The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
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baugh that followed, Flannelly still wasn't convinced it would be enough. "I'm still thinking, there's still no way this is going to happen," he ad- mits. "But Ghindy says, 'Keep it up! Keep it up! Keep it up! You're doing a great job, and it's working!' "So, I kept it up. We all did!" In fact, Ghindia was right: It was working. "I was aware of all the calls com- ing in," Sarah Harbaugh told me. "It was really neat — neat to see a whole group of people coming to- gether and really pushing for him. It was a little overwhelming in a sense, but that made it that much harder to say no — not that there was ever a question." "Everyone's calling Jim," Anson says. "Ghindy would call me every day, sometimes 20 times. And it was always, 'Okay, who's next? Okay, what's next?' "Man, Ghindia was all over this thing! "'Who's next?!'" ❏ Sitting Down With Author John Bacon A University of Michigan grad in 1986 (with a master's in education in 1994), John Bacon has authored or co-authored six books on sports and business, including Bo's Lasting Lessons in 2007, which shares the leadership approach of Bo Schembechler, Three And Out in 2011 chronicling the Rich Rodriguez tenure at U-M, and Fourth And Long in 2013, which follows Michigan, Northwestern, Penn State and Ohio State. His new book, Endzone, takes fans inside the tumultuous four-year run of David Brandon as athletic director at Michigan, the dismissal of Brandon and head coach Brady Hoke, and the skillful courtship of Jim Harbaugh to return to his alma mater. The Wolverine: What was the genesis for writing Endzone? Bacon: "This was the idea of Ben Smith, an editor at Public Affairs. He asked my agent last October if I planned to write a book about Michigan football. "At this point, Michigan was 2-4, and things are not going terribly well, and I was thinking, not only would I not want to write that book, I wouldn't want to read that book, and I didn't think anyone else would either. "He said, 'No, no, no, the off-field stuff you're already writing about for The Wall Street Journal. The attendance, the finances.' And I thought that could be a book. "It took me a month to write a proposal and by the time I finished, David Brandon was already gone, Brady Hoke looked to be headed that way and the rumors of Jim Harbaugh seemed to be more real than NFL reporters thought. At that point, we thought, this could be a hell of a book." The Wolverine: The Shane Morris concussion saga ended up being the beginning of the end for Hoke, but according to your book, he was put in a really bad spot. What happened? Bacon: "That was a Public Relations 101 mistake and deeply unfair to Brady Hoke. He had his ups and downs as Michigan's head coach, but I've never heard