The "New York Times" bestseller about the state of college football: Why we love the game, what is at risk, and the fight to save it--"A fascinating saga" ("Booklist").
In search of the sport's old ideals amid the roaring flood of hypocrisy and greed, bestselling author John U. Bacon embedded himself in four college football programs--Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan, and Northwestern--and captured the oldest, biggest, most storied league, the Big Ten, at its tipping point. He sat in as coaches dissected game film, he ate dinner at training tables, and he listened in locker rooms. He talked with tailgating fans and college presidents, and he spent months in the company of the gifted young athletes who play the game.
"Fourth and Long" reveals intimate scenes behind closed doors, from a team's angry face-off with their athletic director to a defensive lineman acing his master's exams in theoretical math. It captures the private moment when coach Urban Meyer earned the devotion of Ohio State's Buckeyes on their way to a perfect season. It shows Michigan's athletic department endangering the very traditions that distinguish the college game from all others. And it re-creates the euphoria of the Northwestern Wildcats winning their first bowl game in decades. Most unforgettably, "Fourth and Long" finds what the national media missed in the ugly aftermath of Penn State's tragic scandal: the unheralded story of players who joined forces with Coach Bill O'Brien to save the university's treasured program--and with it, a piece of the game's soul.
This is the work of a writer in love with an old game--a game he sees at the precipice. Bacon's deep knowledge of sports history and his sensitivity to the tribal subcultures of the college game power this elegy to a beloved and endangered American institution.

There are very few coaches held higher esteem than Bo Schembechler. As coach of the University of Michigan football team, he won 13 Big Ten titles and finished as the winningest coach in their storied history. But beyond the wins and losses, Bo is best remembered for the remarkable impact he had on his players and fans alike. In BO'S LASTING LESSONS, the coach draws on his years of experience, using first-person anecdotes to deliver timeless lessons on leadership, motivation and responsibility. His distinctive gruff voice leaps from the page. With pithy language, Bo explains that true leadership requires the compassion to actively listen to your people, and then to have the courage to do what is right every time. A big believer in peer pressure and in always making his players accountable for their actions, Schembechler has coached athletes who went on to become professional football players, doctors, lawyers and CEOs.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER The riveting (National Post) tick-tock account of the largest manmade explosion in history prior to the atomic bomb, and the equally astonishing tales of survival and heroism that emerged from the ashes "Enthralling. ... Gripping. ... A captivating and emotionally investing journey." --Pittsburgh Post-Gazette After steaming out of New York City on December 1, 1917, laden with a staggering three thousand tons of TNT and other explosives, the munitions ship Mont-Blanc fought its way up the Atlantic coast, through waters prowled by enemy U-boats. As it approached the lively port city of Halifax, Mont-Blanc's deadly cargo erupted with the force of 2.9 kilotons of TNT--the most powerful explosion ever visited on a human population, save for HIroshima and Nagasaki. Mont-Blanc was vaporized in one fifteenth of a second; a shockwave leveled the surrounding city. Next came a thirty-five-foot tsunami. Most astounding of all, however, were the incredible tales of survival and heroism that soon emerged from the rubble. This is the unforgettable story told in John U. Bacon's The Great Halifax Explosion: a ticktock account of fateful decisions that led to doom, the human faces of the blast's 11,000 casualties, and the equally moving individual stories of those who lived and selflessly threw themselves into urgent rescue work that saved thousands. The shocking scale of the disaster stunned the world, dominating global headlines even amid the calamity of the First World War. Hours after the blast, Boston sent trains and ships filled with doctors, medicine, and money. The explosion would revolutionize pediatric medicine; transform U.S.-Canadian relations; and provide physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who studied the Halifax explosion closely when developing the atomic bomb, with history's only real-world case study demonstrating the lethal power of a weapon of mass destruction. Mesmerizing and inspiring, Bacon's deeply-researched narrative brings to life the tragedy, bravery, and surprising afterlife of one of the most dramatic events of modern times.

"Like the Moneyball of college football, Three and Out blows the lid off one of the sports world's most perplexing mysteries."--Entertainment Weekly "Three and Out" tells the story of how college football's most influential coach, Rich Rodriguez, took over the nation's most successful program, only to produce three of the worst seasons in the University of Michigan's celebrated history. Coach Rich Rodriguez granted author and journalist John U. Bacon unrestricted access to the Michigan Wolverines' program. Bacon saw it all, from the meals and the meetings, to the practices and the games, to the sidelines and the locker rooms. Nothing and no one was off-limits. John U. Bacon's "Three and Out" is the definitive account of a football marriage seemingly made in heaven that broke up after just three years, and exposes the best and the worst of college football.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER From the "poet laureate of Michigan football," a riveting inside chronicle of the Jim Harbaugh era, and "an unprecedented look at the inner workings" (Sporting News) of a big-time college football program John U. Bacon received rare access to Head Coach Jim Harbaugh's University of Michigan football team: coaches, players, and staffers, in closed-door meetings, locker rooms, meals, and classes. Overtime captures this storied program at the crossroads, as the sport's winningest team battles to reclaim its former glory. But what if the price of success today comes at the cost of your soul? Do you pay it, or compete without compromising? In the spirit of HBO's Hardknocks, Overtime delivers a deeply reported human portrait that follows the Wolverine coaches, players, and staffers. Above all, this is a human story. In Overtime we not only discover what these public figures are like behind the scenes, we learn what the experience means to them as they go through it - the trials, the triumphs, and the unexpected answers to a central question: Is it worth it? From the "poet laureate of Michigan football" (according to New York Times's Joe Drape), and one of the keenest observers of college football, Overtime offers a window into a legendary program and the sport itself that only John U. Bacon could deliver.

"Blue Ice" relates the tale of the University of Michigan's hockey program--from its fight to become a varsity sport in the 1920s to its 1996 and 1998 NCAA national championships.

This history of the hockey program profiles the personalities who shaped the program--athletic directors, coaches, and players. From Fielding Yost, who made the decision to build the team a rink with artificial ice before the Depression (which ensured hockey would be played during those lean years), to coaches Joseph Barss, who survived World War I and the ghastly Halifax explosion before becoming the program's first coach, to Red Berenson, who struggled to return his alma mater's hockey team to prominence in the 1980s and 1990s. Players from Eddie Kahn, who scored Michigan's first goal in 1923, to Brendan Morrison, who upon winning the 1996 national championship with his goal said, "This is for all the Michigan] guys who never had a chance to win it."

"Blue Ice" also explores the players' exotic backgrounds, from Calumet in the Upper Peninsula to Minnesota's Iron Range to Regina, Saskatchewan; how coach Vic Heygliger launched the NCAA tournament at the glamorous Broadmoor Hotel; and how commissioner Bill Beagan transformed the country's premier hockey conference.

In "Blue Ice," fans of hockey will learn the stories behind the curse of the Boston University Terriers, the hockey team's use of the winged helmet, and the unlikely success of Ann Arbor's home-grown talent.

Unlike other sports at the collegiate level, the hockey players at Michigan haven't been motivated by fame or fortune; rather, they came to Michigan get an education and to play the game they loved.

John U. Bacon has won numerous national writing awards and now freelances for "Sports Illustrated, ""Time, ""ESPN Magazine, "and the "New York Times," among others.