John U. Bacon

When Mitch McGary played high school basketball in New Hampshire, he was one of the nation’s top recruits. Michigan fans were rightly thrilled when he decided to play for the Wolverines.

In his first NCAA tournament, last spring, McGary played so well folks thought he might jump to the NBA. Instead, he returned for his sophomore year – then injured his back so badly, he needed surgery mid-season. The Wolverines weren’t doing much better at 6-4, with Big Ten conference play still ahead. It looked like Michigan might miss the NCAA tournament.

The Wolverines proved them wrong by winning the Big Ten regular season title – its first since 1986 – with McGary cheering them on from the bench. McGary also beat the odds, recovering so quickly he dressed for Michigan’s final NCAA tournament game, joining his teammates for warm-ups.

The Wolverines’ dreams fell short when they lost to Kentucky in the regional final. After the game, the NCAA conducted its routine, random drug tests on a few players – including Mitch McGary.

This makes sense. No one wants to see a team using steroids win the title. The NCAA has a special role, too, in looking out for the health of its student-athletes – and the damage steroids can do is no secret.

The drug test McGary failed, however, was not for steroids. The NCAA can never seem to catch those guys. It was for marijuana, which is now legal in two states. Still, the NCAA’s rule is well known, and it was McGary’s job to follow it. He has no one to blame but himself – and to his credit, that’s just what he’s done. But when the NCAA gave McGary a season-long suspension, he decided to jump to the NBA.

I thought I was beyond being shocked by the NCAA. But I was wrong.

The basic idea, I get – and I support. McGary failed the test, and that has consequences. But the punishment is ludicrous – and the NCAA, more so.

Keep in mind, the NCAA doesn’t test for alcohol, even though it’s illegal for everyone under 21 – a group which includes roughly three quarters of college athletes. In fact, in Ann Arbor, the penalty for underage drinking is $350, and the penalty for possessing marijuana is 25 bucks. The NBA no longer tests for marijuana, because so many players would fail it.

I used to coach high school hockey, and I was pretty strict. When one of our players got caught smoking pot, we suspended him for a quarter of the season. But we allowed him to practice, so we wouldn’t lose him. We wanted him to learn responsibility, not leave. As one of my mentors told me, “When in doubt, err on the side of the kid.”

It worked. He learned his lesson, played an important role, and has since graduated from college. We’re still in touch, and I’m proud of him.

What did the NCAA teach McGary? If you turn down the NBA, return for your sophomore year, take school seriously, suffer a season-ending injury but cheer on your teammates anyway – and then you make one dumb mistake, you’re done. Nothing else matters.

Prohibition showed us that when our rules are ridiculous, the people who enforce them start looking ridiculous, too. And it’s a pretty good sign your punishment is absurd when the recipient would be a fool to accept it.

I wonder if any of the NCAA’s employees have ever smoked pot? Does the NCAA test them to find out? If an NCAA employee failed the test, would he be suspended for a year without pay? And if so, would he accept that punishment, or leave the NCAA to work for – oh, I don’t know – the NBA?

McGary has undoubtedly learned some lessons – but not the ones the NCAA is supposed to teach him, about accountability, second chances, and redemption. Instead, the NCAA has shown him that some authority figures can’t tell the difference between a civil infraction and a felony, and it’s given him an unforgettable lesson in rank hypocrisy.

And once you’ve learned that, I cannot blame you for going to the NBA. There’s nothing more to learn here, that you need to learn.

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

The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our publication of columnists like John U. Bacon. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle. And if you’re already supporting us, please encourage your friends, neighbors and colleagues to help support The Chronicle, too!

John U. Bacon

Last week, in a surprising decision, the National Labor Relations Board granted the Northwestern University football players the right to unionize, if they want.

But what does that mean? What doesn’t it mean? And how might this change the future of college football?

The NLRB’s ruling made a big splash, but it’s actually very narrow. The decision applies only to private schools. There are only a handful or two that play big time college football – usually about one per major conference – a short list that includes universities like Duke, Rice, Vanderbilt, Stanford and USC. Further, the Northwestern players still have to vote to unionize – not a given – and no matter how they vote, the university is going to appeal the NLRB’s decision.

But the Wildcat players have been very shrewd, and will be hard to dismiss. That starts with their leader, senior quarterback Kain Colter. I got to know him pretty well while researching my latest book, “Fourth and Long,” and I can tell you he’s one of the more impressive young men to play the game today.

Colter is a pre-med major who often had to miss summer workouts to attend afternoon labs. The group he’s formed – the somewhat redundant College Athletes Players Association (CAPA) – is also wisely not asking for money, but post-graduate health care for injuries suffered while playing. Seems to me it’s pretty hard for any university – created to improve the lives of its students, after all – to argue against that.

Because he’s a graduating senior, Colter is not acting out of self-interest, either. He’s working for those who will come after him – while potentially jeopardizing his appeal to the NFL teams who might draft him this spring. He’s also made it clear that Northwestern has been very good to him, from President Schapiro to athletic director Jim Phillips to his coach, Pat Fitzgerald. Having studied the program throughout 2012, I can tell you unequivocally that Northwestern is a model of how college athletics should be done.

So what’s going to happen next? Anybody who claims they really know is either stupid or silly or both. We have never been here before. But we do know a few things already.

First, what the Northwestern players are asking for is exactly what the NCAA, the leagues and the schools should have been providing for decades anyway: health care for injuries sustained while playing for their schools. In other words, the same protection the universities give their employees who are injured on the job – and few jobs are more dangerous than football.

While they’re at it, the NCAA should end the very cynical policy of providing one-year scholarships. That’s right: when an athlete gets a scholarship, it’s not a four- or five-year deal, but a year-by-year contract, leaving him entirely at the mercy of the coach. At an upright school like Northwestern, the players don’t have anything to worry about. But at too many other schools, the coaches exploit this shady arrangement every season.

A scholarship should automatically cover the players’ entire education, even if their careers end due to injuries or disappointing play, so long as they’re making an honest effort – and they should keep that scholarship until they earn their degree, even after their eligibility runs out. It’s difficult to finish a bachelor’s degree while working 40 hours a week on your sport – and that’s what it takes, no matter what the NCAA claims.

Michigan quarterback Devin Gardner is a serious student, who asks more questions per hour than the rest of his classmates combined. He does very well in class, though not as well as he’d like. When I asked him once what he would be if he wasn’t the Michigan quarterback, he thought about it, then said, “An ‘A’ student.”

If the NCAA is serious about the “student” part of “student-athlete,” now would be a great time to prove it.

The NCAA should also ban the increasingly obscene practice of paying bonuses to head coaches, assistant coaches and even athletic directors for milestones the players themselves achieve. Last week, when Ohio State wrestler Logan Stieber won his third consecutive national title without a loss – an incredible feat – his athletic director, Gene Smith, automatically received an $18,000 bonus for Stieber’s thousands of hours of work. Stieber, of course, couldn’t take an extra dime.

Doesn’t the nonprofit NCAA find that outrageous?

They should also outlaw, completely, the practice of “oversigning.” This occurs when unethical coaches promise more incoming freshmen scholarships than they have. When they all arrive on campus in August, they conduct what amounts to an on-campus try-out to whittle their numbers down to the 25 scholarships they actually have. The losers go home, having already turned down offers from other schools, and try to pick up the pieces.

If the NCAA rights these wrongs, I’d bet the Northwestern players call their efforts a success – as they should – and drop their campaign.

And there are good reasons why they might. Most college athletes are actually getting a pretty good deal. In my previous book, “Three and Out,” I calculated that for an out-of-state, fifth-year senior at Michigan, the free tuition, meals and travel easily come to $580,000. And that doesn’t count the cost of the academic counseling and tutoring, the strength and conditioning, or the athletic training – let alone the cost of those buildings. If the student-athletes become employees, the IRS could easily conclude they have to pay taxes on their scholarships, and everything else.

If the players do unionize, and become employees of their schools, I also wonder if their new identity will diminish the appeal of college sports. College fans aren’t attracted to excellence – any pro team can beat any college team, in any sport – they’re attracted to romance. If the magic bubble bursts, the fans might decide to stop supporting the venture, and then who’s paying the bills?

In fact, both parties should be careful what they wish for, or the law of unintended consequences could obliterate the benefits both sides receive. I honestly don’t think either side has given the long-term consequences of their actions very much thought.

For now, the NLRB’s decision is less important legally than it is symbolically – more Rosa Parks than Brown v. Board of Education. For the first time, a group of players has formally organized, and been officially recognized. And in the process, they’ve discovered something I finally realized in the past couple years: the players have no power – until they threaten to sit down, together. Then, suddenly, they have all of it.

I hope the people who run college athletics are listening – but their hearing has been impaired for so long, I wouldn’t bet on it.

They should do the right thing, and do it now, or risk losing everything.

Seems like an easy decision to you and me – but that’s why we’re not the NCAA.

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

The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our publication of columnists like John U. Bacon. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle. And if you’re already supporting us, please encourage your friends, neighbors and colleagues to help support The Chronicle, too!

John U. Bacon

On November 5, 2011, Penn State’s former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky was arrested on forty criminal counts, including the sexual assault of eight boys over a fifteen-year period, one of them in the showers of Penn State’s football building.

That put in motion a series of events that few could have imagined: it exposed the worst scandal in the history of modern sports; it led to the midseason firing of the iconic Joe Paterno; it prompted the hiring of little-known New England Patriots offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien; it resulted in Penn State’s commissioning the Freeh Report, which concluded university leaders knew enough about what Sandusky had done, but cared more about protecting the university’s image than his young victims; and it surely accelerated Paterno’s decline and death – all within three months of Sandusky’s arrest.

But Penn State’s troubles were far from over.

Most of the players didn’t know who Sandusky was, but their reactions were pretty swift. “They used to hang people at the Centre County Courthouse,” senior linebacker Mike Mauti told me, “and frankly, I would have been okay with that. Hell, give us the rope, and we’ll do it for you.”

But few Penn State insiders thought the NCAA would punish the football program for Sandusky’s sins, and they had precedent on their side. NCAA officials usually steered clear of the most serious matters, including rape and murder, leaving them for the appropriate legal authorities, while the NCAA ruled on whether players are allowed to put cream cheese or jam on their breakfast bagel. (They are not.) Letting the NCAA rule on a child rapist is as unwise as putting a meter reader in charge of a serial murder. They were in way over their heads – and they proved it.

At 10 a.m. Monday morning, July 23, 2012, Penn State’s football players gathered in their lounge to watch NCAA president Mark Emmert lay out a series of penalties. One erased a wide swath of Penn State’s rich history, vacating all victories from 1998 through 2011 — thereby dropping Paterno from the perch of his profession down to fifth. The sanctions also threatened Penn State’s future: a $60 million fine, a four-year postseason ban, and a drastic reduction in scholarships, from 85 to 65.

Emmert declared Penn State’s penalties might be considered “greater than any other seen in NCAA history.”

The public focused on the bowl ban, but Coach Bill O’Brien was far more worried about another clause, which allowed Penn State players to transfer immediately, without penalty, to any school they liked, and coaches from other schools to recruit them all over again. That could amount a death sentence, by slow poisoning. Could Penn State’s program survive?

O’Brien spoke immediately to his shell-shocked squad.

“We’re not here to understand the rules,” he told them. “We’re here to follow them. It’s my obligation to tell you that you are free to go anywhere you want, with no penalties. However, if you stay, I promise you, you will never forget it… and you will still get a great education.’ ”

At Penn State, that promise is not hollow. Joe Paterno surely had his blind spots, but how to run a clean program was not one of them. Even the Starbuck baristas in town know they can’t give a Penn State player so much as a free latte.

Within 24 hours, a hundred coaches from around the country converged on the parking lot of Penn State’s football building in the hopes of luring their players away. Some of those coaches, the players knew from being recruited the first time, would offer the players money, women and more.

Would O’Brien’s simple offer be enough to keep his players in State College?

“Were we in danger of a complete collapse?” assistant coach Larry Johnson, Sr., wondered aloud. “No question. The threat was as real as it could be.”

The NCAA sanctions were putting the lie to the NCAA’s own propaganda, which officially discouraged transfers because “student-athletes” are supposed to pick their schools for the education, not the athletic opportunities. But there Emmert was, inviting Penn State’s student-athletes to jettison the university that graduated 91% of its student-athletes – a big reason many of them chose Penn State in the first place – to transfer to programs that couldn’t come close to that rate.

Not only did it suddenly fall to every Penn State player who stayed to protect their storied program from disintegrating, they could only do so by upholding the very values the NCAA itself could apparently no longer proclaim with a straight face.

Amazingly, almost all of the players stayed – but they were rewarded with two straight losses, forcing them to save the season. Again, they rallied, finishing with a surprising 8-4 record, capped by an overtime victory over Wisconsin, the eventual Big Ten champions.

They had survived the sanctions, and the start to their season.

Emmert was probably as surprised as anyone. This week, the NCAA announced they were reducing Penn State’s penalties, restoring scholarships faster than originally planned – though, I suspect, for the wrong reasons.

Penn State’s leadership still seems lost. The 32-member board of trustees – one of the most dysfunctional boards in higher education, seemingly by design – hired one of their own, a former trustee whose business had gone bankrupt, to run the athletic department with no prior experience. How Sandusky was able to get away with his heinous crimes for so long, they still haven’t determined. The countless court cases to come will likely have something to say about that.

But the players’ stoic response to the sanctions turned the tide of public opinion – and that’s what turns the NCAA around. It is an organization without any guiding principles, save one: Do whatever is best for the NCAA, at that moment. That its decision also happens to be what’s best for Penn State’s student-athletes is merely a coincidence.

At the end of Penn State’s surprising season, one assistant coach told me, he’d always remember that their kids knew how to handle the situation better than most of the adults.

What was true ten months ago is just as true today. Important lessons were learned – about honesty, resilience and responsibility – just not by the people who needed to learn them.

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

The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our publication of columnists like John U. Bacon. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle. And if you’re already supporting us, please encourage your friends, neighbors and colleagues to help support The Chronicle, too!

John U. Bacon

On Tuesday 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.

In December, a few weeks before Ohio State’s Sugar Bowl game, five Ohio State players were forced to admit they sold some jerseys, mementos and trophies to a tattoo parlor owner. (And if you can’t trust a tattoo parlor owner with your ill-gotten goods, who can you trust?) Well, he naturally put them on eBay, and there’s your scandal. It all seems pretty petty to most people, but it’s serious business to the NCAA.

In fairness to the NCAA, the players knew the rules – despite initially denying they did – and brazenly decided to do it anyway. They got caught, and they will have to pay the price. Or they might … eventually. You can’t be certain.

That’s because they were not caught by the FBI or the IRS or whatever agency hunts down the scofflaws who tear off mattress tags. They were caught by the NCAA – and that changes everything.

The NCAA started in 1905, after 18 college students died playing football that year. President Theodore Roosevelt wanted to save college football, so he called the presidents of Harvard, Yale and Princeton to the White House to figure out how. And that’s when the NCAA was born.

For decades, the NCAA’s main source of money was members’ dues, which it used to enforce the rules. Simple enough. But about 30 years ago the NCAA started profiting enormously from its basketball tournament – the current TV contract is worth more than 10 billion dollars. The sheriff became the saloon keeper. And nobody can do both jobs equally well.

Six years ago, the University of Southern California Trojans were suspected of giving the parents of its Heisman Trophy-winning tailback, Reggie Bush, a house. A whole house. I said at the time: Watch how slowly the NCAA moves on this one. But even I didn’t think it would take five years for them to find the house – the kind of thing you can find with, say, a phone book.

But when the five Buckeyes were busted, they were in danger of being suspended for their upcoming bowl game. Suddenly, the same Keystone Cops who took five years to find a house sorted out the Ohio State mess in just a couple weeks. Then they allowed the players to serve their five-game suspension the following fall, when some or all of them might already be in the NFL.

Now an email has turned up which seems to prove Jim Tressel knew about all of this back in April – but told the NCAA in December he knew nothing, no-how. Oops.

So that’s why Gene Smith came rushing back to Columbus to announce he would suspend Tressel for two games. Sound serious? It’s supposed to – but those first two games are against the Akron Zips and the Toledo Rockets – games the Buckeyes could not lose if they were paid to.

If the suspended players stay in school, they will miss out on almost half their last season to prepare for their one chance at pro football. Fair enough. They brought it on themselves. But their coach, who covered all of it up for a year, will be just fine.

How can I be so sure? Because his boss, Gene Smith, is currently the chairman of the NCAA committee for this year’s men’s basketball tournament – the NCAA’s cash cow. If he’s not the sheriff, he’s the deputy. He’ll find just enough wrongdoing to make it look like he’s doing something – and not one ounce more.

The NCAA is no longer interested in integrity – just the image of it. That’s what sells. The suspended players don’t get that. But Tressel does, and so does his boss. They know the saloon owners won’t be too eager to investigate the saloon manager and his best bartender when business is booming.

So, drink up. This round’s on the house.

About the author: John U. Bacon lives in Ann Arbor and has written for Time, the Wall Street Journal, and ESPN Magazine, among others. He is the author of “Bo’s Lasting Lessons,” a New York Times and Wall Street Journal business bestseller, and “Third and Long: Three Years with Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines,” due out this fall through FSG. Bacon teaches at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, and the University of Michigan, where the students awarded him the Golden Apple Award for 2009. This commentary originally aired on Michigan Radio.

John U. Bacon

March Madness is one of the best sporting events of the year, every year, on a very short list with the Super Bowl, the World Series and the Olympics. But March Madness is the most inclusive – and, in some ways, the purest.

The tournament’s 65 teams came from 31 states this year. Schools like Gonzaga and Winthrop, Lehigh and New Mexico State all got to play.

What separates March Madness from the other events is that we get to play, too. Every office runs a hoop pool, and the winner is never the ESPN-addicted sharpie in sales, but the receptionist who picks her teams based on her favorite colors. It’s a beautiful thing.

This year’s March Madness had it all – early round upsets, like Northern Iowa over Kansas; traditional powers like Michigan State and Kentucky advancing to the Elite Eight; and a title game for the ages.

In this corner, you had the three-time champeeens: The Duke Blue Devils, whose coach wondered why his school wasn’t more popular. Yes, why aren’t obnoxious rich kids from New York more popular? Got me, Coach!

And in this corner, you had the upstart Butler Bulldogs from Indianapolis, who had never been to the Final Four. They play their home games in the very arena where they filmed the movie “Hoosiers” in 1986, and where Milan High School played that actual game, in 1954.

All the experts said Duke was going to blow out Butler, but the game went back and forth all night. In the final seconds, Butler’s wonderboy, Gordon Hayward, dashed down the court to launch a last-second half-court shot – but it bounced off the rim, just off the mark. Duke won by two – the closest final since Michigan’s overtime victory in 1989.

It was one of those rare games where both teams came out the better for it. For the fourth time, Duke earned a national title, and for the first time, Butler earned national respect.

The TV ratings were the best in 11 years. So the NCAA, in its infinite wisdom, was not content to say, “It is good.” No. That’s for suckers. It said, Gimme gimme gimme.

Instead of leaving perfection alone, the NCAA is poised to add 31 teams and another week to the tournament. If you wonder why, you have to remember the NCAA’s holy trinity: Greed, Hypocrisy and Stupidity.

March Madness is already the biggest money maker in the history of college athletics, by far. Every year, CBS pays out $700 million to the NCAA, in exchange for 10 days of basketball. The coaches are millionaires, and the players are students. Where’s Karl Marx when you need him?

But $700 million is not enough. Why? Because, to the NCAA, it is never enough. It reminds me of an exchange between Homer Simpson and his boss, Monty Burns. When Homer says, “You’re the richest man I know.” Burns says. “Yes. But you know, I’d trade it all for just a little more.”

Some things in sports are perfect: 90 feet from home plate to first base. 100 yards on a football field. And three weeks for March Madness.

If the NCAA adds a fourth week, they’ll give us a lot of bad teams playing bad basketball, and ruin the rhythm of the tournament for everyone. How are you going to fit 96 teams on a single sheet of paper to fill out your bracket?

None of this will stop the NCAA, because nothing – not billions, not perfection, not fair play – has ever stopped the NCAA.

March Madness might be the best sports event of the year. But the NCAA is going to trade it all, for just a little more.

Now that is madness.

About the author: John U. Bacon lives in Ann Arbor and has written for Time, the New York Times, and ESPN Magazine, among others. His most recent book is “Bo’s Lasting Lessons,” a New York Times and Wall Street Journal business bestseller. Bacon teaches at Miami of Ohio, Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, and the University of Michigan, where the students awarded him the Golden Apple Award for 2009. This commentary originally aired on Michigan Radio.

John U. Bacon

It’s been a dismal year for Michigan fans. The football team and the men’s basketball team both failed to make it to the post-season, and together they lost to Michigan State three times.

The men’s hockey team was supposed to be the saving grace. Entering this season, the Wolverines had made it to the NCAA tournament a record 19-straight seasons. That streak started in 1991, before many of the current players were even born.

The Wolverines were picked to finish first in their league – but they finished seventh, unheard of in Ann Arbor. The only chance they had to keep their streak alive was to win four straight rounds of their conference playoffs. Nothing else could save their season.

It was a tall order. No team had ever come from that far down to win the league playoffs. And it got a lot taller when the Wolverines lost their starting goalie, Bryan Hogan, leaving them with the shortest goalie in the league, a five-foot-six backup named Shawn Hunwick. In his three seasons at Michigan, Hunwick had not started a single game.

Hunwick isn’t even the best player in his family. His older brother Matt had captained the Wolverines, and now plays for the NHL’s Boston Bruins.

They grew up in Sterling Heights, where Matt beat Shawn in just about everything, including daily fights. But Shawn was feisty, and always came back for more. When Shawn wanted to play hockey, Matt shoved him in net – like older brothers do – and made him play goalie.

But Shawn took to it immediately, and tried to convince his parents – a grocery store manager and a school maintenance man – to buy the expensive equipment needed to play the position. They initially refused, but Shawn persisted until they couldn’t say no. Shawn’s like that.

It’s not fair to say he looks like your paperboy – because he looks like your paperboy’s baby brother. When Hunwick’s in his stance, he barely reaches the cross bar, and looks like he has to jump for the high shots.

He paid his dues in places like Alpena, and Petrolia, Ontario, before he became Michigan’s “practice goalie.” These guys pay full tuition – brother Matt pays Shawn’s – and they don’t even dress for the games. All for the honor of having future pros fire slapshots at their heads two hours a day. There’s a reason why practice goalies are called “targets.”

In almost three years at Michigan, Hunwick played exactly 18 minutes of college hockey. But he never complained, he never skipped, and he never badgered his coaches for playing time. He just kept his mouth shut, and did his job, day in and day out.

In his first start, four weeks ago against Notre Dame, he got shelled for four goals in ten minutes, and Michigan lost. But the next weekend, the first round of the do-or-die playoffs against Lake Superior State, he gave up only two goals the first night, and none the next, to earn his first shut out.

The Wolverines then faced second-place Michigan State, which had already beaten Michigan three times. But with Hunwick in net, the Wolverines swept their arch-rivals, 5-1 and 5-3. Head coach Red Berenson realized he had pulled out a plum.

Next up: the Miami Redhawks, which finished first in the league, and second in the nation. But they were no match for Shawn Hunwick, who led Michigan to a 5-2 victory. The next night, with Michigan’s 19-year NCAA tournament streak on the line, Hunwick held off Northern Michigan, 2-1. Their season, and their streak, had been saved.

When the game ended, the Wolverines threw their gloves and sticks into the air and raced to hug their hero, like they’d won the Stanley Cup. Hunwick’s parents cried. Even Berenson, who’s about as expressive behind the bench as Mt. Rushmore, was caught smiling, on camera – twice. And when they called up his surprising savior to receive the MVP award, Berenson actually got a little choked up.

Back on the team bus, Shawn made his first call to brother Matt, and tried to give him the credit, but Matt wouldn’t hear it. “You made the saves,” he said.

And that’s how little brother earned one trophy big brother never did.

About the author: John U. Bacon lives in Ann Arbor and has written for Time, the New York Times, and ESPN Magazine, among others. His most recent book is “Bo’s Lasting Lessons,” a New York Times and Wall Street Journal business bestseller. Bacon teaches at Miami of Ohio, Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, and the University of Michigan, where the students awarded him the Golden Apple Award for 2009. This commentary originally aired on Michigan Radio.

John U. Bacon

Last Sunday, the Detroit Free Press ran a front-page story on the Michigan football team that created a national stir. The newspaper said Michigan football players exceed the NCAA rules on the amount of time student-athletes can work at their sport. It prompted Michigan to launch an internal investigation, but it leaves some important questions unanswered.

But before I try to answer those questions, I want to tell you in the interest of full disclosure that I teach at the University of Michigan, and I write books about their teams. I’m not involved in this story, but I’m close to the people who are.

The story quotes 10 players, most of them former, and most of them anonymous. They all agree that Michigan football players put in a lot of time and effort. Some boast about it, others complain. But the important thing to understand is what constitutes an NCAA violation, and what doesn’t.

The NCAA needs two pages and 35 bullet points just to cover a small section of this convoluted rule. Boiled down, student-athletes can spend only eight hours a week on their sports during the off-season, and 20 hours a week during the season.

Sounds simple, right?

It is – until you get into what the NCAA calls “countable” hours, and “uncountable” hours. Under “countable” hours the NCAA lists 11 core activities like practice, games and team meetings.

Under “uncountable” hours, they list just about everything else, 16 items total, from stretching and taping to team meals and travel. In other words, the 20 hours a week the NCAA counts is probably about half the actual time student-athletes put in every week.

It’s not an adventure, it’s a job.

It gets even messier when you count mandatory activities, which count, and voluntary ones, which don’t. Weight lifting, for example, is considered mandatory – except when it isn’t.

How can you tell the difference? Good question. If you write for the Michigan Daily or play in the Michigan Marching Band, you probably have to put in extra hours if you want to become the editor-in-chief or the drum major. Does that make it mandatory? Who knows? The NCAA isn’t watching them, of course.

Even voluntary weight lifting can be tricky. If several strength coaches are in the weight room conducting the session, it’s considered mandatory, and it counts. But if only one strength coach is in the weight room, monitoring the players for safety, that’s considered voluntary, and does not count.

The main motive behind these rules is to make sure the student comes before the athlete. In this case, at least, it does not appear to be a problem. The Michigan football team just notched its highest grade point in 20 years. But that will have no bearing on the investigation whatsoever.

Still confused? Well, now you know how the investigators must feel.

About the author: John U. Bacon lives in Ann Arbor and has written for Time, the New York Times, and ESPN Magazine, among others. His most recent book is “Bo’s Lasting Lessons,” a New York Times and Wall Street Journal business bestseller. Bacon teaches at Miami of Ohio, Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, and the University of Michigan, where the students awarded him the Golden Apple Award for 2009. This commentary originally aired on Michigan Radio.