Quotes from John U. Bacon

Whenever a college athletic program got itself in trouble with the law - big trouble - the NCAA usually steered clear, sticking to how many minutes a week student-athletes are allowed to stretch, the distance they can travel in a car with an alumnus, and whether they are allowed to put cream cheese or jam on their free breakfast bagel. (They are not).

Michigan wasn't broken for over a century. But when it finally cracked, from the inside out, the people who knew its history rose to fix it, and restore the meaning of a simple, timeless saying: This is Michigan.

When I teach at Michigan, on the first day I tell the students, "You will not miss class. You will not be late to class. You will not use a laptop, or a cell phone, or wear a hat. My late-paper policy is simple: There will be no late papers, ever. That is my 'late-paper policy.' Why? This is Michigan.

The Red Baron and his eighty combat victories in the sky pale in comparison to legendary U-boat captain Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière and his 194 sunken ships.

Mont-Blanc was chugging up the coast, burrowing through the deep waves kicked up by a coastal storm and weighed down with 6 million pounds of high explosives to attack German soldiers.

Put it all together, and the power of Mont-Blanc's cargo works out to about 3 kilotons of TNT—or about a fifth of the 15 kilotons the "Little Boy" atomic bomb unleashed on Hiroshima.

But by making the last-minute decision to store most of the fuel on the deck and the TNT and picric acid below, the crew had unwittingly constructed the perfect bomb, with the easy-to-light fuse on top, and the most explosive materials trapped in the hold below.

If the NCAA ran local law enforcement, whenever they pulled over a drunk driver, they would impound the car and let the driver hop in another one and drive off.

In fact, the top 11 games of total offense for any player at any position in Michigan history are all held by either Denard Robinson or Devin Gardner—best friends who lived together for three years. "I think we represented 1428 Brookfield Drive pretty well!

assumed everyone

Almost every Division I college football team predates the oldest NFL teams by three or four decades. Most schools built their current stadiums before most NFL teams built their first—or second, or third. College football is one of those few passions we have in common with our great-grandparents.

Even the shift to presidents nationwide had its downsides. "The problem is," Canham said, "they confused presidential control for presidential management. What would a bureaucrat know about that?

ensuret his never

Brandon envisioned a world in which the loser of the Michigan–OSU game could find redemption. That's not how it works. That's not how any of this works. You lose the game, you fume for 364 days until you have an opportunity to right the wrongs. This is not a carnival fun ride. It's college fucking football.

in World War I, Canada lost 60,000 young men, from a total population of 7 million. If the United States had lost a similar ratio in Vietnam, it wouldn't have lost 58,000 men but 1.7 million—or almost thirty times more.

The American playwright and painter Lorraine Hansberry said, "The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely.

In the wake of tragedy, people are often tempted to tell the mourners "Everything happens for reason," "It will all work out for the best," or "This is all part of God's plan." Reverend Swetnam, a devoted man of the cloth, was having none of it. "If this was the work of God," he said, "I'll tear off this clerical collar.

When I asked star linebacker Devin Bush Jr. about this, he laughed and imitated a classmate's voice, " Ã¢â'¬ËœYou're playing a game! You get a free education! You don't have to pay for food and housing!' "Let me tell you: We pay for all that stuff every time we wake up at five-thirty in the morning. When you go home for holidays, we're practicing. When you go home for the summer, we're in class, and the weight room.

Tragedy comes quick and loud, while the small acts of decency that follow come slowly and quietly.

You have to do everything you possibly can to develop your middle tier of talent. It's your job, as the leader, to make those people do more than they thought they could—maybe more than you thought they could—and put them in the best possible position to help the team.

A Brown University alum, Angell's vision for Michigan was to create a university that could provide "an uncommon education for the common man.