Here's a book that takes readers behind the scenes for some of the greatest moments in University of Michigan football history. From "Kip" Taylor, who scored the first touchdown at Michigan Stadium in the late 1920s, to Lloyd Carr, the Wolverines? current head coach, Michigan fans will be offered details of the stories they've heard about for years...and some that they have never heard. Players who knew Yost, Oosterbaan, Crisler, Elliott, and Schembechler tell their stories in Tales from Michigan Stadium about practice, famous plays, and games from one of the most tradition-rich football programs in collegiate history.
Jon Falk is a living encyclopedia of Michigan football tradition and history, and these firsthand, inside stories reveal the priceless experiences of the coaches and players who made it happen. He’s not as well known as the Big House itself or even the Little Brown Jug, but among coaches, players, and a good portion of the Michigan football faithful, Jon Falk has forged a colorful legend of his own. While games are won and lost on the field, it’s in the locker room where stories are told, friendships are made, and memories are created during the best four years of any college player’s life.
Some of greatest untold stories from Michigan’s football program are shared in this book based on intimate interviews with former players and coaches. Due to his long history covering Michigan football, author Steve Kornacki was given open-door access to Lloyd Carr, Bo Schembelcher, and Gary Moeller, all of whom provided hours of their time sharing their personal accounts and of occurrences during their coaching tenures; the stuff that legends are made of. Stories include being in the Michigan locker room after Bo Schembechler’s last game in the Big House and hearing his rousing speech leading the team in “The Victors” as they punctuated each verse by thrusting red roses toward the ceiling. Coach Carr tells about riding in a limousine through New York on the eve of the Heisman Trophy presentation with Desmond Howard en route to a meeting at NBC Studios with Tom Brokaw and a night in the green room at Late Night with David Letterman. A more heartfelt yarn is the “American Dream” tale of quarterback Elvis Grbac’s Croatian family and the story of center Steve Everitt’s family surviving Hurricane Andrew in a bathtub with the family dog and his 1990 Gator Bowl MVP trophy. Go Blue! reaches back to those special places in time in the program’s history in addition to sharing heartwarming anecdotes. This collection is something no Michigan football fan will want to be without.
A giant tsunami hit the staid Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan in 1969 when it was announced that Glenn Edward "Bo" Schembechler was to be the new head football coach, replacing the beloved Bump Elliott. Efforts to pronounce the last name correctly came in response to thousands of questioners asking "Bo who?" but it didn't take long before his name and the Wolverines' resurrected football fortunes were the talk not only of the town, but of the hundreds of thousands of Michigan alumni across the country and around the world. Bo's Warriors is the story of that man and the moribund football program he revived. Bo won a school record 194 games while losing only 48 and never had a losing season. His Michigan teams won or shared the Big Ten title 13 times and made 10 Rose Bowl appearances. In 1968 under Elliott, archrival Ohio State had pounded the Wolverines 50-14, and to add insult to injury, Buckeye coach Woody Hayes went for a two point conversion late in the game rather than kicking the extra point. When asked why he went for two, Hayes is said to have replied, "because I couldn't go for three." The next year, Bo's first as coach, the defending national champion Buckeyes were 17 point favorites, but the 7-2 Wolverines dominated Ohio State and beat them 24-12. In a single afternoon, Schembechler had resurrected Michigan's proud football tradition and returned the program to the country's elite. Bo's Warriors is the story of Bo's first year as coach, seen through the eyes of several players and one assistant coach, and making the excitement of that historic season come alive.
Africa’s World Cup: Critical Reflections on Play, Patriotism, Spectatorship, and Space focuses on a remarkable month in the modern history of Africa and in the global history of football. Peter Alegi and Chris Bolsmann are well-known experts on South African football, and they have assembled an impressive team of local and international journalists, academics, and football experts to reflect on the 2010 World Cup and its broader significance, its meanings, complexities, and contradictions. The World Cup’s sounds, sights, and aesthetics are explored, along with questions of patriotism, nationalism, and spectatorship in Africa and around the world. Experts on urban design and communities write on how the presence of the World Cup worked to refashion urban spaces and negotiate the local struggles in the hosting cities. The volume is richly illustrated by authors’ photographs, and the essays in this volume feature chronicles of match day experiences; travelogues; ethnographies of fan cultures; analyses of print, broadcast, and electronic media coverage of the tournament; reflections on the World Cup’s private and public spaces; football exhibits in South African museums; and critiques of the World Cup’s processes of inclusion and exclusion, as well as its political and economic legacies. The volume concludes with a forum on the World Cup, including Thabo Dladla, Director of Soccer at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Mohlomi Kekeletso Maubane, a well-known Soweto-based writer and a soccer researcher, and Rodney Reiners, former professional footballer and current chief soccer writer for the Cape Argus newspaper in Cape Town. This collection will appeal to students, scholars, journalists, and fans. Cover illustration: South African fan blowing his vuvuzela at South Africa vs. France, Free State Stadium, Bloemfontein, June 22, 2010. Photo by Chris Bolsmann.
The paperback version of Endzone includes an all-new, 57-page Afterword covering Michigan's triumphant 2015 season, and never-dull 2016 off-season. Informed by exclusive, in-depth interviews with Jake Rudock, Blake O'Neill, Jake Butt, Jim and Sarah Harbaugh and his parents, the Afterword addresses the players' initial shock at Harbaugh's long practices, their renewed confidence, and the story behind the stunning finish to the Michigan State game, the Wolverines' comebacks against Minnesota and Indiana, and their Citrus Bowl victory over Florida. It also goes a long way to answering the question on everyone's mind: How long will Harbaugh stay in Ann Arbor? Bestselling author John U. Bacon's Endzone tells the story of how college football's most successful, richest and respected program almost lost all three in less than a decade - and entirely of its own doing. It is a story of hubris, greed, and betrayal - a tale more suited to Wall Street than the world's top public university. Endzone takes you inside the offices, the board rooms and the locker rooms of the University of Michigan Wolverines to see what happened, and why - with countless eye-opening, head-shaking scenes of conflict and conquest. But Endzone is also an inspiring story of redemption and revival. When those who loved Michigan football the most recognized it was being attacked from within, they rallied to reclaim the values that made it great for over a century -- values that went deeper than dollars. The list of heroes includes players, students, lettermen, fans and faculty - and the leaders who had the courage to listen to them. Their unprecedented uprising produced a new athletic director, and a new coach - the hottest in the land - who vindicated the fans' faith when he turned down more money and fame to return to the place he loved most: Michigan. If you love a good story, you'll want to dive into Endzone: The Rise, Fall and Return of Michigan Football.
"Like the Moneyball of college football, Three and Out blows the lid off one of the sports world's most perplexing mysteries."—Entertainment Weekly Three and Out tells the story of how college football's most influential coach took over the nation's most successful program, only to produce three of the worst seasons in the histories of both Rich Rodriguez and the University of Michigan. Shortly after his controversial move from West Virginia, where he had just taken his alma mater to the #1 ranking for the first time in school history, Coach Rich Rodriguez granted author and journalist John U. Bacon unrestricted access to Michigan's program. Bacon saw it all, from the meals and the meetings, to the practices and the games, to the sidelines and the locker rooms. Nothing and no one was off limits. John U. Bacon's Three and Out is the definitive account of a football marriage seemingly made in heaven that broke up after just three years, and lifts the lid on the best and the worst of college football.
Over the past century, the Wolverines have created heroes and legends that excite both the young and old. From the first football game in 1879 to the hundreds of thousands of faithful fans that cheer on the most triumphant program in college football history, University of Michigan football has an undeniable legacy. In Michigan Motivations: A Year of Inspiration with the University of Michigan Wolverines, authors Cyle Young and Del Duduit relive the most famous moments and show readers how they too can overcome adversity, find success, understand true teamwork, and much more. A year's worth of weekly stories will motivate and inspire, showcasing legendary players like Tom Harmon, Anthony Carter, Desmond Howard, Charles Woodson, and Tom Brady. Along the way, readers will also appreciate the Wolverine persistence that drove a 1934 team MVP to become the 38th President of the United States, and they will learn to apply that same Michigan character in their own life. Michigan Motivations is for every fan that bleeds Maize and Blue. Rejoice at the stories that reveal come-from-behind victories, sigh at surprise losses, and scratch your head at how Ohio State went to the Rose Bowl in 1974.
From New York Times bestselling author and Michigan football expert John Back, an analysis of the state of college football: Why we love the game, what is at risk, and the fight to save it. In search of the sport’s old ideals amid the roaring flood of hypocrisy and greed, bestselling author John U. Bacon embedded himself in four college football programs—Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan, and Northwestern—and captured the oldest, biggest, most storied league, the Big Ten, at its tipping point. He sat in as coaches dissected game film, he ate dinner at training tables, and he listened in locker rooms. He talked with tailgating fans and college presidents, and he spent months in the company of the gifted young athletes who play the game. Fourth and Long reveals intimate scenes behind closed doors, from a team’s angry face-off with their athletic director to a defensive lineman acing his master’s exams in theoretical math. It captures the private moment when coach Urban Meyer earned the devotion of Ohio State’s Buckeyes on their way to a perfect season. It shows Michigan’s athletic department endangering the very traditions that distinguish the college game from all others. And it re-creates the euphoria of the Northwestern Wildcats winning their first bowl game in decades. Most unforgettably, Fourth and Long finds what the national media missed in the ugly aftermath of Penn State’s tragic scandal: the unheralded story of players who joined forces with Coach Bill O’Brien to save the university’s treasured program—and with it, a piece of the game’s soul. This is the work of a writer in love with an old game—a game he sees at the precipice. Bacon’s deep knowledge of sports history and his sensitivity to the tribal subcultures of the college game power this elegy to a beloved and endangered American institution.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER From the “poet laureate of Michigan football," a riveting inside chronicle of the Jim Harbaugh era, and "an unprecedented look at the inner workings" (Sporting News) of a big-time college football program John U. Bacon received rare access to Head Coach Jim Harbaugh’s University of Michigan football team: coaches, players, and staffers, in closed-door meetings, locker rooms, meals, and classes. Overtime captures this storied program at the crossroads, as the sport’s winningest team battles to reclaim its former glory. But what if the price of success today comes at the cost of your soul? Do you pay it, or compete without compromising? In the spirit of HBO’s Hardknocks, Overtime delivers a deeply reported human portrait that follows the Wolverine coaches, players, and staffers. Above all, thisis a human story. In Overtime we not only discover what these public figures are like behind the scenes, we learn what the experience means to them as they go through it – the trials, the triumphs, and the unexpected answers to a central question: Is it worth it? From the “poet laureate of Michigan football” (according to New York Times’s Joe Drape), and one of the keenest observers of college football, Overtime offers a window into a legendary program and the sport itself that only John U. Bacon could deliver.
