Yost’s Changes of Heart
[Sorry, Loyal Readers and Listeners: Michigan Radio is fund driving this week, so there's no audio.] Two weeks ago, I wrote about one of the University of Michigan’s lowest moments, when athletic director Fielding H. Yost scheduled Georgia Tech for a football game in 1934, which required Michigan to sit out its star player, Willis Ward, because Southern teams would not take the field against African-Americans. The attention Yost’s decision received surprised and embarrassed him. In his limited view of the situation, Yost thought he...
read moreA Matter of Perspective
[Listen to the audio by clicking here: Bacon_final_3-8-2012] The Big Ten basketball experts knew exactly what was going to happen this season before it even started. Michigan State would battle for another title, while Michigan would be stuck in the middle, fighting for a tournament bid. And that’s exactly how it started. The Spartans jumped out to first place, and had it all to themselves with just two games left. The Wolverines spent most of the season in the middle of the pack. The experts were looking pretty smart – until...
read moreUpdate on Writer’s Conference in FLA this weekend
Dear Loyal Readers, I am officially Out of Africa — but loved it. Plenty of stories to come, both serious and, well, less so. You’ll see them in next week’s blogs. Now in Paris, then DC, then home, then Ft. Lauderdale’s Hyatt Regency for a writer’s conference. The schedule: -Saturday cocktail party, 5 p.m. (about 500 people), -Dinner, Riverside Hotel (room for about 30) -Sunday: 3:30 Nova Southeastern University, my talk on “The Changing Campus.” Which, it occurs to me, I should start...
read moreTwo Profiles in Courage
[Listen to audio version here: Willis Ward] The University of Michigan can boast 19 highly ranked schools and colleges, a couple dozen nationally recognized teams and countless famous graduates. And on matters of social justice, Michigan has usually led the nation, not followed it. But one Saturday, 78 years ago, Michigan took a sad step backward. When Ann Arbor’s own George Jewett – who has a street named after him in his hometown – earned his third varsity letter on Michigan’s football team in 1892, he could not have imagined...
read moreBoys’ hockey, women’s hockey, and the differences thereof
[Listen to the audio version by clicking here: TheBacon_final_2-17-2012] The Michigan women’s club hockey team beat the #1 ranked Michigan State women’s team twice down the stretch to finish second in the league, and earn a spot in the national tournament. Hats off to them. Although I’ve coached high school boy’s hockey teams for almost a decade, a few years ago, I spent two years helping out the very same Michigan women’s hockey team – and I learned a lot more than they did. It’s worth noting that I’m comparing only high...
read moreSuper Bowl Silliness and Sincerity
[Listen to the audio version by clicking here: Bacon_final_2-10-2012_web] It’s been five days since the Super Bowl, just enough time to give us a little perspective on the whole thing. Was it a football game? A concert? A competition for the Clio Award? Or some bizarrely American combination of all three? Let’s start with the least important: The football game. You might have caught bits of it, squeezed between the ads and the show. How could you tell when the game was on? Those were the people who ran really fast, and wore...
read moreThe Nuttiness of National Signing Day
[Listen to the audio by clicking here.] The most important day of the year for a college football coach is not the home opener, the big rivalry game or even a bowl game. It’s national signing day, which falls on the first Wednesday in February. On signing day, the end zone is not grass or Astroturf, but a fax machine tray. Only when a signed National Letter of Intent breaks the plane of that tray does it count. Sounds pretty simple, right? A couple years ago I got a chance to see the sausage get made at close range – and it’s a lot...
read moreIrreconcilable Truths
[Listen to the audio version here: Paterno Obit 1-12] When an 85-year old man dies, you cannot call it a tragedy. Sad, yes, but tragic, no. But Joe Paterno’s passing might be an exception. Born in Brooklyn in 1926, he enrolled at Brown University, where he played quarterback. He still holds a school record — for interceptions — with 14. After graduating, Paterno was supposed to go to law school, but instead followed his coach, Rip Engle, to Penn State. His father was beside himself. “For God’s sake, what did you go to...
read moreThe Beginning of a Great Rivalry
[ Listen to the audio version here: Michigan-Michigan State basketball rivalry] The rivalry between Michigan and Ohio State in football is one of the best in the country. But it obscures the fact that, in just about every other sport, Michigan’s main rival is Michigan State. In men’s basketball, there’s no team either school would rather beat than the other. The problem is, for a rivalry to really catch on, both sides need to be at the top of their game. Think of Bo versus Woody, Borg-McEnroe and, of course, Ali-Frazier, which...
read moreBowled Over
[Click here to hear the audio from Michigan Radio: Getting Bowled Over] The college football bowl season has always been a little crazy – but most of that used to be fun crazy. But lately, it’s been turning bad crazy – and fast. Here’s why. Michigan played in the first ever bowl game against Stanford on New Year’s Day in 1902. The Wolverines won, 49-0 – but didn’t play another bowl game for 46 years. Pasadena didn’t host another game until 1916, and no other bowl games even existed until 1935, when the Sugar Bowl, the...
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