by Mitch Albom | Feb 16, 2020 | Comment, Detroit Free Press, Sports
Dear Coach Mel Tucker: Consider this a welcome letter. Or a “welcome back” letter, because you were at Michigan State once before, in the late ’90s. Your duties back then, as a graduate assistant on the football team, you told me, included shoveling...
by Mitch Albom | Nov 17, 2019 | Detroit Free Press, Sports
Just before the final snap of what he called “the state championship,” Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh pulled aside his quarterback, Shea Patterson, and said, “This year, after you kneel down, keep the ball. Don’t throw it up in the air.” “I’ve got...
by Mitch Albom | Nov 3, 2019 | Comment, Detroit Free Press, Sports
There were two days in Juwan Howard’s life that he chose Michigan. Both ended in tears. The first was almost exactly 29 years ago, when he rose and got dressed in his grandmother’s place on the south side of Chicago. She told him to wear something nice,...
by Mitch Albom | Oct 6, 2019 | Comment, Detroit Free Press, Sports
One of the great things college teaches us is that it’s not always simple. Answers can be complex and nuanced. When it comes to sharing the wealth in college sports, it’s not that simple either. California passed a “fair pay to play” law last...
by Mitch Albom | Sep 22, 2019 | Comment, Detroit Free Press, Sports
That wasn’t a football game. That was Waterloo. Forget national playoffs, forget challenging the elite programs, forget even moving the bar higher than last season. The Michigan Wolverines on Saturday looked as bad as they’ve looked since Jim Harbaugh...
by Mitch Albom | Aug 18, 2019 | Comment, Detroit Free Press, Sports
It’s not that Michigan fans WANT to hate Ohio State. It’s that Ohio State keeps providing so many good reasons. Forget about the hiring of Urban Meyer as football coach, or the seven straight times he beat the Wolverines, or the fact that when he retired, the Buckeyes...
by Mitch Albom | May 23, 2019 | Detroit Free Press, Sports
People make this mistake about the Fab Five. They were not all the same guy. Not even close. Chris Webber and Jalen Rose, inseparable back then, were, personality wise, miles apart. Jimmy King and Ray Jackson were both from Texas, but the sameness ended there. And...
by Mitch Albom | May 14, 2019 | Detroit Free Press, Sports
A dream is a wish your heart makes. That’s how the old Disney song goes. So let’s take the high road and say the dream of coaching an NBA team was just too strong a wish for John Beilein’s heart to turn down. Better to think that. Better to think Beilein, at age 66,...
by Mitch Albom | Apr 8, 2019 | Detroit Free Press, Sports
They came for a trophy. They went home with a story. It’s a good story, sure, with choked-back tears and credit-where-credit-is-due hosannas. But a story is words and a trophy is solid. And at some point, the Spartans’ Tom Izzo needs to again lift something solid over...
by Mitch Albom | Apr 5, 2019 | Detroit Free Press, Sports
Twenty eight years ago, Tom Izzo hung up the phone, sat down, and cried. He had just been informed that a high school star named Chris Webber, whom he had been recruiting for years, had chosen archrival Michigan instead. Izzo wasn’t even the head coach at Michigan...
