John U. Bacon

While I was writing “Three and Out,” the Michigan football players challenged me to join their workouts in the weight room. They were surprised when I was actually game – one of the dumbest decisions of my life.

I’d heard so much about these modern gladiators and their weight room heroics that I wanted to find out for myself just how much harder it really is compared to what the average weekend warrior puts himself through just to avoid buying “relaxed fit” jeans.

The plan was simple: I would work out with these guys three times a week, for six weeks – “if you last that long,” said Mike Barwis, Michigan’s former strength coach, in his famously raspy voice. But before I even started, there were four signs that I shouldn’t be doing this.

When I asked Barwis if I should prepare by lifting weights, he said, “No, it’s too late for that!” Well, that’s one sign.

“Okay,” I asked, “what’s it NOT too late for?”

“Running.”

“Why running? We’re not going to run.”

“Because your heart is going to give out before your muscles do.”

That was the second sign. I got the third sign when I finally showed up for my first workout and they gave me a clipboard with a half-dozen legal waivers on it, each one describing in great detail a new way I might die in the weight room. If you drop the bar on your neck, sign here. If you’re just standing there and your heart explodes, sign here.

The fourth sign came a moment later, when Barwis paired us up with our workout partners. “Bacon! You’re working with Foote!” That would be Larry Foote, the former Michigan All-American linebacker-turned-two-time Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steeler. He is paid millions to snap quarterbacks in half.

Hi Larry! I’m John!

I started my first set of squats. I’d done this hundreds of times before – but never like they did it. They’re fascists about form, so each set feels twice as hard as it would doing it your way. After a few reps, I was dying for Barwis to yell, “Rack it!”

Finally, he said it – and I thought, great. Time for a break while I watch Larry Foote do his squats. Nope. It was time for me to take my pair of ten-pound weights off the bar, and put on Larry’s rack of reds and blues and yellows – a veritable Lifesavers’ roll of a few hundred pounds. Doing this was actually harder than what I had just finished.

Okay, but now I got to take a break, right? Nope. Next, they made me do plyometrics like lunge jumps, abdominal crunches and inclined push-ups. It was actually worse than the squats. After a few of those, I was dying to get back in the rack. And after a while, I was just dying.

Barwis was right: Just 15 minutes into my first workout, I was sweating like a pig and panting like a dog. You could have taken my pulse by touching my hair.

After 30 minutes, I was in deep trouble – mouth breathing, head back, eyes half closed – when it occurred to me you might actually be made to throw up just from lifting weights.

I realized I had to find a trash can, and fast. Barwis had seen the look before, so he just pointed, “Trash can’s over there!” then calmly went back to loading Foote’s weight bar. I started walking – then running. I made it just in time to lose my breakfast, repeatedly and loudly. With my head in the dark trash can, I was hoping that, just maybe, no one saw me.

Fat chance. I lifted my head out of the trash can very slowly – and a great cheer went up. The Michigan football team was giving me a standing ovation – for puking in a trash can.

“Yeahhhh!”

“Go, Bacon, Go!”

“Get rid of the poison!”

“We have a winner!”

Yes, there is a snobbism in the Michigan weight room, but it’s not based on your stats or your weights, just how hard you’re working. I was the oldest, weakest and fattest guy there by a long shot, and I was fully prepared to take a lot of crap for all of it. But I never took a single shot for any of that. So long as I was sweating like they were, the players would yell and urge me on, and high five me after each lift.

In their eyes, I now had the same status as every other guy who’d puked in that trash can – which is to say, everyone. After that, the interviews for the book were easy.

Puking in that trash can proved to be the greatest career move of my life.

About the author: John U. Bacon is the author of the New York Times bestseller “Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football.” He also co-authored “A Legacy of Champions,” and provided commentary for “Black and Blue: The Story of Gerald Ford, Willis Ward, and the 1934 Michigan-Georgia Tech Football Game,” which has been airing on various stations in Michigan and nationally.

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 University of Michigan can boast 19 highly ranked schools and colleges, a couple dozen nationally recognized teams and countless famous graduates. And on matters of social justice, Michigan has often led the nation, not followed it.

But one Saturday, 78 years ago, Michigan took a sad step backward.

When Ann Arbor’s own George Jewett – who has a street named after him in his home town – earned his third varsity letter on Michigan’s football team in 1892, he could not have imagined it would take four decades for another African-American player to follow him.

The biggest reason was Michigan’s head coach from 1901 to 1926, Fielding H. Yost. He invented the no-huddle offense and the position of linebacker and popularized the forward pass. He built Yost Fieldhouse, the Intramural Building and the Big House. He had boundless energy, ambition and ego, and six national titles to back it all up.

You could argue that most of Yost’s faults were benign flaws, maybe even necessary evils. But one of Yost’s blind spots had no redeeming qualities: He was a racist.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. His dad fought for the Confederates, after all. But Yost was surprised decades later when his discriminatory decisions created a national controversy.

It started in 1929, when as athletic director he tapped one of his former All-American players, Harry Kipke, to become Michigan’s next head coach. Two years later, Kipke worked hard to persuade an honor roll student out of Detroit Northwestern named Willis Ward to turn down Dartmouth and play for Michigan.

Kipke wasn’t dumb. Ward had already been named the state’s best athlete, and would actually beat Jesse Owens on the track.

When Ward decided to join the Wolverines, Michigan fans were thrilled – but not Yost. Some reports say he almost came to blows with Kipke over the recruit, and others say he actually did. But either way, Kipke stuck to his guns, and to Ward, who became the first African-American to make Michigan’s team since George Jewett in the 1890s. Ward became an All-American honorable mention the next year, and helped Michigan win two straight national titles. He was every bit as good as advertised.

But the simmering conflict between Kipke and Yost came to a boil in 1934, when Yost invited Georgia Tech to play in Ann Arbor. At that time Southern schools did not allow blacks to play on their teams, or even play teams who had black players. So, when a Northern team played a Southern team, it was customary for the Northern team to bench its black players, and the Southern team to bench white players of equal skill.

When Yost made it clear he intended to follow the custom, he was stunned by the backlash, which spanned from campus protests to alumni letter-writing campaigns to an embarrassing article in Time magazine.

Michigan’s president, Alexander Ruthven, who was presented a golden opportunity to stand up for the values Michigan claims to stand for, chose instead to duck.

The students proved to be both wiser and more courageous. This group included a Michigan Daily reporter named Arthur Miller, and a senior center named Jerry Ford. He had met Ward during their first day on campus while registering for classes in Waterman Gym. They hit it off immediately, and roomed together on the road. Yes, 35 years before the Chicago Bears’ Brian Piccolo roomed with Gale Sayers, inspiring the movie “Brian’s Song,” Ford and Ward were breaking the same barrier, and thought nothing of it.

“Willis was probably my closest friend on the football team,” Ford said years later. “We were the leaders of that team.”

And that was the problem. When Yost’s decision to bench Ward came down, Ford faced an agonizing dilemma. After a lot of hand-wringing, he walked into Coach Kipke’s office and said, “I quit.”

If Ford had stuck to his decision, he probably would not have gotten the assistant coaching job at Yale, which paid for his law school, which in turn launched his career as a lawyer, and later a politician. There was probably a lot more riding on that call than even Ford knew at the time.

Ward generously talked him out of it, telling Ford that his quitting would only make a bad situation worse. But that came with a price, too. During the game, a Tech player named Charlie Preston called Ford all the names racists call white people who don’t play along. By all accounts, the normally mild-mannered Ford responded by simply kicking Preston’s ass.

Michigan won that game, 9-2, but lost all the rest, finishing the year at 1-7 – which still stands as the Wolverines’ worst season, in just about every way possible. Kipke’s teams were never the same, finishing no higher than fifth in the Big Ten the next three seasons. In 1937, Yost fired him.

But Michigan had learned its lesson – the school would soon return to its position of leadership on social issues – and both Ward and Ford went on to earn their law degrees. When Ward ran for Congress, Ford left his own campaign on the west side of the state to stump for him in Detroit, and later endorsed him for the bench. “Willis turned out to be an excellent state judge,” Ford said. The two remained such close friends that Ward’s grandson didn’t realize for years that the “Jerry” his grandfather kept referring to was President Gerald Ford.

At Ford’s funeral in 2007, then-president George W. Bush gave the eulogy, as is the custom. He could have told any number of stories from Ford’s distinguished career of public service, but President Bush chose to tell this one, perhaps the bravest stand of Ford’s long life.

But this story doesn’t end there. In the halls of Congress, each state is represented by two statues, almost always a Democrat and a Republican. In 2007, politicians from West Michigan moved to replace the statue of Zachariah Chandler, an abolitionist, with one of President Ford. Detroit Democrats argued against it, until a young state senator named Samuel “Buzz” Thomas gave an impassioned speech about Ford’s central role in the Willis Ward story.

He closed with a simple line: “I am Willis Ward’s grandson.”

The measure passed in a landslide.

Chandler’s statue now stands in Lansing’s Constitution Hall. President Ford’s stands in the nation’s capital, a lasting symbol of Michigan at its best.

About the author: John U. Bacon is the author of the New York Times bestseller “Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football.” This column is based on Bacon’s research from two other projects: “A Legacy of Champions,” which he co-authored, and  Stunt3’s excellent production of “Black and Blue: The Story of Gerald Ford, Willis Ward, and the 1934 Michigan-Georgia Tech Football Game,” which has been airing this month on various stations in Michigan and nationally. Bacon provided commentary for “Black and Blue.” 

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 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

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

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!

John U. Bacon

One of the central questions that comes up in various forms about Rich Rodriguez is the “Fit, or Lack Thereof” with Michigan’s program. I’ll start to answer that question by working backward, from the final seconds of Rodriguez’s regime.

On January 5, 2011, the assistant coaches, staffers, and yours truly were all sitting in the coaches’ meeting room, when Rodriguez walked in, laid a file down on the table, and said, “Well, as expected, they fired me.” He later added, “It was a bad fit here from the start.”

And in many ways it was. But I’m not certain it had to be.

People who were living in Ann Arbor in 1968 can tell you about the last outsider to take the reins: Bo Schembechler. His predecessor, Bump Elliott, was a former Michigan All-American who was smart and humble, with an urbane, conservative manner. He didn’t yell at his players, he rarely swore, and if you said you were hurt, that was enough for him.

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. He did not allow players to come to his office in the Athletic Department to complain about the new guy, either. And when Schembechler delivered what today would be an unforgivable comment about changing “Michigan’s silly helmets,” Elliott, Don Canham, Fritz Crisler and Bob Ufer quietly taught him Michigan tradition.

And, to Schembechler’s credit, he was wise enough to listen, and even seek out their help.

When Michigan upset Ohio State that year, they gave Bump Elliott the game ball, and there was not a dry eye in the room.

That’s Michigan at its best. The last three years were not.

Rodriguez had never been to Ann Arbor before his first press conference, and it was clear he had not prepared, nor been coached – a noted contrast to Brady Hoke’s introduction, when his rehearsed lines won over many doubters that day.

To cross this chasm, neither Michigan nor Rodriguez did enough, soon enough. I believe Rodriguez should have learned more about Michigan faster than he did, but I also believe he received little guidance. Readers will likely be struck by how often Rodriguez invoked Michigan’s traditions – the helmet, the banner, the rivals – when he talked to his team. And he could have helped his cause by reaching out to sympathetic Michigan groups like the M-Club, filled with loyal supporters who could have helped him when trouble hit.

Both sides of this marriage could have learned a lot from the other. Rodriguez could have gained the kind of polish Michigan usually applies to its players and coaches, much as it did for the initially rough-hewed Schembechler. And Michigan’s famed arrogance – occasionally succumbing to rank snobbism during the Rodriguez regime – could have been softened with some of Rodriguez’s down-home friendliness.

I suspect both sides have learned a great deal since, manifest in Michigan’s almost universal support for Brady Hoke. He isn’t exactly Bump Elliott, either, but he’s been accepted as a true “Michigan Man.”

Train Wreck of a Transition

Everyone knows the transition was poorly handled – but it was actually much worse than you think, marked by a lack of preparation, communication, and transparency, not to mention severe undermining of the process and the candidates. It resulted in the famously unified Michigan football family fracturing before then-athletic director Bill Martin named Rodriguez Michigan’s next coach – and it only got worse afterward. For his part, Rodriguez naively assumed he was walking into the same program Schembechler had created.

Rodriguez also made a crucial miscalculation: He honestly believed that the bigger the program, the less time the head coach has to deal with peripheral duties like connecting with former players, alumni and fans – when the opposite is true. The head football coach at Michigan, Texas or Alabama, is, in a very real sense, the leader of that school.

That said, it’s worth remembering: Michigan was hiring Rodriguez, not the other way around. It is the employer’s job to set their employees up for success, and at that central task, Michigan failed badly.

But I still believe that nothing would have helped more than Bo Schembechler continuing to lead the family. When he passed away, Michigan lost more than a coach. It lost its spiritual leader – and five years later he has still not been replaced.

If there were any doubts before that Bo did more than anyone to keep Michigan football at the top, long after he retired, his absence erased them for me.

The Blame Game

I know: you want to know what happened to the defense, and who is most to blame for the disappointing last three seasons.

It’s not hard to identify a handful of contributing factors, all of which were necessary, but none sufficient to guarantee failure. We have a dozen variables in both cases, but no control group, so it’s ultimately impossible to be completely certain what, precisely, was the most important straw.

Nonetheless, if I don’t feed the bulldog something I’ll probably get my hand bitten off, so here goes.

Let’s start with the defense. When people ask if the shockingly poor performance was the result of inheriting weak talent, transfers, a stretch of freak injuries, youth or coaching, I say: Yes. It is simply impossible for your defense to drop to 68th then 82nd then 110th without all those factors playing a part. But the hardest to tease out is coaching.

We do know a few things, however. Failing to get Jeff Casteel was much bigger than probably anyone realized at the time. Bill Martin failed to pony up a few more bucks and a guaranteed contract to get him, while Rodriguez – who would not come to Michigan without Mike Barwis and the promise of a million-dollar weight room – was apparently willing to leave without his defensive coordinator. If he could do it again, he would probably insist he wasn’t coming to Michigan without his trusted defensive coordinator.

After that, Michigan never gave Rodriguez sufficient bait to get his top choice to replace Casteel. When Scott Shafer and Greg Robinson arrived in Ann Arbor, they inherited a staff of strangers who had been loyal to Rodriguez for years. Shafer and Robinson are both decent guys who’ve been successful elsewhere, but it clearly didn’t work at Michigan.

At the end of the day, however, the head coach is responsible for his team’s performance, and that obviously includes defense.

Likewise, there was no shortage of variables contributing to Rodriguez’s demise. The long list includes: the horrible transition; his Honeymoon from Hell (including overblown PR problems over buy-outs, departing players, and even shredded papers); his 3-9 debut; the Detroit Free Press feature and subsequent NCAA investigation; the string of four crucial losses in the middle of 2009 and three in middle of 2010; and the final Bust. Obviously, some of those are on Michigan, and some on Rodriguez.

The Rodriguez reign was fatally damaged by two main causes: the harm done by detractors inside and outside the program, and his own missed opportunities – from PR problems to those seven lost match points in 2009 and 2010, any one of which would probably have been enough to deliver him to a new era when he could focus more on football than survival. In particular, I believe the 2009 game against Illinois, which blew up when Michigan failed to score on a first and goal from the one-yard line, marked the Continental Divide of the Rodriguez Era.

So, it’s not true that Rodriguez had no chance. He had seven. It is true, however, that his chances were greatly diminished by detractors inside and outside the program.

Assigning blame essentially boils down to weighing the factors above. But on one crucial point – really, the most important of all – there is absolutely no shade of gray whatsoever. Rodriguez, his staff, and his players (after the 2008 team graduated) worked extraordinarily hard to win every game.

Some powerful insiders, however, were working 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 admirable history. But the people who suffered the most were the least to blame: the players.

As former offensive line coach Greg Frey told me, while driving to Mott Hospital one night, “I think about guys like Moosman and Ortmann and Brandon Graham. Man, those guys work their asses off. They care about their teammates. They stayed. They get pushed aside in all this, and that’s all right? That’s sad.”

When Angelique Chengalis of The Detroit News asked Ryan Van Bergen how it felt to see hundreds of alums returning to support the new coach, he said, “You know, it’s kind of unsettling… It’s great they’re back, but it’s kind of, where have they been the last two or three years? We’ve still be wearing the same helmets since they were here.”

Who deserves how much blame can be debated.

But who was working against the Wolverines, and who suffered the most because of it, cannot be.

Rodriguez and The Michigan Man

The term “Michigan Man” probably goes back to the day men arrived at Michigan. But it’s taken more than a few twists and turns since – and not always for the better.

Fielding Yost gave the term “Michigan Man” a boost when he started using it in his speeches. But the phrase really took off in 1989, of course, when Schembechler announced he was firing basketball coach Bill Frieder, on the eve of the NCAA basketball tournament, because Frieder had signed a secret deal to coach Arizona State the next season. This prompted Schembechler to bark: “A Michigan Man will coach Michigan!”

Pundits have wondered exactly what Bo meant, but I think it’s pretty simple: anybody coaching at Michigan better be completely committed to Michigan.

The phrase took on more weight four years ago, when a reporter asked brand-new head coach Rich Rodriguez if the Michigan coach had to be a Michigan Man. He joked, “Gosh, I hope not! They hired me!”

He was criticized for that – and not without some justification, in my opinion. The question was inevitable, and it exposed Rodriguez’s superficial knowledge of the program upon his arrival, and the athletic department’s failure to prepare its new coach for his mission.

From that point on, the phrase was used more often to beat somebody over the head – usually Rodriguez – than to underscore the values it’s supposed to represent, much the way extremists use “patriot” to castigate someone as un-American.

At the “Victors’ Rally” held in February 2010, Rodriguez wanted to show that he’d gotten the message. So, he closed his speech by saying, “I’m Rich Rodriguez, and I am a Michigan Man.” This time, he was criticized for being presumptuous.

Finally, with great humility, he told the crowd at his final speech at the Bust in December 2011, “I hope you realize, I truly want to be a Michigan Man.” But this time his critics said a true Michigan Man wouldn’t have to ask.

And thus, the silliness of the entire exercise had come full circle. The phrase had become so distorted, Michigan’s critics started using it as a mocking insult. Much like the word “classy,” it seemed, whoever uses it, probably isn’t.

Despite my temptation to chuck this overused and little understood phrase forever, I still think there’s something to it. Everyone knows the values it’s supposed to stand for: honor, sacrifice, pride in your team, and humility in yourself, all in one. But ultimately, to define it, I have to resort to Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s description of pornography: “I know it when I see it.”

Pardon the comparison, but when it comes to the phrase, “Michigan Man,” I know it when I see it, too. They might be Big Men on Campus, but they don’t act like it – in college or afterward. The men I’ve been lucky enough to get to know – many as good friends – really do put their team and their school before themselves, and become the kind of adults you want to be your employee, your colleague, your boss, your neighbor, your brother-in-law. Not because they played football for Michigan, but because they represent its values. And they really are different than the players I’ve met from other schools.

I can cite too many men who fit this description, and too many examples of their conduct, simply to dismiss it.

Here’s a small one: a few years ago the football alums of Ohio State and Michigan were invited to an event in Columbus. The Buckeyes showed up wearing everything from sport coats to sweatshirts and jeans. But the Michigan alums arrived wearing coats and ties. No one told them what to wear. Bo had already passed away. But they simply knew, reflexively, if you represent Michigan, this is how you do it.

A bigger example: a few years after graduating, Scott Smykowski, a former backup under Schembechler, discovered he needed a bone marrow transplant, but his health insurance wasn’t going to cover all his expenses. That’s all Schembechler needed to hear to rally Michigan Men from coast to coast. And that’s all they needed to hear to raise $150,000 in just a few weeks – even though most of them never played with Smykowski or even met him. That’s what being a Michigan Man meant to them.

When I speak at Michigan events, I often end with a quote from arguably the first important Michigan Man, Fielding Yost. Near the end of his life, they held a big banquet for him called, “A Toast to Yost from Coast to Coast,” which was broadcast nationwide by NBC. After all the speakers had paid tribute, he got up in his eponymous Fieldhouse and said, “My heart is so full at this moment, I fear I could say little else. But do let me reiterate the Spirit of Michigan. It is based on a deathless loyalty to Michigan and all her ways. An enthusiasm that makes it second nature for Michigan Men to spread the gospel of their university to the world’s distant outposts. And a conviction that nowhere, is there a better university, in any way, than this Michigan of ours.”

It gets me every time. But what really gets me is the response from the people in the audience. None of them ever met Fielding Yost. Most of them weren’t born when he passed away in 1946. Most of their parents weren’t, either. And yet, when they hear these words, they nod involuntarily, the words resonating with something deep inside them, and they are often glassy-eyed when I finish the quote.

If you could stand on that podium and look out on those faces, you would not have to wonder if the idea of the Michigan Man is for real.

Despite the best efforts to kill it, it is still very much alive.

What’s Next?

Some people have asked what’s in my future, given the response that some Michigan administrators have had to my book. Despite the sacrifices I mentioned in the first column – time, money, and possibly professional opportunities – writing it was my decision, naturally, and I don’t regret it. Given my choices, trying to write an honest book is certainly more appealing to me than trying to keep everyone happy and produce a book I could never respect.

Plus, I had the chance to see a big-time program from the inside that no fan, and no reporter, has ever had – and probably never will again. If there was one great privilege that I hope every reader can share, it was getting to know these young man not as gladiators but as human beings – some of the best I’ve met. If you were proud of Michigan football before, I can tell you this: getting to know these guys can erase much of the cynicism we all feel for college football these days. They were, quite simply, the real thing.

None of that, unfortunately, solves the problem described above. David Brandon and Lloyd Carr, through various means and channels, have made their contempt for the book (and its author) plain enough. I have no idea what’s going to happen with my various ties to Michigan, including my teaching arrangement, but I’d probably be foolish to count on anything.

It’s almost impossible to write anything interesting without at least some cooperation and access, and I might find those in short supply under the Brandon regime. I will likely have to go “off the reservation,” if you will, to pursue future projects. And perhaps it’s time.

But I also believe this book would cost me a lot more if I were writing about Kentucky basketball under Eddie Sutton or, say, Ohio State football (as a convenient example). Those schools and fans generally don’t want the truth, and will attack anyone who attempts to deliver it – witness Kirk Herbstreit’s forced move to Tennessee. Michigan football fans are very demanding – they expect a first-class program on and off the field – but they also want the truth, and they can handle it.

I feel the same way. After all, I learned how to do all the things I needed to write this book – researching, writing and thinking critically – from world-class professors at the University of Michigan. But the most important principle Michigan taught me was the central importance of pursuing the truth without fear, wherever it leads.

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 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. His first local book signing will be at Nicola’s on Friday, Oct. 28.

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

Q: So let’s talk about how this book came about. You had total unfettered access to Rich Rodriguez? How does that come about? Why would anyone agree to such a thing? What was his motivation?

This book came about largely by dumb luck – and it was luck, of all kinds, that reshaped it several times before I finished this summer.

With my degree in history (“pre-unemployment”) in my pocket, I got my first job out of Michigan teaching U.S. history and coaching hockey at Culver Academies in Indiana. One of my best students, Greg Farrall, went on to become an All-Big Ten defensive end, and then a successful financial adviser.

We’ve stayed in touch, and in early 2008, he asked for some signed copies of “Bo’s Lasting Lessons,” including one for his former coach at Indiana, Bill Mallory, and another to his boss at the time, Mike Wilcox – who just happened to be Rich Rodriguez’s financial adviser. In fact, when Rodriguez first met with Bill Martin and Mary Sue Coleman in December 2007, they did so at Wilcox’s Toledo office. [Martin was UM's athletic director at the time. Coleman is president of the university.]

One thing led to another, and in July 2008 Wilcox asked me if I’d be interested in getting complete access to Rodriguez’s first Michigan team. I thought about it for a week or so, before concluding I’d be crazy not to jump at this chance.

Rodriguez’s motivation, I believe, was pretty straightforward: by July 2008, he had already been hammered by the press in Morgantown and Michigan, and probably figured he didn’t have much to lose. As he joked at the time, “Charles Manson is also from West Virginia, and right now he’s more popular than I am.” I think he also believed he didn’t have anything to hide, either. So he was willing to take his chances on a guy he’d never met tagging along to tell the story.

The original plan was simply to write about the spread offense coming to one of the country’s most conservative programs and publish a series of stories to a national magazine, in the hope of turning them into a book co-authored by Rodriguez, similar to the one I wrote with Bo Schembechler in 2007. But after the team finished 3-9, it was obvious the story was far from over, and that I’d need to write it myself. I was looking at sunk cost. If I bailed then, I’d have nothing to show for it. But if I came back for another year, I might have a great story to tell. That same reasoning held after the second season, too. To Rodriguez’s credit, he didn’t flinch.

We had a short legal agreement that gave him the right to read the final manuscript and comment on factual accuracy, but gave me the right to ignore anything and everything he suggested. The final product is mine, and mine alone, and does not have his approval.

I secured a book contract with a great publisher, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, which eschews sports writers for high brow authors like Ian Frazier, Jonathan Franzen and Jeffrey Eugenides. I felt lucky then, and I still do. They gave me an advance that is roughly equivalent to a year’s salary. The catch is, of course, the book required three years of working full-time, so I’ve spent my life savings to get this done. When I read a few folks online posit that I’m simply out to make a quick buck, I enjoyed a good chuckle. It’s hard to imagine any buck being slower or smaller to make, with no guarantee of critical or commercial success. The book business is notoriously fickle – been to Borders lately? – and only a fool plans on a payoff. (And you can keep your comments to yourself: No, even I’m not that foolish.)

I can honestly say I didn’t put one thing in this book just to sell copies. I did not dump my notebook on anyone, providing enough information to make a point and then move on. I kept out more than a few salacious details because they were not sufficiently sourced or they were not relevant to the main questions, and felt like cheap shots.

Likewise, if I was pursuing my own self-interest, the most obvious approach would be to put all the blame on Rodriguez, who is gone and cannot do anything to help me that I can think of, and none on the University of Michigan, where I was born, earned two degrees and continue teaching, among other lifelong connections. As I’m sure you know by now, I didn’t do that, either – but if I was trying to please Rodriguez, I can tell you I clearly fell short on that score, too. He has flaws and he made mistakes, and they’re in the book, too.

I realized pretty early in the process that trying to play politics with this would be almost impossible – and probably backfire in any case. So, I settled on the single, simple goal of getting as close to the truth as I possibly could. How close I came will surely be debated in the weeks and months to come, but that was my singular mission, no matter what it costs me.

Instead of diving right into all the particulars at this stage, I’d like to step back and give an overview of what I was trying to do with this book, and what I wasn’t.

While the target moved a few times, as described above, when I sat down to write the final version from January to July of 2011, I was not setting out to write a “Whodonit,” but as accurate a picture as possible of what it’s really like to be a college football player and coach. And not just for any team: the most stable and successful program in college football, which happened to be going through the three most tumultuous years in its long and enviable history. Yes, my reporting includes plenty of inside information on the drama constantly swirling around Schembechler Hall during that time, but if this book is going to have any lasting value I believe it will be because it’s the most intimate picture of college football players and coaches any writer has ever been allowed to paint.

Although some readers will surely debate this, I was not out to take sides. That doesn’t mean everyone comes out equally well, any more than a fair referee can ensure both teams will be penalized equally. But I sincerely tried to call everything as fairly as I could – and more often, let the readers sort the information for themselves.

Some have suggested that I must have had an axe to grind with Bill Martin, Coach Lloyd Carr, Dave Brandon [the current UM athletic director] and others. Not true. The first two spoke to my classes several times, and I’ve extolled the good work of all three men in numerous pieces – including an ultimately flattering story on Dave Brandon in “Bo’s Lasting Lessons,” and another on Coach Carr’s body of work, on and off the field, after his team lost to Appalachian State. When I won Michigan’s Golden Apple Award in March 2009, I hoped to ask Coach Carr to introduce me, but he was out of town. He said, however, that he would have been happy to do so, and I believe him. I’m also confident, having seen him speak many times on his dual passions for UM’s Mott Children’s Hospital and education, he would have done a great job.

That’s why, when I started hearing some surprising claims about the Michigan football family, I did not take them seriously. Most of those stories proved to be unfounded, but not all. When I returned to those sources, confirmed their stories, and connected the dots – to the degree I could – I was stunned. I took no pleasure in these discoveries, nor in reporting them. As I told my first audience for this book in Chicago last week, researching and writing “Bo’s Lasting Lessons” was a labor of love. “Three and Out” was labor.

I have tried to report unflinchingly on Rodriguez’s flaws and mistakes, but most people already know those – including his historically horrendous defense, his press conference gaffes, and his denouement at the final Football Bust. Michigan’s mistakes, on the other hand, were private. Thus, when you read them, the latter will likely be more surprising and make a bigger impression.

To produce this book, I started by filling two-dozen two-sided notebooks, eight bankers’ boxes worth of documents, and taking more than 10,000 pages of single-spaced notes from observing 37 games, hundreds of practices and meetings, and interviewing several hundred people. That effort created over 2,000 pages of copy, which we had to slash to the 438 pages that comprise the final manuscript.

All that cutting forced me to drop all photos and an epigraph from Oscar Wilde that I believe neatly sums up the entire three years: “The truth is rarely pure, and never simple.”

That’s exactly what I found in the bizarre dysfunction of the past three seasons. I did not encounter any angels, but I did not discover any devils, either. Almost everyone involved made some mistakes – most unintended, some not – but everyone in these pages had redemptive qualities, often quite remarkable ones. People, it turns out, are complicated.

The book, therefore, is not presented as an argument for this side or that, a glorified football whodunit. The reviews we’ve gotten so far (on MGoBlog, on The Wolverine and on amazon.com) seem to indicate it’s being received in that spirit. “The author,” Publisher’s Weekly writes, “doesn’t shirk from acknowledging Rodriguez’s shortcomings as a coach or discussing the players’ disappointing performances.”

The readers, of course, will come to their own conclusions. And, knowing the wide range of independent-minded Michigan alums and fans, I’m sure those conclusions will run the gamut. But before we get too far down the scorekeeping path, I want to say that while that’s surely a reader’s right, it was not the author’s aim.

How close I came to achieving my goal of producing a fair-minded depiction of a marriage seemingly made in heaven that quickly ended in a disastrous divorce – with the best and worst of college football surrounding it – you can decide for yourself.

I look forward to hearing from the smartest readers in college football.

P.S. Since folks have asked, I will give the first local book talk and signing at Nicola’s Books in Ann Arbor at 7 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 28. I will be updating my schedule on my website very soon.

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

Last weekend, for the first time in the history of Michigan football, they scheduled a night game, and invited Notre Dame to join the party.

But what if you had a night game, and nobody came? Well, that wasn’t the problem. The game attracted more than 114,000 people, another NCAA record.

To commemorate the event, Michigan wore “throwback jerseys” – which went back all the way to September 10, 2011. (Ask your grandparents.) Michigan’s jerseys have never had stripes – and when you saw them Saturday night, you appreciated just how wise Michigan’s founders had been. It was less about tradition than it was about trade.

But what if you invited the entire nation to watch your big game, and you laid an egg? In the first half, Michigan couldn’t have looked worse, trailing Notre Dame in first downs, 15-3. The only stat that was even close was the only one that mattered: the score. Notre Dame had completely dominated the Wolverines, but led only 17-7.

If lightning had been sighted near the end of the third quarter, with Notre Dame ahead 24-7, you could make a case for calling this game early, too.

Michigan started the fourth quarter with the ball on Notre Dame’s one-yard line – when running back Stephen Hopkins fumbled. If the ball had bounced toward the Irish, the fans would have headed for the aisles, with Michigan’s first night game declared a failure.

But on this night, the luck of the Irish had switched to the Wolverines. The ball bounced right to quarterback Denard Robinson, who did what he does: trotted into the end zone for an easy touchdown.

What happened next is hard to believe, even now. The same team that couldn’t do anything right for three quarters, suddenly couldn’t do anything wrong. The Wolverines caught fire, scoring touchdown after touchdown, taking the lead for the first time with just 1:12 left. The crowd erupted.

But Notre Dame finally woke up, and scored its first touchdown of the quarter, leaving the Wolverines stuck with a 31-28 deficit, and just 30 seconds left. It seemed like they had run out of tricks.

When you lose, no matter how heroically you played, people talk about what you did wrong. The critics would have asked what happened to the high-powered offense the team inherited, and why the defense wasn’t any better than the disastrous defense from the year before. But when you win, all people talk about is what you did right. And Michigan did a lot right in that fourth quarter.

Amazingly, with just eight seconds left, Michigan gave itself a chance to win the game. Roy Roundtree hadn’t caught a pass all night, but in the huddle, the normally unassuming man told Robinson, “Give me the ball.”

And that’s what Robinson did, sending a pass soaring to the edge of the end zone. The defender was all over Roundtree – but it didn’t matter. That ball was his. And when he grabbed it, the game was Michigan’s.

It’s fashionable to say Michigan Stadium is home to the quietest 100,000 people in the world. But thanks to a full day of partying, the new skybox acoustics, and the almost surreal feeling that night, no crowd, anywhere, could have been louder.

And the fans didn’t stop. Not when the players jumped into the student section to sing “The Victors.” Not when Denard actually skipped off the field. Not when he returned for a post-game interview. Not even when they turned out the lights. The fans just moved their celebrations elsewhere.

It hasn’t stopped all week. People are still buzzing about it.

Winning solves a lot of problems, but not all of them. This team has a lot of work to do. But, who cares? I can’t imagine the fans ever seeing, hearing, or feeling anything like they did that night in the old stadium again.

We don’t have to wait to gain perspective on this one. We can say, right here, right now, that that was the greatest finish in Big House history.

Don’t believe me? Just ask any of the 114,000 people who were there – or the half million folks who will soon be telling you they were.

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!