Episode 20: John U. Bacon — “The best of Bacon”

Hi, this is Deborah Holdship editor of Michigan Today.

In this episode of “Listen in Michigan” my guest is John U. Bacon. Author, teacher, coach, father, athlete, and sports enthusiast extraordinaire. Which you would know if you had been following his career as a writer and broadcaster for the past 25 years. John’s new book The Best of Bacon: Select cuts from John U. Bacon, is a collection of stories and essays he’s written over the past 25 years. You may know John from his books The Fourth and Long, End Zone. Most recently he wrote Playing Hurt: My Journey from Despair to Hope which he co-authored with ESPN’s John Saunders who struggled with depression. While John has covered sports at every level, from local to college to national, I would venture to say that his favorite aspect of sports is college sports. He says, “We watch not for perfection but for passion.” Here’s John —

John U. Bacon: Sports have got a way, for men especially but also women, of bringing emotions out. Men have a hard time expressing emotions almost anywhere else. But, on a football field or a basketball court you are allowed to cry after a loss and you’re considered a tough guy for doing so. Incredibly, I recall interviewing Michael Jordan for Time Magazine cover piece. I was one of the writers on that.

Holdship: Cool.

Bacon: It was cool. And he said look I know that curing cancer is more important than what I do, but what I do is more fun to watch. And in the case of coaches, we can see immediately the impact of their leadership, which you can’t see in most offices. You just can’t. So for what I do, it makes sports, sports is a very good prism for seeing character.

Holdship: Yeah so true. I love when they have tantrums. That’s my favorite thing.

Bacon: There you go, well then you’d love Bo. (laughs)

Holdship: Yeah it’s always great when the headphones come off and there’s lots of yelling.

Bacon: It’s real emotional. How many places and I’m sure it always made me attracted to sports at some level based on the raw emotion. Crying after you lose, throwing your headset for bad call, fights almost breaking out, the joy of victory and the agony of defeat and all that. It’s all there…

Holdship: Yeah!

Bacon: …and it’s on display.

Holdship: I love college sports so much and it’s so interesting how different, it’s strange that college and professional sports are as different from one another as they are, but they really are.

Bacon: I agree wholeheartedly.

Holdship: So talk about why we love college sports so much.

Bacon: That’s a great question. One I almost never get. So, thank you.

Holdship: Really? Oh good.

Bacon: Yes and I’ve got an ear. So, they tend to be lumped in, got college ball on Saturday, got NFL on Sunday, Minor League, Major League. No, it’s not. One huge difference is this: If you are the best player in college basketball or football that year, what happens to you next? You’re drafted by the professional team you want to go to least to live in the city you live in the least. You’re drafted and you’re paid. There’s a term for that. Doing things you don’t wanna do because you’re paid. If you’re the best high school player in the country you choose. You have all the power. So I guarantee that everyone who’s wearing the winged helmet in that tunnel has actively chosen to be a Wolverine. They’ve turned down other programs, maybe all the other programs, because they decided that. They all say the same thing too, whether they go to Michigan State, Ohio State, or Michigan. They always say “This is where I belong. I came to campus and meet the people and I knew that this is my home.” And when you’re a fellow student with these athletes, you share that. You share nothing with the Detroit Lions. You share nothing with the Detroit Tigers.

Holdship: That’s true, yeah.

Bacon: They’re not in your neighborhood and they got a better offer somewhere else they are moving. They don’t care. Alright. Everyone here on campus has chosen to be here on campus and that the spirit of college football and college basketball, in fact, all college sports is fundamentally different because of that. And that energy can feel and everyone’s got a story from being in class with Rick Leech or Jim Harbaugh or Denard Robinson. And that’s part of the package too. You can talk to any, any Michigan alum, I swear to God, — football, basketball, hockey, guys playing in the NHL, the NBA — every single one of them will tell you it’s cooler to play at Michigan than it was in the pros. Now the money was nice, and so is the fame. When even Tom Brady, who might be the acid test for this, he was split time at Michigan now he’s, of course, the biggest star ever in football, when even he says that, it gets your attention.

Holdship: Yeah I mean he still comes back here and talks to people and obviously it’s got a lot of love in his heart for it. And then Harbaugh to come back here and coach. I mean come on.

Bacon: I guarantee the NFL would have paid him more. Now he’s not, as he said to me and it’s in the story here in this book “Harbaugh came home”. I said, “Why’d you come home?” And if I were to pay you more… and he said, “Whoa don’t put me in the same dance floor as Mother Teresa, I’m making 5 million.” Now it’s more than that. I said, “Okay fair enough, but I already heard from the New York Jets, Chicago Bears, Oakland Raiders, the number was, the opening bid was ten and was going to go to 11 or 12. Get NFL owners bidding on something then the ego’s takeover. And he said, “Okay I can tell you I did not come back to Michigan because I thought I was gonna make the most money by coming back here.” I said, “Okay so why’d you come back?” And he said, “Three days earlier I talked my dad Jack Harbaugh, from ????? of course, and I said dad, you know everything I know, what do you think? And he says Son, you’ve always made good decisions. My advice is to follow your heart.” And Jim looks at me and says “So that is what I did.”

Holdship: So another theme that I love about college sports and is the phrase that you had in the book was that “we have the potential to see the truly unthinkable when we watch sports.”

Bacon: It’s true because if you wrote some of these stories as a, as a Hollywood script they would say you’ve gone too far. Everyone knows where they were when Desmond Howard made his catch in the end zone against Notre Dame. Of course and Charles Woodson’s interception and all this stuff. Everyone can place where they were because we all watch it together. We all share that experience. And now, of course, your phone blows up. “Holy mackerel! They did it!” and how cool that is. So I think sports are one of the few things we still share across the board. Across race, religion, politics. Which is very hard to transcend these days. Sports does do that. The key to really get into sports, whether you’re a big sports fan or not, is to get off the field and get to know the people. Get to know the people and now it’s one of the greatest soap opera you’ve ever seen and you don’t know how it’s going to turn out either. It’s great storylines that feed into it. And what I tried to do with this collection also is if you don’t care about sports at all you should still like this. It’s all about the people. A struggle over values is what it’s really about. The temptations, the hard work, the frustrations, the setbacks, the perseverance. All these things we can see as I said earlier in sports and that’s what I want to get to here. An expression of our values.

Holdship: Yeah. Well and an expression of how difficult it is to be a good athlete too. I love your self-deprecating humor in these. Like George Plumpton Adventures you went on. Like there was a hockey one and football too, right?

Bacon: Yep.

Holdship: There’s one where there’s a lot of puking.

Bacon: Yes that’s the football. And hockey is pretty close.

Holdship: (laughs) The one where you like, your whole body like shuts down.

Bacon: Ugh, it did. I tried out for the Detroit Vipers hockey team had lost six pounds the hard way and that was brutal. The hardest one by far though was working out with Mike Barwis the old strength coach at Michigan back in 09. And I puked every day for a week and a half working on those guys. I couldn’t walk after these workouts, you couldn’t get down the steps. I mean you really went home and you got in your couch in the fetal position and you whimper for an hour and you realize I’m going to die here. You have to get up and feed yourself in some way. And that’s when I realized — but no exaggeration anybody’s gone through this — it’s called hypertrophy for your body, as you said, just breaks down. It is a cataclysmic event to your body. It just shuts down. And these guys go through it twice a year and then they get used to it and they start lifting weights again. Read that piece and you will see Michigan football players in a different light. Man, it is not an easy life. And I don’t care if they are full rides. Those are not free rides. They pay a price and and that does humble you. Tried out for the U.S. Open golf tournament and got crushed. Of course. Tried out for the Drake Grand Prix race.

Holdship: Oh yeah! That was an exciting one too! Spinner!

Bacon: Well it was very exciting at 100 miles an hour. Yes, Spinner is my nickname. There, you figured that one out. Coached women’s hockey here at Michigan actually and how different that was then coaching boys. One you learn very early on with women is you’re always building their confidence. Women athletes — at least I did — the individuals as well as a team. “You’re better than you think you are.” Constantly telling them. “You’re better than you think you are.” Coaching high school boys and I love those guys too. “You’re not half as good as you think you are.”

Holdship: That’s so funny.

Bacon: (laughs) And that’s said it probably translates the management is my guess. So that was a ton of fun to put that section in. Yes, all the jokes were at my expense.

Holdship: Oh my god. I just love the image of you running on the field. Like the time the coach told you if you can’t do it the whole team’s going to have to do it again.

Bacon: We’re back to working out the football team on that one. After I finally got through, I was getting better at the weights and quit throwing up. And the weight room it was still bad but I was not destroyed. I could walk afterwards after a couple weeks. I did that for four weeks and then my last two weeks of this thing, I do weights followed by running with them after the workout. So I had to go six weeks total and man. I got to the run I did not give a damn. I’m already trashed. I’m working out with Larry Foote All American. We all line up on the goal line of the indoor football building. And he says, “Alright all you guys” I forget what the time was exactly but, “you guys gotta, NFL guys gotta do it in 50 seconds or 45 seconds, Michigan guys gotta do it in 50 seconds. Bacon, you gotta do it in 60 seconds or else everyone else has to do it again.” And that’s when 50 football players, half a team, man they gave me the death stare and I thought I have got to do this and I thought man if I do this I’m going to die then I thought, but if I don’t do this they’re going to kill me. So you might as well die with honor on the field. And I made it at 58 seconds just barely got high fives from those guys then I pass them all to run right to the trash can and throw up again. And then I got back into line. They turn you into a monster by the way. You do this enough times, you don’t care about anything anymore. You all of a sudden, I was looking for bar fights in my case. All the first-person stories and all these stories really if I’m there I want you to get something you can’t get otherwise and feel like you were there too.

Holdship: One of the other stories that I thought was really touching with your Ernie Harwell story.

Bacon: If you’re going up north in the seventies, what are you doing? You’re listening to Ernie Harwell in Paul Carey describe the game. It is a wonderful way to get up north, of course, all summer long. Got to get to know him in 96 or 7, 7 I think when I was covering spring training for the Detroit News for the first time I’m there half an hour. I’m sitting on a bench and there’s five or six different pickup games going on at different diamonds. At their big complex. Ernie Harwell my old hero sits right next to me says “how you doing I’m Ernie Harwell.” Like I didn’t know. We started chatting and he invites me to dinner that night with his wife Lulu. We have a lovely chat for two or three hours. Stayed in touch ever since. Spit on my radio show a few times and just an incredibly sweet guy. Then of course we learned, did a big story on him for Northwest Airlines Magazine, and it’s 911 I was still sleeping. I gotta call it eight o’clock in the morning. This is what wakes me up that day. And it’s Ernie Harwell and he says “John I just wanted to thank you for the lovely story in Northwest Airlines Magazine.” Who does that mean? You know I mean no matter how positive it is, no one ever does that. And so we have a nice little chat and then I turn on the TV in the day, of course, goes dramatically worse. And yet I always think of Ernie Harwell in that day because it reminds me of this simple goodness of a sweet sincere man. As countered with all the horribleness we saw later on that day. I saw the human condition alpha to omega in about an hour and a half. But I I cling to the Ernie memory as proof that we’re not all bad we’re not all evil etc. Not even close.

And then of course when he contracted cancer and announced it, I wrote a piece on him as well and he had we thought weeks left maybe months. Write another piece describing a lot of the stuff. Man. The piece comes out at nine o’clock Friday morning and I get a call from Ernie Harwell at 9:30 that morning and we chat. He says “Well you know John we’ve been friends a long time.” It’s a very Ernie thing to say and you know it had only been at that point not even quite 20 years. He had he had longer friends and me. And I felt guilty. Man, your time is limited to this point. Why are you talking to me? But that was, it feels good to memorialize his story is something more than a link and a yellowy newspaper to put them between two pieces of cardboard would be a little bit better preserved. They’re all you know if it’s made of man-made it’s going to die someday. But it feels good to kind of put such good character in enbalment basically and enjoy it down the road.

Holdship: I love that. What you said earlier about this is a book about the good guys because it really is. You come at these people in a bit of an unusual angle. Like even talking about Bo as sort of a romantic figure.

Bacon: That’s hilarious. Bo after Millie Schembechler passed away was not doing well. He was lonely, which is hard to believe for a guy known and loved by so many. He’d stayed in his robe in the morning and his house in Ardington and here in Ann Arbor and he was not doing all that well. So as friends noticed at a cocktail party in Florida that he noticed Kathy Aikens from across the room and she’s a very attractive lady so not too hard to notice. And so they set up a breakfast the next day with Bo and Kathy. Bo, knowing nothing about this dating stuff as he would say, shows up with his fishing vest on. Which smells, I’m sure, of fish. And she, of course, is dressed to the 9’s in here he is about to go on to a deep sea fishing trip in an hour. And that’ll make you feel special as a lady. Wouldn’t it? She says at one point “So Bo I hear that used to coach basketball.” She says he says “No I’m afraid your scouting points a little off. I coached football.” “Oh, that’s nice. What else did you do?” He says “Let me tell you that was a full-time job.” So contrary to early rumors she did not should not care about his fame. She’s was not aware of it. She had more money than he did. So it’s not the money. They truly fell in love. And it’s fun to see the sweet side of Bo. Which you are not going to see in the sidelines. Bo will be talking to me about Woody Hayes or something else and he’d be barking. And then the phone would ring and he’d go over. Even Bo could figure out caller ID. He’s not a high-tech guy. He’d go “Ah I gotta get this one” and then he’d pick up the phone and get all sweet and lovey-dovey. Oh man, I was not expecting that. I then he turned me a little embarrassed. “Now where were we.” Just like, come on man I saw that!

Holdship: (laughs) Did his voice change?

Bacon: Oh hell yeah it changed. “I love you too.” (laughs)

Holdship: I love when that stuff happens.

Bacon: Yeah you had to be there to get it. And so and hopefully the reader feels like they’re in all these private places with all these people.

Holdship: Yeah I definitely felt that. So I think you accomplish that. What makes Hutch so special? I read your piece but like talk a little bit about her like why do we love her? Why is she so successful?

Bacon: As great as she is with all be entitled, she is still underrated because how do you stay hungry year after year after year. All her players graduate there’s not a graduation rate. They all do. There’s no rate. It’s 100%. She’s amazing and she still says tough with them. Her players love her. They’ll take a bullet for her and she’s tough man. She is absolutely tough as nails but she loves her players also and back to our earlier equation. I recall talking to a radio host few years ago about Mike Babcock, the Detroit Red Wings coach at the time, and the commentator said, “Oh so you have to balance being tough with being caring?” No you have to be a 100% tough and a 100% caring at the same time. It’s like being a parent basically. I mean you don’t slack off but you’re always tough and you always care and Hutch is those things. I used to teach the adult hockey classes at Yost arena. Tuesday and Thursday mornings from six thirty, no seven thirty to nine o’clock in the morning. So these are business people and so on. A wide range. Hutch came down man, and Hutch was a pretty damn good hockey player. But I’m telling you right now, if there’s a puck in the corner and Hutch is one of the two players after it, she’s going to get it. She’s tough. And I will also say she was very coachable. I’m one of the few people that had a chance to coach Carol Hutchins at some point, not in a real sense of course, but she’s great and she’s a ton of fun to be around and she’s very funny.

Holdship: When Warde Manuel was named AD. He told a really funny story about when he had been a student here and he he must have worked on the grounds crew or something then he’s like “Oh yeah Hutch, I used to water your grass.” You know, and now I’m your boss basically. It’s crazy how full circle things come.

Bacon: Well think of the love that he expressed also at that press conference. Which is what we’re talking about here. They said — he’s at UCONN and UCONN’s a serious, probably they win national basketball titles there and they’re competitive in football and so on — and they said would you be interested in the Michigan job and he said oh hell yeah. That’s not a negotiating position. And likewise, Harbaugh said I’m in before terms are discussed. He goes I’m in. And what did Jim Hackett say, the AD, said, “Some jobs are for God and country and Michigan is it for me.” So he didn’t know what the terms were when he said yes. This place can do that to you.

Holdship: Let’s talk a little bit about the state of college athletics today. You said some interesting things about the concept of paying college athlete and also about, I don’t know what they call it, the freshmen rule?

Bacon: Yes, freshmen ineligibility. It was the rule from 1905 when the NCAA started to 1973, that late. So freshmen were not allowed to play. They have freshmen teams which are popular for most schools at that time. Most kids I talked to from that era say thank God for it because I became a real student during that time. College is hard and I got my bearing before the game started.

Holdship: It really makes sense. It’s so sensible.

Bacon: It does make sense to me and I think a lot of folks would do it. I think the presidents need to stand up and ask for that or demand it. Now some coaches are gonna scream and holler, so what let him go to the pros. It’s not a crazy idea. Baseball and hockey have had this very same system for a 100 years more minor leagues work in those sports and therefore the baseball and hockey players you have on campus have actively chosen not to take the money and to take the degree.

Holdship: And then, this whole concept about paying athletes. Where do you think that’s going to go?

Bacon: I get the impetus behind it I can certainly see when your coach they’re making, Bo made $21000 his first year at Michigan. Anybody on the team knows, hell I can do better than that. But now, of course, it’s millions. So now the disparity between what the players get and what the coaches get is is a chasm clearly. So I can see why the impulse is there to pay the players but I’m telling you it won’t work for a few reasons. One is if you pay him, now you’re an employee and it changes everything now IRS taxes and it’s more complicated than you think. Title nine. If you want to give a $5 thousand stipend let’s say to the starting quarterback. Okay sounds good. Right, now the backup coxswain on the women’s crew team also gets $5 thousand. Title nine is virtually undefeated. It wins and wins and wins and it should. Alright but that’s part of the deal. So now instead of paying your top 20 or 30 players, you’re paying 900 athletes on campus. Michigan could probably afford it. I guarantee you EMU cannot. So we’re going to see college sports as we know basically fall off. Minor leagues in NBA and NHL and NFL need to happen. And therefore you’re not being exploited, and if you want to come to campus like a baseball hockey player does. You’ve made an active choice. This is more important to me than making a minor league contract. Which by the way you suddenly realize a college degree actually has got a lot more value than making 50 thousand or 80 thousand for a minor league baseball team. That’s why they make that choice. Granted that you’re paying big money here to see a football game or a basketball game. So you’re tempted to see it like pro sports. These are 20-year-old kids that aren’t getting paid. And by the way for all those who’ve talked about the cruft of college athletics, there’s a strong case to be made. We can make that case. It ain’t here at Michigan. It really isn’t.

I will say this about Michigan fans and this is from the heart. When Three and Out the first controversial book came out in 2011, Hulk was already 5-1 that season. Life was good. He was immensely popular. Rich Rodriguez was fired in disgrace and he was immensely unpopular and I was not taking Rich Rod’s side but there were complicated factors going on. And I thought okay what do we do here. So man, you went to Michigan and you’re a journalist. Your job is to tell the truth and again it’s a story about a failed coach. It debuted at number six on the New York Times bestseller list. And that’s when I thought man, Michigan fans are different. Michigan alumni are different. If I wrote that book about Ohio State then I am talking to you Deborah from a secure undisclosed location in Knoxville, Tennessee by Skype. Michigan fans cared. Harvard does not care if they lose. Alabama doesn’t care if they cheat and Michigan cares a great deal about both. It’s one of the few places that’s in that category I think. They want to know what happened and they’re sophisticated judges, as you well know, on journalism and they can tell if you got it right or not. And if you got it right whether it’s good or bad they’ll stick with you. And that to me is the Michigan difference And what I back to my earlier point about closing these speeches, I’d say look, no it wasn’t easy to write wasn’t fun to write frankly. I’d rather write the Bo book all day long and Harbaugh’s return and all that happy stuff. However, on your diploma and my diploma on the great seal at the University of Michigan it says only three words: Artes, Scientia, Veritas. Art, science, truth and either we believe it or we don’t. And so I was trained by English and History professors here at Michigan to pursue the truth wherever it leads without fear. And this book is a product of that search.

Holdship: Okay sports fans. hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. If you’d like to read an excerpt from The best of Bacon please visit michigantoday.umich.edu and look for athletics under the topics tab. You can find more “Listen in, Michigan” podcasts on iTunes, TuneIn and Stitcher and also at michigantoday.umich.edu under the podcast tab. Okay, thank you so much for listening and I look forward to having you back next time. Until then as always, Go Blue.