Book: "Michigan Days"

            Rick Bay is a Michigan man, a well-traveled Michigan man, but a Michigan man none the less.  After 20 years at Michigan as a student-athlete, coach and alumni administrator, Bay left Ann Arbor to become the athletics director at the University of Oregon.  The job in Eugene propelled him to an extraordinary career in sports administration where, over the course of the next 20 years, he also became the athletics director at The Ohio State University, the University of Minnesota and San Diego State.  Sandwiched between these assignments in intercollegiate athletics, he also served as the Chief Operating Officer for the New York Yankees and President of the Cleveland Indians.  He left several of these positions while embroiled in controversy, but always with his high principles still intact.  As Rick, himself mused, “I guess I was always better at getting jobs than I was in keeping them.”               

            It was at Michigan from 1961 as a freshman student-athlete to 1981 as associate director of the University of Michigan Alumni Association that Rick developed his leadership skills and began his odyssey.  This is his story, at least his Michigan story.

            A two-time Big Ten wrestling champion, a Michigan team captain, a member of three Big Ten championship teams, Rick wrestled for the legendary Cliff Keen.  And he was a member of the Wolverine football team coached by Bump Elliott. After graduating, Rick served in United States Marine Corps Reserve before becoming Keen’s assistant, and then succeeded his mentor in 1970 as Michigan’s head coach at the age of only 27, at the same time that Bo Schembechler joined the Michigan staff.  He coached only four years, but his last two teams were undefeated, winning a Big Ten title, and finishing 3rd and 2nd in the NCAA Tournament, a feat for which he was named the National Coach of the Year in 1974.

            In search of administrative experience, he went to work for Bob Forman at the U. of M. Alumni Association where he began to write and travel, often leading alumni tours abroad.  Although never publicized at the time, Rick had a rocky relationship with Michigan’s powerful athletics director, Don Canham, from the time he became the Wolverines’ wrestling coach through his days at Ohio State.  This book recounts those experiences, including how Bo helped him get the Oregon job despite Canham’s negative recommendation.

            Written with humor and wit, and covering everything from his time in a freshman dormitory to coaching against Michigan State to taking alumni into China in the 70’s, the book is filled with memories and anecdotes that cover the two decades of Rick Bay’s MICHIGAN DAYS.