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!

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!

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!

John U. Bacon

Former Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren said, “I always turn to the sports pages first, which records people’s accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man’s failures.”

But this year, the sports page had plenty of both. Sad to say, bad news tends to travel faster.

So let’s start with some good news. In men’s tennis, the rivalry between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, already one of the best in tennis history, was joined by a man named Novak Djokovic, who won three major titles this year on a gluten-free diet – no joke. We might be watching the sport’s greatest era. Even better, all three players are true sportsmen, resorting to none of the ranting and raving of past greats.

Today, the spoiled brats are on the first tee, led by Tiger Woods, whose petulant tantrums on the course were eclipsed by his behavior off it. Now he’s trying to reassemble his knee, his swing and his life all at once. His opponents don’t like him, but they have to pull for him to return, along with their big paychecks.

The Detroit Red Wings made the playoffs for their 20th consecutive year – an incredible accomplishment of consistency in the modern era of parity and free agency. If you’re in college, you cannot recall when they were so bad we called them the “Dead Things.” General manager Ken Holland is the best in sports. Period.

The Tigers, meanwhile, stretched their playoff streak to one. Justin Verlander starts the game throwing 95-miles per hour, and ends it throwing over 100. He is the most dominant Detroit pitcher in four decades. Take your kids to see him now, so years later they can tell their grandkids.

The biggest surprise in the state has been the Lions – formerly known as the Lie Downs. They are still recovering from the reign of former president Matt Millen, who led the team to a historically awful run. Now he has a lucrative job judging the people still doing his old position better than he ever did. Which only proves my theory: the worse you were managing or coaching, the more likely you will get a job criticizing the very people who beat you every week.

The last time the Lions won a playoff game, the Red Wings were just starting their 20-year streak of playoff appearances. The Red Wings aim for Stanley Cups, every year. The Lions set their sights on mediocrity, and this year, standing at 8-5 with three games left, they just might reach it.

It looked like no one was going to make the NBA playoffs this season, because for three months there was no NBA season, thanks to the lock out. All work-stoppages in professional sports are indefensible, but the consolation in this case was that few seemed to care. The only thing more pointless than the first half of the NBA regular season is the first half of every game. We didn’t miss you.

The good news for Detroit basketball fans is that your team will soon be back on the court. The bad news is: Your team is the Detroit Pistons, whose odds of making the playoffs haven’t changed since the lock out started.

This year, the media spotlight shone brightest on college sports – and what it revealed wasn’t pretty. It started with a cynical game of musical chairs among colleges and their conferences. When the music ended, Boise State somehow was sitting in the Big East – making it the biggest East you’ve ever seen.

Then the scandals started. The NCAA gave Ohio State a clean bill of health after a rushed investigation so the Buckeyes could play in the Sugar Bowl. The Buckeyes won the game, but lost all respect when head coach Jim Tressel got caught lying through his sweater vest. Michigan State coach Mark Dantonio, who had worked for Tressel, described him as a “tragic hero.” This phrase originally meant a virtuous man who suffers misfortune, not some guy who got caught cheating. Perhaps Dantonio knows something Aeschylus didn’t.

But the biggest scandal in college sports – scratch that, the saddest in the history of all sports – is the travesty still unfolding at Penn State. A former assistant coach is accused – and pardon me, but euphemism will not do here – of raping young boys. It is already horrifying, and it will surely get worse before it’s over. For the victims, it never will be.

These cases reveal an underlying problem: Once a college coach becomes an icon, no one has the power – or the guts – to point out the emperor has no clothes. Until college presidents realize they have more power than college coaches – or reporters remember they answer to the readers, not the legends – we will remain at the coaches’ mercy. Heaven help us.

The long-term effects of football injuries are finally getting the attention they deserve, but it’s too late for too many. Of the first 25 notable sports deaths in 2011, seven were football players, and only one lived to be 70. Something is very wrong here.

In Michigan, at least, the year brought good news: Michigan State’s men’s basketball team made it back to the Final Four, and its football team won the first Legends Division title. In Ann Arbor, the Wolverines are winning again. Brady Hoke beat the Buckeyes in his first season, riding a resurgent defense. Sometimes, good things happen to good people, and this senior class has a bunch of them.

Sparky Anderson, the first manager to lead teams in both leagues to World Series titles, died this year at 76. Two years ago, I asked him what’s the best advice he could give a coach. He pointed two of his gnarled fingers at his leathery face, cracked his famous grin, and said, “Trust your eyes, son. Trust your eyes.”

Maybe he wasn’t talking about sports, after all.

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.” His next local book signing will be at Nicola’s Books in Ann Arbor on Saturday, Dec. 17 from 2-4 p.m.

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

Just a few years ago, ESPN’s viewers called the Michigan-Ohio State rivalry the best. Not just in college football, or all football. But in all sports. Period.

Everyone knew this year’s game wouldn’t go down as one of the best. Michigan entered the game with a 9-2 record and a No. 17 ranking, but the Buckeyes hobbled into their annual finale dragging a 6-5 record behind them, their worst record since the 1990s.

But that just made the stakes for Michigan that much higher.

The Wolverines hadn’t beaten the Buckeyes since 2003, but the Buckeyes entered last week’s game reeling from just about every problem a major program can have – from an ongoing NCAA investigation, to coach Jim Tressel being fired last spring in disgrace, to their star quarterback Terrelle Pryor departing a year early for the NFL.

This Buckeye team was led by a freshman quarterback, Braxton Miller, and an interim coach named Luke Fickell. Making matters worse for the Buckeyes, just days before the game, reports surfaced that Urban Meyer would be named the permanent head coach after the game – which he was.

All this only put more pressure on the Wolverines. If they couldn’t beat the Buckeyes at their baddest, when could they?

Lose, and critics would wonder if Michigan’s renaissance was just a mirage. How would the Wolverines do any better in 2012, when the schedule gets a whole lot tougher?

But win this game, and the Wolverines would have 10 wins for the first time in five years. They would be going to a big-time bowl game. And they would have the monkey – scratch that, the fully-grown gorilla – off their backs. There would be no do-or-die games for Michigan’s new coaching staff.

The Buckeyes scored on their first possession to go up 7-0. But Michigan fought back, hanging on to a 37-34 lead late in the game.

On second down from the five-yard line, Michigan running back Fitzgerald Toussaint broke through the line and appeared to score, which would have given Michigan a very comfortable 10-point lead.

But no. The modern game is determined not by the players, or even the refs on the field, but by some invisible official in a video replay booth hundreds of feet above. The mystery man made a mysterious call, declaring Toussaint hadn’t scored a touchdown after all.

No big deal, right? Just do it again. But on the next play the refs called the Wolverines not just for holding but also a personal foul. Think those guys weren’t feeling the pressure?

The Wolverines had to settle for a long field goal, something they rarely made the year before. But the Buckeyes still had enough time to score a touchdown – and if they did, the upset would be theirs.

When Ohio State wide receiver DeVier Posey slipped past Michigan’s defender, making himself wide open with nothing between him and the endzone, a hundred thousand Michigan fans held their breath. But the freshman quarterback panicked, threw it too far, and the Wolverines survived.

Well, survived is not quite the right word. They went crazy – fueled by joy and relief and the secure feeling that no one could take this away from them.

The students rushed the field to join the players in a scene now being replayed on thousands of Facebook message boards, a picture of pure salvation. The losing streak was over.

This week, the Big Ten rightly awarded Brady Hoke Coach of the Year honors. If his defensive coordinator, Greg Mattison – who took a 110th-ranked defense and turned it into one of the nation’s best – isn’t voted the nation’s top assistant coach, Michigan should demand a recount.

One thing I discovered from my miniature coaching career: When you beat your arch-rival by a point, all everybody can talk about is what you did right. But when you lose by a point, all they can talk about is what you did wrong.

Winning, I learned, is better.

Just ask the teary-eyed players hugging the students on Saturday.

No, it wasn’t one of the best Michigan-Ohio State games of all time. But for Michigan, it was one of the most important.

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,” currently on sale in bookstores. The book was recently No. 6 on the New York Times bestseller list.

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

College football coaches are far from the richest people in sports, but they could be the most powerful. That might seem far-fetched, but not to the disciples of Bear Bryant, Woody Hayes, and Tom Osborne, to name just three, who rose to become almost spiritual leaders at their schools.

At University of Michigan president James Duderstadt’s retirement banquet in 1996, he said being president wasn’t easy, but it came with some nice perks. He even got to meet the man thousands of people considered God. “No,” he said, “not Bo Schembechler, but the Dalai Lama.”

It got a laugh, but it also revealed how much presidents both fear and resent their coaches’ power, which can eclipse almost everything else on campus. The best that schools can hope for is an enlightened despot, one who keeps things clean – while winning ten games a year and beating their arch-rival.

Michigan has been lucky. Its biggest icons – Fielding Yost, Fritz Crisler, and Bo Schembechler – were not just revered, they were restrained, refusing to resort to the dirty tactics their opponents used on and off the field.

No one in the history of Penn State stamped the school more than Joe Paterno did. He led the Nittany Lions to five perfect seasons, and did it the right way. He didn’t spend a dollar to expand his humble ranch home, instead donating more than $4 million to expand the university.

As Mark Twain said, once a man earns a reputation for hard work, he can sleep until noon. Likewise, Paterno’s image eventually took on a life of its own, one so powerful no mere mortal dared question it.

The acid test was his former top assistant, Jerry Sandusky, who received the first formal complaint about his questionable conduct from a boy’s mother back in 1998. This introduced a pattern of reports, with all of them systematically squelched by Paterno and Penn State. Having seen Michigan’s coaches spend 16-hour days together – which is typical at that level – I find it impossible to believe Penn State’s coaches weren’t all too aware of Sandusky’s behavior, and the danger it posed.

Finally, last week, the avalanche of evidence became too great even for Paterno’s image to withstand. But it’s instructive to note this case was finally broken not by the people at Penn State, who had ample reason to take serious action more than a decade ago, nor by the conference or the NCAA, which have vested interests in keeping the good ship Paterno sailing along. Even the writers who follow the team never reported a thing, because doing so would cost them their access, the lifeblood of any beat writer.

When reporters asked Paterno’s fellow coaches what they would do in his situation, the tough-guy coaches turned wimpy surprisingly fast, refusing to criticize him even after the gory details began to emerge. One claimed he couldn’t say what he would do without knowing the “policies and procedures” of Penn State. This begs the question: How much do you really need to understand about any school’s policies and procedures to know instinctively a helpless boy must be protected, and the man punished?

Michigan State basketball coach Tom Izzo, much to his credit, replied more directly. Last week he had his eleven-year-old son join him on a team trip, and said the news from Penn State “sickens me.” Here’s to one honest man.

No surprise, then, that it was not any of the parties above that finally took concrete action, but the federal government. If self-policing does not work at one of the most respected programs in the country, can it work anywhere?

I have researched college football for almost two decades, and can say without question that this is the ugliest chapter in the sport’s long history. But until more people are willing to speak truth to power, no matter the cost, I’m afraid it won’t be our last.

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,” currently on sale in bookstores. The book was recently No. 6 on the New York Times bestseller list.

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

Michigan football has produced a lot of big name coaches and players, but one of the finest men who played and coached for Michigan deserves to be a little bigger.

At last week’s homecoming game, Michigan had planned to honor one of its great alums, a man named Chalmers Elliott – which might explain why he goes by “Bump.” He was an All-American football player and a Big Ten champion coach, but earned greater fame as the athletic director at Iowa, Michigan’s opponent this weekend. Pneumonia kept the 86-year old legend from making it, however, so I’m going to honor him today.

He was born in Detroit in 1925, and served in the Marines during World War II. He returned to star for Michigan as a halfback alongside his younger brother Pete, who played quarterback. Their offense was so dazzling, seven players could touch the ball on a single play. That earned them the nickname, the Mad Magicians, plus the national title in 1947 – the same year the conference named Bump Elliott the MVP.

Elliott came back to Michigan in 1959 as the head coach. To his players, he came off as an erudite, modest Midwesterner, who rarely swore or even yelled, and if you said you were hurt, that was enough for him. You could take the day off. Whenever I talk with his former players about him, they invariably say the same thing: “Bump Elliott was the consummate gentleman.”

But after ten years produced only one Big Ten title, Elliott happily left coaching in 1968 to become the associate athletic director. There, in that unassuming role, he might have performed his most noble task.

He helped hire his replacement, Bo Schembechler – which, believe it or not, first looked like it might have been a mistake. When Schembechler’s crew arrived with their wives sporting beehive hairdos and stiletto heels, some Michigan insiders took to calling them “The Ohio Mafia.” The players quickly learned the new guy yelled, swore, grabbed your facemask and literally kicked you in the ass. If you were merely hurt, not injured, but didn’t want to practice, you got left behind when the team plane took off.

Instead of turning his back on the new regime, however, Elliott embraced them, hosting parties for their families and introducing them to important people around town.

Elliott also left Schembechler eleven All-Americans, four of whom have been inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. No Michigan team has produced more. As Bo told me, “Ol’ Bump had not left the cupboard bare!”

Those players had come to Michigan to play for the courtly Elliott, not this raving lunatic from Ohio. Not surprising, some tried to complain to their old coach. But the formerly friendly, inviting coach would have none of it. “I didn’t want to talk to them,” Elliott told me earlier this year. “That was Bo’s team now. There was no reason for me to be involved in that.”

Years later, Schembechler told me, “That was a great gift.”

Of course, Bo’s first team finished his first year in Ann Arbor by upsetting the top-ranked, defending national champion Ohio State Buckeyes – arguably the most important victory in Michigan’s long history.

The next year, Elliott became Iowa’s athletic director – by far the best they’ve ever had. He turned a sleeping giant into a juggernaut in football, basketball and even wrestling, where the Hawkeyes won 12 NCAA titles under his watch and starting packing the basketball arena for every match.

Bump Elliott earned just about every accolade a player and athletic director can, but the greatest might have been a simple, private tribute he received after Michigan’s upset over Ohio State in 1969. After the room quieted down, Bo asked Bump to come to the front. Bo said a few words of deep gratitude, then he handed Elliott the game ball. Everybody got choked up, including Bo and Bump, and more than a few of Elliott’s former players shed some tears.

Just a few months before Bo died, he told me, “I don’t remember when I felt better about anything I’ve done in my entire life.”

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,” currently on sale in bookstores. The book is currently No. 6 on the New York Times bestseller list.

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

In the summer of 2008, Rich Rodriguez granted me unfettered access to the Michigan football program so I could write a book. Three years later the book is finished, and like just about everybody else connected to Michigan football the past three years, I had no idea what I was getting into.

During my three years following the Michigan football team, the working title of the book changed from “All or Nothing,” to “All In,” to “Third and Long,” before Rodriguez’s last season, and after he was fired, to “Three and Out.”

At first, I thought I was watching the football version of “Coal Miner’s Daughter.” Then, maybe “Shawshank Redemption.” Guy gets dumped on, but comes through. Then, I finally realized I was watching “Titanic.” The unsinkable ship goes down. The hottest coach in America takes over the winningest program in the nation – and the marriage seemingly made in heaven ends in an ugly divorce.

While the target moved many times, the central goal of the book didn’t: show what it’s really like to be a college football player and coach. Both are a lot harder than I ever imagined. The players put in 16-hour days – and the coaches put in more. In college football, the best thing to be is not a coach or a player, but a fan. Enjoy your Saturdays.

But those fans want to know who’s to blame for the three most tumultuous years in the history of Michigan football. To answer that, I’ll quote Oscar Wilde, who was probably not discussing the Rodriguez Era when he wrote, “The truth is rarely pure, and never simple” – but he nailed it.

If I had to boil it down, the Rodriguez era failed for four reasons: First, a sloppy search that created a lot of bad blood in the Michigan family. Second, the damage done by detractors inside and outside the program. Third, the impact of the Detroit Free Press and NCAA investigations, which took a lot more out of the coaches and the players than outsiders realized. And fourth, Rodriguez’s missed opportunities, from PR missteps to several crucial losses, due largely to a historically horrible defense.

You can weigh those four factors how you like. But on the most important point, there is no shade of gray whatsoever. Rodriguez, his staff, and his players worked extraordinarily hard to win every game. But some powerful insiders worked just as hard to see them fail. That is not a matter of degree. It’s a clear-cut, black-and-white difference – something I have never seen in all my years researching Michigan’s long and proud history.

Ultimately, who deserves how much blame can be debated. But who suffered the most cannot be: the players.

When a reporter asked defensive lineman Ryan Van Bergen how it felt to see hundreds of former players returning to support new Michigan football coach Brady Hoke, he said, “You know, it’s kind of unsettling. It’s great they’re back, but where have they been the last two or three years? We’ve still be wearing the same helmets since they were here.”

This book will probably sting Michigan in the short run, but not for long. After all, great institutions can only be built on the truth – something the world-class professors at the University of Michigan teach their students to pursue wherever it leads, without fear.

I’ve said it before, and it’s still true – for those who say this book will hurt Michigan, I can only respond: not the Michigan I know.

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.” His first local book signing will be Friday, Oct. 28 at Nicola’s Books in Ann Arbor.

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!