John U. Bacon

Michigan Radio sports commentator John U. Bacon had Monday April 20, circled on his calendar for a long, long time. Before COVID-19 hit, that was the date of the Boston Marathon, and John was supposed to be in it. The marathon is on hold, so John came up with an alternative: he drew up his own 26.2 mile course in Ann Arbor and invited people to cheer him on – at a distance – over the weekend.

This month we’ve learned the University of Michigan is facing a version of the same problem that has recently beset Penn State, Ohio State, and Michigan State: A former staff member has been accused of sexually abusing students .

Last time I checked in with you , I made a few confessions: I turned 55 this past summer. That same day I tipped the scale at a staggering 205 pounds – a full 40 pounds over my, um, “Coaching Weight.” And I stand only 5-foot-8. According to the Body Mass Index, I was technically obese.

In 1935 Detroit earned the title, “City of Champions” — and for good reason. That year the Tigers won the World Series, the Lions were NFL champions, and the following spring the Red Wings claimed their first Stanley Cup.

In the preseason college football coaches poll , Michigan started the season ranked 7th, with Michigan State ranked 20th. Since then they’ve both gone through plenty of ups and downs , with Michigan falling to 17th, and Michigan State falling out of the rankings altogether. But there’s one final twist left: their bowl games.

This Saturday, for the 112th time, the University of Michigan and Michigan State University will fight over a football for 60 minutes. During the year’s other 364 days, the two schools’ coaches, players, and fan bases produce enough adolescent sniping and sophomoric stunts to fill a book— in fact, several.

On my 55th birthday this summer, I stepped on the scale and watched it top out at 205 pounds. Since I’m just 5'8", the Body-Mass Index scale put me in the “obese” category. Awesome.

Michigan and Michigan State both entered this season ranked in the top twenty. Both have struggled on offense, and lost some games along the way. But by the end of October, their paths seemed to have diverged. Michigan State has lost three straight, while Michigan finally found its way with a big win over Notre Dame. The Spartans started the season ranked 20th , and were expected to compete for the Big Ten East Division title. But it was quickly apparent the 2019 offense wasn’t any better than the previous year’s anemic model – and might actually be worse. Instead of hiring a credible offensive coordinator, head coach Mark Dantonio keeps playing musical chairs with the coaches he already has, moving this guy to that position, and that guy to this one – which hasn’t made anything better. To be fair, the Spartans just finished one of the toughest months in college football. They faced three straight top ten teams -- Ohio State, Wisconsin, and Penn State -- two of which have already

The Michigan football team entered this season ranked 7th nationwide, and were picked to win the Big Ten title. With a lot of good players and coaches coming back from a 10-win team the year before, it made sense. But on the season’s first play, senior quarterback Shea Patterson injured his oblique muscles, and took weeks to fully recover. The offense, and the team’s new offensive coordinator, Josh Gattis, struggled along with him.

Everyone sees the football coaches and the players when they go to a game at the Big House . What we don’t see are the 67 full-time staffers that support them, almost around the clock. These include everyone from athletic trainers to strength coaches to nutritionists, videographers, and academic advisors, just for starters.

Both the Michigan State and Michigan football teams entered last weekend with something to prove – and one of them proved it.

In 1895, the presidents of seven Midwestern universities met at the Palmer House Hotel in Chicago to form what we now call the Big Ten. They created the world’s first school-based sports organization, predating even the NCAA. Soon the rest of the country’s colleges and high schools followed suit, forming their own leagues based on the Big Ten model. The uniquely American marriage of academics and athletics – something no other country would even consider -- had been officially consummated. The Big Ten quickly established itself as the nation’s premier conference on the football field, too, and kept it up for decades. From 1900 to 1970, Big Ten teams won 39 national titles – more than one every two years. When the Rose Bowl started pitting the Big Ten against the Pac-10 in 1948, the Big Ten won 11 of the first 12. Sometimes the Big Ten would send its runner up – and that team would crush the Pac-10 champion, too. The Big Ten’s hey-day looked like it would never end. This was the fifties

L ast week, Michigan Athletics admitted student football ticket sales are down —from about 21,000 two years ago to just 13,000 this fall. How’d Michigan lose so many students so fast? A lot of hard work. Athletic Director Dave Brandon has often cited the difficulty of using cell phones at Michigan Stadium as "the biggest challenge we have." But when Michigan students ranked seven factors for buying season tickets, they ranked cell phones dead last. What did they rank first? Being able to sit with their friends.

When Michael Sam told his University of Missouri teammates he was gay before last season, it wasn’t a big deal. It’s a safe bet that NFL teams – who know what kind of gum their prospects chew – already knew this, too. But when Sam came out publicly, it changed the equation. The NFL has already had gay players, so that’s not 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-rounder to the seventh and final round. Part of the reason was surely homophobia – though that term isn’t accurate. To paraphrase Morgan Freeman, “If you’re homophobic, you’re not afraid of homosexuals. You’re just an A-hole.” But the NFL teams that passed on Sam probably had other reasons, too. Yes, Sam was named defensive player of the year in the Southeastern Conference, 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

Wednesday night the Detroit Red Wings lost their final playoff game of the season to the Chicago Blackhawks, breaking the hearts of hockey fans across Michigan. But according to Michigan Radio Sports Commentator John U. Bacon, it was still a series to savor. 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, 1990, 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.

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. But before we bash the students too much, perhaps we should ask why they’re not showing up. Punishing your paying customers for not liking your product enough is probably not something they teach at Michigan’s Ross School of Business. The athletic department hasn’t asked them, but I have a few hunches. Because tickets are so expensive now, and games take so long, the current students didn’t go when they were kids – which is when you get hooked on the

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. Another assistant coach, Brian Ellerbe, was named the interim coach, which usually is a mistake -- and this proved no exception. At the 1998 Big Ten tournament, the Wolverines pulled a rabbit out of a hat to win it, and Ellerbe was named the permanent head coach – until he was fired three years later because of a bad record -- and players being paid by the same booster. The NCAA launched an investigation that lasted years. Tommy Amaker, the next coach, had to