John U. Bacon

The University of Michigan’s athletic director sent a proposal to the university’s board of regents, requesting permission to set off fireworks during two football games this fall.

At first blush, the question of post-game fireworks didn’t seem like a very big deal either way. On Michigan fan blogs, reactions were mixed. As for the university’s regents, they have bigger things to worry about than fireworks. Even the athletic department’s budget – which has grown by 50%, currently pushing $150 million – might seem like a lot to us, but that’s a rounding error at the university’s hospital.

So when the regents voted down the proposal for fireworks for two games this season, it got people’s attention.

The regents rarely split their votes, or deny the athletic director’s wishes. But when the regents looked into the fireworks proposal, they were surprised to find the department wanted to set off fireworks not just after both games, but during the second game, after touchdowns – replacing the century-old tradition of celebrating success with the marching band blasting “The Victors.”

Once bloggers saw that, they exploded like – well, fireworks. They didn’t like the idea any more than the regents did.  

More telling were the regents’ remarks. Three-term regent Larry Deitch said, “I have religiously attended [Michigan] football games for 50 years. I have not found that experience wanting for lack of fireworks.”

Regent Mark Bernstein termed the fireworks a “huge symbolic issue.” He explained: “We are not Comerica Park, Disney World, or a circus. I love Michigan football for what it is, and for what it is not. It remains and should be intentionally simple. The fireworks should be on the field, not above it.”

The bloggers voiced full-throated agreement, writing things like “They get it!” “About time!” and “Amen.” They might have set a record for quoting regents.

The day after the vote, incoming president Mark Schlissel told a reporter that, being new, he had no opinion on the matter. He made it a point to tell the faithful he appreciates just how important athletics are to the university culture, but he added: “We’re an academic institution, so I want to work on the appropriate balance between athletics and academics… The athletic director does have delegated responsibilities, but he works for me.”

On Michigan websites, this sparked another chorus of “Hallelujah.”

But what does all this mean? It’s easy to read too much into the comments from the regents and President Schlissel. When you boil their quotes down, they represent not a radical departure from the status quo, but a return to it: the protocols, the customs and the traditions Michigan has relied on to become a leader academically and athletically for over a century.

Taken together, however, their comments do suggest the people who run the university no longer feel compelled to rubber stamp the athletic director’s every request.

The athletic department has bigger things to worry about, too. The department has run ads on its blog, its electronic billboard, on TV and even at a street stand during the Ann Arbor art fair, urging fans to buy football tickets. If those unprecedented efforts didn’t tell us how eager they must be to unload tickets by the thousands, the email this week to its golf club members, announcing free tickets for anyone who asks, removed any doubt. If you went to Michigan, live in Michigan or can find Michigan on a map, don’t be surprised when the athletic department offers you free Michigan football tickets. It’s a boon for those who’ve already dropped their tickets – and a bust for those who have already paid full price for theirs.

If Michigan fails to lure 100,000 fans to the Big House this fall for the first time since 1975, the biggest fireworks might not be in the sky or on the field, but in university offices on State Street.

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

Last week, I explained why Michigan students are dropping football tickets in record numbers – about 40% in the last two years. It touched a nerve – actually a few hundred thousand nerves. And not just among Michigan fans, but college football fans nationwide, who recognized many of the same flaws at their favorite university that were turning them off, too.

It’s all well and good to criticize Michigan’s athletic administration – and apparently very cathartic for many fans, too. But it doesn’t solve the central problem: How can college programs protect an experience millions of fans and students have loved for decades, before it’s too late?

Yes, winning helps. But when Michigan went 3-9, 5-7, 7-6 a few years ago, they still had a robust wait list. And when USC was winning national titles about the same time, they rarely sold out their Coliseum. Fans obviously love winning, but what they want – what they need – runs deeper than that.

Allow me to offer a few suggestions.

First, some easy ones: Give the fans real opponents, at a reasonable price, then revert the student ticket policy back to what it was, for – well, forever. Freshmen sit in the end zone, and seniors get the best seats. Simple.

Want them to show up on time? Don’t bully them, or tease them with donuts or cell phone service. Just remove the least appealing aspect of a modern football Saturday: boredom.

What’s boring? Waiting in line for 30 minutes to get in your seat. Or worse, being forced to arrive hours before kickoff, with nothing to do but sit in the heat, the cold or the rain, while your classmates are still outside tailgating. Then there’s the 20-minute wait for a six-dollar hot dog.

Fans at home don’t have to wait in line for any of these things. Why should fans who paid hundreds to sit in the stands? Hire a few more folks, reduce the lines, and keep the fans happy.

Everybody’s most hated delay is waiting for TV timeouts to end. Because every game is televised, ticket holders endure about 20 commercial breaks per game, plus halftime. That adds up to more than 30 minutes of TV timeouts – about three times more than the 11 minutes the ball is actually in play.

To loyal fans who sit in a stadium that is too hot in September and too cold in November – and often too rainy in between – this is as galling as taking the time, money, and effort to drive downtown to a local store, only to have to wait while the clerk talks on the phone with someone who didn’t bother to do any of those things.

Why do the powers that be let TV spoil your day at the stadium? TV doesn’t stop car races, golf tournaments or soccer games – yet those still make millions of dollars for all involved. If the TV whizzes can’t figure out how to make a buck on football without ruining the experience for paying customers, those fans will figure it out for themselves, and stay home.

While TV is running its ads, Michigan too often gives its loyal season ticket holders not the marching band or – heaven forbid – silence, but obnoxiously loud rock music and, yes, ads! Spectators spend hundreds of dollars to suffer through almost as many ads as the folks watching at home for free. Sssssuckers!

Yes, advertising in the Big House does matter. Americans are bombarded by ads, about 5,000 a day. Michigan Stadium used to be a sanctuary from modern marketing, an urban version of a national park. Now it’s just another stop on the sales train.

I’m amazed how eagerly universities have sold their souls to TV. It wasn’t always this way. Bo Schembechler said, “Toe meets leather at 1:05. If you want to televise it, fine. If you don’t, that’s fine too.”

Bo’s boss, Don Canham, backed him. TV was dying for a night game at the Big House. Canham wasn’t. So, they compromised – and didn’t have one.

If fans want night games, fine – give ‘em what they want. But nobody likes waiting for TV to decide when Michigan is going to play that week – especially fans flying in from far away.

This past fall, ESPN descended on Evanston, Illinois, for a game between Ohio State and Northwestern – a rarity. When ESPN told the folks at Northwestern to get rid of these shrubs and those bushes near Lake Michigan, because ESPN wanted to build their set there, Northwestern did something none of the big boys have the guts to do: They said, “No. You can set up where we planned it.”

What did ESPN do? They followed Northwestern’s orders. What else could they do?

The universities still have the power – but only if they’re willing to use it.

Okay, you start dictating terms to TV networks, they might cut back on the cash (though I doubt it). But even if they did, what would that mean? Perhaps Michigan’s rowing team would have to make do with a $20 million training facility, instead of a $25 million one. Maybe Michigan’s head coach would have to get by on $2 million a year, instead of $4 million. Perhaps Michigan’s athletic director – and yes, he does pay himself – might just have to feed his family on $300,000 a year, instead of $1.3 million.

I think universities could somehow survive these deprivations. It would be worth it if, in the bargain, they get their souls back.

Which brings me to legendary Michigan broadcaster Bob Ufer, who often said, “Michigan football is a religion, and Saturday is the holy day of obligation.” He was on to something. Athletic directors need to remember the people in the stands are not customers. They’re believers. Treat them accordingly – or lose them forever.

That is not unique to Michigan. Researching my latest book, “Fourth and Long,” I met Dr. Ed Zeiders, the pastor of St. Paul’s United Methodist Church in State College. He has seen what a college football team can do for a community in ways others might not.

“We are desperately needy,” he told me. “We need a place to stand, and a people to stand with, and a cause to stand for. That is not original with me. That came out of World Methodism. And those three propositions hold the key to healthy and value-oriented living. Our culture is devoid of these things.”

Pastor Ed, as he’s known, fills those needs every week at his church. But he couldn’t help but notice the place of worship down the street can host 108,000 believers every Saturday.

“Sports has the capacity to make that happen,” he said. “That can get skewed and twisted, especially in the marketing side of the equation, but my interest in sports is more in the community that forms around them.”

And this brings us to the central problem: a misguided mindset driving the entire enterprise into the ground. If you think the University of Michigan is just a brand, and the athletic department is merely a business, you will turn off the very people who’ve been coming to your temple for decades.

Break faith with your flock, and you will not get them back with fancier wine. Welcome them, and the faithful will follow.

You have a choice. Just remember: The fans do, too.

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.

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

Last week, the Michigan athletic department admitted what many had long suspected: student football ticket sales are down, way down, from about 21,000 in 2012 to a projected 13,000-14,000 this fall.

The department has blamed cell phones, high-definition TV, and a sweeping national trend – but those don’t tell the whole story.

How’d Michigan lose so many students so fast? Answer: a lot of hard work.

Athletic director Dave Brandon has often cited the difficulty of using cell phones at Michigan Stadium as “the biggest challenge we have.” But when Michigan students were asked in a recent survey to rank seven factors for buying season tickets, they ranked cell phones seventh – dead last.

What did they rank first? Being able to sit with their friends.

But Brandon did away with that last year, with his new General Admission seating policy. Instead of seating the students by class – with the freshmen in the end zone and the seniors toward the fifty, as they had done for decades – last year it was first come, first served. (They also raised the price to $295, up from $195 the year before, when Michigan played six home games instead of seven.) The idea was to encourage students to come early, and come often. Thousands of students responded by not coming at all.

This was utterly predictable – and I predicted it, 13 months ago, in this column.

TV networks loved showing blimp shots of the sold-out Big House – one of the iconic sights in college football. Now they don’t show any.

Working with student government leaders, the athletic department revised the policy for the 2014 season. But it was apparently too little, too late, as some 6,000 Michigan students decided to drop their tickets anyway.

Insult to injury: college teams now play their biggest rivals on Thanksgiving weekend, when most Michigan students have gone home. If the students don’t love college football now, when it’s half-price, will they love it more when they’re paying twice that, plus a Personal Seat License?

“We know who our competitor is,” Brandon often says. “Your 60-inch, high-definition TV.”

If that’s true, maybe they shouldn’t have increased seat prices by an average of $100 each since Brandon took over. Perhaps they should stop charging six bucks for a hot dog, five bucks for popcorn, and four dollars for water. Maybe they should stop showing ads between plays on the big screens for corporate receptions at Michigan Stadium, which start at $9,000. Fans can get all those things at home for less, including the ads. They can only get the marching band at the Big House.

Survey after survey points the finger for low attendance not at cell phone service or high definition TV, but squarely at the athletic department and college football itself. Fans are fed up paying steakhouse prices for junk food opponents – and junk food itself – while enduring endless promotions. The more college football caters to the TV audience at home, the more fans paying to sit in those seats feel like suckers.

Brandon said, “We all think of every home Michigan football game like a miniature Super Bowl.”

I don’t know any Michigan fans who think that. Quite the opposite, they think Michigan football games are the antidote for the artificial excess of the Super Bowl.

In 2005, then-athletic director Bill Martin commissioned a survey which revealed more than 50% of Michigan season ticket holders had been buying them for more than two decades, but only 9% of them also bought season tickets to any professional team. 

This tells us a basic truth: Michigan football fans don’t just love football. They love Michigan football – the history, the traditions, the rituals – the timeless elements that have grown organically over decades. They are attracted to the belief that Michigan football is based on ideals that go beyond the field, do not fade with time, and are passed down to the next generation – the very qualities that separate a game at the Big House from the Super Bowl.

After the 2013 Notre Dame game, Brandon said, “You’re a 17-18 year old kid watching the largest crowd in the history of college football with airplanes flying over and Beyonce introducing your halftime show? That’s a pretty powerful message about what Michigan is all about, and that’s our job to send that message.”

Is that really what Michigan is all about? Fly-overs, blaring rock music, and Beyonce? Beyonce is to Michigan football what Bo Schembechler is to – well, Beyonce. No, Michigan is all about lifelong fans who’ve been coming together for decades to leave a bit of the modern world behind – and the incessant marketing that comes with it – and share an authentic experience fueled by the passion of the team, the band and the students. That’s it.

In his speeches, Brandon often mentions he was the CEO of three Fortune 500 companies. Then why doesn’t he know his customers, and what they like?

Yes, the department has always followed basic business practices. But it has never been run strictly as a business – until now.  The proof is the wait list, which former athletic director Don Canham grew by the thousands. Canham was a millionaire businessman in his own right. If he wanted to “maximize revenue,” he knew he could increase the price to meet demand. But he didn’t, because he believed that would dispel the magic.

Brandon’s predecessor, Bill Martin, introduced Personal Seat Licenses to the Big House, but only after the nation’s next 19-biggest stadiums had already done so. Even then, the PSL program was relatively moderate, and spared the fans in the end zones, and he lowered ticket prices during the 2008 recession. Michigan’s wait list remained robust.

“Just because you can charge them more,” Martin told me, “doesn’t mean you should. You’re not there to ring up the cash to the nth degree. It’s a nonprofit model!”

In Brandon’s first three years, he increased the operating budget from $100 million to $137.5 million. That does not include the building program, last estimated at $340 million. In Brandon’s defense, he also generated a $9 million surplus, and the buildings will benefit all Michigan’s teams, not just football and basketball. But his budget also includes: his million-dollar salary, three times what Bill Martin paid himself, plus a $300,000 annual bonus – part of a 62% increase in administrator compensation; a 225% increase in “marketing, promotions and ticketing”; and a 500% increase in “Hosting, Food and Special Events.”

I’ve come to believe it’s not scandal that will bring down college athletics, but greed. How long can these numbers, fueled by increasingly unhappy fans, continue to skyrocket before they come crashing back down to earth?

All that money comes from someone – and that someone is you, the fans. Tickets used to be underpriced, and you knew that when you scalped them for more than you paid. Now they’re overpriced, and you know that when you try to sell them through Michigan’s Official Scalper, Stubhub, and get far less.

The wait list is long gone. They’ve been sending waves of emails to former ticket holders to assure them, “The deadline has been extended!” Beg your former customers to come back five times, and you don’t have a deadline, and you don’t have a wait list.

This fall, Michigan is in danger of breaking its string of 251 consecutive games with 100,000-plus paid attendance, which started in 1975. Treat your fans like customers long enough, and eventually they’ll start behaving that way, reducing their irrational love for their team to a cool-headed, dollars-and-cents decision to buy tickets or not, with no more emotional investment than deciding whether to go to the movies.

After a friend of mine took his kids to a game, he told me, “Michigan athletics used to feel like something we shared. Now it’s something they hoard. Anything of value they put a price tag on. Anything that appeals to anyone is kept locked away – literally, in some cases – and only brought out if you pay for it. And what’s been permanently banished is any sense of generosity.”

After Brandon became Michigan’s 11th athletic director in 2010, he often repeated one of his favorite lines: “If it ain’t broke… break it!”

You have to give him credit: He has delivered on his promise.

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.

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

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.