John U. Bacon

On Tuesday night, the Michigan men’s basketball team beat Illinois to earn its first outright Big Ten title in almost three decades. What’s more impressive is how they’ve done it.

Michigan’s famous Fab Five left the stage 20 years ago, and were replaced by Tom Izzo’s Michigan State teams a few years later. For more than a decade, the Spartans dominated the state.

Izzo’s teams have earned 16 straight NCAA invitations – and they’ll get another one next week – seven Big Ten titles, five Final Fours, and one national title, in 2000, and he’s done it the right way. His players graduate at roughly an 80% clip, higher than the student body at large. Along the way, Izzo took 18 of 21 against the Wolverines, who have had four different head coaches during his tenure.

But what a difference a few years make. Michigan basketball coach John Beilein has beaten the Spartans in six of their last eight meetings, and returned the long dormant Michigan program to its previous heights.

And by previous heights, I mean 1986, which is the last time Michigan won the Big Ten title outright. I was a senior that year – about the same age as the parents of Michigan’s current players.

This is just the latest of a lifetime of upsets for Beilein, starting with his coaching career itself. He was working in a sewer – literally – when his father’s face appeared in the light of the manhole above. He asked John if he wanted a job at the local high school, which was looking for a social studies teacher who could coach three sports. John didn’t think too long before he decided perhaps that was a better career path, and climbed out of the sewer.

At the next six stops before Michigan – which included one high school, one community college, two four-year colleges and three Division I universities before Michigan came calling – Beilein’s players were always smaller than their opponents, so he created a system that stressed movement, passing and outside shooting. In other words, skill and savvy over size.

Beilein’s unconventional approach worked at every stop, but he was never part of the fraternity of coaches. It wasn’t because they didn’t like him, but because they didn’t know him. While they were assisting legends like Bob Knight and Dean Smith, and getting to know their network of friends, Beilein skipped the assistant step altogether, leading smaller schools in the middle of nowhere on his way up. That was just one more reason why so many people doubted his unique system would work on the Big Ten’s big stage.

After Beilein’s third season in Ann Arbor, when his Wolverines couldn’t manage to win even half their games, a lot of folks concluded he wasn’t ready for prime time. Beilein didn’t listen, sticking to his system, but overhauling his staff.

Those were two big time, gutsy moves – and both worked. The next year, Beilein’s Wolverines won the Big Ten title. Last year, they got to the NCAA title game, and this week, they took another Big Ten title – the third straight banner they’ll be hanging in Beilein’s honor. Unlike a few Michigan banners from the ’90s, which were taken down due to NCAA sanctions, these will be up as long as the building.

Because Beilein’s system stresses brains over brawn, he can afford to pass up most of the five-star high school prospects other coaches salivate over, and take the players they don’t want. The list is long, and includes Zack Novak, Trey Burke, Caris Levert, and Nik Stauskas – smart, coachable kids who either graduate on time or go to the NBA. Then Beilein and his staff develop these overlooked players, turning them into Big Ten stars and, oftentimes, NBA regulars.

Beilein has also attracted the sons of NBA stars like Jon Horford, Tim Hardaway Jr. and Glen Robinson III. Their parents are rich, so their sons can’t be bought by unscrupulous coaches. They also know how slick other coaches can be, so they can’t be fooled, either. So when they pick John Beilein’s program to develop their sons as people and as players, that tells you something.

Beilein pulled off his latest surprise this season. In the off-season, Michigan lost two stars to the NBA, then first team pre-season All-American Mitch McGary had to bow out for back surgery in December. Most experts believed, without McGary, Michigan had no chance for another Big Ten title, and might even miss the NCAA tournament. Two months ago, I wrote: “Do not count them out.” But that’s a far cry from predicting a Big Ten banner. The team showed more guts than all of us watching them.

Even now, many naysayers believe Michigan won’t go far in the NCAA tournament. But do you really want to bet against Beilein…again? He has a history of proving the doubters wrong – a history that spans his entire life.

If John Beilein is not the Big Ten coach of the year, Michigan should demand a recount. Don’t be surprised if he wins the national award, too. It’s hard to imagine a more deserving recipient, on or off the court.

Not bad for a guy who started his coaching career by climbing out of a sewer.

About the writer: Ann Arbor resident John U. Bacon is the author of the national bestsellers “Fourth and Long: The Future of College Football,” “Bo’s Lasting Lessons” and “Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football.” You can follow him on Twitter (@Johnubacon), and at johnubacon.com.

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John U. Bacon

College conferences are going through a major upheaval – perhaps the biggest in the history of college sports.

In the past year, we’ve seen Nebraska join the Big Ten, Colorado and Utah join the Pac-10, and, this week, Syracuse and Pittsburgh join the Atlantic Coast Conference – geography be damned. In fact, DePaul, Marquette and Texas Christian University just joined the Big East. Which raises the question: Just how big is the East, anyway? Big enough to swallow half the Midwest and a chunk of Texas?

I’ve noticed a lot of people who don’t care that much about sports seem to care a lot about this. For non-sports fans, college conferences are kind of like your parents as you get older. You might not check in with them every day, but it’s good to know they’re there, safe and sound.

Our conferences have been there much longer, of course. Way back in 1895, seven university presidents – not athletic directors or coaches – created what we now call the Big Ten. Those seven presidents didn’t do it to make money. They thought it unseemly for a university to charge anybody anything to watch their students play football. The presidents didn’t discuss marketing or “branding,” either. They simply wanted to ensure everybody representing their university was a bona fide student, an amateur athlete, and safe. A good start. The Big Ten served as the model for just about every conference that followed, coast to coast.

Like so much that is great about college athletics, those conferences formed organically and authentically, bringing together schools of similar size, quality and character. They also defined our regions better than any labels.

What is the Midwest? Depending on who’s talking, it could span from Pennsylvania to Montana, and from North Dakota to Oklahoma. But when someone said “Big Ten Country,” you knew they meant the Great Lakes. The Big Eight meant the Plains States – nearby, maybe, but night and day to those of us who live in Big Ten Country. The Southeast Conference was fundamentally different from the Atlantic Coast Conference. And the Ivy League – well, that one always spoke for itself.

Schools bragged not just about their teams, but about their leagues, painting the logos on their fields and their courts. Books were written about those leagues – lots of them. If you went into a sports bar in any of those college towns, you’d see the banners of all the league teams hanging overhead – including those of their rivals, of course. And no sport has better rivalries than does college football.

I have never attended Indiana or Wisconsin or Michigan State, but I’ve visited all those beautiful campuses many times, and met their proud graduates in Chicago, where every Big Ten alum seems to end up.

This stability shuffled a bit in the 1990s, when independent schools started joining their nearest conferences, but that only seemed to strengthen both sides of the equation. But now the whole jigsaw is up in the air, and it’s all based on two things: Money, and fear – the fear that some other football team will make more money than you. These changes threaten just about everything that millions of us love about college sports, including its unique geography, history, and even identity. They tear apart rivalries that go back to the beginning of modern sport.

The contemporary carnival barkers who make these deals never ask the fans, or even the coaches. And certainly not the players.

I believe in amateur athletics, and I believe in the ideal of the student-athlete – and I’ve gotten to know hundreds of true student-athletes over the past three years. But the arguments for these principles get harder and harder to make when cynical and crass conference free-for alls threaten the very foundation of the entire enterprise.

One thing I’ve learned the hard way: the fans of college football love it much more than the people who run it.

About the author: John U. Bacon is the author of the upcoming “Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football,” due out Oct. 25. You can pre-order the book from Nicola’s Books in Ann Arbor or on Amazon.com.

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

Today, for only the third time in almost a century, the Big Ten will officially admit another university to the league. Nebraska left the Big Eight conference to start playing Big Ten football this fall.

The Cornhuskers will receive a slice of the much bigger Big Ten TV pie, but that might not be the best reason to join.

To celebrate Nebraska joining the nation’s oldest conference, the Big Ten Network will be kicking off three days of non-stop programming. Now I’m the kind of guy who might actually watch three days of non-stop programming about the Cornhuskers, but you might have other priorities this holiday weekend.

So, I’m here to tell you what you need to know in three easy minutes.

Adding Nebraska is nothing but good for the Big Ten, which needs 12 teams to host a lucrative conference championship game. Nebraska’s football program is one of the most successful and respected in the nation, and their fans are gracious in victory or defeat. They have class.

They’re based in Lincoln, and their most famous alum is a guy named Warren Buffett, who still sits with the common folk in the cheap seats.

The Bo Schembechler of Nebraska football is Tom Osborne. He took over in 1974 1973, after his mentor retired with three two national titles in his last four three years. But Osborne had to wait a decade for his first chance at a national crown. He finally got it in the Orange Bowl against the Miami Hurricanes, the anti-matter of the conservative, corny Cornhuskers. The ‘Canes engaged in toxic levels of trash talk, and were led by Jimmy Johnson*, who now shills for a “male enhancement” product called ExtenZe.

The Cornhuskers, in contrast, celebrate their touchdowns by handing the ball to the referee. Whether ahead by thirty or down by three, Osborne looked about as animated as a flight attendant explaining how to buckle your seatbelt. When Osborne retired, he skipped pitching for ExtenZe to become a Congressman – though, given recent Congressional photo scandals, maybe that’s a wash.

But under the surface, Osborne was surprisingly bold. In the final moments of that 1984 national title game against Miami, he decided not to kick the easy extra point for a tie – which would have secured his first national title – and instead went for the riskier two-point conversion to win. It failed, they lost, and Osborne had to wait another decade to win his first national title. But recently he explained that playing for a tie would have been insulting to his players and the people of Nebraska, who appreciate good football, and he would never vote for a team that played for a tie. In my book, that’s pretty cool.

By joining the Big Ten, Nebraska will get more money, more fans, and more visitors. David Byrne of Talking Heads once wrote that no one pays money to see flat landscape – and Nebraska is so flat, you can see three state capitols just by standing on a park bench. But people will pay to see great football.

Nebraska is a solid school, but ranks in the Big Ten’s lower half academically. Fewer than half its students graduate. This gives rise to an old joke: What does the “N” on Nebraska’s helmet stand for? Knowledge.

But, in joining the Big Ten, Nebraska’s faculty is automatically admitted to the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, or CIC, which provides a big boost to the Big Ten’s big research universities. Since Penn State joined the Big Ten twenty years ago, its research income has tripled, to $780 million.

Nebraska is not the first school to leverage football to improve its academics. Chicago, Notre Dame, and Michigan State, among others, have all done it, and done it quite well.

Twenty years from now, the N on Nebraska’s helmet might stand for Nobel laureates – and the joke will be on the Big Eight schools Nebraska just left behind.

*Correction: The Miami Hurricanes were coached in that 1984 Orange Bowl game by Howard Schnellenberger, not Jimmy Johnson.

About the author: John U. Bacon lives in Ann Arbor and has written for Time, the Wall Street Journal, and ESPN Magazine, among others. He is the author of “Bo’s Lasting Lessons,” a New York Times and Wall Street Journal business bestseller, and “Third and Long: Three Years with Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines,” due out this fall through FSG. Bacon teaches at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, and the University of Michigan, where the students awarded him the Golden Apple Award for 2009.

John U. Bacon

This spring the Big Ten Conference added Nebraska, giving the league 12 teams.

So, what do you do – change the name to the Big 12? No, because that name’s already taken by another conference – which, naturally, now has 10 teams. So the Big Ten decided to keep its name – and change everything else, starting with the logo.

Now, to handle all this, they could ask some corn-fed rubes like you and your cronies, but you would probably do something silly like draw on the Big Ten’s unparalleled 115-year history and come up with something simple, honest, and authentic. Or you might just pay some art student a hundred bucks to make a new logo, like Nike did years ago, to create some swoosh-looking thing. It was so embarrassingly bad they got rid of it as soon as they could, which is why you’ve probably never seen it.

And that just won’t do, you mouth-breathing Midwesterner. Why, you probably don’t even use “networking” as a verb. You disgust me.

No, what you’ve got to do is lay yourself at the mercy of high-priced international image consultants – the kind of “branding experts” who cover the euro currency with geometrically perfect structures that never existed and name the streets of our finer subdivisions after purely abstract concepts, which are as suitable for your municipality as they are for Mars – and let them tell you what you’re supposed to like.

And, thank God, that is exactly what the Big Ten did!

The conference hired the high-priced international image consultants of Pentagram Design – a “multi-disciplinary design firm with offices worldwide,” whose “culture of interchange…adds tremendous value to all creative thinking,” and whose website offers English, Español and something called “Deutsch,” whatever that is. For slightly less than the salary of a college president, Pentagram Design put their best people on this urgent assignment – and, after months of experimenting in their dust-free labs, their seven-person Project Team emerged from their undisclosed location to give us the solution: put the word BIG over the word TEN.

Pretty catchy, huh? It’s the kind of cutting edge, “outside-the-paradigm” thinking we Hot Pocket-huffing hicks could never have come up with on our own. I can’t speak for you, but I sleep a little easier knowing we helped subsidize this expensive effort through tax breaks for the nonprofit Big Ten and its member institutions.

Many fans thought they might try to sneak the number 12 into the logo, the same way they squeezed the number 11 around the T in Ten, after Penn State joined the league 17 years ago. You know, to give some indication of how many teams are now actually in the league.

No, the high-priced international image consultants of Pentagram Design – whose “core competencies” apparently include “futurizing” – realized the league might expand again, so they didn’t want to chain themselves to a number that might become outdated. That’s why they decided to chain themselves to a number that is already outdated. Timeless!

The new logo turns the I in BIG into a 1 – following me so far? – and makes the G look like a zero. Get it? One? Zero? Put ‘em together, and what do you get? That’s right: 10!

So, right below the number 10, you see the word TEN. And that way, you can never forget how many teams were in the Big Ten from 1953 to 1992.

As the Consultant Class says: Ten is the new twelve.

The color they picked for this avant-garde logo is a shade of light blue, but uglier, somehow – which might explain why not one of the 12 Big Ten teams has ever put that color on their uniforms. Sure, it costs a little more, but they assure us we’ll all soon agree that it’s worth every euro.

Having come up with the perfect logo, it was time for the Big Ten’s braintrust to work its magic on the new division names.

Now you, being an American-car driving moron, might have come up with such prosaic titles as East and West, or maybe Lakes and Plains. Perhaps even Schembechler and Hayes, in honor of two actual human beings who also happened to be the league’s two greatest coaches.

Well, that just shows what you know, Gomer. The People Who Know Better didn’t name the divisions after boring old geographical features or deceased people, but famous words: “Legends” and “Leaders.”

Eureka!

I myself am not a high-priced international image consulting firm, like Pentagram Design. I don’t have an international office to speak of, I have yet to instill a culture of interchange that adds tremendous value to all creative thinking (but I’m working on it), and I do not have a seven-person Project Team. I am only one person, armed with just a pen, a few cocktail napkins and, currently, a couple cans of cold Bud. So this is all I could muster, division name-wise:

Rustbelt and Flyover.

Euchre and Cornhole.

Athlete’s Foot and Jock Itch.

“Takin’ ‘Em One At a Time” and “Just Trying to Help the Team.”

And finally, “Lack of Institutional Control” and “Violation of Team Rules.”

So you can see the Big Ten was right to stick to its own names, which set up countless wonderful possibilities. Thanks to them, you could be a leader in the Legends Division, for example, or one day become a legend in the Leaders Division. Or a leader in the Leaders, or a legend in the Legends – or you could play for Indiana, and be celebrated for your Legendary Lack of Leadership at All Levels.

After cleverly naming the divisions for nothing and nobody, they created 18 trophies, and named them after everybody. That’s right. If you ever played or coached Big Ten football, or know of someone who did, chances are good you’re one of the 36 legends – or leaders? I can’t recall – honored on these awards. Two per trophy. This ensures every conference school has several hundred former players on some hardware somewhere.

Because, after all, the whole point of giving out trophies is not to recognize individual achievement, but to assert that no one’s better than anyone else, and everyone’s great – and so is every school they ever attended. Provided it’s one of the 12 Big Ten schools, anyway. Everyone else, of course, sucks beyond measure.

And that’s what makes all 12 Big Ten schools, and everyone who has ever played for them, is playing for them now, or might one day play for them, True Leaders. And Legends. Really, Legendary Leaders.

If you’re like me, you can only hope the high-priced international image consultants of Pentagram Design take the next step, and declare every conference member an Institution of Unequaled Excellence – and rename them all after popular shampoos. It’s called “branding,” you hayseed.

I, for one, think that would be great. But what do I know? I just live here.

Pass the corn.

About the author: John U. Bacon lives in Ann Arbor and has written for Time, the New York Times, and ESPN Magazine, among others. His most recent book is “Bo’s Lasting Lessons,” a New York Times and Wall Street Journal business bestseller. Bacon teaches at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio; Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism; and the University of Michigan, where the students awarded him the Golden Apple Award for 2009. This commentary originally aired on Michigan Radio.

John U. Bacon

Ten years ago, ESPN viewers voted the Michigan-Ohio State football game the best rivalry in the nation. Not just in college football, or football in general, but in all sports. Since 1935, it’s held a privileged spot as the last game of the Big Ten season. More college football fans have seen this rivalry, in person and on TV, than any other.

HBO has produced dozens of sports documentaries, but only one on college football: the Michigan-Ohio State game. They titled it simply, “The Rivalry.” They did not feel they had to explain it.

But when the Big Ten added Nebraska, everything seemed up in the air, including the Michigan-Ohio State game. Next fall the Big Ten will have 12 teams, playing in two divisions, culminating in a title game – all new.

So that raised a few possibilities – not to mention plenty of rumors and fears.

If they kept Michigan and Ohio State in the same division, the teams could never meet in the title game. But if they put them in different divisions, they might have to play again in the title game just one week later. One rumor had them moving the game from its traditional date at the end of the season – or even interrupting the rivalry, instead of playing every year.

The fans, former players and reporters – including me – responded with their “usual level of cool maturity,” as Dave Barry would say, “similar to the way Moe reacts when he is poked in the eyeballs by Larry and Curly.” One Ohio politician even went so far as to introduce a resolution demanding the game never be moved.

Rob Lytle, an Ohio native turned Michigan All-American, said, “Bo would have hated this. I’m glad he and Woody don’t have to go through it. They’re probably marching around throwing tantrums right now.” He was probably right.

College football is famous for fixing what ain’t broken, but the idea of moving or even interrupting the greatest rivalry in sports would have been the dumbest idea since New Coke. Actually, that’s not fair – because no one made you drink New Coke.

Fans expect to see the Rose Bowl in January, the Super Bowl in February, and March Madness in, yes, March. And they expect to see Michigan play Ohio State in late November. If they moved it, it would be no better than, say, Tennessee-Florida, or Oregon-Southern Cal. Those are not classics, just games, and no one cares when they play them. Not so The Rivalry.

Besides, the odds of a championship rematch are actually pretty small. In the last 22 years, the two rivals have finished first and second only four times – less than twice a decade. And on those rare occasions when there is a rematch, it won’t dampen interest, but ignite it.

Take the most recent example: in 2006, Michigan was undefeated, and ranked second in the country. Ohio State was undefeated, and ranked first. The Wolverines’ comeback attempt fell just short, and they lost, 42-39. But the game was so good, almost half the country wanted them to meet again for the national title. So who wouldn’t watch them tee it up a week later for the Big Ten title? The ratings would be astronomical.

So what’d the Big Ten honchos finally decide? They stunned everyone – including me – and came up with a format that’s intelligent, even elegant. They listened to their constituents and left the Michigan-Ohio State game at the end of the season, right where it belongs.

There’s only one downside: I had written my commentary a few days ago blasting away in anticipation of the sporting world’s dumbest decision, and instead I have to close this by saying: “You fooled me. Well done.”

About the author: John U. Bacon lives in Ann Arbor and has written for Time, the New York Times, and ESPN Magazine, among others. His most recent book is “Bo’s Lasting Lessons,” a New York Times and Wall Street Journal business bestseller. Bacon teaches at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio; Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism; and the University of Michigan, where the students awarded him the Golden Apple Award for 2009. This commentary originally aired on Michigan Radio.