Stories indexed with the term ‘John U. Bacon’

Teachers in our country rarely get the respect they deserve – a uniquely American pathology. But this year they’ve endured not just indifference, but disrespect – and from Congressmen, no less.

Teachers are now blamed not just for falling test scores, but failing state budgets and rising healthcare costs.

There was once a politician who took a different view. In 1787, Thomas Jefferson’s Northwest Ordinance – what some scholars believe to be one of the three most important documents in the founding of America, along with the Constitution and Declaration of Independence – provided funding for public schools and universities. In it, he declared, “Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”

The idea is so central to American public education, the University of Michigan has it engraved on the façade of its central building, Angell Hall. But few of the people walking by Angell Hall even know the line is there, or why. Ignorance makes it easy to take what’s good for granted. [Full Story]

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

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

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

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

My dad grew up in Scarsdale, New York – but, as he’s quick to point out, that was before it became “Scahsdahle.” His dad told him always to root for the underdog, and my dad took that seriously.

All his friends were Yankees fans, but Dad loved the Brooklyn Dodgers. A perfect Friday night for him, when he was a young teen, was to go up to his room with a Faygo Redpop, a Boy’s Life magazine – he was on his way to becoming an Eagle Scout – and listen to Red Barber reporting on the Dodgers’ game. He wouldn’t say something so prosaic as, “the bases are loaded,” but “the bases are saturated with humanity.”

Dad was a decent athlete – baseball and golf – but he didn’t make his high school team. He did have a star turn as the short stop for his fraternity softball team, which won the championship when he pulled off a perfect squeeze play. You never forget those moments.

My parents raised three kids, and spent most of their weekends schlepping us to swim meets and hockey games. My dad had to wake me up at five in the morning, then pile me and my hockey bag into our 1965 Volkswagen Beetle – which had no radio and a heater only in theory. I’m sure I complained every time he woke me up. He didn’t complain once. [Full Story]

The Jim Tressel era at Ohio State started on Thursday, Jan. 18, 2001.

The Buckeyes happened to have a basketball game that night against Michigan, so it was a good opportunity to introduce their new football coach. When Tressel stood up to speak, he knew exactly what they wanted.

He was hired on the heels of John Cooper, whose record at Ohio State was second only to that of Woody Hayes. But in 13 seasons, Cooper’s teams lost to Michigan a stunning ten times. Can’t do that. And you can’t say, “It’s just another game,” either – which might have been his biggest mistake.

Knowing all this, Tressel told the crowd, “I can assure you that you will be proud of your young people in the classroom, in the community, and most especially in 310 days in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on the football field.”

The place went crazy. “At last,” they said, “somebody gets it!” [Full Story]

I went to Ann Arbor Huron High School, considered by every objective source to be the greatest high school in the history of the universe. And one of the things that made it so great when I was there was an intramural softball league.

Maybe your clearly inferior high school had one, too. But the IM softball league at Huron was created and run entirely by students – the burnouts, no less. That meant the adults, perhaps wisely, wanted nothing to do with it.

So the burnouts got the park permits – God bless ‘em – and every clique had a team, from the guys in auto shop to marching band. They gave their teams names like the Extra Burly Studs, the Master Batters and – yes – the ‘Nads. If you pause to think of their cheer, you’ll get the joke.

My buddies and I failed to get a team together our junior year, but our senior year, we found inspiration. Most of my friends weren’t playing spring sports, so we came home every day after school to catch “Leave It To Beaver” re-runs on Channel 20 – on something called UHF. (Kids, go ask Grandpa.)

Come softball season, we were moved to build a team around that very name: The Cleavers. But if we were going to face battle-tested squads like the All-Star Rogues and the Ghetto Tigers, we knew we’d need an edgier name. And that’s when we came up with – yes – the Almighty Cleavers. You know, to instill fear in our opponents.

You can imagine how well that worked. [Full Story]

This tale of woe takes place in the ninth grade, back when ninth graders still stayed in junior high.

I had detention. I don’t remember why. But so did the prettiest girl in the class, whom I’ll call Rhonda – because that was her name.

The catch was, she was dating Benny, the captain of the football team. But, at detention, I learned there was trouble in paradise. Oh yes. They had broken up, with just four days to go before the big ninth grade dance. Tragic!

We had a fine chat when I walked her home, so when I got home, I decided, what the heck. I called her up to ask her to the dance. Sure, she said, why not.

Simple stuff! [Full Story]

Sometimes the real world is so overwhelming it sneaks into sports. One of those times occurred after 9/11, when the crowd at Yankee Stadium sang “God Bless America,” with all their heart. I’m not very religious, but it sounded right to me.

It seemed appropriate that that signature moment, when we needed to be together, occurred in our country’s most hallowed arena, the nation’s front porch. We are probably the most sports-soaked culture in the world – we’re the ones who pay for the Olympics, after all – and I believe our code of conduct when we’re competing often represents our values at their best.

People like to say sports teaches us how to be aggressive. But you can learn that through alley fighting. Any jerk with no regard for others can be aggressive. Prisons are filled with them – 9/11 was conceived by them.

And it’s easy to play by the rules, too, if you never defend yourself.

So, I disagree. What sports teaches us is how to be tough without crossing the line. That’s the crucial difference. That’s why every sport I know not only has official rules, but unwritten ones, too, that anyone who cares about the sport is expected to follow.

If you’ve ever coached – any sport, any age – you know that is one of the hardest lessons to teach. And, I believe, one of the most important. [Full Story]

On Tuesday, the Michigan football family lost another beloved son, Jim Mandich, who died of cancer at age 62.

Regular readers of this space know I’ve had to write a few elegies already this year, and I’m not sure if we can bear another one right now.

I’m not sure Mandich would want any more, either, beyond his funeral. As he told Angelique Chengelis of The Detroit News last fall, after he was diagnosed with cancer, “I said to myself, ‘No whining, no complaining, no bitching. You’ve lived a damned good life. You’ve got a lot to be thankful for.’”

And he did, including a great NFL career and three grown sons – good guys, good friends. But I’m sure he’d like to be remembered – don’t we all? – and I thought you might enjoy a story or two about an unusually talented and charismatic man. [Full Story]

Last year, Michigan’s men’s hockey team was in danger of breaking its record 19-straight appearances in the NCAA tournament – a streak that started before many of the current players were even born. They were picked to finish first in the league – but they finished a disastrous seventh, unheard of in Ann Arbor.

The only way they could keep their streak alive was to win six league playoff games to get an automatic bid. Oh, and they’d have to do it with a back-up goalie named Shawn Hunwick, a 5-foot-6 walk-on who had never started a college game. Things looked bleak, to say the least.

But the kid caught fire. The Wolverines actually won all six games, they stretched their streak to 20 straight NCAA tournaments, and Hunwick won the league tournament MVP award. He was like Rudy – with talent.

But there are no sequels for Cinderella. One run is all you get. [Full Story]

If you’re not a Michigan football fan, you probably haven’t heard of Vada Murray, but you might have seen his picture. It’s one of those iconic images of Michigan football, along with Tom Harmon standing in his mud-soaked, torn-apart jersey, and Desmond Howard diving to catch a touchdown pass against Notre Dame.

But the photo I’m talking about shows Vada Murray and Tripp Welborne soaring skyward to block a field goal. They were a kicker’s nightmare. But even when they got a hand on the ball, it simply denied their opponent three points. That’s not the kind of thing that wins you a Heisman Trophy or an NFL contract. They don’t even keep records of those things.

But more than two decades later, something about that photo still resonates. Maybe it’s because it captures their effort, their intensity, their passion – all of it spent just to give their teammates a slightly better chance for success. There is something noble in that. And we recognize it – which is why they’ve been selling that photo at the frame store on Ann Arbor’s Main Street for years, right along side the legendary poses of Harmon and Howard. [Full Story]

Fennville, Michigan – On Monday, I drove across Michigan to see a Class C regional semi-final basketball game, pitting tiny Schoolcraft High School against even tinier Fennville.

Both schools were undefeated – but that’s not why I was going. I was going to see the impact of a young man who would not be there.

Before I drove back, I also learned how quickly even a record-breaking basketball game can become utterly insignificant – and then, just a few days later, how the next game can matter so much.

Fennville is about 200 miles from Detroit, but it might as well be 200 light years. When you approach Fennville, you pass a sign declaring, “Hometown of Richard ‘Richie’ Jordan, Member of the 2001 National High School Sports Hall of Fame.”

You haven’t heard of Richie Jordan, who graduated almost 50 years ago and stands only 5-7. But everyone around here has, and down at the Blue Goose Café, they still talk about all the records he set in football, basketball and baseball. But the last few years, they’ve been talking about Wes Leonard. [Full Story]

On Tuesday night, Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith flew back from New York, where he had been running the NCAA basketball selection committee, to conduct a press conference. He announced he was suspending his head football coach, Jim Tressel, for the first two games of the 2011 season.

It looks like Tressel has gotten himself into a bit of hot water. That’s why Smith, his boss, flew back to make sure everybody said they were “taking responsibility” – a phrase which changed some time in the last decade, and now means the exact opposite.

It was fine theater. [Full Story]

In the late ’90s, Eastern Michigan University assembled some its best basketball teams. The Eagles were so good they stunned the Duke Blue Devils in the first round of the 1996 NCAA tournament, 75-60. They were led by the nation’s second-leading scorer in 1998 – a guy named Earl Boykins – who the program said stood just 5-foot-8-inches tall. This, I had to see.

I watched Boykins torch Western, Central and Ball State. He could handle the ball, shoot it and pass it better than anyone on the court – even though he was shorter than everyone on the court. Yep, this was a story.

When I interviewed him, the story just got better. He told me he was so small growing up that he learned to dribble by using a tennis ball. When he was three, his dad could sneak him into games by stuffing him in a gym bag – but, Boykins told me, “Man, that’s back when I was small.”

Then he stood up, and I quickly realized the program listing was very generous. 5-foot-8? I’m 5-foot-8 – and I towered over him. I said, “Duuuuuude! You ain’t 5-8!” [Full Story]

Whenever I talk to a high school coach who quit, they always say the kids were great, but the parents drove them crazy. Doesn’t matter what sport.

But when I coached the Ann Arbor Huron High School hockey team, I was lucky. Yes, getting to know the players was the best part, and now, seven years after I stepped down, I’m going to their weddings. What I didn’t expect, though, was becoming lifelong friends with their parents, too.

The team we took over hadn’t won many games, but after we had a decent first season, three hot shots showed up at our door. They had all been coached by Fred Fragner, who once played for the Junior Red Wings.

Whenever these boys blew a great scoring chance, or received a bad call or got whacked with a stick, Fred always told them, with a grin, “Three words: Be a man.” By the time they came to Huron, all three were just that. [Full Story]

Last week my beloved television went Poof! It’s seven years old – or, 14 in sports writer years.

So, what great sports events have I missed? Well, I can’t be sure, of course, but I’m willing to bet: Not many.

Sports writers complain about the dog days of summer, when all we have to write about is tennis and Tiger and the Tigers – and, well, that’s about it.

But there’s a lesser-known slow season for sports scribes, and it’s called February. College football picked its champion more than a month ago, the super-hyped Super Bowl has finally blown over, and baseball is still a solid six weeks away from opening day. And that leaves basketball and hockey. [Full Story]

Forty-five years ago, the Super Bowl … wasn’t even the Super Bowl. They called it the NFL-AFL Championship Game, until one of the founders renamed it after watching his grandson play with a “High Bouncing Ball” – a super ball. Super ball – Super Bowl. Get it? And thus, an artificial event was born.

Tickets were just fifteen bucks for that first game – and they barely sold half of those, leaving some 40,000 empty seats in the Los Angeles Coliseum.

A 30-second ad cost only $42,000 – and they weren’t any different than the ads they showed the previous weekend. The half-time show featured three college marching bands – including one you might have seen from the University of Michigan.

Over the next couple decades, of course, the event became a veritable national holiday. Tickets now sell for thousands of dollars, and ads for millions. The game attracts more than 100 million viewers in the U.S. alone. [Full Story]

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

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

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

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

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

And, thank God, that is exactly what the Big Ten did! [Full Story]

On Saturday, more than 100,000 frozen fans will watch Michigan play Michigan State at the Big House. Not in football, which happens every other year. But in hockey, thus setting the record for the biggest crowd ever to watch a hockey game – anywhere.

To build a hockey rink on a football field, a six-man crew works for three weeks. First, they install the floor out of big plastic tiles called Terratrak, which were originally designed to create portable runways for fighter jets in the desert. If they can handle F-15s, they can handle Bauer Supremes. Then they put up the boards, the glass, and start flooding the rink with some 40,000 gallons of water.

Don’t worry – these guys have built rinks in San Diego and Mexico City. For them, Michigan’s a skate in the park.

The game will be televised by the Big Ten Network, and will receive worldwide attention. Lawrence Kasdan, the Michigan alum who wrote and directed the classic movie “The Big Chill,” will drop the opening puck. And every time Michigan scores, fireworks will fly.

But that’s not the most impressive part. [Full Story]

By beating Penn State on Saturday, Michigan State secured a share of its first Big Ten title in 20 years. It was a big game, but it was far from Michigan State’s biggest.

The biggest game in the Spartans’ long history wasn’t one of their 30 victories over Michigan, their six national title-clinching contests or their three Rose Bowl triumphs.

No, the biggest game in Michigan State history was against Notre Dame in 1966 – and it wasn’t a victory. [Full Story]

If it seems like the Detroit Lions have played on Thanksgiving since it became a national holiday, it’s because they actually started seven years earlier.

True, the Pilgrims celebrated the first Thanksgiving in October of 1621, but the custom faded, resurfacing only when George Washington, Abe Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt promoted the idea as a national tonic in troubled times. FDR tried to move the unofficial holiday back a week to expand the shopping season, but Congress put an end to all the feast-fiddling in 1941, when it fixed Thanksgiving’s date forever and declared it a national holiday.

George Richards was way ahead of them. In 1934 Richards bought the Portsmouth, Ohio, Spartans, for $7,952.08, moved them to Detroit, and renamed them the Lions. Incredibly, they won their first 10 contests to tie the Chicago Bears for first place with three games left. The bad news: only about 12,000 people seemed to care. If the Lions couldn’t catch on at 10-0, Richards knew, their days in Detroit were numbered. [Full Story]

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

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

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

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

Whenever you see a TV spot promoting college football, you can be sure they’ll include a shot of the Wolverines running out of the Michigan Stadium tunnel to jump up and touch the “M Go Blue” banner. It’s one of the sport’s truly iconic images.

But like most traditions – most of the good ones, anyway – this one started organically and quietly before becoming a public pillar of Michigan football.

Fifty years ago, Michigan’s head coach was a guy named Chalmers Elliott – which might explain why his friends called him “Bump.” As a player, he’d been an All-American and national champion, but coaching was tougher.

In 1962, the Wolverines lost five of their first six games, including four straight Big Ten losses – three of them, shutouts.

The head hockey coach, Al Renfrew, had been a classmate of Elliott’s, and the two had remained good friends. So Renfrew and his wife Marjorie decided to do something to help boost the football team’s morale. Marjorie went to work in her sewing room, stitching a yellow block “M” on a blue sheet, about six feet across. [Full Story]

Michigan towns invest a lot in their high schools – and they should, because those schools represent them. That’s why you see those signs at the city limits boasting about their Class B state baseball champs or Class D volleyball team – from 1994. I’ve always thought that’s pretty cool – and even cooler for the state champs who get to see it every time they come home.

A town’s pride often carries over to the team’s mascots, like the Midland Chemics, the Calumet Copper Kings, or the Bad Axe Hatchets – great names, every one of them. When you pull those jerseys over your head, you know you’re wearing a piece of your home, your history, your very identity.

But if you play for the Panthers or the Wildcats or – heaven forbid – the Eagles, you’re one of a hundred. Actually, you’re one of 103. That’s how many high schools have those names in Michigan alone.

Ann Arbor’s newest high school is among the unfortunate. [Full Story]

Last Saturday, the Michigan State Spartans beat the Michigan Wolverines in the most anticipated rivalry game in years. But that was overshadowed just one day later by the Detroit Lions, who pulled off one of the great upsets of the NFL season, when they … beat someone. Anyone. Doesn’t matter. At football!

Hard to believe it was just two years ago the Lions became the first NFL team to lose all 16 games. And now, here they are, standing tall at 1-5.

That’s why their victory was such big news. I hear from my friends who have real jobs that it was bigger talk around the office water cooler than the Michigan-Michigan State game – and that’s saying something.

It just proves my theory that Detroit really isn’t Hockeytown. It’s a football town. Whenever the Lions so much as show a pulse, the locals go loco.

But I’m still not biting. Not just on the Lions, but on pro football itself. [Full Story]

Players on both sides of the Michigan-Michigan State game will tell you it’s the hardest hitting game of the year. No one can doubt the guys who’ll go at it tomorrow are some of the nation’s toughest men.

But the best athletes I’ve ever seen, and perhaps the toughest, I found on the other side of the world, playing Australian Rules Football – or “footy,” as they call it.

American football is dominated by specialists: huge linemen, speedy receivers and tiny kickers – all with their own, very specific jobs. But in Aussie Rules Football, all 18 players on a team have to be able to catch the ball, run with it, pass it with either hand and kick it with either foot – all on the run. And when an opposing player gets it, they have to chase him down to make the tackle. That’s why footy players all look the same: big and strong, lean and mean. [Full Story]

The Notre Dame football team has lost three straight games to Michigan, Michigan State and Stanford. Normally, nobody would care about a 1-3 team that’s finished in the top 10 just three times in the past two decades. But this is Notre Dame, the nation’s first football team with a national following.

It all started with coach Knute Rockne and his best player, George Gipp – more commonly known as “The Gipper.” Thanks to the famous phrase “Win one for the Gipper,” and a 1940 movie starring Ronald Reagan, who played the Gipper, George Gipp remains famous 90 years after his death. He’s also woefully misunderstood. [Full Story]

Just a few hours after Michigan State beat Notre Dame with a gutsy fake field goal in overtime, Spartan head coach Mark Dantonio suffered a heart attack.

Granted, Dantonio is probably wired a little tighter than most. If you see a picture of him laughing, the photo was probably taken with a quick-reflex camera. But the fact is, every college coach is wired tight – simply because they have to be.

Anyone who’s coached their kids’ soccer team knows how nerve-wracking even that can be. But for my money nothing beats college football for pure, mind-frying stress. [Full Story]

The Heisman Trophy had humble beginnings. In 1935, the Downtown Athletic Club of New York City – a private organization with no ties to the NCAA or any major football conference or team – decided to give an award to the best player in college football. The next year, when the Club’s most famous member, John Heisman, died of pneumonia, the members named the award after him.

They made a fine choice. Heisman went to Brown University as an undergrad, and the University of Pennsylvania for his law degree before becoming a coach in 1892. He coached at six colleges, including Georgia Tech, where he led his team to a 33-game winning streak. Many historians consider him the father of the forward pass. And, on the side, Heisman was a skilled Shakespearean actor.

But his best line was his own. To start the season each fall, he would hold a football in his hand and tell his players, “Men, it is better to die as a young boy than to drop this ball.”

It did not take long for Heisman’s trophy to gain prestige. Today it’s probably the best-known trophy awarded to an American athlete. But, there is a catch: The winner has to be an eligible amateur athlete. [Full Story]

The University of Michigan’s athletic department just completed its $226 million renovation, on time and on budget. To celebrate, last Saturday Michigan rededicated its iconic stadium in grand style, including fancy receptions, programs, pins and not one but two flyovers, all followed by a big win over Connecticut.

But the show-stopper wasn’t a world-class pilot or an All-American athlete – just some guy who walked out to mid-field.

In 2007, on Christmas Eve, 23-year-old Brock Mealer was riding home from their cousin’s house with his family and his brother’s girlfriend. It was a wonderful evening, full of appreciation and promise.

Brock’s brother Elliott had just accepted a scholarship to play football at Michigan, and Elliot and his girlfriend seemed headed for the altar.

But on the way home, a 90-year-old driver named H. Edward Johnson ran a stop sign and struck the Mealers’ SUV. Elliott’s girlfriend Hollis Richer and the Mealers’ father, Dave, were killed instantly. Brock was paralyzed from the waist down. [Full Story]

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

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

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

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