Wow.

'Cause Reggie was in town.

It's his niece actually married Wanda, who married John.

Um, and the funny part is, uh, John was in Baltimore with Oprah Winfrey, by the way, getting his career started.

Had to cover the Orioles.

That's back when, uh, Dr- Reggie was there for, I think, only one season.

Sure

... um, of Reggie Jackson.

But just in terms of sheer talent level, this is up there with some of those red teams from the late 90s.

Well, David and Sue and I went down to Bowling Green to to see uh that game it it's a worthwhile trip one it's just a bit over an hour and secondly the ceiling at bowling green is so low that the noise of the 4 000 fans they get that they pack in there is really profound and two pucks hit the ceiling routinely uh which i've never seen before um And Bowling Green was an okay team, and they came out hot.

They got clobbered Friday night.

They came out hot on Saturday.

And what impressed me was how calm Michigan remained.

They were down 2-0 at the end of the period, but the second period they scored, and then you could tell that Michigan was going to win that game.

They are having problems with breakaways.

mean it did take a little bit of time to come together they had those like games against tcu and uh wake forest

And then, you know, kind of had another coaching and leadership role.

All right.

Well, first of all, my mom is Canadian, so I'm in fact half Canadian bacon.

There's the joke, Phil.

My dad's from New York.

My dad couldn't skate, which kids in New York didn't in his era.

It was Ross Childs with my best friend, Scott Childs, his dad.

You only got one more stage left.

Mm.

So says me anyway.

So there's play calling issues.

But as Jake Butt points out, there's a lack of, there's a lack of, uh, aggressiveness.

There's a lack of, uh, people following their assignments.

And at some point they say, um, you know, "Screw it.

I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna wild, you know, freelance this thing." So man, right now the offense has got about every coaching problem you can have.

I think that's definitely one adjustment that we gotta see.

Right

... hesitant to hop on that bandwagon.

Um, so that's another thing.

Um, but man, you gotta get in that room, and my speech would be very simple.

Everything we need to win is in this room, and nothing we need to win is outside this room.

So whatever's outside this room, cut it off.

It doesn't matter.

Bakes, what's going on in the Bacon cinematic universe?

Yeah, nor did I. I mean, it just, [laughs] it was almost like a, a, a luxury cruise liner that happened to carry iron ore.

It was pretty much best in all categories.

Biggest, fastest, or one of the fastest- Uh, it's supposed to be the strongest, carried the biggest loads, set all the records for fastest load, biggest load, most cargo in a season.

So it was a sprinter, a workhorse, and a marathoner all at one.

It was, it did it all, and it was the most l- lux- luxurious also, amazingly, outfitted by J.L. Hudson's in Detroit.

Back when that was a big deal, of course.

So, and why do you do that? To attract the best captain and crew you can, and they did.

How would you forget 14 hours on a 800-foot boat?

A little more height, but she's got range.

Got range, and she's dedicated.

But, yeah, it is not a ready-for-prime-time defensive secondary.

And you're facing Josh Allen.

And Josh Allen looked like everything he was supposed to be.

I saw an article today saying the MVP award is already locked up and Josh Allen is it.

That's pretty high praise for Week 2.

big boat.

How far from what you expected was what you saw from Michigan last

week? About the same, Sam.

And you raised a great question.

You reframed it last week.

And all I could come up with was 1998, Donovan McDabb in the big house, running wild with Syracuse, of course, on a Tom Brady quarterback team.

And then, of course, you had the, not the App State game.

That was a shocker, but it was a shocker.

What say you?

uh behaviors but by the way that they claim in the lawsuit uh were encouraged again allegedly by red berenson and mel pearson uh thanks this is a heavy one uh your your thoughts

few thoughts uh yeah definitely heavy one let's state the obvious which you guys have already stated this week that you know hazing is wrong we know that same with sexual harassment and racism these are old bugaboos in our society um It doesn't matter how common it was, it's not right and it's not even legal.

I will say, having said that, of course, and certainly very aware of hockey culture, and I've played with these guys for 15, 20 years on Tuesday nights at Yost.

I've heard a lot of the stories and so on.

Hazing was very common, as Seth got to a bit yesterday.

Hazing has been endemic to hockey culture, I think, more than any other sport that I can think of.

It started with the NHL.

What do you make of it stopping the 2001 players, you know, up to 2001 bakes?

Your reaction to what you saw from the Wolverines against Western last week?

Well, same as your reaction, basically.

Uh, if they were improved in any aspect of, of the game, it's hard to imagine what exactly it was.

Defense, it hesitated on the grand scale pretty well, 12 points, all field goals.

But man, that third quarter eat-up-the-clock, uh, drive was impressive from, uh, Western Michigan.

It's just what you wanna be able to do, and that's a Mac team doing that to Michigan in, you know, 16th-ranked Michigan in Michigan's house.

That was, uh, that even, you know, basically deflates any, uh, confidence in the defense based on that.

[laughs]

for the first year Michigan coach, other than Sharone Moore, it seems, it just has been an issue.

An issue as in a loss.

So I can certainly speak to what Bo experienced on that one, and Harbaugh did not.

What happens with outsiders, and now Whittingham is an outsider until, I guess, tomorrow, is that everyone goes in knowing about the Michigan-Ohio State game.

We can talk about that in a second as well.

And that's always the red-letter game.

That's how Bo saw it.

Part one, have you heard anything about the new president and the search for an AD now that we have a new president? And then your thoughts on the eligibility rule being challenged by Roddy Gale, you know, challenging the Big Ten's recent rule.

Ow!

Uh, on top of that, look, I mean, nobody knows who's in charge.

Th- I mean, this rolls, you know, back and forth, you know, probably ping-pong again, as you say, all, all next week.

Uh, but the, the bigger point is no one's in charge.

The NCAA loses every court case it's in these days, basically.

Um, and they've also basically quit trying to be the enforcement in any way, real way.

So you're down to Sankey and Petitti.

If it isn't broken, break it, right, Dave Brandon?

Everybody else, Ohio State, Oregon, Georgia, Notre Dame, Texas, Texas A&M, Mississippi, Oklahoma, all the top 10 teams all return their quarterbacks.

Well, exactly.

And that's not an accident.

And in the ongoing debate in Ann Arbor about Underwood versus Carr, one thing, man, I'm going to quote Devin Gardner again.

Nobody knows how big that stage is until you're on it.

Then it's too late.

Underwood's season last year was underwhelming, no pun intended there.

Why would you think he would wanna stay? Why would you think that if he stayed even through, like, a two weeks notice kind of window, that he would do anything other than going through the motions? You just treated his brother like crap.

They just po- pepper like a ton of questions and a ton of topics at you?

That's exactly what they do.

Um, they, I sat down for, I think, three hours, uh, in, in New York.

And Ig was on before me and Christine Brennan on after me, so you see your friends come and go.

Um, but, uh, that's exactly how they do it.

And I mean, the list of topics is, you know, 20 pages long.

So I was...

Mm-hmm.

I just don't know if this is a, you know, you're gonna spend this money fighting these legal battles, and I don't know if it's one that they can win.

Look, I mean, their success rate in courts the last, since O'Bannon, really, uh, ain't been so great, has it? Um, and again, we've said this before, right and left right now does not agree a whole lot.

Does not agr- does not agree on a whole lot.

Judges, uh, quite a spectrum there of, you know, backgrounds and whatnot.

Everyone agrees on one thing.

You cannot take enough whacks at the pinata that is the NCAA.

Um, so everyone seems to love doing that, and with good reason.

Has he been cast yet? Well.

... should get as big a say or as big a piece of the pie as they could possibly get, will be their argument.

Well, that's the whole job creator's argument too, isn't it? So [clears throat] basically what I say in my class, Sam, applies here.

Sports do not exist in a vacuum.

Almost everything we're talking about is playing on the bigger stage as well.

The 1%, should the billionaires get taxed or not? Should the Dodgers get taxed or not, basically.

Um, and all that.

And, uh, you know, is it the laborer? Is it the job creator? You know, who has the most value here? And, and, and in some ways it's kind of a dumb argument.

That would kinda make them a bit immune to their stupidity, the consequences of their, their stupidity.

Is, is this on par with Kirk Gibson going to the Dodgers when he went?

It's worse for the Tigers.

Uh, Kirk Gibson, God bless him, uh, in his prime as you point out, um, in fact that whole team of course, man, that team should've been held, kept together.

That's the '84, '87 Tigers team as we talked about.

Uh, Lance Parrish to the Pirates, Kirk Gibson to LA, the whole thing started scattering.

Jack Morris, uh, what Toronto and um, Minnesota.

Uh, it just, just heartbreaking to watch that team scatter, especially when they were raised together from Evansville on up.

I'm curious what you think.

Mm

...

Kyle Whittingham has deputized his people to do apparently.

Um, and, and look, I mean, you know and I know wh- wherever there are issues in the last few years, it was never the athletes.

The athletes, man, and Bruce Marty already said it.

The best ambassadors for Michigan athletics are Michigan's athletes.

Those are profoundly good guys.

We wanna do great things," Bakes.

But if it makes them think, uh, you know, like, like they should just make a run and not maximize the commodity that is Tarik Skubal, then is, is winning right now counterproductive?

Well, look, winning is never counterproductive, it just depends on how stupid you are.

[laughs] Um, and by the way, before the break you said we're gonna switch gears afterwards.

Now you are famous and you're very good at throwing me all kinds of unexpected curve balls.

It keeps me hopping of course.

Your, your topics, you save them all week long, could come from anywhere.

After the endless saga of the Michigan athletic department, I was thinking to myself, you know what? I got no idea what Sam's got in his bag of tricks right now, and I don't care, I'm game.

Follow and listen on your favorite platform.

[chuckles]

Uh, and your voice, and your cracking voice, uh, suggests so.

But man, oh man, uh, like we said before, last week before it all came down, um, you can have a healthy debate over, you know, Ward's pros and cons.

And as we said last week, I can make a very strong case for him.

Uh, titles, uh, national and Big Ten, and don't forget, set a record in 2023 for a 13 in one season, one academic year, which, uh, no one had done before.

Um, and the academics, um, we talked about that too, that no one else talks about.

And you know why no one else talks about it, Sam? If the national media ever talked about Michigan's great academics, they'd have to talk about everyone else's crappy academics, and they ain't gonna do it.

[laughs]

[laughs]

[laughs] There's a little levity we all need.

[laughs] People, assure me when I tell you, uh, you can be assured when I tell you this is live radio.

But anyway, um, look, the debate over Ward's future, et cetera, you guys have made a very strong case for him.

A record number of titles.

I can go back to twenty twenty-two, twenty-three, thirteen Big Ten titles.

That is still the Big Ten record.

But there's a difference between that and, and undermining, and it, it just feels like they're doing the latter and not the former.

But back to kind of what we talked about before, if you're gonna give the ch- g- give the guy a chance to, uh, coach the team, uh, credibly and recruit credibly, there had to be more than just a one-year deal in front of him and his assistants, and it, that's what's transpired.

Well, exactly.

And look, h- here's a contrast.

I would call that very decisive leadership.

Huh.

[laughs] So just crazy enough to work sometimes.

Um, you and I talked about it Friday morning, [clears throat] that exact topic, and we both said that, look, you, there, there's no...

Mm-hmm.

[laughs]

But I, I think Ira knows.

You, you guys, you guys are in most of those books.

But, uh, that was the first one you guys were in, um, Fourth and Long.

Uh, Pat Fitzgerald as coach of Northwestern, I give him an A++.

I mean, just did a phenomenal job.

High graduation rate, 90-something.

Right.

... being able to retain its president?

Well, uh, again, this is one of the few points on which you and I tend to disagree.

Um, not that I give anybody an A+ in this world, but, uh, I like him a lot more than you like him.

Uh, Tom Izzo, this was Tom Izzo, buddy.

Uh, it was his donors, his power, his decision to fight this and to fight to get Guskiewicz back.

Uh, Guskiewicz, as it was said, has been the best president at Michigan State during, uh, Izzo's time, which is 30 years, uh, as head coach.

Now, I would, I would make the argument [laughs] much like Michigan's presidents, that's a slow race.

Just gotta find a g- a great writer to replace you, but that's not easy to find.

And, and then, uh, if it, I- if, if things don't look like he's the long-term solution in a year, then you do a, a national search then." Which do you think is the best way to go?

Uh, this is a, these are shades of gray.

And you and I have talked about this before, um, about whenever you hire...

When they hired Sherrone Moore, when they hired Juwan Howard, when they hired Rich Rodriguez, when they hired, uh, uh, Brady Hoke.

Uh, every coaching hire is a risk of one sort or the other.

There's no, there's no slam dunk.

There's no, "This is obvious." Uh, people forget Rich Rodriguez turned down Alabama, and a Nick Saban was their second coach.

That doesn't lock you into Mike Boynton long term, but it gives you the best chance to retain the roster, evaluate him over the year, and evaluate the field over the next year as well, and then go hire your coach after that, if it's not Mike Boynton.