John U. Bacon

One debate I could do without is the question of who is a real Michigan fan, and who isn’t?

On the face of it, the question is pretty stupid. A Michigan fan is a fan of Michigan. And beyond the surface, it’s still pretty stupid. But let’s play it out.

The argument goes that only those who attended Michigan can call themselves Michigan fans. The rest? They’re mere “Walmart Wolverines” – fans who could have picked any school to cheer for, as well as any other, just like we pick the pro teams we want to follow, with no other connection than geography.

Why shouldn’t hard-cord alumni turn their backs on their non-degreed brethren?

There’s a history here, going back to James B. Angell, Michigan’s longest serving – and most important – president.

Angell took office in 1871 – eight years before Michigan’s first football game – and served until 1909, charting a course for Michigan that the university still follows, and other schools adopted. A Brown University alum and former faculty member, Angell’s vision for Michigan was to create a university that could provide “an uncommon education for the common man.”

He was thrilled to see the sons and daughters of farmers and factory workers becoming philosophers, but he couldn’t stand the game of football they – and everyone else – loved so much. Having seen first-hand the hysteria the sport created on campus, he wrote his fellow Big Ten presidents during that momentous 1905 season with great concern.

“The absorbing interest and excitement of the students – not to speak of the public – in the preparation for the intercollegiate games make a damaging invasion into the proper work of the university for the first ten or twelve weeks of the academic year. This is not true of the players alone, but of the main body of students, who think and talk of little else but the game.”

President Angell simply hoped to return college athletics to the English ideal, which allowed for more student participation and less notoriety for the victors. The idea of strangers with no connection to the university paying to watch them play struck him as odd and possibly dangerous.

But Angell failed to see football’s value in pitching his public school to the taxpayers, who picked up over 90% of the budget until the 1960s, missing the point that for many Michiganders, there were few other reasons to support the state school. If you were a farmer in Fennville or a factory worker in Flint, why would you vote for millage after millage to go to the state universities?

My answer is the Big House. As Notre Dame coach Frank Leahy once said, “A school without football is in danger of deteriorating into a medieval study hall.” To which Bear Bryant added, “It’s kind of hard to rally around a math class.”

Football, then and now, serves as the one place on campus where everyone feels welcome. On any given Saturday, fully a quarter of the 100,000 folks who pack the Big House did not attend the school. They include some of the university’s most loyal fans, and biggest donors.

According to Nate Silver – yes, that Nate Silver, who correctly predicted every state in the 2012 presidential election – the nation’s three biggest college football fan bases are Ohio State’s (3.2 million), Michigan’s (2.9 million), and Penn State’s (2.6 million), for a total of about 8.7 million fans, which is more than the entire Pac-12 combined. These three schools usually lead the nation in home attendance, too.

These stats teach a few less obvious but equally important lessons, too. If these teams depended solely on their students and alumni for support, they would have only about a fifth of their current following, since the “subway alums” constitute roughly 80% of their fan base.

Turning our attention back to the Big Ten’s “Big Three” programs, and the 8.7 millions fans who follow them: their gigantic stadiums hold more than three hundred thousand fans, but that still leaves 8.4 million of their followers on the outside looking in, which those fans eagerly do through TV and the Internet. If you want to know why the Big Ten Network was the first conference network, and is by far the most successful, that’s where you start: 17.5 million fans, dwarfing the next-biggest fan base, the SEC’s, at 13.6 million. And that’s why the Big Ten Network now reaches an estimated 53 million households: because it can.

The Big Ten’s 17.5 million fans undoubtedly include just about every demographic you can name in substantial numbers, but it’s what they have in common that’s most important here: a shared love of their favorite Big Ten schools and the conference itself, its history and traditions, right down to their memories of the same games.

Joining a hundred thousand like-minded strangers solves a modern problem, too. The Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa both noted that the great disease of Western civilization is loneliness. Yes, it’s possible to be lonely in a crowd – but not this one.

Studies show our endorphins spike when we march in formation, sing in unison, or cheer together in a stadium. Where else can you be certain a hundred thousand other people are feeling exactly what you’re feeling, exactly when you’re feeling it? This is why such places are more important now than ever.

Think about it. The Big Ten’s twelve teams do not play one game that’s not televised. You can sit back in your easy chair right at home and watch every game. Likewise, every song in the world can be purchased for a few bucks, and every movie is on DVD. Yet we still go to concerts, movies, and games, just as our ancestors did almost a century ago. If Beethoven, Humphrey Bogart, or Fielding H. Yost visited those places today, they would think almost nothing had changed.

Why do we pay money to go to these places? Because we need to be together.

Ken Fischer has run the internationally acclaimed University Musical Society for years with a simple philosophy: “Everybody in. Nobody out.” If the UMS, which has played host to everyone from Marian Anderson to Leonard Bernstein to Yo-Yo Ma, can open its arms to everyone, you’d think a football stadium could do the same.

We need to share something we care about with strangers. And to fill that need, you could do worse than Big Ten football.

“We have too much pluribus,” filmmaker Ken Burns said twenty years ago, “and not enough unum.” If that was true then – before the flourishing of private schools, charter schools and home schooling; before the creation of 500 TV stations that allow us to pick what kind of news we want to hear; before the Internet allowed us to see only the information and people we want, and ignore the rest – it is surely more true now.

Dr. Ed Zeiders, the pastor of St. Paul’s United Methodist Church right in downtown State College, has seen what the football team can do for the faithful in ways others might not.

“We are desperately needy,” he told me. “We need something to cheer about and rally around. Our culture is devoid of these things.

“We need a place to stand, and a people to stand with, and a cause to stand for. That is not original with me. That came out of World Methodism. And those three propositions hold the key to healthy and value-oriented living. I’ve taught and preached that for a lot of years.

“I have this belief that academics should be that unifying principle, but the evidence points to something else.”

While “Pastor Ed” has done a fine job creating that environment in his church, he joked with me that he couldn’t help but notice that the one down the street holds 108,000 true believers.

“Sports has the capacity to make that happen,” he said. “That can get skewed and twisted, especially in the marketing side of the equation, but my interest in sports is more in the community that forms around them. What my wife and I enjoy is the friendships we create in the stands. There is an ease with which sports fans connect with each other. And it has the potential to hold up something that is admirable and unifying.”

College football stadiums are now one of the few remaining places where we connect across race and religion, age and gender, economics and politics. And we do it with vigor.

When Fielding Yost opened Michigan Stadium in 1927, it seated 84,000 fans – three times the population of tiny Ann Arbor. It has played host to Heisman heroes, national champions, presidents, prime ministers, poet laureates, and over 40 million fans. It’s where Michigan fans showed the nation how to tailgate, and do the wave.

At one of the world’s great universities, this is the front porch. When you walk through the front gates, no one should care – and most don’t – about your age or income, or your race, religion or creed. Most don’t even care if you went to school there. They care about one thing: Can you sing “The Victors”? If you know when to throw your fist in the air, you’re in.

Welcome to the Big House. Hail.

About the writer: Ann Arbor resident John U. Bacon is the author of the national bestsellers “Fourth and Long: The Future of College Football,” “Bo’s Lasting Lessons” and “Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football.” You can follow him on Twitter (@Johnubacon), and at johnubacon.com.

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This animated .gif is purely the product of The Chronicle’s “art department” and is not intended to imply even indirectly a willingness by the University of Michigan athletic department to provide a slot in the marquee’s message rotation for city of Ann Arbor public service announcements.

The council will be considering a resolution that asks the University of Michigan to decommission the $2.8 million digital marquee recently constructed by the university’s athletic department. I don’t think the university is going to give that any thought.

In this unnecessary drama, Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) appears to be playing the role of Don Quixote, with four councilmembers auditioning for the role of Sancho – Marcia Higgins (Ward 4), Margie Teall (Ward 4), Sally Petersen (Ward 2) and Jane Lumm (Ward 2). Those five are co-sponsoring the resolution. [If the council really wants to tilt at windmills, the city could have a literal one soon enough.]

The council’s Nov. 7 resolution cites the city’s own recently enacted sign ordinance, which constrains the deployment of digital technology for outdoor signs. According to the resolution, the marquee inflicts the same harms on the community that the city’s newly amended ordinance sought to prevent. [Petersen and Higgins, however, voted against that ordinance.] Those harms are described in the resolution as “distract[ing] motorists and substantially degrad[ing] the community viewshed…”

As the text of the council’s Nov. 7 resolution itself concedes, the University of Michigan is “without any obligation to comply with the ordinances of the city of Ann Arbor” – so the fact that the UM’s marquee rather flagrantly flouts the city council’s sign ordinance is of no consequence.

What is semantically bizarre about the text of the resolution is its contention that by turning the marquee off, or by limiting its use, the Ann Arbor community would be delivered a “material benefit.” If the council’s position really is that the marquee is doing harm, then by no rational standard should the mere mitigation of that perceived harm be labeled a “benefit,” much less a material one.

By way of analogy, if a chemical company is dumping toxic sludge onto my property and jeopardizing my health, then it’s not really a “benefit” to me if the company were to stop doing that. But it could be considered a benefit if the company allowed me to take my own personal toxic sludge and add it to the company’s pile, which the company then removed from my property.

If the city councilmembers who crafted the resolution had taken the phrase “material benefit” seriously, it might have given them pause to ask: Hey, could city residents derive some actual benefit from this situation? And that might have led them to reflect on the reason the UM athletic department wanted to construct this marquee. I think it’s an attempt to meet a communications challenge.

And guess what: The city of Ann Arbor has its own communication challenges. Can you see where this is headed? Or are you too distracted by the constantly changing display in the dumb little animated .gif at the top of this column? 

Let’s say you’re an Ann Arbor city councilmember, and you’ve identified a piece of University of Michigan communications infrastructure as your focus. That’s an occasion to ask yourself if you’re familiar with the communications infrastructure of the city. What are the basic policies and strategies the city of Ann Arbor uses to communicate with residents?

For example, the questions you might have as a councilmember could include: What’s the communications budget for the city? Is there even such a thing as a “communications budget”? What role, if any, does social media play in the city’s strategy? Why is the Community Television Network facility located way down on South Industrial Highway? How much does the city pay to lease the CTN facility? How long is that lease? Is there any kind of leadership transition going on at CTN that might have an impact on the future of CTN? Would the city of Ann Arbor have the capacity with current staff levels and expertise to participate constructively with UM on any new communications initiatives? If the university were to agree to allow the city of Ann Arbor some small number of giant marquee message slots for public service announcements, would the city be able to provide content in a timely way?

Those are all reasonable questions a naturally curious person might have. But if you serve the community as a councilmember – which is supposed to be a part-time job (paying just under $16,000 a year) – your role is to help formulate and direct policy, not micromanage solutions to problems. In the case of all matters related to the University of Michigan, I think that basic city policy should be something like: Seek areas of common ground on which the city and UM can cooperate to benefit residents and the university’s mission.

So as a city councilmember, if you recognize a giant monster in that marquee, instead of trying to figure out “the solution,” your role is to remind the city administrator of the basic policy directive. And that’s it. I think “cooperation” in this particular instance might conceivably translate in some fashion to an effort on the part of the city administrator – or staff under his direction – to convince UM athletics that a couple of slots for city of Ann Arbor public service announcements on the marquee would be feasible and in everyone’s best interest.

In any case, that approach to this “issue” is one that could be handled with a 30-second remark from a councilmember at a council meeting during communications time: “Mr. Powers, in the context of our routine interactions with the University of Michigan, can you add to your to-do list a way of realizing some benefit to residents from the university’s new marquee?”

And maybe six months later we’d start seeing announcements on the marquee reminding residents that it’s Election Day or that our winter taxes are due, or that trash pickup has shifted one day due to the recent holiday. Or not. If Powers were to report back in six months that the issue had very little traction or, for heavens sake, he just had not made that a top priority and there was nothing to report – well, that wouldn’t be the end of the world, either.

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UM football game day street closures (pink) with detour route (purple).

Vehicle access on the fourth side of Michigan Stadium, on university property, will also be restricted.

The street closures are new security measures. According to the staff memo accompanying the resolution, it’s part of an effort to increase safety by creating a vehicle-free zone around the stadium, and involves a cooperative effort with the University of Michigan, U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the city of Ann Arbor police department.

Most of the traffic controls would be in place for the period starting three hours before a game until the end of the game. However, in an amendment to the resolution made during the council’s Aug. 8 meeting, the closure of the southbound lane on Main Street was restricted to just one hour before the game start.

Traffic controls include the following. E. Keech Street between S. Main and Greene streets would be closed. Access to Greene Street from E. Hoover to E. Keech streets would be limited to parking permit holders. The westbound lane on E. Stadium Blvd. turning right onto S. Main Street (just south of the Michigan Stadium) would be closed. And S. Main Street would be closed from Stadium Blvd. to Pauline.

During the meeting an amendment was made to the resolution, stating that after the first three football games, the AAPD will meet with the neighborhood and make a report at the city council’s Oct. 7 meeting.

The council’s vote was 7-4 with dissent coming from Sabra Briere (Ward 1), Margie Teall (Ward 4), Marcia Higgins (Ward 4), and Sumi Kailasapathy (Ward 1).

This brief was filed from the city council’s chambers on the second floor of city hall, located at 301 E. Huron. A more detailed report will follow: [link]

The work will entail removing existing paint, removing or replacing corroded steel, and repainting with a corrosion-resistant paint to protect the metal. Because much of the existing painted surface contains lead-based paint, the project will also include lead-mitigation work, according to a staff memo.

Simpson Gumpertz & Heger Inc. will design the project, which is expected to provide about 15 on-site construction jobs. The job is expected to be finished in the the summer of 2014 and will be funded from athletic department resources.

This report was filed from the Anderson Room at the Michigan Union on UM’s central campus in Ann Arbor, where the regents held their November meeting.

At the Nov. 10 University of Michigan game against Northwestern, local journalist Lynn Monson documented that no matter where you look on Game Day, someone has a camera raised. Here’s a small selection of the people who decided to freeze moments in time before, during and after the game won by UM in overtime, 38-31.

These three photographers were among many gathered in a large crowd watching the Michigan Marching Band drum line perform in front of Revelli Hall before the Nov. 10 game.

Perhaps an indicator of how the game would end much later, two photographers show different results as they review their digital images before the game. Cathy Arnfelt of Lake Elmore, Minn., photographed her son – a player on the Northwestern team – during pre-game warm-ups. Next to her, Michigan fan Archie Eggleton of Grand Rapids seems happier with the photos he took of his stepdaughter, a cheerleader for Northwestern.

Jason Yoder of Detroit tries to get his 21-month-old son Cass to pose for a front-row photo with the football field in the background. Yoder’s wife, LisaAnn Rocha, watches.

A fan stands and captures video as he pans the masses surrounding him in Michigan Stadium.

Juan Lopez of Spring Lake, Mich., records video of his walk down the famous tunnel entrance onto the playing field.

Mike Swope of Jackson watches the game through his camera’s viewfinder for a while in the third quarter.

The Skycam television camera, looking like a extraterrestrial droid, moves low back and forth over the field to give a bird’s eye view of the football action for the game broadcast. In the background, a fan celebrates a different type of “cam” – the Big House Cam – that has flashed his image on Michigan Stadium’s giant video screens.

Not all traditional cameras have been replaced by hand-held cell phone cameras just yet. Martin Vloet, a University of Michigan photographer, focuses on game action with a large telephoto lens supported by a monopod.

After the game a student film crew asked a cheerleader to document them after they had spent the game working on a new admissions video for the university.

Ben Cabrera lets out a whoop as the Michigan Marching Band – displayed behind him on Michigan Stadium’s video screen – finishes a song while he was taking video of the scene. Cabrera, a student at the University of South Florida, has Michigan relatives.

A fan in a maize-and-blue houndstooth hat records one last video snippet of the day as the Michigan Marching Band returns to Revelli Hall after the game.

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UM athletics director David Brandon spoke briefly to describe the project. Calling it an exciting communications tool, he indicated that it’s not uncommon to find this kind of marquee at other institutions. The marquee will be used to display video, graphics, logos and other images to highlight upcoming events, programs, accomplishments and initiatives of the UM athletic department and its student athletes. [map showing location of marquee (yellow dot)] [view of marquee looking east on E. Stadium Boulevard] [view of marquee from intersection of Main and Stadium]

It will be located inside Gate 2 at the southeast corner of Michigan Stadium, elevated 21 feet off the ground. The marquee itself will be 27 feet tall and 48 feet wide. Brandon noted that it will be located across from a golf course – the Ann Arbor Golf & Outing Club – ”so it won’t annoy anyone.” [A residential area is located to the west of the stadium, across Main Street, as well as to the north.] The audio features will be used primarily on game days to communicate with the crowds, he said.

Regent Andy Richner asked about traffic volumes along Main Street. Brandon replied that although the marquee is visible from the intersection of Main and Stadium, it’s primarily intended for the heavy traffic of Stadium Boulevard. Brandon noted that the west side of Michigan Stadium is built to the sidewalk on Main Street, so there’s no room for this kind of sign on that side.

Regent Denise Ilitch told Brandon that she supported the project, but she had received emails from some “less than enthusiastic” people. She encouraged him to consider including information from local nonprofits or other community events, so that people will feel that it’s part of the community.

Brandon was less than enthusiastic about that idea, but said they would certainly consider it. There are literally hundreds of nonprofits that would love to get access to the Michigan Stadium crowds, he said, and the athletics staff would need to be careful about how to manage that. The investment is being made on behalf of UM fans and athletics, he said.

TMP Architecture will design the marquee, and installation is expected by the fall of 2013.

The university is not required to conform with city code. Chapter 61 of the city code – regulating signs and outdoor advertising – prohibits signs of that are the size and placement of the Michigan Stadium marquee. The ordinance also prohibits signs that “incorporate in any manner or are illuminated by any flashing or moving lights other than for conveyance of noncommercial information which requires periodic change.”

This report was filed from the Michigan Union’s Rogel ballroom, where the board held its July meeting.

In January of this year, various media outlets reported that the 2013 Winter Classic would be held at Michigan Stadium, between the Detroit Red Wings and the Toronto Maple Leafs. There has not yet been an official announcement from the NHL.

According to a staff memo, the university would be responsible for providing support activities similar to ones provided at Saturday football games. The NHL would have the right to include advertising and sponsorship throughout the stadium, and a liquor license would be obtained for the event. According to the university, Michigan law allows the university to obtain 12 licenses a year.

Six of the eight regents – all but Julia Darlow and Libby Maynard – participated in the meeting via conference call. Regent Denise Ilitch, who chairs the board, recused herself from the vote. She said that although she has no direct relationship to the NHL, it’s well-known that her family has an interest in the Detroit Red Wings and Comerica Park, and she didn’t want the appearance of a conflict.

David Brandon, UM’s athletic director, emphasized that this isn’t a university event, although the university’s game operations crew will manage the event and city police will be used handle security and traffic control. Regent Martin Taylor said he was comfortable with the liquor license, given that it was a third-party event. Regent Larry Deitch confirmed with the legal staff that indemnification and insurance issues were covered.

Several regents praised the deal, which has not yet been finalized but is expected to be signed soon. Regent Andrea Fischer Newman noted that the economic impact for Ann Arbor and surrounding areas will be significant – for hotels, restaurants and other businesses. Ilitch said the estimated impact would be around $14 million.

Taylor also noted that events like this are important as the university looks for ways to increase revenues.