John U. Bacon

Students aren’t leaving Michigan football - Michigan football is leaving them

John U. Bacon — Fri, 03 May 2013 13:59:23 +0000

For decades, students at Michigan games were assigned seats, with the seniors getting the best ones. But for some games last year, a quarter of the 20,000 or so people in the student section were no-shows.

So, athletic director Dave Brandon decided to switch them to general admission – first come, first seated -- to get them to show up on time -or, at all.

The students went ballistic.

Yes, some can display a breathtaking sense of entitlement, and they won’t get much sympathy from the average fan, who has to pay three or four-times more.

Find the work you love and forget the rest

John U. Bacon — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 05:11:00 +0000

CareerCast.com ranked more than 1,000 American jobs, and determined that the worst job isn’t garbage collector, animal cage cleaner or Lindsey Lohan’s sobriety tester – but journalist.

Yes! Score! Booyah!

They based their rankings on four criteria:

the workplace environment,
the industry’s future,
the job’s average income,
and stress.

Okay, it’s true: newsrooms aren’t pretty places. The future looks bleak for newspapers. You can make more money doing a lot of other things. And, yes, the stress is very real. The hours are bad and many of our customers think they can do it better – and often take the time to tell us that.

But journalists themselves have reacted to this ranking with all the cool, collected calm of Geraldo Rivera, or Nancy Grace.

But here’s why: newsrooms aren’t for everybody, but we like them – the hustle and bustle and energy and urgency. We like the stress, too – no matter how much we complain about it – because it comes with doing work we think actually matters.

From out of the sewers, Michigan finds its man in John Beilein

John U. Bacon — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 05:32:00 +0000

It wasn’t that long ago that Michigan’s basketball program was not merely unsuccessful, but the shame of the athletic department.

Bo Schembechler fired basketball coach Bill Frieder on the eve of the 1989 NCAA tournament, famously barking, “A Michigan Man will coach Michigan.”

Assistant Coach Steve Fisher filled in, and the team “shocked the world” by winning Michigan’s first-ever national title in basketball.

But on the eve of Fisher’s ninth season, he too was fired in disgrace, because some players had been paid by a booster.

Michigan Hockey: A salute to consistency, the most unheralded virtue

John U. Bacon — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 05:00:00 +0000

Sports columnist Rick Reilly once wrote that weekend golfers invariably claim, “I’m a good golfer. I’m just not consistent.”

Well, he said, if you’re not consistent, you’re not a good golfer.

Americans are great at building things, and rotten at maintaining them.

We admire winners and celebrities, but we overlook the loyal spouse or the honest accountant or the people who maintain our bridges – that’s why they’re falling apart.

So, let this be a salute to consistency – that most unheralded virtue.

In 1984, Red Berenson took over Michigan’s moribund hockey program, which had not been to the NCAA tournament in seven years. Berenson thought it would be easy, but it took seven more years to get Michigan hockey back to the big dance in 1991.

Once they got into the tournament, they made it a point to stay there. Year after year, they kept coming back.

Finally, in 1996, they won Michigan’s first national title in 32 years – and they did it again in 1998. They’ve come close a few times since, but they have yet to win another.

This bothers Berenson, one of the most competitive men I’ve ever met. When he visited my class, I listed his many accomplishments on the board.

A tip for amateur athletes: The pros are way better than you think

John U. Bacon — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 06:00:00 +0000

A lot of amateur athletes think they’re not that far from the people who play their sports for a living.

Well, when Michigan Radio Sports commentator John U. Bacon tried out for Detroit’s minor league hockey team, he found out that just isn’t so – and he found out the hard way.

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.

An unqualified success: The story of Eddie Kahn

John U. Bacon — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 06:00:00 +0000

In the Michigan hockey program’s 90-year history, some 600 players have scored more than 10,000 total goals. But the man who scored the team’s very first goal 90 years ago, might still be the most impressive one of the bunch.

This is the story of Eddie Kahn.

Super Bowl XLVII: A 20-to-1 ratio of ads to action

John U. Bacon — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 06:00:00 +0000

Super Bowl XLVII provided us with thrills, spills and record electric bills – plus a football game somewhere in there.

Congratulations!

You not only survived that annual orgy of conspicuous consumption called the Super Bowl, you also survived the two weeks of endless stories without news that lead up to the big day.

And when the big game arrives, what is our reward? 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.

'Bo's sons' face off in Super Bowl next Sunday

John U. Bacon — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 06:00:00 +0000

With Ann Arbor’s own Harbaugh brothers about to square off in the Super Bowl, you’ll probably start to hear lots of stories from the folks who met them along the way.

Well, count me in.

The new year in sports: A good man is hard to find

John U. Bacon — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 06:00:00 +0000

With the college football season finally behind us, I wanted to write a simple college football roundup, ending in a sweet little story about a very good guy.

But every time I tried, some bad news got in the way.

The first obstacle was Lance Armstrong. In case you missed it – though I can’t imagine how – it turns out the man who came back from cancer to win a record seven Tours de France and write two best-selling books about his inspirational story, is a fraud.

Hockey: The greatest sport, run by the dumbest people

John U. Bacon — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 06:00:00 +0000

I’ve played hockey my entire life, so I’m biased. But when you combine ice skating, stick handling, passing, shooting and yes, body-checking, in one game, you’ve got it all.

Until they start playing lacrosse in the water or golf on skis, hockey will remain the hardest sport to play, and the most impressive to see played well.

There’s nothing like it.

So, for Detroit Red Wings fans, the NHL lockout was a nightmare.

Sports in 2012: The best, the worst, and the just plain silly

John U. Bacon — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 06:12:00 +0000

2012 was a remarkable year in many ways, and the sports world was no exception.

Just a few hours into the New Year, Michigan State and Michigan both won bowl games in overtime, and both finished with eleven wins. A good start.

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.

Big money pushing kids out of the Big House

John U. Bacon — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 16:39:52 +0000

A 'seat license' is a fee fans pay just to reserve the right to buy the tickets.

They call it a donation, even though every single one of us apparently decided to donate the exact same amount, or lose our tickets. But that allows us to call it a tax deduction.

It's hard to call that honest, or cheap.

In fairness, Michigan was the last of the top 20 programs to adopt a seat license program, in 2005.

It started gradually, and left endzone fans alone.

But this week, Michigan pushed the seat license for the best tickets up to $600, and even people in the endzone will have to cough up $150 per ticket, just for the right to buy them.

In the past decade, the total cost of my two tickets on the ten-yard line has more than tripled, to over $1,700, which makes you wonder just how we got here.

Commentary: College football bowl games are a sham

John U. Bacon — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 15:31:56 +0000

The people who sell bowl games need us to believe a few things:

Their games are rewards for great seasons;
They offer players and fans a much-wanted vacation;
The bowls are non-profits, while the schools make a killing.

These claims are nice, and would be even nicer if they were true.

Forty years ago, college football got by with just eleven bowl games.

The 22 teams they invited were truly elite, and so were the bowls – like the Orange Bowl, the Sugar Bowl, the Cotton Bowl and The Granddaddy of Them All, the Rose Bowl.

When your team got into a bowl game back then, you knew they’d done something special.

But the number of bowls has more than tripled, to a staggering 35, including such timeless classics as the The Meineke Car Care Bowl, the Advocare V100 Independence Bowl, and the legendary Taxslayer.com Bowl.

Brady Hoke's sophomore slump

John U. Bacon — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 06:00:00 +0000

This time last year, Brady Hoke was the darling of Michigan football fans.

He’d charmed everybody at his first press conference, then led a team that had averaged just five wins a year to a 10-2 regular-season record, with thrilling wins over Notre Dame, Nebraska and arch-rival Ohio State.

Then he capped it all off with an overtime victory in the Sugar Bowl.

The man could do no wrong.

When he referred to injuries as “boo-boos” and Ohio State as “Ohio,” fans did not conclude he was an ignoramus who knew nothing about the greatest rivalry in sports, but a motivational genius, who understood exactly what the duel was all about.

Our national anthem is worth more than ten bucks

John U. Bacon — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 06:00:00 +0000

On Veterans Day, we generally honor our Veterans.

It’s a good idea, for lots of reasons: they served our country, often in unpleasant places, and in great danger, to keep the worst of the world away from our homeland.

My grandfather was a New York dentist who volunteered at age 39 to hop on a ship in the Pacific during World War II.

My dad graduated from medical school, then enlisted in the U.S. Army, which sent him and his new bride to Fulda, Germany, to guard the border.