Five years ago, the University of Michigan football team was headed into its final game of the season 11–0 and ranked No. 2 in the country, facing 11–0 and No. 1 ranked Ohio State. “The Game” had become “The Game of the Century” and everything was on the line: a chance to beat archrival Ohio State; a national-championship-game invite; and an opportunity to put the capstone on Lloyd Carr’s Michigan career (one that had steadily lost its glow since his 1997 national title).

On what seemed like the precipice of greatness, however, the program instead fell into darkness with wailing and gnashing of teeth.

With eerie symbolism, legendary coach Bo Schembechler died the day before The Game. The next night, Michigan lost in heartbreaking fashion, 42–39, and then lost again to USC in the Rose Bowl, 32–18.

The following season, the Wolverines (ranked No. 5) lost to Appalachian State in one of the most stunning upsets in college-football history. This downward spiral was briefly interrupted by a 9–4 season and a win in the Capital One Bowl. But the next three seasons would prove to be perhaps the ugliest and most difficult in the long history of Michigan football.

And John U. Bacon found himself with the kind of access unheard of in modern athletics. The result is a remarkable book: Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football.

Lloyd Carr retired at the end of the 2007 season and Michigan eventually hired West Virginia’s Rich Rodriguez. In one of those quirks of fate, a former student of Bacon’s worked for Rodriguez’s financial adviser. This connection led to the idea of Bacon’s writing a couple of articles about the spread offense coming to Michigan, and then maybe collaborating on a book.

It is the height of understatement to say things did not work out as planned.

For most Michigan fans (myself included), that makes this book particularly painful. It is like watching a replay of your car accident in slow motion, on repeat. You know both the ultimate end result and the final score of every painful game and yet you force yourself to read the excruciating details as you relive the nightmare.

But if you are simply a fan of college football, or interested in big-time college athletics more generally, it is a fascinating read. Ohio State fans might find it entertaining and strangely cathartic.

What happened? What went wrong? Well, just about everything.

Having lost the legend, and the glue that held the community together, the Michigan football community became unorganized, splintered, and ineffective. The search for a new coach was bungled; the eventual hire was undermined at nearly every turn; the media were hostile to a degree hard to fathom outside of Ann Arbor; the coach far too often failed to see the repercussions of his words and actions; a lack of recruiting, injuries, and poor decisions decimated the talent available; the offense eventually soared but the defense cratered; and ultimately the football team lost far too many games. End result: Rich Rodriguez was fired after going 15–22 in three seasons.

While Bacon is frequently critical of Rodriguez, the picture he paints is largely one of Michigan never giving him the chance to do what he does best: coach football. Athletic director Bill Martin’s incredibly bungled search for a new coach undermined trust and began the bad feelings that would be a source of constant distraction and disunity. Having failed to get the Michigan Man so many wanted in Les Miles, Martin and former coach Lloyd Carr seemed unaware that Rodriguez would need extra support if he were to succeed — support he never really received.

Carr, who refused repeated interview requests from the author, bizarrely called Rodriguez to encourage his interest in the job and then seemed to undermine him at every turn — including encouraging recruits to transfer and never really sticking up for the new coach or the team.

Rodriguez fatally assumed that, Michigan being Michigan, 1) the talent would be there and 2) the backbiting and lack of support that drove him away from West Virginia wouldn’t happen. Desperately wrong on both counts. Rodriguez contributed to this problem by never hiring a defensive coordinator that he could trust and work with (even a half-decent defense would have made a world of difference, as his team gave up leads and lost heartbreakers with soul-crushing frequency) and failing to grasp the impact of his words and actions off the field. He increased the bitterness by careless words and not working hard enough at building relationships.

The “Michigan Family” takes a beating as well. The story is full of petty jealousy and bickering that undermined a high-quality coach – and, by all accounts, a genuinely good person — and also the very program and institution that Michigan people claimed to love and support (and, in many cases, the employer who paid them large sums of money).

What strikes me as truly amazing, however, is the dedication and commitment of so many of the players despite the never-ending negativity and criticism. After a rocky start, and with a few exceptions, Rodriguez molded a team that fought hard and cared deeply for their teammates and their school. The same cannot be said of too many of the adults tasked with supporting them.

On Saturday, some who endured this epic soap opera have a chance for some redemption. If new head coach Brady Hoke can lead his team to victory in this edition of The Game (against a 6–5 Buckeye team mired in scandal) it would portend an end to the dark cloud hanging over Ann Arbor since that fateful day five years ago when the heart and soul of Michigan football passed away.

And maybe, just maybe, Michigan’s return to greatness can really begin.

Related articles

• ‘Three And Out’: A College Football Coach, Undone In Mythical Fashion (npr.org)

For those that love the game and not just their chose teams this is a great time of year; full of days on end of football.  But with this enjoyment comes the bittersweet recognition that the season is coming to a close – there are only so many games left and then the dreaded off-season.

If you are a football fan there is a resource that might help you get through the off-season and come out even more knowledgeable about the game you love. Football: An Encyclopedia of Popular Culture edited by Edward J. Rielly is a treasure trove of information for fans and history/culture lovers alike:

Football. Far more than a game, America’s favorite spectator sport is an intrinsic part of the nation’s popular culture—a proving ground for high school athletes, a springboard for stars, a multimillion-dollar business, and a vast entertainment enterprise. Football: An Encyclopedia of Popular Culture provides a detailed look at America’s pastime through the lens of pop culture, a fascinating A-to-Z inventory of how certain aspects of the game affect and reflect broader society.

From African Americans in football to the meaning of Zero in the sport, this volume profiles players and personalities, teams and events, games and football concepts, and sociological and technological changes in the sport. The goal is not to name every Hall of Famer or to retell the game’s entire history, but to give a clear and detailed account of where, in football history, the importance of people and events extends beyond the playing field. Its wide-ranging entries examine such names as Joe Montana and Byron “Whizzer” White and phenomena from concussions, mascots, team names, and literature to U.S. presidents and football’s presence in television commercials. The encyclopedia covers all levels of play—professional, collegiate, high school, and youth—offering a from-the-ground-up, gridiron look at the game of football within the matrix of American culture.

Just to give you an example, I looked up “Bowl Games” and spent an enjoyable few minutes reading about the history of college bowl games. I learned things I didn’t know about the early history of the Tournament of Roses which eventually featured a game in a new bowl shaped stadium and thus led to the Rose Bowl and the the term Bowl Games.

As a University of Michigan fan suffer these last few years it was nice to read that the very first game featured the University of Michigan versus Stanford. The Wolverines built a 49-0 lead and the game was actually called six minutes early as Stanford had had enough and asked for mercy!

After that I kept on reading as the very next entry was Bradshaw, Terry Paxton (b. 1948) and being a huge Pittsburgh Steelers fan I wanted to read about the winner of four of their six Super Bowls.

Another Super Bowl QB, and Michigan alum, was next with Brady, Thomas Edward, Jr. (b 1977) and so I kept on reading about his exploits. Along the way you learn about the controversial tuck rule and Brady’s time in the spotlight thanks to off field issues.

Also as a Steeler fan, I am approaching this weekend with much trepidation. The defending Super Bowl champions are in danger of not making the playoffs. Thanks to an ugly five game slide to team like the Kansas City Chiefs, Oaklnad Raiders, and Cleveland Browns the Steelers need to win Sunday and have help. This is increasingly unlikely as many of the teams they need to win will have nothing significant to play for having wrapped up a spot in the playoffs.

The Steelers are seeking to grab one of the two remaining “Wild Card” spots. And if you look this up, you will learn what the term means but also that five Wild Card teams have gone on to win the Super Bowl (including the Steelers in 2005). This is what give players and fans hope: just get in and who knows what can happen.

In just a few minutes of browsing and reading I learned things I hadn’t know and was reminded of things I had forgotten. Football: An Encyclopedia of Popular Culture is a great resource for football fans or those interested in the intersection of popular culture and the game. It would also be a handy reference guide for those who would like to learn more about the game and its history.

I am sure I will be spending more time reading it as the dark night of the soul know as the football off-season approaches.

*IE problem now fixed*

So without further ado:

1. How did you convince someone to publish yet another book on the Ohio State Michigan rivalry and/or Bo and Woody?

That was the first challenge of selling the proposal: convincing publisher’s that my book would be different. I really emphasized the social history and my reporting background, and thankfully, publishers understand that even when others have tackled a subject, it is possible to write a high-quality book with new insight and information. Laura Hillenbrand was not the first author to write a book about Seabiscuit
. There have been dozens of Muhammad Ali books, but three of the most recent – David Remnick’s “King of the World,” Mark Kram’s Ghosts of Manila and Dave Kindred’s Sound and Fury
” – were critically acclaimed. Once editors read my proposal (which ran 60 pages) I think they understood that this book was different.

2. As a columnist what did you like the most about writing a book?  What was the most difficult aspect; or the part you disliked?

I love being a columnist, but I find myself rending verdicts and offering a point of view in almost every column, and I really loved the opportunity to just tell a story. There is no judgment in this book – radicals and intense football coaches and even Richard Nixon are not judged by the author. I wanted to take readers inside their heads, to understand why they did what they did.

The most difficult part was the sheer volume of work and the discipline it required. I tend to write columns in pieces, then put them together – I almost never write top to bottom and send it in. Obviously, it’s hard to write a 300-page book that way. Yet I had to keep that approach in order to weave the story together. What happens on page 20 might foreshadow what happens on page 240.

I thought I could write a book, but it’s hard to know until you try it. There were many days when I was not sure I could pull this off.

Questions 3-10 below

3. The book is a unique mix of sports, biography, and social history.  How did you attempt to appeal to fans of all these different styles or genres – to make this more than just a book about college football?

I wanted to write a story that would appeal to everybody, while still giving Michigan and Ohio State fans the kind of insight that they would want in a Bo/Woody book. Weaving the storylines together was tough, but I felt it was necessary – I didn’t just throw in the social history for my own enjoyment. I felt that the era could tell us so much about the coaches and players. They didn’t operate in a bubble. They had to live through what was happening on campus, and it absolutely affected both programs.

One of the toughest writing challenges was figuring out how to tell the stories of the games – without boring anybody, but also without skipping important moments. My hope is that when you get to a game portion, you have become invested in the characters, and so you care what happens to them. I took great care in selecting which plays and sequences to mention.

4. OSU and UM are very different institutions and campuses.  What did you find in researching this period about these towns, schools, and campuses?

They are different now and were much more different then. Ann Arbor was one of the most radical cities in the United States. Bomb craters were built, actual bombs were detonated and corporate recruiters were routinely locked in buildings for hours at a time. Ohio State was known as The Big Farm – it was dominated by rural and working-class kids who just wanted to get an education and weren’t likely to protest. Michigan players told me they felt like everybody on campus was on the left; Ohio State activists told me they felt like everybody on campus was either conservative or indifferent. That’s a generalization, but it shows you how people felt.

5. You detail one particular player’s struggle with drug use while he was playing.  How much of this kind of thing goes on today that we are not aware of?

I’m sure it happens today; it’s obviously still a major societal problem. But at least today, people are educated about drug use, and there is testing. Woody, and Bo to a lesser extent, seemed to think if a kid smoked pot on Tuesday night then they could tell at practice Wednesday. And even if they suspected something, there was not much they could do about it.

There is no doubt some players today use hard, recreational drugs. But I think performance-enhancers and alcohol are probably bigger issues.

6. What do you think is more important on these campuses today: sports or politics?

I would hope it’s politics, especially with the state of the world today. No matter where you stand politically, we’re obviously living in an incredibly tense time. But I can’t say with confidence that the answer is politics.

The biggest difference between 1969 and 2008, in this respect, is that in 1969, football was viewed as a conservative, Establishment activity. Some of the Michigan players in 1969 and 1970 didn’t want people to know they were football players for that reason.

In 2008, football is just entertainment. If a peace activist today told you he loves Ohio State football, you wouldn’t think much of it. That was not the case in 1969.

7.  Bo and Woody are both legends.  In what ways were they similar and how were they different as coaches and as people?

They were similar in so many ways – their commitment to discipline, their stubbornness, their ability to teach technique and motivate players. That is why their teams looked so similar. And it wasn’t some genetic coincidence, either – Bo copied 95 percent of what Woody did and tried to learn from the other 5 percent.

The biggest difference, at least in “War As They Knew It,” is that Woody really saw his program as a model for society. He thought people would see this militaristic unit — everybody following a leader, no individualism, built on work ethic – and learn from it. Bo, on the other hand, just wanted to keep society away from his program. As long as he could coach his guys in practices and games, he was happy.

Well, it becomes apparent over this period that society is shunning, even mocking, the Hayes model. That bothered him tremendously. Schembechler, on the other hand, could keep on focusing on football. That is why he survived and then thrived in Ann Arbor, despite being a conservative in a liberal town.

8. A number of reviewers, myself included, felt that the most compelling aspect of the books was our portrait of Woody Hayes.  As a Michigan grad and reporter why do you think that is?

Well, Bo was an incredibly charismatic and compelling figure. But he was the first to admit that Woody was more fascinating. With Woody, there were so many extremes – he was an absolutist, and there aren’t many of those around. I can’t imagine Bo walking three miles to work to reduce America’s reliance on foreign oil or turning down pay raises when he was making $35,000. Bo was much more pragmatic than Woody. This was one reason why he never came close to losing his players like Woody did.

Woody is truly a tragic hero in the classic Greek sense: he caused his own downfall. Yet he was an incredibly likable character, too, so by the time you get to the downfall, I hope you have a real empathy and even affection for him. Bo never had a downfall, which is to his credit, but that means his story arc isn’t as interesting as Woody’s.

9. How big for Michigan football was Bo’s win against Woody in his first year?

Huge. It meant the players would never seriously question Bo again. He had credibility with them. And it elevated that rivalry to unprecedented heights.

10.  Why isn’t Don Canham a better known figure outside of college athletics?

Well, he wasn’t on TV much, and in our culture we tend to celebrate coaches instead of athletic directors. But Canham was one of the most influential people in the history of intercollegiate athletics, and anybody who worked in college sports from 1968 to 1988 knew it.