Review: Playing Hurt by John Saunders, with John U. Bacon

On Saturday, I got the call: My dad had collapsed at a restaurant, and he was on his way to the hospital. He was fine - no heart attack, he just fainted for an unknown reason. But as I sit down to write this review, I can't help but think of Playing Hurt through that lens.

I always thought of John Saunders as one of the best in sports broadcasting. He was a pro, a steadying presence, and always welcome on my TV screen. I knew he'd briefly been on the hockey teams at Michigan and at Western, but I had no clue about so much of his life. This book is deeply honest and revealing, and much of the focus is on how the turmoil in his early life led him to dark, despairing places. How suicidal ideation was always a threat, and how the disease of depression impacts your life and your loved ones.

John paints a vivid picture of how depression works as a chronic disease: How it ebbs and flows, creeping up to knock you down, but how it can be managed with a good therapist, the right combination of medications, and figuring out how to build in processes to minimize its triggers. He also shows how sometimes that doesn't matter.

Before I started this book, I only vaguely remembered that John had been sidelined at ESPN due to a medical issue. I completely forgot that he had collapsed at work. He wasn't as lucky as my dad. John hit his head, giving him a traumatic brain injury (I completely agree with John that calling those things "concussions" minimizes how severe these can be). The aftermath was severe, forcing him to learn how to walk again. And like many TBI sufferers, it threw his emotional controls out of whack. Everything was on a knife edge, and small things could flare his depression to dangerous levels. The episode he recounts on the Tappan-Zee Bridge is nothing short of harrowing. I'm lucky: my dad didn't hit his head. He was talking with our long-time dentist when it happened, and he lowered him to the floor. I've been thinking about what the road ahead could have looked like.

Of course, John Saunders is gone now. He had a heart attack due to complications from his Type 1 diabetes. I wish he'd had more time with his family, and if we got some of it, we'd all be the better for it. I'm glad John U. Bacon got a chance to finish this book to add to Saunders' legacy. Playing Hurt is a compelling read, and it's well worth your time.

Note: Da Capo Press provided a copy of Playing Hurt for this review.

A (Maize and Blue) Nation at Risk: A Review of Endzone by John U. Bacon

Mark Twain, building off a notion from Lord Byron, once said: "It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense."  It is in reading a review copy of ENDZONE: The Rise, Fall, and Return of Michigan Football (St. Martin's Press, $27,99, available September 1, 2015) that one is profoundly reminded of this notion.   If I had not lived through the era covered by this book, I would have found some of Bacon's notions preposterous and downright insulting to my intelligence.  Instead, Bacon fills in the notions of what many of us suspected with details that somehow are simultaneous gratifying and infuriating.

If you have read Three and Out or Fourth and Long, Bacon's strengths from those books come to the fore again.  Bacon starts, like most good historians, with a clear argument he sets forth to prove in the book.  He proceeds to do this with brief chapters focused on one singular idea or issue.  This allows Bacon's facts to speak for themselves with a minimum of editorializing.  In the end, he presents the actions of Michigan Athletic Director David Brandon and allows the reader to make their own decisions.  What I respect here is that Bacon could easily allow his version of Brandon to descend into cartoonish supervillainy, in part because he knows his core audience would lap it up.  But he never does.  If Brandon comes off poorly in this book, it is because of what he did and the choices he made, not because Bacon chooses to piles on.  If Brandon seems imperious in this book, it is because of the manner in which he acted in front of people willing to call him on it now, not because Bacon casts him in that light without factual backing.  Truthfully, in reading, I was reminded of a phrase first put forward in 1983's A Nation at Risk.  To paraphrase: "If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on Michigan the mediocre administrative performance that existed in 2010-14, we might well have viewed it as an act of war."

One of the things that struck me as I read this is that I am not sure there would be an audience for a book like this among many college football fan bases.  Bacon has acknowledged repeatedly, in previous books and on Twitter, one of the fundamental notions of Michigan fandom: There is a segment of this fan base that isn't happy unless it's unhappy.  But I also think this look back comes at the exact right moment in Michigan's history, needing to wrap up what went wrong over the last four years and explain what went right in December 2014.  It is a public morbidity and mortality conference for the Brandon administration.  (I should also note: Bacon makes a reasonable effort to track the "tipping points" of various constituencies when it came to Brandon.  There are the ones you knew, and will get mad about again, and then there are ones you didn't know about and will make you made all over again.)

If there are unexpected stars in Endzone, they are Michigan students.  Bacon devotes considerable time to Will Hagerup, whose personal struggles during the Brandon Administration make for a compelling story.  Hagerup's story of recovery shows the need for strong mental health support systems and the wisdom Hagerup won during his time at Michigan is a great message.  My soft spot for Devin Gardner also wins renewed backing, for the seriousness of his reflections, but ones seemingly lacking any form of bitterness.  The Central Student Government tandem of Michael Proppe and Bobby Dishell also make for wonderful, plucky underdog characters who win the day because they do what Michigan students have done for years: go hard, bring facts, and never lose faith in your argument if the data is there, even if those in power don't want to hear it.  Bacon's ability to forge relationships with "college kids" is unsurprising, given his work in the college classroom, but the respect he grants them by letting them tell their story in their words is a tribute to knowing how to get the best out of someone.

The most difficult part of Endzone, in my estimation, is resolving the dichotomy between the student-athlete support for David Brandon (built on the notion that he viewed them as his core constituency, which may have been an admirable choice, but not necessarily the wisest course of action) and his seeming hand-waving dismissals of the non-athlete students, the alumni, and fans.  I respect that there may be no simple or straight forward answer to this, in part because each side has reason to feel like they deserve most favored nation status.  Bacon has repeatedly pressed forward on the idea that when you treat your fans like customers, don't be surprised if they act like consumers.  This is repeatedly what has happened in Ann Arbor since 2010.  The question is, will Jim Hackett and his eventual successor be able to restore some of what was lost in the Brandon years. History tells us that if something is broken, it can never be made whole again, just repaired.  The hiring of Jim Harbaugh is a great first step.  We have not had a new season of Football Saturdays to see if we can go home again.  I have hope that we will, but it remains to be seen.

In conclusion, this is an important book for Michigan fans, if not a "fun" book to read.  You may literally yell at people (or empty spaces) when certain notions are revealed.  But it's OK, really, it's cathartic.  Read the book, learn from this chapter of our past, then move forward into the 2015 season in the warming glow of HARBAUGH.

"Billionaire Ball" Review Part 2: The Rise and Fall of the Superconferences

If you made it all way through Part 1 of my review of Matt Hinton's "Billionaire Ball," you'll have read my promise to discuss how college athletics can maintain its traditions while maximizing revenue. As Hinton wrote in his essay, college athletics without tradition would be nothing more than minor leagues and thus lose its ability to generate revenue. This is why the Big East is doomed: in its desperate search for football teams, it has destroyed its northeastern basketball tradition. There is no reason to pay money to watch a matches between Tulane, East Carolina, or Cincinnati, even among supporters of those schools. There's no reason to hate each other, no reason to respect each other, no reason for a rivalry.

The movements of Maryland, Rutgers, Louisville, and others have lead many, particularly in ACC country, to ask if four superconferences are inevitable. The ACC is worried, with good reason, because they are four "nuclei" of college sports fandom in the US that can serve as the bases for superconferences: Los Angeles, Dallas, Atlanta, and Chicago. Charlotte is just too small. The northeast corridor, barring the improbable re-emergence of the Ivy League as a sporting powerhouse, cannot form such a nucleus because its population is distributed among too many different schools. New York City will always have significant fan bases for Rutgers, Syracuse, Connecticut, and other local schools, but no school will every hold New York's attention the way USC/UCLA can hold Los Angeles's or Texas/Oklahoma can hold Dallas's. Every emergent power in college athletics will try to grab a piece of the northeast market: the Big Ten's acquisition of Rutgers and Maryland is the first move in the upcoming fight for the extra piece of the pie.

For the next few years, it's going to be all about the money. But after that, the realization will come that there is no money without tradition. No 16-team football superconference will be able to maintain meaningful traditions; as Brian Cook is fond of saying: it's not a conference, it's a scheduling arrangement. And without traditions, there's no money. I'm going to speculate here and risk being embarrassingly wrong, but, after the jump, I'll take my best shot at predicting how college athletics will make its fortune while only temporarily losing its soul.

Essay Review: Matt Hinton, "Billionaire Ball," from The Baffler #20 (Part 1)

Over on the Twitter, Will Leitch stated that Jonathan Chait's blog post for New York was the "definite take" on the Big Ten's expansion "madness." I can't really agree with this, as the definitive take on the economics of college athletics had already appeared in June, in an essay by Matt Hinton in The Baffler #20. A quick consultation of Google indicates that the intersection of sports bloggers and people who read left-wing cultural agitprop is me and Mr. Hinton, the difference between us being that he gets paid for it. To summarize:

Thus, it falls to me to inform the survivors of the Maryland/Rutgers apocalypse that Hinton thoroughly described the pernicious influence of money on college athletics over the offseason and predicted the music was nowhere near finished in the conferences' game of musical chairs. In Part 2 of this tl;dr post, I'll discuss what I think the landscape will be like when the revenues are maximized and the new equilibrium is reached. Here in Part 1, I'll discuss Hinton's dissection of the history and future of college athletics, which The Baffler's section editor helpfully labeled as "Studies in Total Depravity."

Before the Storm

I can see the squall line from here, in that I've lived it.  I've read the excerpts, I've looked over Bacon's answers to some thoughtful questions, I know what I am getting in to when I read this.  I'll learn things I cannot unlearn, I will see people in new lights, perhaps lights that are unflattering, but it has to happen.  We need to know the truth, or something close to it, because we need to learn from history, no matter how painful it may be.

So we're going to read it (fair warning, we're not going to review it until we're done, and that may be a while, it's just the nature of my life at the moment).  I'll happily discuss the book with you, but be advised, in any conversation of this type, I will prefer sourced notions to speculation.

Here we go...

Book Review: Historic Photos of University of Michigan Football

(review by Craig Barker)

Michelle O'Brien's new book Historic Photos of University of Michigan Football is a thoroughly wonderful look back at the first century of football in Ann Arbor, from the cap clad gentlemen who became the first intercollegiate team formed west of Pennsylvania to Anthony Carter's Homecoming game catch against Indiana in 1979, the photos collect many of the iconic images of the winningest team in the history of Division I football.

Building on Turner Publishing's Historic Photos series, particularly the Historic Photos of the University of Michigan, published last year, Ms. O'Brien makes deft and quality use of the resources of the Bentley Historical Library to show the obvious (the first Rose Bowl team, center Gerald Ford from the 1934 team, the various National Championship teams, Bo, the aforementioned Carter grab), the iconic (including a personal favorite picture of mine, Fielding Yost walking in front of Yost Field House), and the surprisingly deep (Louis Elbel conducting the MMB in the Victors in 1952, 54 years after he write the song or Michigan's "legendary" Block M card section from Ferry Field as featured on the cover).

Enhancing the photos, lovingly rendered on glossy pages in vivid black and white are some wonderful captions which provide context, trivia, and detail. As you progress through the book, you feel the story of Michigan football being told to you, piece by piece. Also enjoyable is the number of photos of the Michigan Marching Band, from its humble origins to "The Chief" William Revelli.

There are a number of small things in the book which caught my attention, like the fact that Michigan's current "Go Blue" banner is much newer than I though, as the 1974 version clearly is in a different font, that in 1965, Michigan's road jersey had a block M on the sleeve, and the strangest one, to me at least, empty end zone seats in the 1950s. As you read through this book again and again, you will notice more and more details, making something great even better.

The only fault I can find with this book is that it stopped in 1979, which, while a logical look at the first century of Michigan football, it would have been nice, in my mind, to go through 1989 and round the Bo era out. Perhaps that can come in a sequel?

All in all a wonderful effort, Ms. O'Brien has done herself and Michigan football's heritage proud.

"The Big House" book review

So on Thursday I used a power failure to finish up reading The Big House: Fielding Yost and the Building of Michigan Stadium. I thought I would share a couple of thoughts about the book.

Let me begin by saying that I do think that if you have any interest in the history of the Michigan football program, this book is a definite must read. The prose lacks a certain lyrical flow, but it is more than made up for in the exceptional level of research done. Drawing from Yost's letters as coach, AD, and his personal correspondence, along with extensive excerpts from The Michigan Daily, Dr. Soderstrom gives the reader an exceptional view of what it was like to be a Michigan football fan in the 1920s.

Which leads me to one of my favorite things I drew from the book: In 85 years, Michigan football fans (and college football in general) has changed immensely and at the same time, very little. There were academic wailings about the quality of student that was brought in to be a part of the football team, concerns about a stadium "arms race" among colleges, the concerns over professionalism and its impact upon the sport, concerns about student rowdiness at games and on road trips, the concerns about students using football games as an excuse to get drunk, and my personal favorite, the Daily repeatedly calling out the Ferry Field crowd for its lack of vocal and enthusiastic support for what were some great Michigan teams. So much of college football handwringing today is really nothing more than variations on a theme.

I also enjoyed the insight into Fielding Yost. We need never question where the popularity of the phrase "Michigan man" came from. It's clearly a Yostism. In dozens of letters and speeches, his focus was on the "Michigan man" (and woman, Yost's willingness to embrace a co-educational university and equality in physical education for women is a recurrent theme in the book.) I was also impressed with Yost's tirelessness, particularly in his advocacy for building Michigan Stadium, and the obstacles he was compelled to overcome to build it. Indeed, even the reminder that before it was Yost Ice Arena, it was Yost Field House is worth the time devoted to it, the first Field House in the country.

All in all, I enjoyed the book because I have an interest in the subject area, and the level of research more than made up for any other failings of the book.

Have a good weekend.