John U. Bacon > Quotes

“There's a port on a western bay
and it serve 100 ships a day
Lonely sailors pass the time away
And talk about their homes.

There's a girl in this harbour town
And she works laying whiskey down
They say, "Brandy, fetch another round"
She serves them whiskey and wine,

The sailors say, Brandy, you're a fine girl
What a good wife you would be
But my life, my love, and my lady is the sea”
― John U. Bacon, The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald

“Whenever a college athletic program got itself in trouble with the law - big trouble - the NCAA usually steered clear, sticking to how many minutes a week student-athletes are allowed to stretch, the distance they can travel in a car with an alumnus, and whether they are allowed to put cream cheese or jam on their free breakfast bagel. (They are not).”
― John U. Bacon, Fourth and Long: The Fight for the Soul of College Football

“Michigan wasn’t broken for over a century. But when it finally cracked, from the inside out, the people who knew its history rose to fix it, and restore the meaning of a simple, timeless saying: This is Michigan.”
― John U. Bacon, Endzone: The Rise, Fall, and Return of Michigan Football

“When I teach at Michigan, on the first day I tell the students, “You will not miss class. You will not be late to class. You will not use a laptop, or a cell phone, or wear a hat. My late-paper policy is simple: There will be no late papers, ever. That is my ‘late-paper policy.’ Why? This is Michigan.”
― John U. Bacon, Endzone: The Rise, Fall, and Return of Michigan Football

“The American playwright and painter Lorraine Hansberry said, “The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely.”
― John U. Bacon, Overtime: Jim Harbaugh and the Michigan Wolverines at the Crossroads of College Football

“the Atlantic. Their hard-earned fatalism fostered”
― John U. Bacon, The Great Halifax Explosion

“Put it all together, and the power of Mont-Blanc’s cargo works out to about 3 kilotons of TNT—or about a fifth of the 15 kilotons the “Little Boy” atomic bomb unleashed on Hiroshima.”
― John U. Bacon, The Great Halifax Explosion

“The caveat here is that praise is only effective when it’s sincere. Numbers help. If you want to praise your people for making progress, you start by measuring it.”
― John U. Bacon, Let Them Lead: Unexpected Lessons in Leadership from America's Worst High School Hockey Team

“Almost every Division I college football team predates the oldest NFL teams by three or four decades. Most schools built their current stadiums before most NFL teams built their first—or second, or third. College football is one of those few passions we have in common with our great-grandparents.”
― John U. Bacon, Fourth and Long: The Fight for the Soul of College Football

“The Mortuary Committee would be burdened with many unenviable tasks, but the first was straightforward: instead of storing the corpses at a half dozen locations around town, which made it more difficult for soldiers to transport the bodies and record-keepers and families to find them, they needed to select a single building to house an official, temporary morgue. They quickly settled on the Chebucto Road School, which, despite its broken windows, had a lot to recommend it: it was large, it could be quickly cleared out and converted to its new purpose, and it was close to Pier 6, minimizing the transport of corpses and travel for their relatives. The committee also needed a place that could keep bodies for as long as possible, giving them the best chance of being identified. They designated the upper floors for offices and the wide-open, cooler basement for the bodies, which they planned to lay in rows and cover with sheets. The Royal Engineers quickly fixed up the damaged school, covered its windows, and cleaned the space. As soon as people learned of the location, bodies began to pile up outside the building, stacked two and three high until morgue workers could retrieve them. The Relief Committee also dispatched crews of volunteers to put out fires and turn off water mains, faucets, and spigots, and to pick up the dead—tagging their names, when they knew them, to the victims’ wrists, or simply attaching a number when they didn’t—loading them onto rudimentary flat wagons dozens at a time. They soon learned to conduct this dispiriting job late at night so as not to offend the friends and relatives of the deceased. But because everyone could hear the horses’ hooves each night, the rolling midnight morgue was a poorly kept secret, one that woke many Haligonians whose homes still lacked windows.”
― John U. Bacon, The Great Halifax Explosion

“If I flopped before I even got to the starting line, I could console myself that at least I had failed while daring greatly. So I had that going for me.”
― John U. Bacon, Let Them Lead: Unexpected Lessons in Leadership from America's Worst High School Hockey Team

“Tragedy comes quick and loud, while the small acts of decency that follow come slowly and quietly.”
― John U. Bacon, The Great Halifax Explosion

“My players would probably be surprised to hear it, but I frequently questioned if I’d been too hard here or too soft there, and I often wasn’t sure what to do next. But I never questioned that the foundation of our rebuilding project had to be based on character and culture.”
― John U. Bacon, Let Them Lead: Unexpected Lessons in Leadership from America's Worst High School Hockey Team

“But Clark had a point. The Peace Corps accepts about one in six applicants. The Navy SEALS accept a mere 6 percent, and 75 percent of those drop out. How can they afford to be so picky? Those jobs don’t pay much. A Peace Corps volunteer makes a few hundred dollars a month, while a typical SEAL makes about $54,000 a year.”
― John U. Bacon, Let Them Lead: Unexpected Lessons in Leadership from America's Worst High School Hockey Team

“And the best way to make it special,” he continued, “is to make it hard.”
― John U. Bacon, Let Them Lead: Unexpected Lessons in Leadership from America's Worst High School Hockey Team

“A Brown University alum, Angell’s vision for Michigan was to create a university that could provide “an uncommon education for the common man.”
― John U. Bacon, Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football

“This proves another important point: employees recruit employees. So you better hire good ones.”
― John U. Bacon, Let Them Lead: Unexpected Lessons in Leadership from America's Worst High School Hockey Team

“We weren’t trying to minimize how hard this would be. We weren’t apologizing for it either. We were no longer even selling it. We were celebrating it!”
― John U. Bacon, Let Them Lead: Unexpected Lessons in Leadership from America's Worst High School Hockey Team

“No need to force-feed anyone. If you’re not hungry for what we’re serving, that’s fine. Keep walking. But if you are, keep eating. We’ll get you more.”
― John U. Bacon, Let Them Lead: Unexpected Lessons in Leadership from America's Worst High School Hockey Team

“Begging someone to work for you is as ill advised as begging someone to marry you.”
― John U. Bacon, Let Them Lead: Unexpected Lessons in Leadership from America's Worst High School Hockey Team

“The business concept of “management by walking around” is essential to your success.”
― John U. Bacon, Let Them Lead: Unexpected Lessons in Leadership from America's Worst High School Hockey Team

“You have to do everything you possibly can to develop your middle tier of talent. It’s your job, as the leader, to make those people do more than they thought they could—maybe more than you thought they could—and put them in the best possible position to help the team.”
― John U. Bacon, Endzone: The Rise, Fall, and Return of Michigan Football

“Even better, the more the players got to know me, the less they feared approaching me.”
― John U. Bacon, Let Them Lead: Unexpected Lessons in Leadership from America's Worst High School Hockey Team

“This lake without sails”
― John U. Bacon, The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald

“Whatever else we coaches got right or wrong, the players knew that all of us were exchanging a lot of our lives to work with them—and we were happy to make the trade.”
― John U. Bacon, Let Them Lead: Unexpected Lessons in Leadership from America's Worst High School Hockey Team

“He said his dad always told him, “Just focus on two things: work hard, and support your teammates.”
― John U. Bacon, Let Them Lead: Unexpected Lessons in Leadership from America's Worst High School Hockey Team

“You are the foundation for all the success that future teams will achieve.”
― John U. Bacon, Let Them Lead: Unexpected Lessons in Leadership from America's Worst High School Hockey Team

“My promise to them was straightforward: “I work hard for you. You work hard for me.”
― John U. Bacon, Let Them Lead: Unexpected Lessons in Leadership from America's Worst High School Hockey Team

“If the NCAA ran local law enforcement, whenever they pulled over a drunk driver, they would impound the car and let the driver hop in another one and drive off.”
― John U. Bacon, Fourth and Long: The Fight for the Soul of College Football

“Henry David Thoreau said the price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”
― John U. Bacon, Let Them Lead: Unexpected Lessons in Leadership from America's Worst High School Hockey Team