The Ann Arbor Chronicle » professional sports

Column: Michael Sam’s Saga

John U. Bacon — Fri, 23 May 2014 12:32:21 +0000

John U. Bacon

Last February, University of Missouri defensive end Michael Sam publicly declared he was gay – a first for a likely NFL draft pick. Last week, the St. Louis Rams drafted him in the last round – another first. But I believe the trickiest terrain is still ahead.

When Michael Sam told his University of Missouri teammates he was gay before last season, no one seemed to care very much. No one tweeted the news to the public, and Sam had a great season. It’s a safe bet that NFL teams – who know what kind of gum their prospects chew – already knew he was gay, too. But when Sam came out publicly, it changed the equation.

The NFL has already had gay players, so that isn’t new. But publicly declaring you’re gay is new – and so is the onslaught of media attention.

After Sam came out, he dropped from a projected fourth- or fifth-round draft pick to the seventh and final round. There’s no way to prove this, of course, but it’s hard to believe part of the reason wasn’t homophobia – though that term isn’t accurate. As the saying goes – often attributed to Morgan Freeman – “It’s not a phobia. You are not scared. You are an asshole.”

But the NFL teams that passed on Sam probably had other reasons, too. Yes, Sam was named the Defensive Player of the Year in the Southeastern Conference, the nation’s best – but he’s not a complete player. He’s great at sacking quarterbacks, but not at covering the run. At the NFL Combine, his numbers for speed, strength and agility weren’t that impressive.

But I’ll bet the biggest reason teams skipped him in the draft was a much bigger fear: Not homosexuality, but distractions. You don’t have to hang around football coaches very long before you hear them spit out their most hated word, “distractions,” about a hundred times.

Former Michigan All-American Larry Foote, who won a Super Bowl with the Pittsburgh Steelers, told me that in the NFL, just about everyone’s fast, strong and smart. So most games boil down to three or four mistakes. Whoever makes those few mistakes, loses.

This helps explain why coaches are maniacally focused individuals. It’s no surprise they expect their players to be that way, too.

The St. Louis Rams spared the league an embarrassing black eye by drafting Sam, a clearly qualified player. But a few eyebrows went up when Sam celebrated by kissing his boyfriend on live TV. Some people felt uncomfortable – but as ESPN’s Jamele Hill said, “Blacks and whites would still be drinking from separate water fountains if we waited for folks to be comfortable about social change.”

The vast majority of reactions to Sam being drafted – from fans, writers and NFL players – were unequivocally positive. Only a relative few embarrassed themselves with predictably ignorant responses.

And that’s why Sam’s next move was so befuddling. Having won the war, he decided to lose the battle – or his handlers did. Soon after he was drafted, and was publicly welcomed by his teammates, he repeatedly said he wanted to be judged only as a football player, and keep his private life private. Fair enough. But then he signed a side deal with Oprah’s production company to star in a reality show based on his life, on and off the field – something the seventh-round draft picks aren’t typically offered.

Even commentators who had publicly supported Sam’s decision to come out felt compelled to point out the hypocrisy of Sam’s talking the talk, but walking the other way. Sam’s handlers and producers – who all stood to make millions off the reality show – had to be convinced by the team to drop the idea. And it apparently took a lot of convincing.

So, for now, things have settled down. Sam has gone back to what he claimed he always wanted to be: just a football player. He has plenty of work to do just to make the team, and even if he does, the average career for an NFL player is about three years. That’s why football players say the NFL doesn’t stand for “National Football League,” but “Not For Long.”

The trickiest terrain still lies ahead. And it’s not on the field, and it’s not with the fans, or even Sam’s teammates. It’s with his advisers, who threaten to plunder his chance to make a difference before his career even starts.

They need to let Sam be himself, and do his job. That’s enough for any man.

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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Column: Chasing the Brass Hoop

John U. Bacon — Fri, 18 Apr 2014 13:36:27 +0000

John U. Bacon

Nik Stauskas grew up in Mississauga, Ontario – a Toronto suburb better known for its neighborhood hockey games than for a Lithuanian kid spending thousands of hours shooting on his parents’ backyard hoop.

This year, Stauskas was named Big Ten player of the year. It worked.

Glenn Robinson III took a completely different route to the NBA: His father is Glenn Robinson Jr., also known as “The Big Dog,” and was the first pick in the NBA draft twenty years ago. If Stauskas had to work to get attention, Robinson had to work to avoid it.

They became strong candidates to leave college early for the NBA draft, which is their right. This week, both decided to make that jump, and file for the draft this spring. Stauskas is projected to be a high first-round pick, and Robinson not too far behind.

Good for them. They’re both nice guys, hard workers, and serious students. If a violinist at Michigan was recruited by the London Symphony Orchestra, no one would begrudge her for jumping. I might have done it myself.

But I do object to the pundits and fans claiming if the NBA dangles millions of dollars in front of a college player, “he has no choice. He has to go.”

This bit of conventional wisdom is based on one gigantic assumption: that the pursuit of money eclipses all other considerations, combined.

The idea that a great player might decide to stay in school to improve their game, to enjoy the college experience, or to pursue his education are considered silly, even immature responses, when they’re considered at all.

And if he does decide to stay in school – as a surprising number do, despite the pressure to leave – these same people will call him a fool. Why? Money.

The funny thing is, we have actual data – tons of it – that tell us what makes us happy. And study after study shows it’s not money. It’s family. It’s friends. It’s work we care about. And that’s about it.

But ignoring our own values invariably creates unhappiness. Ditto, greed.

The happiest people I know have lived the most meaningful lives, including dedicated schoolteachers, talented musicians and friends working for nonprofits that actually help others.

My dad, like just about everybody else who works at a university, turned down more money from the private sector to keep teaching, researching and treating his pediatric patients. My mom spent ten years teaching grade school, and decades later, she still hears from her students.

The late Chris Peterson, a psychology professor at Michigan who won the Golden Apple Award for teaching in 2010, studied happiness. He discovered the biggest factor in job satisfaction is not hours or prestige or pay, but one good friend. That’s it.

Perhaps that’s why every former Michigan athlete I know who played in the NBA, the NFL and the NHL says they liked playing for Michigan best. That list includes Stanley Cup champions, Super Bowl winners, and millionaires.

Mike Kenn played for Michigan in the late ’70s, then played 17 years for the Atlanta Falcons, 251 straight starts. He told me, “I watch the Falcons play on Sundays, and I hope they win. But on Saturdays, I live and die with the Wolverines.”

Jim Mandich was the captain of Bo Schembechler’s first Michigan team in 1969, and an All-Pro tight end on the undefeated 1972 Miami Dolphins. He stayed in Miami, and did a lot of radio and TV for the team. When the Detroit News’s Angelique Chengalis asked him a few years ago, when he was facing terminal cancer, if he still had time to follow Michigan football, he said, “Are you kidding me?” Mandich said. “Of course I care about that stuff, to the point of irrationality. It will always be Michigan first, cancer second.” He didn’t even mention the Dolphins.

Yeah, this is what the NCAA wants us to believe, which always makes me nervous. My contempt for that organization is growing – and I didn’t think that was possible. But that doesn’t mean everything they say is always wrong.

So, for Nik and Glenn, do whatever is right for you, and good luck. You’ve worked hard and beaten incredible odds to create those options.

But don’t think for a second that just because someone offers you money to do something, you have no choice but to do it.

If you do, you’re not buying your freedom. You’re selling it.

Column: Hank Aaron’s Impressive Run

John U. Bacon — Fri, 11 Apr 2014 13:10:23 +0000

John U. Bacon

This week marks the 40th anniversary of one of baseball’s signature moments: Hank Aaron hitting his record 715th home run, to surpass Babe Ruth’s 39-year old record. But to appreciate how special that was, you have to understand who Hank Aaron is – and what he faced.

You’ve heard of Babe Ruth, who might be the best-known American athlete of the last century. Ruth loved the fans, and the fans loved him right back.

That’s why, when another New York Yankee, Roger Maris – a nice, humble guy – started closing in on Ruth’s record of 60 home runs in a single season in 1961, he became so stressed by Ruth’s fans rooting against him that his hair started falling out.

When Hank Aaron approached Ruth’s career home run record, he had it worse, for two very simple reasons: 714 home runs was the baseball record, a number even casual fans knew. And second, unlike Maris, Aaron is black. Of course, that shouldn’t matter in the least – but it mattered a lot in 1974.

Aaron grew up in Mobile, Alabama, one of eight children. They say his wrists grew strong from picking cotton, and his unorthodox practice of swinging “cross-handed” – that is, holding the bat with his left hand on top, instead of his right – was a habit he didn’t break until a minor league coach showed him the correct way to hold the bat.

Aaron made it to the Milwaukee Braves in 1954, one of the first African-Americans to play Major League baseball. According to Daniel Okrent, a best-selling author who also invented fantasy baseball, the ’50s was baseball’s most talented decade, because in that era every kid grew up playing baseball – not soccer – and, thanks to Jackie Robinson, everybody was finally allowed to play.

Surrounded by legends like Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays, Aaron was often overlooked – and that was just fine with him.

He was a complete player, hitting for average and power, and winning three gold gloves for fielding. Yes, he hit his home runs, but not in eye-catching batches. When 50 homers a year was still the gold standard, the closest he came was 47. But he hit more than 30 home runs in a season 15 times – a record that still stands, even though nobody seems to know about it.

After the Braves moved to Atlanta, and Aaron finished the 1973 season just one home run away from tying Ruth’s all-time mark, there was no more hiding.

Aaron was no stranger to racism, of course, but what he faced during that long off-season was stunning – and downright scary. The death threats were so frequent, Aaron feared he might not make it to opening day in 1974. He wasn’t being paranoid: Lewis Grizzard, then the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s sports editor, quietly had an obituary written for Aaron just in case some lunatic followed through on his threat.

After enduring the off-season, Aaron was clearly ready for baseball to resume. The very first pitch Aaron received that season he sent over the fence, tying Ruth’s record. A few days later, on April 8, 1974, he smashed one over the wall in Atlanta to break Ruth’s record, once and for all. Aaron rounded the bases with his trademark poker-face, relieved it was finally over.

As a nine-year-old kid, I was blissfully unaware of everything Aaron had to overcome to achieve that mark. The next day in school, I jockeyed with my old friend Matt Colon for the right to announce the news at show-and-tell – and won, something I obviously remember to this day.

Aaron finished his career with the Milwaukee Brewers, the new American League team, toiling far from the spotlight, just the way he liked it.

When Barry Bonds approached Aaron’s all-time record of 755 home runs, many fans were again troubled, but this time for a different reason: just about everyone suspects Bonds of using steroids. That would help explain why Bonds’ home run production jumped from 16 a year to over 70; and why his hat size increased – in his thirties – from 7 1/4 to 7 3/8; and also why his personal trainer served time in prison instead of taking the stand to testify against his boss. Nonetheless, the toothless people who run baseball did nothing to stop Bonds, who broke Aaron’s record in 2007.

Aaron once again proved his class, congratulating Bonds on the Jumbotron. He also demonstrated his quiet dignity, doing so from afar rather than in person.

Despite setting one of the biggest records in sports, Aaron is not one of the biggest names in sports – probably not in the top ten.

He’s just one of the most impressive.

Column: Bill Ford Sr.’s Legacy of Loyalty

John U. Bacon — Fri, 14 Mar 2014 12:52:07 +0000

John U. Bacon

Editor’s note: A shorter version of this column was published in the March 12, 2014 edition of the Wall Street Journal.

In the course of his 88 years, William Clay Ford, who died Sunday, captained Yale’s tennis team, earned an engineering degree and chaired Ford Motor Co.’s finance committee, which is enough for any lifetime.

But he will likely be remembered mainly as the owner of the Detroit Lions, during five woefully unsuccessful decades. Since he took over the franchise in 1964, the Lions have won exactly one playoff game, and remain the only NFL team to miss out on all 48 Super Bowls.

Ford’s critics claim he was a snob who didn’t care about the average fan, a fat cat who was more focused on profits than the playoffs.

False, and false.

The Anti-Henry

It is impossible to understand the Lions organization without first understanding the man who owned them. The sibling rivalries within the Ford family shaped the psyche of William Clay Ford Sr., which in turn determined his selection of coaches, his generous treatment of them, and his inability to win a Super Bowl before his time was done.

The decisions that seemed so mysterious to the average fan aren’t so mysterious when you understood the man who made them. Bill Ford Sr.’s family history suggests it was because he was determined to be the opposite of his cantankerous older brother, Henry II.

“Hank the Deuce” was an autocratic leader who traded on his family loyalties when convenient, drank too much, married three times and often behaved in a cold, calculating fashion.

Bill Sr. was the antithesis of all that, by design.

Much the way Henry I manipulated, humiliated and dominated his only son Edsel, Henry II tried to do the same to brothers Benson and Bill. For a time it looked as though Henry II’s blind ambition would grind up Bill the same way it had chewed up Benson.

In 1954, Henry II put his 29-year-old brother Bill in charge of the Continental Mark II, the second coming of their father’s trademark car, the Mark I. Henry II gave Bill all the tools he needed to succeed, including a generous budget, a good team and complete creative autonomy. Bill, a graduate of Yale’s engineering school, had the same knack for design that Edsel I did. He and his staff worked incredible hours to create a new standard in luxury driving.

As the landmark car was nearing completion, however, Henry II took Ford Motor Company’s stock public. Henry II feared telling potential stockholders their newest model would lose money, so they hiked the price, stripped Bill’s car of its best features and pirated them for the new Thunderbird – which was a great success.

After Henry II sabotaged the Mark II, Bill was demoralized. He took to calling his oldest brother “Lard Ass” and drinking hot gin at noon. “The trouble is,” Bill observed, “there is only room for one Ford at a time.”

According to Peter Collier’s classic book, “The Fords,” Bill’s drinking continued from 1955 to 1965, resulting in a “a ten year lost weekend.”

“What I needed most of all,” Bill said later, “was something to do.” For $4.5 million, he found it: buy the Detroit Lions. “I always wanted something that was all mine and mine to do. This was it.”

Bill Ford entered a clinic, quit drinking cold turkey, and devoted himself to his wife, his four children and his new football team. By the late ’60s, it was clear Bill Sr. had triumphed where Edsel and Benson had failed. He had managed to get off the fast track with his sanity and family intact, and soon earned a reputation around Detroit and the NFL as a sincere, humble and loyal man.

The contrast between the two brothers came into sharp focus on Thursday, March 13, 1980. According to Robert Lacey’s book, “Ford: the Men and the Machine,” Bill Sr. sat in his office at Ford World Headquarters, waiting to be named chairman by his oldest brother. Without any warning, however, Henry II came in to tell Bill that Philip Caldwell, not he, was about to be named chairman.

Bill finally let him have it. “You treat your staff like that, you treat your wives like that, and your children like that,” he spat, “and now you treat your brother in the same way.”

“I made a choice,” Henry II later acknowledged. “I married the company.”

Bill Sr. didn’t. He remained happily married to his wife, and headed the only close-knit Ford household since the turn of the century.

Two Myths

The only place where Bill Sr. kept failing was on the football field – but it wasn’t because he was an out-of-touch snob who cared more about cash than competition.

Quite the opposite. For a man born into the greatest business dynasty in U.S. history, you wouldn’t know it if you worked for him.

“Let me tell you something: he’s very down to earth,” former head coach Rick Forzano told me, echoing the comments of a dozen people interviewed on the subject. “Mr. Ford always used to get upset with me because I would never call him Bill – but he finally he gave up. He isn’t a snob by ANY stretch of the imagination.”

When Bill Ford came home from Yale for the summers, he worked on the River Rouge assembly line – and loved it. He married Martha Firestone, a Vassar student and heiress to the tire fortune, who was initially against “dynastic marriages” but couldn’t help falling for Bill. In contrast, while Anne McDonnell married Henry II because he was a Ford, Martha Firestone married Bill in spite of it. They were genuinely crazy about each other.

“She is so unpretentious it’s scary,” Forzano said of Martha Ford, who is now in charge of the Lions franchise. “My wife used to say, ‘The way she treats me, I think I’m the one who has all the money.’”

The couple worked hard to raise their children as normally as possible, and by all accounts they succeeded. Bill Ford Jr., for example, sent his two boys to Ann Arbor Huron, a public high school.

Bill Sr. found the perfect blend of informality and meritocracy in competitive athletics. As he said, “I always liked sports because they involved a democracy of talent.”

Nowhere was that more true than in Naval pre-flight school during World War II. As part of their training, hundreds of cadets – identified only by a number slapped on their backs – raced through a rigorous obstacle course designed by former heavyweight Gene Tuney.

Bill Ford finished first.

“Without anyone knowing my name or who I was or whether I had a dime,” he recalled years ago. “I did it on my own.” To the day he died, it was one of his proudest achievements.

According to the late Bill Talbert, a professional tennis star, “He was an excellent [tennis] player.”

Ford’s Yale teammates elected him captain of both the tennis and soccer teams, and he was also a fearless skier, occasionally courting serious injury. After he snapped his Achilles tendon twice in the mid-1950s, he turned his attention to the links, where he soon became a scratch golfer, scoring over a half-dozen hole-in-ones.

When Ford bought the Lions in 1964, his competitive fires were easily transferred to their Sunday games. Joe Schmidt, the Hall of Fame linebacker who coached the Lions from 1967-72, recalled a December game in Buffalo.

“It was a nasty day, rainy and muddy and cold,” he said. “We dropped two balls in the end zone, and our kicker missed three field goals within 20 yards.

“Well, Ford came walking in the dressing room and kicked a water bucket clear across the room. I said, ‘Too bad you weren’t kicking for us today.’ He shot me a look, but a few seconds later he had a little twinkle in his eye. That shows his sense of humor, but also his competitiveness.”

Those who knew Ford well said the same thing: he was a pleasant, unassuming man with a fierce desire to win.

“I’ve told people Mr. Ford would give up a lot of the monies he has to win,” Forzano said. “When we won up at Minnesota [in 1974] for the first time in eight years, we gave him the game ball. He’ll probably deny it, but this guy was crying. It excited me to no end, because I like emotional people, and Mr. Ford is an emotional person. If he’s not a competitor, then I’m a laundryman.”

“Mr. Ford can have anything he wants,” said Bill Keenist, the Lions’ longtime PR man, several years ago. “And what he wants is a Super Bowl.”

The Lions

It leads to the question: If Ford wanted to win as badly as the fans, and was willing to spend his money to do it, why did the Lombardi Trophy elude him?

In a nutshell, Ford was attracted to nice guys who finished third – or worse. And the reason for that was just as simple: he saw himself as one of them.

Since 1964, 17 different coaches have guided the Lions. Only five of them had been NFL head coaches prior, and only Dick Jauron was hired as an NFL head coach afterward. Most of those 17 coaches were Lions assistants who took over when the head coach was fired or resigned. In other words, serious national searches for proven talent rarely happened under Ford.

The former Lions head coaches have more in common than just a lack of experience and success. In a business where egos run rampant, conflict is constant and obsessiveness is the norm, the coaches Ford hired were generally likable, admirable men with bedrock values and a sense of perspective — with the notable exceptions of longtime right-hand man Russ Thomas and former president Matt Millen.

The chorus of respect for Ford within the organization and around the league is as uniform as the complete lack of praise for Thomas and Millen. Not one person interviewed offered a single kind word.

Thomas was as meddlesome as he was underqualified – sort of like Henry II, without the smarts. When Thomas retired after 43 years with the Lions, he was sufficiently disliked that the organization didn’t even attempt to hold his retirement ceremony at the Silverdome. Instead, they waited for their last away game in Atlanta, where Thomas was given an official send-off before 10,000 puzzled Georgians.

The most common theory is that, during Ford’s ten-year battle with alcoholism, Russ Thomas was the guy who made sure Ford got back safely to his home or office without incident. When Ford bought the Lions in 1964, his legendary loyalty prompted him to pledge to Thomas he would always have a job with the team.

As for Millen’s seven-year reign as president and CEO of the organization, the Lions posted a record of 31 wins against 84 losses – an average of 12 a year – the very worst in the league.

Millen wasn’t a nice guy who finished last. He was an utterly incompetent office bully who said so many stupid things he spawned websites devoted to his dumb quotes. He was so mean-spirited that even the secretaries, who never say boo to the press, felt compelled to complain to reporters about what an unbelievable jerk Millen was.

But those two exceptions prove the rule of the hundreds of genuinely nice people Bill Ford Sr. hired over his five decades at the helm, including the vast majority of his coaches. Bill Sr. tried to give men like Monte Clark, Wayne Fontes and Marty Mornhinweg the chance Henry II never gave him.

Bill Sr. has also been able to foster the kind of trusting, caring atmosphere with the Lions organization that Henry II could only dream of. Even those coaches and administrators who were let go by Ford speak very highly of him.

“Mr. Ford is as honest and generous a man as you can find anywhere,” Forzano said. “I feel so strongly about him, I’d go back and coach tomorrow for Mr. Ford if he asked me.”

“He is a very loyal and honest person,” Joe Schmidt said. “I think he gives you the opportunity to do your job, he doesn’t interfere, and he lets you follow through with your philosophy and what you think needs to be done – which is very unusual in the NFL these days.”

The Fords have never threatened to move the team, nor hijacked the taxpayers for a new stadium. They paid most of the bill for Ford Field themselves, they successfully fought to keep their traditional Thanksgiving Day game, and they’ve done it all very quietly.

Bill Sr.’s determination to be the anti-Henry II came with a price. Hiring and retaining nice guys who finished last was part of it.

But in the end, the abiding respect and affection for Bill Ford Sr. might have been worth more than the Lombardi Trophy.

Column: A Few Wild Guesses for 2014

John U. Bacon — Fri, 17 Jan 2014 13:09:23 +0000

John U. Bacon

Because my last 700-word commentary completely covered every subject in the sports world that occurred in 2013, my editor thought, “Hey, why not preview the year in sports in January?!”

Why not? Because I have no idea what’s going to happen, that’s why. Nobody does. That’s why we watch sports: We don’t know how it’s going to end. It’s also why we shouldn’t watch pregame shows: everybody is just guessing.

Nonetheless, if The Chronicle wants to pay me to make wild, unsupported guesses – then doggonnit, that’s what I’ll do. Just one of the many duties that come with being a hard-hitting investigative journalist.

Let’s start at the bottom. That means, of course, the Detroit Lions.

The Lions finished yet another season by missing the playoffs, and firing their coach. If you’re surprised by any of this, you have not been paying the slightest attention, and probably don’t know that the football is the one with pointy ends.

In my lifetime, the Lions have won exactly one playoff game – and I am no spring chicken. At this rate, if I want to see the Lions win the Super Bowl, I’ll have to live… several lifetimes.

In 1997, I wrote: “The Lions’ four decades of mediocrity beg more fundamental questions. Why did [the Lions] pick Wayne Fontes in the first place? Why have they been so patient with him? And why are the Lions so attracted to nice guys who finish third?”

Seventeen years, seven head coaches, and zero playoff wins later, we are asking the same questions. First wild guess: 17 years from now, we’ll be asking the same ones.

Michigan State basketball coach Tom Izzo has gotten the Spartans into the NCAA tournament every year, for 16 straight years. He once told me, as a joke, that maybe they should miss the tournament one year, just to remind their fans it’s not a birthright. Maybe, but not this year. The Spartans are 15-1, ranked fourth, and flying high.

Izzo has won seven Big Ten titles, been to five Final Fours and won the national title in 2000. But I’ve often said his best season of coaching was 2010, when they lost two-time Big Ten player of the year Kalin Lucas, and got to the Final Four without him.

By that measure, this could be Michigan head coach John Beilein’s best season, too. Last year they got to the NCAA finals for the first time since the Fab Five. They were expected to do big things this year, too. But then star center Mitch McGary had to bow out for back surgery. It was a colossal blow – to which the Wolverines have responded by winning six straight games, including their first four Big Ten contests. Do not count them out.

That brings us to the Detroit Pistons, for some reason. The Pistons made the playoffs for eight straight years until their owner, Bill Davidson, passed away in 2009. They haven’t made it back since, and they won’t this year.

The Red Wings, in contrast, are extremely well run, and proved it by making the playoffs every season since 1990 – a record that spans longer than the lifetimes of some of their players. Another wild guess: their streak will not be broken this spring, either.

The Tigers are in for an interesting year. After Jim Leyland retired, they hired Brad Ausmus to manage the team. Ausmus, a Dartmouth grad, might be the smartest, best looking manager the game has ever seen. And that will carry him right up to… opening day.

In college football, the questions are simple: Are the Spartans really all that? And when will the Wolverines return to being all that?

The Spartans went 13-1 last season, beating Michigan and Ohio State to win the Big Ten title, then followed up with a Rose Bowl win over Stanford – all with players those schools didn’t want. Can they do it again, and prove it was no fluke?

At Michigan, the Wolverines are trying to prove that the last decade was a fluke, and they still belong among the nation’s elite teams. The big story this month was not a big bowl win or a big recruit, but the firing of an offensive coordinator, and the hiring of a new one. Good move.

I’ve never seen a fan base so excited over the hiring of an offensive coordinator. And I’ve never seen that excitement so justified.

Will Michigan’s offense be better than last year’s? Well, as my dad so often told me as a kid, when you’re on the floor, you can’t fall out of bed. The best date on the schedule next year might be October 25, when the Wolverines travel to East Lansing to face the Spartans.

Be sure to tune in 11 months from now, when I will publicly deny making any one of these predictions.

Column: Looking Back at 2013

John U. Bacon — Fri, 20 Dec 2013 14:27:27 +0000

John U. Bacon

The year in sports, 2013, started out with the Detroit Lions missing the playoffs, and hockey fans missing the entire National Hockey League season.

The NHL hadn’t played a game since the Stanley Cup Finals that spring. The lockout started the way these things usually do: The players thought the owners made too much money, and the owners thought the players made too much money. And, of course, both sides were dead right.

On one side, you had NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, widely considered the worst commissioner in sports today – and maybe ever – who gets booed by the fans whenever he shows up. On the players’ side, you had union chief Donald Fehr, who led the baseball players union to cancel the 1994 World Series.

Well, you can guess what happened: a game of chicken between two stubborn leaders bent on self-destruction.

Fortunately, a government mediator – yes, you heard that correctly – saved the day, and hockey resumed. All of it only goes to prove my theory: hockey is the greatest sport, run by the dumbest people.

Things picked up after that.

Ann Arbor’s own Harbaugh brothers, John and Jim, coached their teams into the Super Bowl. Their dad, Jack, coached under Michigan legend Bo Schembechler, and Jim was his star quarterback, and played in the NFL. But on this day, John – the older, quieter, less celebrated brother – was the star, with his Baltimore Ravens holding off Jim’s San Francisco 49ers, 34-31.

The bigger surprise: On the one day we actually look forward to watching TV ads, they were so bland and boring and just plain bad, we had no choice but to turn our attention to the actual football game.

Michigan basketball coach John Beilein, the eighth of nine kids, started his career when he literally climbed out of a sanitation sewer to teach high social studies and coach three sports. Four decades and eight teams later, the 60-year old coach led his Wolverines to the NCAA Final Four, then the finals. It was the feel-good story of the spring.

After Michigan fired its last four basketball coaches, three in the wake of scandals, Michigan just might have finally gotten the right guy. He just took a little while to get there.

Andy Murray became the first British tennis player to win Wimbledon since 1936, and the first Scotsman since 1896 – something to savor.

Jim Leyland’s Detroit Tigers won the division title for the fourth time in eight years, then retired. He had plenty of critics, but I couldn’t help but notice his teams always won. Everywhere. In the minors. In the majors. In the National League. In the American League. At every level, in eight different states, and five different decades. Leyland must have done something computers can’t. I’m glad that still matters.

Ohio State University president Gordon Gee’s ability to put money in the bank was equaled only by his ability to put his foot in his mouth. In politics, they say, when your opponent is shooting himself in the foot, don’t grab the gun. His final gaffe: “The Fathers are holy on Sunday, and they’re holy hell the rest of the week. You just can’t trust those damn Catholics on a Thursday or a Friday, and so, literally, I can say that.” Yes, and so, literally, Ohio State can ask you to leave.

The NCAA decided to reduce the sanctions against Penn State’s players, who didn’t know who Jerry Sandusky was until he was arrested. The same month, Grambling’s players boycotted a mid-season game. College players have no power, until they sit down. Then they have all the power.

The Michigan football team’s dreams of a division title ended with five league losses. The Wolverines best game was a one-point loss to hated Ohio State, the first time I have ever seen Michigan fans feeling better about their team after a loss than before it.

While the Wolverines were stumbling, up the road Michigan State quietly won the division to face those same Buckeyes, leaving Wolverine fans to wish for the lights to go out, a la the Super Bowl. No luck. The Spartans beat the Buckeyes 34-24, to win their first trip to the Rose Bowl in a quarter century.

In the 80th annual Mud Bowl, played in a mucky swamp in front of Michigan’s Sigma Alpha Epsilon house, an estimated 2,000 fans showed up to watch. But it’s hard to say, because the Mud Bowl doesn’t have turnstiles, ticket scanners or seat licenses – or TV timeouts, for that matter. It was cold, it was chaotic, it was crazy, but the pure energy pulled the crowd in, just as it surely did when students played the first game in 1869.

The players weren’t battling for money or fame, just pride. They showed all of us why football had caught on in the first place. It was a nice reminder.

Column: Hockey Fans Ask – Now What?

John U. Bacon — Fri, 31 May 2013 12:42:38 +0000

John U. Bacon

Most sports fans are happy just to see their team make the playoffs. But Detroit Red Wings fans have been able to take that for granted for a record 22 straight seasons. The last time the Red Wings didn’t make the playoffs, not one current NHL player was in the league. Some of the current Red Wings weren’t born. Nine current franchises weren’t yet created.

But the record seemed doomed to be broken this season.

To start, there almost wasn’t a season at all, thanks to the contract dispute between the players and the owners, who both thought the other side was making too much money. And, of course, both sides were right – setting up a game of chicken between self-destructive lunatics.

When a federal mediator finally brought them to their senses in January, they had just enough time left to play a 48-game schedule – which actually seemed about right. But the Red Wings came out flat-footed, falling so far behind they had to win their last four games just to sneak into the seventh of eight playoff spots.

In the first round, they faced the Ducks of Anaheim – formerly the Mighty Ducks – which is already an affront to everything that is holy about hockey.

Amazingly, the Red Wings beat them in seven games – quite an upset. Their reward: an even tougher opponent, the top-seeded Chicago Blackhawks, who earned at least one point in their first 24 games, which is a record.

But for hardcore hockey fans – and really, are there any other kind? – this series was a reward.

The Red Wings and Blackhawks are two of the NHL’s Original Six teams. What are those? Until 1967, the NHL consisted only of Boston and New York, Montreal and Toronto, and Detroit and Chicago. All six have great fans who understand how offsides works, and classic uniforms designed not by Disney focus groups working with computer graphics, but actual human beings working with sewing machines.

Whatever happened between Detroit and Chicago, it was going to be a playoff series to savor. But probably nobody expected the Red Wings to go up three games to one, with three chances to topple the top team in hockey.

And after that start, probably nobody expected the Red Wings to drop games five and six, either, to set up a winner-take-all game seven Wednesday night.

With the score tied, 1-1, the two teams went into a frenzy like no other sport can create. When two baseball teams head to the ninth inning, the game stalls with a parade of relief pitchers and pinch hitters. In football, the players start running out of bounds and intentionally throwing passes into the stands. And in basketball – please don’t get me started here – we get time-outs, intentional fouls, and a free throw contest. The last two minutes can take 20.

But hockey is the only sport that speeds up as the game winds down. And that’s what happened Wednesday night, with the teams battling for their lives. As Willy Wonka said, “The suspense is terrible. I hope it lasts.”

When the seventh game of a hockey playoff series goes into overtime, it’s as close to actual “sudden death” as sports can get. When you’re losing by a few goals, you might not like it, but you know what’s coming. But in overtime, there’s no preparing for the sudden ecstasy – or agony.

And that’s why, when Chicago’s Brent Seabrook fired a lucky wrist shot off a Red Wings’ skate and into the net, it unleashed a torrent of endorphins in the heads of a few million Chicago fans – and a flood of equally powerful chemicals, going the other direction, in the brains of Red Wing backers.

But the worst part wasn’t losing. It’s that one of the best series in recent memory was over – and now we have to watch the NBA playoffs.

Or mow our lawns – which is more exciting.

About the writer: Ann Arbor resident John U. Bacon is the author of “Bo’s Lasting Lessons” and “Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football” – both national bestsellers. His upcoming book, “Fourth and Long: The Future of College Football,” will be published by Simon & Schuster in September 2013. You can follow him on Twitter (@Johnubacon), and at johnubacon.com.

Column: Playing Hockey with the Pros

John U. Bacon — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 13:35:26 +0000

John U. Bacon

A few years ago – okay, a bunch of years ago – I bit on a bet I never should have touched.

I was writing for the Detroit News, and a top minor league hockey team called the Detroit Vipers played at the Palace. So, I got to thinking: just how big is the gap, really, between the pros, and beer league players like me?

Good question. And even better if I didn’t try to answer it. But, being the hard-hitting investigative journalist that I am, I had to go down to the Palace and find out. Bad idea.

I called the Vipers, and they said, sure, come on down to practice. Now, I couldn’t hear them laughing themselves silly when they hung up – but I bet they were. I should’ve known I was biting off more than I could throw up.

But I actually had reason to believe I might survive. Okay, so my hockey career on the Ann Arbor Huron varsity squad consisted of two phases: the first – “This kid’s got a lot of potential” – and the second – “This kid had a lot of potential.” I sort of skipped the middle part, where I was supposed to realize all that potential. My career was like Rudy’s, minus the game-ending sack.

But hockey is a war of attrition, and I was still standing. I even played on the best men’s team in Ann Arbor. I had gotten a little smarter, and a little better, but I was still slow, short and weak.

To get ready for Monday’s practice, I bought a new pair of pants – the kind with padding. I went to the weight room a few times, I played in a couple pick-up games and I even replaced my usual dinner of pepperoni pizza and Stroh’s with mushroom pizza and Pepsi. I know it sounds extreme, but my attitude was, “Hey, whatever it takes, baby.” I was playing to win. Or at least survive. When I showed up in the Vipers’ locker room, I was a lean, mean 160 pounds of blue, twisted steel.

I’d be replacing John Craighead, because his fists were too banged up from a fight he won the night before. He bet me lunch I wouldn’t survive practice. With more brass than brains, I said, “You got it.”

Coach Rick Dudley, as tough as they come, ran through the drills we’d be doing that day. Then he looked at me and added, with a sinister grin, “And don’t forget, we’ve got laps at the end.” Fifteen laps one way, then 15 the other.

On the first few drills, I actually managed to score three times. And yes, I was counting. The key was my change-of-pace. While everybody was ripping slap shots, I was baffling the goalies with my off-speed wrist shots – which were, of course, intended to be full-speed.

But it wasn’t long before my lungs were working so hard, I felt like I was trying to breathe peanut butter. I was dying, and I knew it. I think my new teammates did, too. I was so spent, I couldn’t even do simple things correctly, like I was drunk. And my new pants felt like I was wearing an oak barrel. After 30 minutes, I could no longer even lift the puck. Hey, the goalie wants the damn puck, he can get it on the ice, just like the rest of us.

I lathered sweat like a stallion, and started looking for a place to puke. Right when I thought I was about to lose it, Coach Dudley blew the whistle. Relief! Mercy! I had made it!

No! I hadn’t. Time for laps: 15 one way, then 15 the other. All timed.

But, amazingly, something magical happened. I got my second wind, my legs back, and I finished. A few laps behind everyone else, but so what?

Back in the locker room, I sat, sweating, while the guys played ping-pong. I would have joined them, if I could have raised my hands above my waist.

Okay, I survived, but I’m not gloating. I lost six pounds that day – the hard way. Any weekend athlete who thinks he can do what the pros can do, had better have another think or two.

When Craighead saw me in his stall, frozen like a prizefighter who’d just gone 15 rounds and lost, he laughed, then said the words I longed to hear.

“How ’bout lunch?”

We went dutch.

Column: 2012 in Sports – Good, Bad & Silly

John U. Bacon — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 14:04:19 +0000

John U. Bacon

2012 was a remarkable year in many ways, and the sports world was no exception. Here’s a look back on the sport year’s best and worst – and just plain silly.

Just a few hours into the New Year, Michigan State and Michigan both won January bowl games over ranked teams in overtime, and both finished with 11 wins – Michigan’s best record since 2006. A good start to the new year.

Not all the news was happy, of course. We said goodbye to some legends. Budd Lynch, who lost his right arm in World War II, announced Red Wing games for six decades, right up to his death this fall, at 95.

Another Bud, VanDeWege, ran Moe’s Sports Shops in downtown Ann Arbor for 46 years, turning thousands of Michigan fans into friends. He passed away at 83.

We also lost the great Bob Chappuis, another World War II hero whose plane was shot down over Italy, behind enemy lines. He hid for weeks, then returned to lead Michigan to a national title. Along the way, he appeared on the cover of Time magazine, and finished second in the Heisman Trophy voting. Try to sing his praises, however, and he’d wave you off. “Everybody says we’re heroes,” he told me, with a twinkle in his eye. “But what kind of idiot wouldn’t jump from a burning plane?”

The most watched funeral was Joe Paterno’s, the longtime football coach at Penn State. His life ended on Jan. 22, but the debate over his legacy is very much alive.

The New York Giants won their fourth Super Bowl, despite finishing the regular season at an anemic 9-7. Then the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings won their first Stanley Cup, despite being the eighth and last team in the Western Conference to qualify for the playoffs. Both titles confirmed a simple contrast to college sports, where the regular season actually counts.

In the NBA, the Miami Heat won their title the old fashioned way: They bought it, by getting LeBron James – another reason I prefer college sports.

If I needed a third reason, the NHL provided it this season – which, you might have noticed, hasn’t started. But then, because it’s the NHL, you might not have noticed its absence at all, which is why the NHL cannot afford to cancel its second full season in nine years. Like I always say: hockey’s the best sport, and the worst league.

The European Ryder Cup golf team trailed the United States, 10-6, on the final day, then completed the most stunning comeback in the competition’s 85-year history. Then they sang, “O-Le, O-Le O-Le O-Le!” for about a month. Well, fair enough. That’s what happiness sounds like.

Overseas, Americans had better luck. 16-year old gymnast Gabrielle Douglas became the first black woman to win Olympic gold in the all-around competition. Then she handled criticism about her hair – yes, her hair – with the same skill she handled the balance beam. Of course, the beam might have been smarter than her critics. You go, Gabby.

2012 marked the 40th anniversary of Title IX, one of the most powerful pieces of legislation ever passed. To see the results, you need only check out Carol Hutchins’ Michigan softball team: 15 Big Ten regular season titles in 20 years – while graduating all her players. Simply, sports at its best.

Another example: After the NCAA hit Penn State with the worst sanctions in years, everybody said their program was dead. But the seniors – not the school’s president or trustees or PR people – stood up and said, “This program was not built by one man, and it’s sure as hell not going to get torn down by one man.” They finished their season by winning eight of their final ten games, the last an overtime thriller over Wisconsin, which clinched the Big Ten title the following week to earn a trip to the Rose Bowl.

I asked a few of the seniors if they were disappointed the NCAA had banned them from going to a bowl game. They chuckled, and said no, they were not disappointed to miss a trip to Boise or El Paso over the holidays just so a few bowl reps in ugly sport coats could line their pockets. They didn’t need a chintzy ring from a chintzy bowl game to tell them what they’d done.

At the end of this bizarre year, those men might have been the biggest winners. And you would never have guessed that on January first.

About the writer: John U. Bacon is the author of “Bo’s Lasting Lessons” and “Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football” – both national bestsellers. His upcoming book, “Fourth and Long: The Future of College Football,” will be published by Simon & Schuster in September 2013. You can follow him on Twitter (@Johnubacon), and at johnubacon.com.

Column: Remembering Budd Lynch

John U. Bacon — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 12:22:21 +0000

John U. Bacon

His parents named him Frank Joseph James Lynch – but everybody knew him as Budd.

He passed away this week, at the age of 95. No, you can’t call that a tragedy, but you can call it a loss – one that thousands are feeling.

In a week that included no Big Ten teams being ranked in the top 25 for the first time, the amazingly idiotic NHL lockout and, far worse, Jerry Sandusky’s sentencing, I’d rather spend my few minutes with you today honoring a man who lived as long as he lived well.

Lynch was born in Windsor, Ontario, during World War I. He got his start in radio in Hamilton, Ontario, but World War II interrupted his young career in 1939, when he volunteered for Canada’s Essex Scottish Regiment. Five years later, on D-Day, he stormed the beaches at Normandy, and survived unscathed. But a few weeks after that, a German rocket took his right arm.

When Lynch returned, he worked for the Red Wings, back at the old Olympia Arena – which was still pretty new at the time. Over the next six decades, he held a variety of jobs, but they all involved a microphone, the Red Wings, and his smooth, redolent voice. He saw his job as “simply relaying information to the crowd, not to act as a cheerleader.” He was a pro’s pro.

He was as beloved by Red Wing fans as Ernie Harwell and George Kell were by Tiger fans. Like his peers, Lynch was remarkably humble. The Associated Press’s Larry Lage recalled that, although the guy could have walked through the cramped Joe Louis press box like he owned the place, Lynch always turned sideways, and waited for some young buck like Larry to pass, with a smile.

I got to know Mr. Lynch in the 1990s, when I was writing sports features for the Detroit News. He always remembered my name, and liked to chat up my latest article – which I believe he did for all the young writers. He was a voracious reader.

During that time, a Red Wings coach told me a story about a center I’ll call Ken Patrick, “a very good player who thinks he’s a great player – and that’s the problem.” Patrick would get ticked off, for example, if the refs failed to credit him with an assist he felt he deserved. After one game, he complained about this very thing to his teammates – which is never a good idea, prompting a few of them to ask Mr. Lynch to come down to Joe Louis the next day.

At the end of practice, in an empty arena, they heard Lynch’s voice suddenly boom over the P.A. system: “A correction to last night’s third goal. The assist should be credited not to Kris Draper, but to Ken Patrick. Ken Patrick.”

Most of the players had no idea Lynch was going to do that, and erupted in laughter, smacking their sticks against the ice and high-fiving each other. Patrick, however, didn’t find it so funny, and stormed off the ice, sulking.

And this is just one reason why I loved Budd Lynch. He took his work seriously, but not himself, and he wasn’t afraid to partake in a little good-natured ribbing if somebody had it coming.

Budd Lynch didn’t invent anything. He wasn’t doctor, or a lawyer, or a captain of industry. He wasn’t rich and he probably wasn’t too well known outside of Michigan, but he didn’t care about any of that.

Lynch did care about his family – six daughters survive him – and service to country. USA Today’s Kevin Allen recalled the unique way Lynch introduced the national anthem: “Please rise and remove your hats. Active duty and retired military may keep their hats on while rendering the military salute. Please join the Red Wings own Karen Newman for the U.S. national anthem.” People listened.

Budd Lynch was a bona fide war hero, a talented man who was inducted into just about every Hall of Fame a hockey broadcaster can be. He cared about his work, and the people he worked for – the coaches, the players and the fans. Thanks to the Red Wings’ wisdom, he was still at the microphone this past season – his 63rd – and sounding great.

I’ll remember Budd Lynch as a very good man. And this week, that’s worth remembering.

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.”