books

As you might have heard, there is a new John U. Bacon Michigan book today. This one's full title: OVERTIME: Jim Harbaugh and the Michigan Wolverines at the Crossroads of College Football. If you want it, you can start at Bacon's website, or you can come down to Hill Auditorium tonight for the event hosted by Literati, ask your questions to the man himself, and get a signed version.

FULL DISCLOSURE: Bacon's publisher is advertising this book on this here site, and I make my living by selling the advertising on this site. They're not paying me to write a review, and I had most of this review written before they offered. I think if you compare this review to Brandon's Lasting Lessons, you'll be able to gauge how much bias crept in. Anyway, you're a Michigan fan and you read this site, so the rest of this is superfluous: you've known you're going to start it tonight since you heard about it.

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Revelations

I heard about it early. I was trying to pitch Bacon on writing an article for Hail to the Victors 2018 called “Recruiting Harbaugh,” paralleling Michigan’s pursuit of the young quarterback in 1981-‘82 with that of its savior head coach in 2014—”You know, like Godfather II.” Bacon kindly explained his publisher had other ideas for a Harbaugh story contrasting the rise of the Comeback Kid with the administration of the family operation he rescued.

As with previous books, Bacon spent a year embedded in the program, catching stories you wouldn't believe, and a lot more you suspected. Coming off the Brandon one, I can see why reviewers and excerptionists would prefer to focus on the few compact tales of cartoonish villainy and incompetence. A barrage of "I can't believe he actually…" stories were a feature of Endzone because they were a feature of the man in charge of things. In Overtime, the ol' rogues gallery provides enough to keep things spicy and tickle some confirmation biases, but focusing on the controversies is antithetical to the story being told. My friends will be happy to know the Michigan Man™ stuff isn’t as belabored as the tweets make it seem.

[After the JUMP: A sequel to someone’s lasting lessons]

Being a Michigan fan means simultaneously having to deal with two traits that rarely exist in combination: A curious mind that can’t just be satisfied with the simple explanations it wants to hear, and a football mind that can’t just be satisfied with a mere 10 Saturdays per year that end with a football win. Fortunately this cursed population also produces chroniclers of our shared obsession that no other sports fanbase could dream of. John U. Bacon is an author from the shrinking top echelon of authors. He writes books about Michigan football. He has another.

This excerpt is derived from Chapter 28, “Bad Blood,” and Chapter 29, “Calvary’s Coming,” in John U. Bacon’s latest book, OVERTIME: Jim Harbaugh and the Michigan Wolverines at the Crossroads of College Football, which comes out September 3, the same day he will appear at Hill Auditorium at 7 p.m. to give a talk, answer question, and sign books. He'll also be joining us this Friday at the Bo Store/MGoRadio to talk about his latest Michigan novel. It covers the Michigan State game and its immediate aftermath. Every other excerpting outlet asked for this section too, but as it happens Bacon is one of us.

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[After THE JUMP]

[Ed-Seth: If you like Harbaugh stories and want to support #ChadTough, read on.

Take This Job & Love It! is a collection of Jim Harbaugh yarns from his friends, family, coaches, teammates, and former players. A small sample of contributors: Shemy Schembechler, Jon Falk, Todd Anson, Jamie Morris, Jerry Hanlon, Bump Elliott, Mike Ditka, and Tappan Junior High coach/Phys Ed teacher Rob Lillie. The book is only available in Michigan stores or online.

The author Rich Wolfe is an old friend of Jack Harbaugh, and he’s written 50 other quasi-biographies like this, where he goes around to his subject’s friends and prints their stories. One is on Tom Brady, before that first Super Bowl.

For this one he called me with an idea: post an excerpt on the blog, and if anyone bought the book from that we’d donate 100% of the proceeds to #ChadTough. So here’s a few bits from a long section titled “A Roomie With a View” by former Michigan player and Harbaugh roommate Jerry Quaerna. If you’d like more, head to www.chadtoughharbaughbook.com. Or you can find it in some stores in Michigan but it’ll be more expensive that way.]

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Excerpts from ‘A Roomie With a View’

By Jerry Quaerna (at right)

1. YOUR DADROCK IS UNACCEPTABLE

I was recruited to play football at Michigan. When I went there, Jim was my roommate. Jim and I were paired up as freshmen. We didn’t know each other. Then we lived together as fifth-year seniors. I got to see Jim before he was a big star and after he was big time. I had a long trip over from Wisconsin. I got unpacked, and I was sleeping on my bed in the dorm when Jim showed up with Jim Minick. He grew up with Minick in Ann Arbor. Minick spent 26 years in the Marines and is now Jim’s right-hand man on his Michigan staff.

I woke up and introduced myself to these guys. What was the first thing Jim did? This was back in the day. This was ’82. We had LPs. I was into music, and I had about 20 LPs and my turntable. Those were going to go out the window in three or four years, but I had a nice collection of vinyl there.

After Jim shook my hand, he went straight to my vinyl collection, and he critiqued it. I’m not kidding you. I had good stuff. I had the Doors, I had Jimi Hendrix. I had plenty of Beatles. I’m a big Beatles fan. Jethro Tull. I had Hot Rocks from the Stones. I loved that album. I had Black Sabbath. I had some great independent records. I had some Priest.

Jim is going through my records, and he’s saying, “Yep, no, yep, no. Doors, no. Beatles, nope. Jethro Tull, no.” When he’s done critiquing my collection, he goes, “You don’t have any Who.”

[Hit THE JUMP for the rest of this and some other stories, or hit THE LINK to get them all]