The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/418536
INSIDE MICHIGAN ATHLETICS Grant scored the game-winning goal at 1:30 of the third period to help the Wolverines defeat Dartmouth 8-4 in the 1948 championship game. Michigan was 80-15-4 (.812 winning percentage) in Grant's four seasons with the Wolverines. He scored 63 goals and added 83 assists for 146 points. Grant graduated from Michigan with a B.B.A from Michigan's Business School in 1950 and worked for General Motors until his retirement in 1987. He was inducted into the United States Hockey Hall of Fame in 1994. On the football side, Richard D. (Dick) Farrer, 87, died Aug. 30 in Tucson, Ariz., of natural causes. Mr. Farrer, a center, lettered for three years (1948-50) and was a member of the Wolverines' 1948 national championship squad coached by Bennie Oosterbaan. Mr. Farrer received an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., in 1946 and played football in his first year until he suffered a significant head injury. He spent more than four weeks in Bethesda Naval hospital, receiving an honorable discharge for medical reasons the following spring after he returned to the Academy. He then played for Michigan until he graduated and went on to Balliol College in Oxford, England, where he played rugby for one season. Farrer was a securities analyst for Fidelity Investments and later moved with his family to California, where he was a venture capitalist before he retired in Tucson, Ariz. Former Michigan punter Don Bracken, who averaged 40.8 yards per punt during his years at U-M — still fourth best in U-M history — died Nov. 5 of a serious staph infection that had hospitalized him in Billings, Mont. Bracken is best known for his record 73-yard punt in a 23-6 victory over Washington in the 1980 Rose Bowl win over Washington. Bracken, an all-state defensive end and punter for Thermopolis (Wyo.) High School, punted for eight years in the NFL. He kicked 368 times during his tenure in Green Bay, second-most in Packers franchise history behind David Beverly's 495. His 39.7-yard gross average ranked 16th among Packers punters who had at least 100 attempts. He once said Green Bay tried to replace him 28 times during his tenure, but he always found a way to keep his job. Undrafted out of Michigan, Bracken did not play in 1984 after remaining unsigned following tryouts with the USFL's Michigan Panthers and the NFL's Kansas City Chiefs and Houston Oilers. He signed with the Packers in 1985 and averaged 40.5 yards per punt in seven games that season. "The thing about Bracken that has always impressed me is that he had had a challenge every year and he's reacted to it very well," former Packers special teams coach Howard Tippett told a Los Angeles newspaper after Bracken joined him in Los Angeles in 1992. "He's a competitor." The Packers cut Bracken after the 1990 season. He sat out a year and then punted for two seasons with the Rams, posting his best season in 1992 when he averaged 41.1 yards per punt. A memorial scholarship has been set up in Bracken's name for a Thermopolis player: Don Bracken Memorial Football Scholarship, Central Bank & Trust, 435 Arapahoe, Thermopolis, WY 82443.