit the fax machine. Nothing, but nothing, is left to chance.

One of them told me, “This is like game day. It’s miserable.”

It gets more miserable when a five-star recruit you’ve courted for years starts his press conference with three baseball caps in front of him, each with the logo of a school he’s considering. Then he asks some mysterious advisor behind him – some guy you’ve never seen before – to pick the cap of the school he’ll attend. And the mystery man picks some school out West.

Years ago, former Michigan athletic director Don Canham asked one of his coaches how recruiting was going. The coach said it was going well but could be great if he landed the player everyone in the nation wanted.

“What are your chances?” Canham asked.

“The key is always the mom,” the coach said. Then added, with a grin, “And the mom loves Michigan.”

A few months later, Canham asked him if he’d landed that big star.

“No,” he said. “But the mom is coming to Michigan!”

The year I watched, after every recruit’s fax had come in, the coaches celebrated by walking back to their offices to watch tape of recruits for the next class. The interim between recruiting classes lasted exactly nine minutes.

I don’t care what those guys get paid. I would never trade.

About the author: John U. Bacon is the author of “Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football.” 

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!

U.S. president Barack Obama, speaking at the University of Michigan's Al Glick Fieldhouse on Friday morning, Jan. 27. His remarks focused on the issue of education and college affordability. (Photos by Mary Morgan.)

Also not wanting to miss Barack Obama’s appearance at the University of Michigan – a return visit after delivering the commencement address in May of 2010 – were dozens of other national, state and local media. Attention is heightened even more during this election year, and Friday morning’s speech was just one of many stops as Obama hit the road following Tuesday’s State of the Union address.

There will be countless reports and opinions offered on the Jan. 27 speech at UM, but we’d encourage you to approach it unfiltered, at least initially. You can watch the roughly 40-minute speech in its entirety online, or read a transcript of it here.

For Obama’s remarks almost two years ago at the 2010 UM commencement, we provided a bit of our own analysis, along with photos by Myra Klarman.

This time, we went with an eye for recording the community connections we could see at the event. And there were many – not surprisingly for a Democratic stronghold like Ann Arbor. Politicians were easy to spot, of course, but there were also educators, business owners, government workers and many others.

Over 3,000 people attended Friday morning’s speech. Here are a few of those we encountered there.

Eugene Kang, left, lost a close race for a spot on the Ann Arbor city council several years ago – and now has to content himself as the president's special projects coordinator and assistant. State Rep. Jeff Irwin of Ann Arbor, top left, had worked on Kang's council campaign. In the foreground is state Sen. Rebekah Warren and her husband Conan Smith, chair of the Washtenaw County board of commissioners.

Susan Pollay, director of the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority.

Deborah Ball, dean of UM's School of Education, gets camera instructions from Brit Satchwell, president of the Ann Arbor Education Association, before the president's speech. Satchwell is standing with Tracey Van Dusen, a Pioneer High School government teacher who was a 2010 Classroom Teaching Ambassador Fellow with the U. S. Department of Education.

Washtenaw County commissioner Yousef Rabhi (in light blue cap and scarf, with beard) and Andy LaBarre (back right), a candidate for commissioner and former aide to Congressman John Dingell.

Ann Arbor city administrator Steve Powers had a height advantage over some of the other spectators at the Jan. 27 event.

Jim Kosteva, UM's director of community relations, glides down the risers.

Jason Brooks, a management analyst in the Washtenaw County administrator's office and a 2011 Ann Arbor Chronicle Bezonki Award winner, got a prime spot next to the stage.

Many people in the crowd were taking photos and texting on their iPhones or other mobile devices and sending the information to the Internet in realtime. But one man passed the minutes waiting for the president by reading an account of the previous day's news printed off on multiple sheets of paper – a so-called "news paper."

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, leaning over in the center of the huddle, prompted a brief media scrum before the start of Obama's speech.

Media photographers stood on risers for a clear view of the speaker's podium. Photographers in the crowd had to rely on other techniques to get their shots.

Jo Mathis, left, takes a "Hail Mary" shot. The former Ann Arbor News columnist is now editor of the Washtenaw Legal News.

University of Michigan quarterback Denard Robinson poses for a photo with U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow. The crowd's cheer for Robinson, who arrived several minutes before the president, nearly rivaled its enthusiasm for Obama. Robinson fielded dozens of autograph and photo requests, including one from a member of the event's security detail.

Ann Arbor city councilmember Stephen Kunselman, who's employed by UM as an energy management liaison.

Among the spectators in this crowd shot are Ann Arbor Public Schools superintendent Patricia Green and AAPS trustee Andy Thomas, and Ann Arbor city councilmembers Christopher Taylor, Tony Derezinski and Carsten Hohnke.

From left: University of Michigan regents Kathy White and Denise Ilitch, chair of the board of regents.

From left: Eastern Michigan University president Susan Martin and Rose Bellanca, president of Washtenaw Community College.

Barack Obama during his speech. Trust us: Among the people in the background risers are Ann Arbor city councilmember Sabra Briere and her husband, local attorney David Cahill; Democratic activist Doug Kelley; Ann Arbor Art Center president Marsha Chamberlin and her husband John Chamberlin, a UM professor of public policy.

UM president Mary Sue Coleman, at right, listened to Obama's speech on a platform behind the speaker's podium. She did not address the crowd.

After his speech, Barack Obama worked the crowd. He offers a high five to Mark Bernstein's kid – Bernstein is a candidate for UM regent.

Ann Arbor city councilmember Sandi Smith, center, gets ready to greet the president. Behind her, slightly to the right, is Ann Arbor Public Schools trustee Glenn Nelson.

Following Obama's speech, anti-fracking protesters were keeping a cold vigil in the parking lot outside of the Al Glick Fieldhouse. To the right, a man holds an "I Vote Pro-Life First" sign. Volunteers were also passing out Obama re-election campaign literature and collecting signatures for repeal of the state's emergency financial manager law.

The Chronicle could not survive without regular voluntary subscriptions to support our coverage of local government and civic affairs – and the occasional photo essay. 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

The rivalry between Michigan and Ohio State in football is one of the best in the country. But it obscures the fact that, in just about every other sport, Michigan’s main rival is Michigan State.

In men’s basketball, there’s no team either school would rather beat than the other. The problem is, for a rivalry to really catch on, both sides need to be at the top of their game. Think of Bo versus Woody, Borg-McEnroe and, of course, Ali-Frazier, which required three death-defying fights just to determine that one of them might have been slightly better than the other.

The Michigan-Michigan State basketball rivalry, in contrast, usually consists of at least one lightweight. When Michigan got to the NCAA final in 1976, Michigan State had not been to the tournament in 17 years.

When Michigan State won the NCAA title in 1979, Michigan finished in the bottom half of the Big Ten.

When Michigan won back-to-back Big Ten titles in 1985 and ‘86, State wasn’t close. And when State rolled up four straight Big Ten titles under Tom Izzo, Michigan was headed for probation, and yet another coach.

Around that time, Izzo told me there was no reason, given the basketball talent in this state, that this rivalry could not be every bit as good as Duke and North Carolina. But for more than a decade, it was anything but. Izzo owned Michigan, winning 18 of 21 games through 2010.

But Michigan managed to sweep State last year for the first time in 13 years. And on Tuesday night, for only the fifth time in the rivalry’s long history, Michigan and Michigan State both entered their contest ranked in the top 20.

This was it. The rivalry finally looked like a rivalry.

The stage had improved, too. Crisler Arena used to be too dark and too warm, with seats that were too soft and students scattered high among the gold seats, with a jazz band, for some reason, playing standards more suited to a smoky night club than a basketball arena. Crisler was set up not for an intense basketball game, but a Saturday matinee – or a nap.

But the place has been redone. They added lights, then tore out a section of cushy seats and replaced them with wooden benches nobody wants to sit in, and put the students there – who stand the entire game anyway. They’ve reserved the endzone for the pep band, which plays – here’s a novel idea – band music. Now the place actually gives an advantage to the home team.

But none of the improved “atmospherics” could change the fact that the Wolverines hadn’t beaten a top 10 Spartan team since a guy named Magic Johnson played for the green and white. Yes, that’s 1979.

Tuesday’s game actually lived up to its billing, with the battle raging for the full 40 minutes. Michigan built an 11-point lead, State erased it, then it was back-and-forth the rest of the way. With just 36 seconds left, the Wolverines took a one-point lead. But with just one shot, State could take the game.

The arena was electric – something it had not been for decades. With just three seconds left, State’s Draymond Green drove to the basket, jumped up, and fired. The ball hit the backboard, then the rim – and out. They got the rebound, put it back up – and missed. The ball landed into the hands of Tim Hardaway, Jr., who launched it into the air to start the celebration.

To be sure, it was a big victory for the Wolverines.

But it could be bigger than that: the start of a truly great rivalry.

About the author: John U. Bacon is the author of “Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football.” 

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

The college football bowl season has always been a little crazy – but most of that used to be fun crazy. Lately, though, it’s been turning bad crazy – and fast. Here’s why.

Michigan played in the first ever bowl game against Stanford on New Year’s Day in 1902. The Wolverines won, 49-0 – but didn’t play another bowl game for 46 years.

Pasadena didn’t host another game until 1916, and no other bowl games even existed until 1935, when the Sugar Bowl, the Orange Bowl, and the Sun Bowl all started, followed two years later by the Cotton Bowl. But the games were just glorified exhibitions, created to reward a few teams with a nice trip, and promote southern cities.

That started to change in 1948, when Michigan’s Fritz Crisler played matchmaker between the current Big Ten and the Pac-12, who started sending their league champions to play each other at the Rose Bowl every New Year’s Day. If you were second place, you only got to play in a bowl if your league champion repeated, because the university presidents didn’t want their teams to go to a bowl game two years in a row.

Bowl games were considered so insignificant that Notre Dame didn’t bother to go to any bowl games from 1926 until 1970 – and still won seven national titles during that stretch.

But when Michigan’s undefeated, fourth-ranked 1973 team tied top-ranked Ohio State, and was denied a trip to Pasadena by a vote of athletic directors, the Big Ten ended its 25-year-old ban, and let any team in the league go to any bowl game that would have them.

Since then the number of bowl games has more than tripled, from 11 to 35, and they’re spread out over a month. New Year’s Day used to be reserved for the four best bowl games, with a national title determined that day. This year not one college team played on New Year’s Day – the NFL took it over – but 24 teams played in the new year, well into the start of the semester for many schools.

On January 8 – January 8! – Northern Illinois played Arkansas State in the Godaddy.com Bowl. How many things are wrong with that sentence? Is there anything right about it?

Then, the next day – scratch that – the next night, on Monday, Alabama played Louisiana State in the long-awaited national championship game. The game ended close to midnight. How many kids stayed up that late on a school night? Let’s hope none.

The bowl games were expanded to generate money – for the bowls and networks, mind you, not the schools, and certainly not the players. Dozens of teams lost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and their students got little more than injuries. Many of the stadiums were half-filled, and the national title game got the lowest TV ratings in a decade. As one of my friends said, “It’s January ninth. We’ve already moved on.”

And now, of course, the fans and writers are calling for a playoff system. Yes, clearly, we need more games, all played by unpaid athletes who don’t get a cent more, win or lose, while their coaches can get millions in bonuses for a single bowl victory.

Do not ask for whom the buck tolls. It tolls for the adults, not the kids.

Why do we need a playoff? To determine a true national champion, we’re told. Will removing all doubt about who’s college football’s national champion really make our lives that much better? Back in 1997, one poll named Michigan the national champion, and the other named Nebraska. Neither team asked for a playoff to settle the issue, and both schools still claim the title. What’s so horrible about that?

Since then they changed to system to produce only one national champion each year. Has our happiness gone up accordingly?

We need fewer games, not more. The more they make college football mimic pro football, the more of a minor league it becomes, the less special it is.

The people who understand the actual appeal of college football the least, happen to be the very leaders who are changing it the most.

About the author: John U. Bacon is the author of “Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football.” 

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

The Big Ten is still considered one of the nation’s top leagues, despite its frequent belly flops in bowl games. This year, the Big Ten placed a record 10 teams in bowl games – then watched them drop, one by one. And not just in the storied Rose Bowl, but in games like the Taxslayer.com Gator Bowl, the Meineke Car Care Bowl of Texas, and the Insight Bowl. When Iowa got whipped 31-14, I wonder just how much insight they had gained.

Until Monday, Big Ten teams had managed to win only two games: the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl in Detroit, over Western Michigan, and the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl, over a team that had a losing record and no coach. In non-food based bowls, the Big Ten had no luck at all.

Then, Michigan State came to the rescue. The Spartans beat Michigan during the regular season, they won their division, and they seemed poised to win the Big Ten’s first conference championship game until one of their players was called for “roughing the punter.” This is on a par with giving the class nerd noogies– and about as serious. But it cost them the game.

Their reward for all this? An invitation to a less prestigious bowl game than Michigan received. The Spartans were ticked off – and rightly so.

After Georgia jumped out to a 16-0 lead at the half, the Spartans came back to tie the game in the final seconds. And that’s when things got really nutty. In the first overtime, the Georgia kicker missed a chance at a game-winning field goal. Then, in the third overtime, the Spartans blocked his kick to win. Small wonder college coaches knock back Rolaids like Chiclets.

Michigan’s road to redemption was even crazier – and far longer.

When Bo Schembechler famously told his first team that “Those who stay will be champions,” they had to put up with him and his crazy methods for just a few months before being rewarded with a historic upset over Ohio State.

Michigan’s current senior class, however, had to put up with much more – including detractors outside and inside the program – for three years.

At the team banquet a year ago, Zac Ciullo took the podium to defend his teammates. “We received the harshest criticism of any Michigan team. [But] all the fire and turmoil has only made us stronger.”

Ciullo’s teammates proved him right after Michigan fired Rich Rodriguez. That same day, David Molk addressed his teammates. “If we don’t stay together, we’ll never make it. I don’t want to see anyone leaving.”

They did not leave. They stuck together – every game. They won all but two of them, earning a bid to the Sugar Bowl against Virginia Tech.

A few hours before the game, Ryan Van Bergen told his Facebook friends that he and his teammates had been called “losers, disappointments, embarrassments. Tonight that changes.”

The Wolverines had plenty of problems in that game, but a lack of passion was not among them. They played their best when it mattered the most – and in overtime, thanks to another missed kick, they pulled the victory.

Did they deserve to win? That’s being debated right now.

But for anybody who was in that meeting room, when these seniors started leading their team before they even had a coach, there can be no debate this class deserved to go out champions.

After all, they stayed.

About the author: John U. Bacon is the author of “Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football.” 

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!

The Chronicle could not survive the coming year without regular voluntary subscriptions to support our coverage of local government and civic affairs. 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! Happy New Year!