John U. Bacon, journalist, author and alumnus of the Knight-Wallace Fellows at Michigan, will deliver the 29th Graham Hovey lecture at 5 p.m. Friday in the Wallace House Gardens.
The annual lecture honors Knight-Wallace alumni whose subsequent careers exemplify the benefits of sabbatical studies at U-M. It is named for the late Graham Hovey, director of the fellowship program from 1980-86 and a distinguished journalist for The New York Times.
Born and raised in Ann Arbor, Bacon earned an honors degree in history and a Master of Education from U-M. He wrote four acclaimed books on college athletics with a focus on Michigan, but his love for his alma mater did not preclude his objective reporting on two dicey transitions in Michigan’s athletic department. He will tell the story and what he learned about covering something he loves.
Bacon appears regularly on TV, including HBO, ESPN, Fox Business, MSNBC, Al Jazeera America and the Big Ten Network, and delivers weekly essays for Michigan Radio and occasionally NPR. He writes for The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo! and others. He also teaches at Northwestern University and U-M, where students awarded him the Golden Apple in 2009.
Bacon is the author of six books on sports and business, including the national best-sellers “Bo’s Lasting Lessons: The Legendary Coach Teaches the Timeless Fundamentals of Leadership,” “Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football,” and “Fourth and Long: The Fight for the Soul of College Football”
As a Knight-Wallace Fellow at Michigan in 2005-06, Bacon studied the institution of collegiate athletics and was named the first recipient of the Benny Friedman Fellowship for Sports Journalism.
The Hovey Lecture is open to the public. A reception hosted by Regent Katherine E. White follows the lecture.
For more information and to RSVP, call 734-998-7666.
