FOURTH AND LONG; The Fight for the Soul of College Football

FOURTH AND LONG 

The Fight for the Soul of College Football

by John U. Bacon

Hardcover 339 Pages
Published 2013
Simon & Schuster

            I had the opportunity to meet author John U. Bacon recently.  He spoke to the Michigan Funeral Directors Association annual convention in Kalamazoo, Michigan as the keynote speaker.  Bacon, who is the official biographer of University of Michigan’s legendary football coach, Bo Schembechler, spoke on Bo’s Lasting Legacy and his personal character.  He gave an awesome speech and apparently absorbed some of Schembechler’s speaking skills with his enthusiastic and high-spirited excitement.  There is no greater advocate for college football; especially Big Ten football and even more especially, University of Michigan football than Bacon.

While some might think it’s odd a sports historian and commentator would speak to a gathering of funeral directors.  As it turns out, Bacon, an Ann Arbor native and now history professor at U of M, was high school classmates with MFDA’s President Dutch Nie at Ann Arbor Huron High School.  Nie now owns the Nie Funeral Home  in Ann Arbor and has been close to Bacon and the University all his life.  Bacon’s remarks on Bo’s character fit right in with the atmosphere and character of the convention.

Bacon and I shared stories on our family history.  My father and some of his friends chaired the Michigan Day Golf Outing in Battle Creek for more than 25 years and my family has been “True Blue” for decades and at least three generations and have been assiduous supports of college football.  We hit it off well.

With Author John U. Bacon

at the MFDA Convention in Kalamazoo, Michigan, May, 2014

****

Fourth and Long is a great read for any red-blooded American college football fan, regardless of your loyalty to a particular school.  As you pick up the book, the dust cover is pigskin brown with raised dimples and a lace that makes it feel you are holding a football.  Brilliant packaging from the designer and publisher!

 Bacon, a huge advocate and promoter of University of Michigan football is also a staunch defender of college football itself and the Big Ten.  The book takes a broad look at all college conferences and delves deep into the history of the Big Ten and each member school.

Bacon, a professor of sports history at Michigan, is also a professor at Northwestern University and has spent a great of time around the Big Ten.  He has been close to all the athletic directors, coaches, players and even Presidents in the Big Ten.

Fourth and Long focuses primarily on four of the legendary programs in the Big Ten; Michigan, Ohio State, Northwestern and Penn State.  He even includes a chapter on Michigan State and the contributions MSU has made to the conference since joining.  He was especially generous with his praise of former MSU President John Hanna who built the school with the GI Bill following WWII, getting veterans on campus.  Hanna was also one of the biggest advocates of MSU football and made it into Ripley’s Believe it or Not by attending every MSU football game, home and away, during his tenure as President.  He also explains why there is so much rivalry and tradition in every state between the University of _______, and ______State University, something the common college football fan hasn't really pondered.

Not to worry Fighting Irish fans, there are also several quips, history an anecdotes on Notre Dame and the great rivalries they've had with the Big Ten over the years.

Early on, he writes about how the Big Ten conference came to be and why it was formed in 1896 (when the President of Purdue, James Smart, called a meeting of several presidents in Chicago to gain control of college athletics) -- the first name of the conference was actually Conference of Faculty Representatives of Midwestern Universities. No wonder they shortened it to Big Ten.  It was the nation’s first athletic conference. It was a collection of Midwestern schools, centered around the Great Lakes, who were alike academically.  The University of Chicago was an original member, but dropped out when they abandoned athletics altogether and focused on being a purely academic school. 

He also points out how important the City of Chicago is to the Big Ten.  He makes the point that no other conference has a city where alumni of each of the conference schools gather.  It seems everyone in the Big Ten gravitates to Chicago and that makes it the “Capital of the Big Ten.”  You can go into a bar in Chicago and meet up with graduates of nearly every Big Ten college.  An observation I never really made.

For a good part of the book, Bacon embedded himself in the Penn State program immediately following the ugly Jerry Sandusky travesty and chronicles the first season back following the NCAA sanctions and the effort to maintain and rebuild the great Penn State traditions.  He got close to everyone in the program, especially the players who he credits the most for saving Penn State’s great traditions.

Following the Sandusky and Paterno tragedies, the NCAA pretty much declared “open season” on Penn State players.  They were free to go anywhere they wanted and coaches could pursue the players with no limitations.  Bacon gets to the heart of the matter and that Penn State mattered to the student-athletes.  Only a small handful left the program.  Most of the team valued a Penn State education and, refreshingly, that’s what they came for, most of them wanted to be part of the new Penn State and preserve the great traditions of the past.  Above all, they sought a Penn State diploma.  Those players elevated the status of student-athlete by staying put, something the major sports media has failed to recognize.

Getting Bill O’Brien, or any coach, to Penn State was no easy task.  It was a hot potato and with bowl bans and restricted scholarships who would want it?   But as fate would have it, he was the right person at the right time.  Bacon chronicles how O’Brien had to win the confidence of the team and get the alumni and supporters back into the fold it wasn’t easy.

Without going into too much detail, Bacon had many frank conservations with the Penn State student-athletes and was privy to many tense meetings with the team and experiences all the emotions surrounding the “comeback.”  It was compelling to peek inside one of the biggest comebacks in college football.  It left you feeling good about what college football is all about.

Bacon also spent a great deal of time with Ohio State and their former coaches Earle Bruce and John Cooper.  He got close to Urban Meyer, an Ohio son who stepped into another troubled program as OSU faced sanctions following the departure of Jim Tressel under very bad circumstances.  Bacon also documented the history of Ohio State, revealing many facts about their traditions and history that most college football fans never knew.  I probably learned more about OSU than any other Big Ten program and it made me respect the Michigan-OSU rivalry even more.  Or should I say TTUN (That Team Up North) as the Buckeye faithful refer to Michigan.

Northwestern is an anomaly in college football, but fits well in the Big Ten.  As a private school, it has different problems than its conference brethren.  Undoubtedly the most academic school in the conference, it has always had trouble attracting good players who can cut it in the classroom.  For a while, they just didn’t take football seriously.  He alluded to the ten year stretch where they won only six games.  During that time he stated that only one team in America had a worse record than NU, the Washington Generals who were paid to lose to the Harlem Globetrotters!  He talks about how they got their groove back and made it to the Rose Bowl with a lot of insightful stories.

While discussing all the football programs and traditions, Bacon also discussed the structure of each Big Ten school and how their governance has affected athletics over the years.  It was an interesting study in the fact that if the president isn’t behind it, they just didn’t succeed.  He parlayed that into the present day dilemma where the football coach has grown more powerful (and better compensated) in the institution than the president and how that has affected the school.

Tradition is a huge talking point in each of the school’s he chronicles throughout the book.  The location on a college campus, not in a big city make it special.  Stadiums are set in lush green campuses and not in a sea of concrete.  The college stadiums are built over time and reflect the identity of the school and its traditions.  Unlike the NFL who typically build stadiums at the tax payer’s expense with little or no traditions and tear them down and rebuild in twenty years.

He has quite an oration on how college football is superior to pro football which I especially enjoyed!

Some of his observations are; Colleges are a connecting place to multi generations and something you have in common with your great-grandparents.  No NFL football team has a marching band.  No NFL team has a true rival and parity has given any franchise a shot at the championship.  College has no pre-season and every game matters.  Pro players are inaccessible.  You run into college football players in class or at the bar.

Bacon also devotes a great deal of time and effort to other college traditions which make college football so special.  He even devotes quite a bit of time to the “trophies” in college football; the “Little Brown Jug”, the “Paul Bunyan Trophy;" the "Old Oaken Bucket" and about a 150 other seemingly irrelevant items rivals play for and the traditions and stories behind many them.

The parting thoughts of his book deals expressly with the growing menace of money in the college game.  Too many of the storied programs are driving away fans and especially students, and pricing them out of the market.  Television is now driving much of the game scheduling and creating problems for the fan.  Having to endure twenty TV time outs destroys the pace of the game and drives fans (in attendance) crazy.  Every Big Ten game is now televised and the Big Ten Network has grown into a behemoth which jeopardizes all the traditions everyone has built over the years.  Talking heads yuck it up at halftime rather than showing an outstanding band performance.

Maryland and Rutgers were recently added to the Big Ten so the network could reach an “Eastern” market.  The two schools have nothing in common with the geography or traditions of the Big Ten.

He’s made it his personal crusade to preserve the game of college football with all its traditions.  We are rapidly turning it into a big business that will go bust because they have sold out the essence of what made it great in the first place, a Saturday afternoon game between rivals which means something to everyone involved.

Bacon continues to turn up the heat with his columns and has taken UM’s AD Dave Brandon to task for killing off the student support at games and making it inaccessible for the longtime fan.  He talks about a friend who’s giving up attending games because it’s now a $500 event to take his family to each game.  It’s easier to watch it on TV with friends in a comfortable setting, every game is now broadcast.

            Bacon is compelling in his argument that college football is an institution worth saving and leaves you longing for crisp fall afternoons watching your team take your rival to the cleaners. 

No book has ever captured the spirit, history and traditions of the college game better than Fourth and Long.  It’s a must read for those who truly care about game and reminds us of not only what makes college great, but also what makes education great.