For next month’s edition of GoBlueWolverine I interview Barb Cossman, director of publications over at the U-M athletic department.   She oversees the production of U-M athletic department materials like game programs and media guides and  U-M has received many national awards for her work.  (I don’t believe the awards for this past school year are out yet but they’ll certainly win something for the 2011 Notre Dame program that included the Moeller headset audio and some original content from John Kryk and yrs truly).  Anyway…in our interview we discussed some recent history of programs & media guides, trends and talk a bit about the future.   Near the end of the interview I asked this: At the beginning of the last century many of the programs were more like artwork—have you considered have original artwork on programs? Cossman: A lot of the older programs had original artwork and yes, we have thought about having original artwork on the programs.  We’re definitely open to ideas.  I’ve had people email me with art samples, offering to design covers. You probably know where I stand on this.      Some of my favorite programs over the years were hand drawn: I think the photos of players with suits and ties are nice for their respective families, but I think there’s a big segment of the fanbase…

Via media relations.  Really like Maloney, wish him the best: Baseball Coach Rich Maloney Departing – Michigan Athletics Will Conduct a National Search ANN ARBOR – Director of Athletics Dave Brandon announced Tuesday (May 22) that the University of Michigan Athletic Department and baseball coach Rich Maloney have mutually agreed to not extend his contract, which ends June 30, 2012. Maloney finished his 10th season as head coach this past weekend.

Congratulations to my pals at Stunt3 Multimedia and to John U. Bacon.  The 2012 Michigan Emmy nominations were released this week and Fox Sports Detroit received the nod in the ‘Sports – One time Special’ category for Bacon’s Blue Ice: The Story of Michigan Hockey.  (P.S. how can a hockey film lose in a category that includes the phrase ‘one time’?) In the Best Historical Documentary category, Stunt3’s Black and Blue The Story of Gerald Ford, Willis Ward and the 1934 Michigan-Georgia Tech Game” got the nom.  Duh.  Black and Blue will be screened again in Ann Arbor on Tuesday, May 22, at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.   This is the director’s cut of the film, and contains new footage and additional materials (including incredible pics of Ward and Ford in the White House) they received since the initial launch. As an aside, Bacon’s wonderful book and Stunt3’s research for their doc couldn’t have been done or certainly done to the degree of the finished product without the U-M Bentley Historical Library.  So give the Bentley an assist. The awards will be presented on June 16 at Motor City Casino, so you can watch these guys take home the hardware.

Last month during the band-is-not-going-to-Dallas crisis, I mentioned that there was a precedent (1910, for example) for Michigan fans passing the hat to help send the marching band on road trips.   I knew that wasn’t the only case, and once again a great item has appeared on eBay to illustrate that piece of history.   Here’s a small card that someone saved in a scrapbook, a memento from an effort to help get the MMB to the critical game against Cornell in 1911: The effort was led by the students, spurred on by the Daily, and was successful in raising the funds for the band trip.  I wrote about the 1911 season in last year’s edition of Brian Cook’s Hail to the Victors and mentioned that apparently everyone wasn’t pleased with the repeated “begging” to help the band, and one Daily reader suggested a fee-based approach: · It was typical in those days to pass the hat amongst the student body and alums to gather up money to send the band to a long road trip. A letter from “One-Opposed-to –Begging” offered a different tact: simply charge a dime admission to the Friday pep rally which would cover the expenses for the trip to Cornell. The band traveled but didn’t help spur on Michigan’s offense.  Here’s the complete rundown of Cornell…