For many of the legendary Michigan coaches and players, life after football has been pretty good. Some like Dan Dierdorf, Tom Harmon and Desmond Howard have ventured into the broadcast media, many others like Fielding Yost and Jamie Morris filled other roles within the athletic department. Of course Gerald Ford ended up in the White House. Many former M Men wrote books about or related to their craft. Bo Schembechler hooked up with Mitch Albom and John Bacon to publish bestsellers. This installment of eBay watch takes a quick look at a few of the books out there: Heisman Winner Tom Harmon: Harmon contributed to a few books but the one most widely seen on eBay is titled “Tom Harmon and the Great Gridiron Plot”. I assume he had some hand in the book other than lending his name, but the official author is Jay Bender. At any given time there are a half dozen of these books for auction so I assume it was pretty popular. I can’t find a full abstract or review on the book but I do see it was targeted for kids and I found this item description: STORY OF TOM HARMON AND THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN TEAM WHO FIND THEMSELVES HAVING TO WIN THE CONFERENCE CHAMPIONSHIP OR THEIR COACH WILL BE DISMISSED Shocking stuff…
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1969 Michigan-Vanderbilt Stub, Bo’s First Game
An interesting item popped up on eBay in the past week. It’s a torn ticket stub from the 1969 Michigan-Vanderbilt game held on September 20, 1969. Normally a non-conference game against Vanderbilt wouldn’t spark much intrigue but this one is special: it was Bo Schembechler’s first game as head coach. You don’t see a lot of 1960s era Michigan items up on eBay. Michigan football was a bit down, folks didn’t hold onto stuff back then and certainly, fans didn’t realize quite yet that they had a legend standing on the sideline. But some cool items have survived like the Vandy stub and memorabilia like this vintage ’69 pocket schedule with a great photo of young general Bo: As far as the game that day, Bo’s not-so-mellow men came out firing as the unranked Wolverines put a 42-14 beat down on the Commodores in front of 70,000 curious fans. The game was the first played on the artificial turf that new AD Don Canham used to carpet the gridiron, but I suspect that most fans wanted to get a good look at this guy “Bo”. Apparently, they saw enough as only 49,000 showed up the following week against Washington. The holder of this ticket stub didn’t get the best view of Bo as he was seated in row 88 on…
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Coach Mac Wants his Mojo Back
On November 20 last year I wrote this post on the auction of a 1980 Big Ten Championship (and ’81 Rose Bowl) ring. This beauty eventually sold for a cool $1,990. The ring bears the name “McCartney” and thus it was speculated that this could be the property of former Michigan assistant coach Bill McCartney. This suggestion was dismissed as the seller pointed out that this was merely a salesman’s sample and we all moved on with our happy lives. Until last night. Turns out McCartney’s grandson TC McCartney is a freshman quarterback for Coach Miles [recruitniks: Yes, TC considered Michigan so take a cold shower]. After returning from the BCS Championship in New Orleans, Coach Mac’s better half was looking for some LSU Championship news and found MVictors (naturally). More specifically, she found the story on the ring and it prompted her to give us an excellent saga along with a plea: We just got back from watching our grandson’s team, LSU win the National Championship. I was browsing about looking for anything National Championship or LSU when I came upon this site. Oh my goodness, my husband’s 1980 Rose Bowl ring! How in the world did it get there? When one of our son’s was in high school his Dad let him wear the ring to impress somebody…
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eBay Watch: Terrelle Pryor’s Sweatband just $349.99
Stumbled upon this on SI.com’s Fan Nation, looks like a wristband worn and signed by your hero Terrelle Pryor is being sold on eBay right now for a cool $349.99. (Maybe the seller will use those funds for a new camera). According to the seller, Ohio State is out of the running for TP….it’s down to Oregon and Michigan. Great! The auction reads: Up for bid in this auction is a Game Used Wristband signed by Terrelle Pryor the #1 ranked high school football player and #10 ranked basketball player in the country. Pryor also put “9/14/07” on the wristband whch is the date of the game he used it in. Terrelle plays for the Jeanette Jayhawks in PA. Pryor is going to MICHIGAN or Oregon next year and hopes to play football and basketball. You will get the Game Used Wristband that is pictured. The Game Used Wristband is signed in Blue sharpie. Not exactly Mean Joe Greene’s jersey! Well, who knows? If TP comes to Michigan and wins the Heisman, that wristband would be worth at least $10, don’t you agree? Speaking of Heisman, Michigan youtube Yoda “WolverineHistorian” just put down his latest joint, and nice montage of Woodson and Howard’s Heisman seasons with some excellent footage (I particularly enjoyed the endzone shots):
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Mark Harmon Faces Michigan, MSU
With the rumors that have Ryan Mallett and quarterbacks coach Scott Loeffler heading to UCLA, it’s a good time to look at the next item in the eBay watch series. Many of you know that Michigan legend Tom Harmon is the father of actor Mark Harmon and that the younger Harmon played quarterback at UCLA. What you may not know is that Mark’s Bruins actually faced his old man’s team in the early seventies and they both returned to Michigan the following year to battle the Spartans. Here are the programs for each game that were recently auctioned on eBay: There were a couple of storylines leading into the Wolverines trip to Los Angeles in 1972. The week prior UCLA started their brutal schedule with a huge win over #1 Nebraska, snapping the Huskers’ 32-game winning streak. It was Harmon’s first game for the Bruins, and a wishbone offense was installed to suit the new quarterback. Mark was named the MVP of the game and finished with 71 rushing yards. A headline in Sports Illustrated that week declared, “YOUNG HARMON MAKES HIS MARK: From Out of Hollywood Comes the Saga of Mark Harmon, Handsome, Articulate, the Son of Old No. 98”. Geez SI, take a cold shower. The other storyline for the game was of course the son playing his legendary…
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Michigan Team Postcards (1907)
The last installment of eBay Watch is this year’s finest: a collection of postcards featuring members of 1907 Michigan football team. Perhaps a one of a kind set, the photos feature legendary players including the great Adolph ‘Germany’ Schulz, coach Yost and even the team trainer Keene Fitzpatrick. The seller offered up the entire collection and it didn’t go unnoticed by collectors. The winning bid for these beauties was $1,364.60 back in October. I actually used the photo of Joy Miller in ‘The Disgrace of 1909‘ but this is the first time I’m posting the entire set. Based on the crude way the auction items were photographed and presented on eBay, I doubt the seller was a professional memorabilia collector which makes this pretty cool. The postcard of Yost is different from the rest, not only the pose but also the background. It appears as though the publisher misspelled the surname of fullback Walter Rheinschild [no h on the postcard], and it is not clear as to why Eugene Flanagan was included as he doesn’t appear to have played a significant role on this or any team. In fact, the Bentley spells his name “Flanigan” but that’s only on an alternate full roster and he didn’t make the team photo in any season. Maybe he snuck into the shoot hoping…
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A Fab Five Christmas
There are thousands of Michigan football-related items on the eBay and this time of year including all kind of items for on or for under your tree. This one has to be top of your list, Juwan Howard in Fab 5 gear dunking on your face: A while we’re on hit, how about this beauty of Jim Harbaugh:
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Michigan Football Lost Luggage in 1914
There’s been so many great items auctioned lately and this one is really nice. A pre-WWI scorecard from the Wolverines trip to play Harvard. The piece consists of 4 pages: the cover, an layout of the starting line-ups, a scorecard and roster, and finally a list of key college football rule changes for 1914. Pretty cool. It fetched a sweet $366.50 on eBay. Check it out: Rule ChangesOne cool thing about scorecard is the back cover lists ‘Important Changes in 1914 Football Rules.’ You could tell the college football rulesmakers were concerned solidifying some of the rules around the game’s latest innovation: the forward pass. Two of the key rules listed in the scorecard related to the quarterback position. It didn’t take folks long to realize that a QB shouldn’t be able to dump the ball to avoid a sack: 3. A penalty to 10 yards is inflicted on the team attempting a forward pass, and, finding the making of the pass impossible, intentionally incompleting the pass by grounding the ball. While taking away the ability to ground the ball, they knew back then that they’d need to protect those precious quarterbacks: 4. There shall be no roughing of the player who has just made a forward pass. Street Clothed WarriorsThe trip to Cambridge was a big one from the…
