• Pastor Marcus Sheds Light | WTKA audio

    Marcus went off this morning on WTKA 1050AM.  Here’s the 2nd segment of his call this morning, holy moly: [display_podcast] Woooo!  Take That! You can catch all the WTKA podcasts here, including the first segment where Ray pretty much endorses my 3 point plan: 1. Calm down & maintain your dignity. 2. Support the team Saturday 3. Retain Jug & let’s talk Monday

  • BTN to air Big Ten Coaching Icons

    It’s official now. The Big Ten Network will continue its Icons series this fall, this time looking at the iconic coaches in the league.  It’s not a countdown this time, rather, they just selected a legend from each school: The 12-episode series will stretch into the winter, and profile one coach from every Big Ten school, including Illinois’ Lou Henson, Iowa’s Dan Gable, Indiana’s Bob Knight, Michigan’s Bo Schembechler, Michigan State’s Jud Heathcote, Minnesota’s Herb Brooks, Nebraska’s Tom Osborne, Northwestern’s Kelly Amonte-Hiller, Ohio State’s Woody Hayes, Penn State’s Joe Paterno, Purdue’s Gene Keady and Wisconsin’s Barry Alvarez. I did get interviewed for the Bo piece so my goofy mug might be in there.   (And maybe in Woody? That would be a treat.) As far as the other selections, Lou Henson is a bit of a surprise.  I guess I would have went with Bob Zuppke but ok. I’ve got a big issue with the Jud Heathcote choice, however.   Without getting too far into this, I grew up in East Lansing watching Jud and I went to his hoops camp and I have nice memories of the man.  And I get that the show can highlight the 1979 title and his grooming of Izzo & it will make for a quality show.  But brother, Jud would be pretty far down on…

  • Inside Big Ten Icons

    I appreciate all the kind words (and hair jokes) for the appearance on the Tom Harmon Big Ten Icons piece that has been running this week.  A few folks have fired over questions about the episode and I’d thought I’d summarize those here.   I addressed some of this and more with Sam and Ira on Feb 3 so check that out as well. I was contacted by the producer about a month ago.  They were pulling together the episode and felt they needed more “voices” to add to the documentary.   Keep in mind most of the interviews/comments about Harmon and the other pieces were collected a while ago.  Angelique, for instance, was interviewed during the Big Ten basketball tournament last year—they shot her in an old gym in Indianapolis.   My read is that they had a lot about how great/dynamic Harmon was, but not a lot of detail in the Harmon story.  So—the producer asked around for names & John Lofy of Michigan Today and the great John U. Bacon suggested they contact me.   The BTN folks also contacted Greg Kinney, the curator at The Bentley Library. They interviewed Kinney and I on January 25th at the stadium on the east side.  (Kinney went before me and he was gone before I arrived).  I’m seated in the first row of…