John U. Bacon

Longtime University of Michigan equipment manager Jon Falk announced this week he will retire after the football season. Falk has held the job for 40 years. But that won’t put an end to the litany of Falk Stories – many of them revolving around his former boss, Bo Schembechler.

Falk first met football coach Bo Schembechler in 1967. Falk was a freshman working in the equipment room at Miami of Ohio, and Schembechler was the head coach. Schembechler seemed pretty gruff to Falk, so he avoided him. That was not going to work for long.

Falk graduated from Miami in 1971 and stayed on as the football team’s assistant equipment manager. He lived at home with his mother and his grandmother and took care of them. In 1974 Bo invited Falk to interview in Ann Arbor. Falk had never lived anywhere but tiny Oxford, Ohio, so he was a little apprehensive about going to such a big place.

When he returned, he told his mother and grandmother that he was going to turn down Coach Schembechler’s offer because he did not want to leave the two of them by themselves. That night, around four in the morning, Falk’s mother came into his room, crying. She said it hurt her to say it, but he must go to Michigan. “I know Coach Schembechler will take care of you.”

His mom was right. The first few weeks Falk was in town, he ate almost every dinner at the Schembechler’s home.

But that didn’t mean Bo was easy on Falk. When Bo wanted a whistle or a pylon or a blocking dummy, he wanted it that second, and whatever it was, usually came from Falk. Patience was not Bo’s greatest virtue.

Bo once told me why he was so demanding of his staff. “Jon Falk’s job is not to fit a few hundred helmets every season. His job is to help us win Big Ten titles, and he does that by being the best equipment manager in college football. And when we win a Big Ten title, he gets a ring, too.”

Falk has 17 of those rings by now – and he has a good chance for his 18^th this fall, with Michigan the likely favorite to win the division.

Falk has also earned the devotion of over a thousand Michigan football players. When they come back, their first stop is usually Big Jonny’s office.

Falk also earned Bo’s respect. And there’s no better proof of that than having Bo give you a hard time – and letting you give it back.

A few weeks after the team finished the 1984 season with a 6-and-6 record – the worst of Bo’s career – Bo was driving along I-94 toward Detroit on a nasty January night. It was all snow and slush and bitter cold – and his car broke down. He got out to hitchhike, thinking someone had to recognize him. But everyone passed him by, even three state troopers.

Finally, someone pulled over – Jon Falk. Bo jumped to the passenger side, covered in ice, and he was still so cold he couldn’t stop his hands from shaking. “Where’re you going, Falk?”

“Coach, I kind of have plans.”

“Well, you’ve got new plans now! You’re taking me back to Ann Arbor.”

On the way back, Bo told him his story. “Falk, a hundred cars and three state troopers flew past me when I was standing on the side of the road. Can you believe that?”

“Well, Coach, we did finish 6-6 last year.”

“Now that’s a man,” Bo told me, “with too much job security.”

One day, Bo needed a buck for the vending machine. Falk was walking by, so Bo asked him. Falk pulled out his wallet, and produced a dollar – but when he did so, Bo noticed a lottery ticket in Falk’s wallet.

“Now what the hell do you have that for?” Bo asked. “We pay you well, and you will never have a better job than this one!”

Falk didn’t hesitate. “Coach, the minute my ticket hits, I’m walking straight into your office, and I’m gonna tell you, ‘Jon Falk is outta here!’”

Bo just stared at Falk, then finally started to grin. “Big Jonny, before you do all that, you better make damn sure you have all six numbers.”

Just a couple days after Bo left Michigan to work for the Detroit Tigers, he came back to the football building to work out  – but his name had already been removed from his locker. Bo said, “Falk, what the hell is this?”

Falk just shrugged, and gave Bo that line from The Natural: “They come and they go, Hobbs. They come and they go.”

They do, but I don’t know where the lettermen will go now.

About the writer: Ann Arbor resident John U. Bacon is the author of “Bo’s Lasting Lessons” and “Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football” – both national bestsellers. His upcoming book, “Fourth and Long: The Future of College Football,” will be published by Simon & Schuster in September 2013. You can follow him on Twitter (@Johnubacon), and at johnubacon.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

Even those who don’t follow sports probably know the Super Bowl is a week from Sunday.  And, for the first time ever, in any major American sport, the opposing head coaches are brothers. More important for Michiganders, they are the Harbaugh brothers, John and Jim, who went to Ann Arbor Pioneer High School. So, you’ll probably start to hear lots of stories from the folks who met them along the way.

Well, count me in.

Their dad, Jack, coached under Michigan’s Bo Schembechler in the ’70s. His oldest son John played football at Pioneer High and Miami of Ohio, then worked his way up the ladder until he became the head coach of the Baltimore Ravens in 2008. He told the Washington Post he’s based his coaching philosophy on Bo’s coaching philosophy.

John’s younger brother Jim has had a complicated relationship with Michigan, but not with Bo. Jim is my age, and when we were 12 he was Michigan’s ball boy – which made all of us envious. I played against him in baseball, and with him in hockey. That was my best sport, and I was just barely better than he was – that’s my claim, anyway – and hockey was his fourth sport, which he played on the side during basketball season. Guess which one of us became a sports writer?

Even in eighth grade, Harbaugh might have been the most competitive person I’ve ever met – and in my business, I have met a few.

He played four sports every year, specialization be damned. In his first year in high school, he was Pioneer’s starting quarterback, starting point guard, and starting pitcher. That is an athlete.

When his dad started coaching at Stanford, Jim finished high school in Palo Alto, but even Stanford didn’t offer him a scholarship. Late in the recruiting cycle, only Wisconsin – then a Big Ten bottom feeder – offered him a full ride, until Schembechler saved him with a scholarship at the eleventh hour.

What happened next is the stuff of legend. Jim Harbaugh started his sophomore year, until he broke his arm trying to recover a fumble mid-season. The team finished 6-6, Bo’s worst season. The next year, a healthy Harbaugh led Michigan to a #2 final ranking, the highest of Bo’s career. In Harbaugh’s last season, the Wolverines were undefeated, ranked second in the nation, with a real chance to win Bo’s first and only national title, going into their last home game – which they lost, to a mediocre Minnesota squad.

Everybody was distraught – but not Harbaugh, who immediately and publicly guaranteed victory over Ohio State.  Nobody ever said the man lacked confidence. Then he backed it up with a key play late in the game, when he ignored a Buckeye defender coming right at him to launch a long pass to Jon Kolesar to clinch the victory. But that’s not what Harbaugh remembered.

When Bo passed away in 2006, just as we were finishing his last book, I solicited stories from his former players. Harbaugh had just been named Stanford’s head coach, which obviously made him a little busy, but he dropped everything to send me this.

“To this day,” he wrote, “I remember almost all of my encounters with Bo in great detail.” But the most memorable, he said, occurred a few days after Harbaugh’s last Ohio State game, the one mentioned above. Bo called him into his office, and told him to sit down. Then Bo stood up, planted both fists on his desk, looked Harbaugh right in the eye – and told he had played one of the finest games he had ever seen a Michigan quarterback play. Then he fell back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling. “What it must feel like,” he said, “to have a son play the way you did! To stand in that pocket with the safety bearing down on you unblocked, and hit Jon Kolesar to seal the victory. UNBLOCKED!” He chuckled, and said, “I’m proud of you, Jim.”

Harbaugh wrote, “I felt as loved and appreciated as I have ever felt, like I was one of Bo’s sons. In reality, I was one of Bo’s thousands of sons.”

Next Sunday, in the Super Bowl, it’s not just two brothers facing each other, but two of Bo’s sons. We don’t have to wonder if Bo would be proud.

About the writer: John U. Bacon is the author of “Bo’s Lasting Lessons” and “Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football” – both national bestsellers. His upcoming book, “Fourth and Long: The Future of College Football,” will be published by Simon & Schuster in September 2013. You can follow him on Twitter (@Johnubacon), and at johnubacon.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

Since the Michigan and Wisconsin football teams first played each other in 1892, Michigan has won a decisive 80% of those games.

The difference was one man: Bo Schembechler, who beat the Badgers 18 of 19 times. If Schembechler had coached Wisconsin, instead of Michigan, the record would be almost even.

That actually almost happened. And it all came down to a 40-minute meeting, 43 years ago.

Schembechler became the head coach of his alma mater, Miami of Ohio, in 1963, at the ripe old age of 33. After Miami won its league title in 1965 and ’66, Wisconsin came calling for the head coach.

Wisconsin set up an interview for 10 o’clock on a Sunday night. Bo walked in to face 20 guys sitting around a room, looking bored. One of the members actually fell asleep, right in front of Bo – which thrilled him. They also had a student who seemed to relish asking smart-aleck questions – which thrilled him even more.

The whole thing lasted just 40 minutes. The second Schembechler got out that door he walked to the nearest pay phone and called the Wisconsin athletic director, and told him to withdraw his name from consideration.

Schembechler already knew they were probably going to hire an assistant coach from Notre Dame anyway, so it was mostly for show. He didn’t appreciate that, either. But Bo knew one thing: even if Wisconsin still wanted him, he no longer wanted Wisconsin.

The process also made Schembechler realize his destination was the Big Ten, and he was going to hold out until he got there.

He turned down Tulane and Pitt, Vanderbilt and Kansas State. Finally, in 1968, Schembechler got a call from Michigan’s outgoing head coach, Bump Elliott, who was recruiting his replacement. Schembechler was interested, of course, but let them know he was not about to go through another dog-and-pony show like Wisconsin’s.

“Michigan didn’t need some silly committee or student rep to check me out,” Bo told me, “and I didn’t need any dime-store tour of the campus to appreciate what Michigan had to offer.”

Two days later, they sealed the deal with a handshake.

A year after Schembechler’s disastrous interview at Wisconsin, the Badgers offered a young basketball coach named Bobby Knight the top job. Knight called Schembechler at six in the morning for his advice.

“I can’t tell you what to do,” Bo said, “but I was unimpressed. If I was in your shoes, I wouldn’t go to Wisconsin.”

Knight didn’t, of course. Two years later, he took the job at Indiana.

The Badgers lost out on a football coach who would go on to win 13 Big Ten titles, and a basketball coach who won 11 more, plus three national titles.

Instead, Wisconsin got a revolving door of five football coaches and six basketball coaches, none of whom ever won a single Big Ten title. They did, however, get shellacked by the coaches they could have had, year after year.

And it was all because of one shabby, 40-minute interview on a Sunday night in 1967.

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

On Tuesday, the University of Michigan announced that Domino’s Pizza CEO David Brandon would succeed Bill Martin as the athletic director. It marked a personal high point of a great career – one you wouldn’t have predicted when Brandon played for Michigan as a third-string defensive back.

Fourteen years ago, I wrote a big feature on Bo Schembechler for the Detroit News. Bo liked the story and, out of nowhere, gave me his papers. When I tried to interest him in writing a book, he told me to ask him later – much later, it turned out. About nine years later. So, in the summer of 2000, I started without him.

The first person I sought out was Dave Brandon, who was in his second year as the CEO of Ann Arbor-based Domino’s Pizza. He probably didn’t know me from Adam, but he gave me an hour of his time anyway. And he didn’t spend it gushing about his greatest day, either, but confessing his worst one.

Brandon had been an All-State quarterback at South Lyon High School, and Schembechler offered him a full ride to come to Michigan in 1970.

Problem was, Michigan already had three quarterbacks who would play that position – Tom Slade, Larry Cipa and Dennis Franklin – so Brandon switched to defensive back. But that only made his situation worse, because the Wolverines were stocked with four future All-Americans at that spot. Brandon could have been the fifth-best defensive back in the country and not gotten any playing time on that team – they were that good. So, after a couple years of hard work, he was still languishing on the depth chart, and getting frustrated.

At a Monday practice in the middle of the 1972 season, Brandon’s junior year, Schembechler decided to work with the guys who hadn’t played that Saturday by making up a scrimmage they called the Toilet Bowl. Well, Brandon apparently responded with something less than complete enthusiasm. He just muttered a few words under his breath, across the field from the old general, but somehow Schembechler was in his face in about eight nanoseconds. Creating the illusion that his eyes and ears were everywhere was part of his genius.

“Brandon! I hear you’d rather not partake in our little scrimmage,” he barked. “Well, I can solve your problem, son. You’re going straight into that locker room, and cleaning your locker out. You’re done playing football for the University of Michigan.”

Brandon sat in his empty stall, dazed and despondent, wondering what he would tell his father, who loved Bo, his teammates, his girlfriend, and, one day, years from then, his kids.

Needless to say, Brandon didn’t sleep a wink that night. The next morning, he put on a dress shirt and went straight to Bo’s office, scared, nervous, and worn out. He apologized – as Bo knew he would – and Bo took him back. But he never heard Dave Brandon complain about any scrimmages after that.

Fast forward to 1989, the first reunion for all of Bo’s players. Brandon is already an All-American businessman by now, and a millionaire – but that incident still bothered him. Brandon figured it was time to confess his sins, so he told his teammates at his table about it – and everybody started laughing.

Brandon was stunned. What are you guys laughing about? I’m spilling my guts! One by one, they confessed, at one time or another Bo had kicked all of them off the team.

Brandon had a good laugh, too – but the lesson stayed with him: Don’t take what you’ve been given for granted, or you’ll lose it.

And that’s one reason why the guy who’d been kicked off the team is now not only responsible for Michigan’s football team, but for all Michigan’s teams.

Bo would be proud – and I’m sure he would agree: That’s a hell of a story.

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 of 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.