college football

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.

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.

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.

Notre Dame v. Michigan rivalry ends: It's not about tradition anymore

John U. Bacon — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 04:03:16 +0000

Notre Dame announced this week the school is suspending its century-old rivalry with the University of Michigan after the 2014 season.

The only constant is change.

Yeah, yeah. We know that – and in case we didn’t, there’s always some office blowhard too eager to say it, as if it’s some profound truth.

But that’s why, the more things change, the more we appreciate things that don’t.

When Carole King sang, “Doesn’t anybody stay in one place any more?” she probably wasn’t talking about NFL franchises, but she could’ve been.

Is the Michigan vs. Notre Dame rivalry coming to an end?

Mark Brush — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 15:44:27 +0000

It appears that a storied college football rivalry is coming to an end. The two teams first met in 1887.

Former Wolverine sues NFL, others over head injuries

Michigan Radio Newsroom — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 18:10:22 +0000

A former National Football League player from Michigan filed a lawsuit yesterday against the league and four others for failing to warn him of football-related head injuries, reports the Associated Press.

Derrick Walker lives in West Bloomfield, and he began his football career playing for the University of Michigan Wolverines where he served as co-captain in the '80s. Since then, the plaintiff went on to play tight end professionally for the San Diego Chargers, the Kansas City Chiefs and the Oakland Raiders.

Over that time period, Walker's lawsuit says he was concussed multiple times which led to memory loss, difficulty concentrating, headaches and difficulty sleeping. Now he's seeking at least $500,000 in damages, reports the Detroit Free Press.

Big Ten prefers "status quo", but is looking at expanded college football playoff

Steve Carmody — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 19:23:07 +0000

Big Ten officials are seriously looking at a plan to create a potentially lucrative national college football playoff system. Just how lucrative remains an unanswered question.

Going the extra mile to get that interview

John U. Bacon — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 11:00:45 +0000

While I was writing “Three and Out,” the Michigan football players challenged me to join their workouts in the weight room.

I did – and soon discovered it was one of the dumbest decisions of my life – and one of the best career moves.

I’d heard so much about these modern gladiators and their weight room heroics that I wanted to find out for myself just how much harder it really is compared to what the average weekend warrior puts himself through just to avoid buying “relaxed fit” jeans.

The plan was simple: I would work out with these guys three times a week, for six weeks -- “if you last that long,” said Mike Barwis, Michigan’s former strength coach. But there were four signs that I shouldn’t be doing this.

When I asked Barwis if I should prepare by lifting weights, he said, “No, it’s too late for that!” Well, that’s one sign.

A sad step backward in Michigan football history

John U. Bacon — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 12:00:00 +0000

The University of Michigan can boast highly ranked schools and colleges, dozens of nationally recognized sports teams and countless famous graduates.

And on matters of social justice, Michigan has often led the nation, not followed it.

But one Saturday, 78 years ago, Michigan took a sad step backward.

National signing day is like game day for college football coaches

John U. Bacon — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:33:35 +0000

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.

A couple years ago I got a chance to see the sausage get made – and it’s not pretty.

Joe Paterno: The noble, and the ignoble

John U. Bacon — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 11:30:27 +0000

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 college for?” That was 1950. 62 years later, that’s where Joe Paterno died.

Money is stripping the fun out of college football

John U. Bacon — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 11:30:36 +0000

The college football bowl season has always been a little crazy - but most of that used to be “fun crazy.”

Now it’s “bad crazy.”

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 one else sponsored one until 1935, when the Sugar Bowl, the Orange Bowl, and the Sun Bowl started, followed two years later by the Cotton Bowl.

The games were just glorified exhibitions, intended to reward a few good teams with a nice trip, and for the Southern cities to promote themselves.

Wayne State football: Go Warriors!

Jack Lessenberry — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 16:34:05 +0000

If you are a football fan, you probably know that the Detroit Lions won a thrilling comeback victory yesterday, and are having their best season in something like a million years.

The most powerful people in sports: Joe Paterno and the cult of the college coach

John U. Bacon — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 12:00:00 +0000

College football coaches are far from the richest people in sports, but they could be the most powerful. That might seem far-fetched, but not to the disciples of Bear Bryant, Woody Hayes, and Tom Osborne, among others, who rose to become almost spiritual leaders at their schools.

What does it mean to be a "Michigan Man"?

John U. Bacon — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 10:36:45 +0000

The term “Michigan Man” probably goes back to the day men arrived at Michigan.

But it’s taken more than a few twists and turns since – and not always for the better.

Fielding Yost gave the term “Michigan Man” a boost when he started using it in his speeches.

But the phrase really took off in 1989, when Michigan athletic director Bo Schembechler announced he was firing basketball coach Bill Frieder, on the eve of the NCAA basketball tournament, because Frieder had signed a secret deal to coach Arizona State the next season.