Derrick Gragg oversees one of the most successful athletic departments in the Mid-American Conference but what defines Eastern Michigan University, to the frustration of the school's athletic director, is the failures in two sports instead of the success of the many others.

Specifically, football and men's basketball have earned the very definition of futility for the past 10 years in Ypsilanti, with football struggling ever since the ill-fated Huron decision was quietly broached in the fall of 1990. Add an administrative train wreck prior to Gragg taking the reins of athletics and Dr. Susan W. Martin assuming the president's position and you can understand why Eastern's recent football hire was so important.

But did Eastern hire the right person for their long-term future? I'm not saying the man who got the job, Ron English, isn't the right man for right now, nor am I saying he wasn't the most qualified candidate. If anything, Ron English is probably over-qualified, a charismatic man who's on-field success and passion for football supersedes the most fervent coach you could imagine.

But was Michigan State running backs coach Dan Enos the better candidate for the long-term viability of EMU football? Is it possible the right man was passed over because he didn't exude of the aforementioned qualities English possesses while remaining the most viable candidate for long-term success?

Yes, I'll concede that sounds a bit naive, so let me explain.

EMU has been a springboard for too many coaches and athletic administrators for too long. Eastern needs its own company man, a Bo Schembechler, Eddie Robinson, Duffy Daugherty or Herb Deromedi-type man to accompany a Don Canham-type athletic director. Moreover, Eastern needs a man content with building a successful, long-term program that will succeed him for a couple generations. I could see Ron English, the dynamic, hard-nosed, smart coach winning more than a handful of games next year, and eight or nine games in Year Two only to be poached away from Ypsilanti for a jackpot of dollars and a conference affiliation that starts with the letters B-C-S.

Where will that leave EMU? The same place it was was when Ron Cooper, another dynamic, hard-nosed, willful leader left after two years for the green pastures of Louisville after a 4-7 season was followed by a 5-6 campaign in 1994. Cooper had been head assistant coach at Notre Dame under Lou Holtz before being hired by another golden domer when Gene Smith tabbed Cooper to replace Jim Harkema in 1993, his final year as EMU's athletic director. After Cooper left EMU was 6-5 under Rick Rasnick in 1995 but that was a bit of a faux record. EMU didn't earn a winning mark in the MAC that season and hasn't notched a noticeable ledger in the MAC since 1989 when the then-Hurons lost to Ball State on the last day of the season in a winner-take-all scenario for the league's title berth to the California Bowl.

The school hasn't had a winning record since. If you think EMU doesn't matter in the big scheme of college football, consider that 20 young men with ties to metro Detroit populate the EMU roster, 11 of whom either lived or prepped in Oakland County.

Dan Enos interviewed for the job at Eastern. He's a Dearborn product, a former Edsel Ford Thunderbird who also led MSU to their last Big Ten title, when the Spartans earned a share of the championship in 1990 under the former Spartan quarterback. Like English, he's got Big Ten coaching experience and has children he's not willing to uproot. It was rumored that Enos was already building a staff that included George Perles' son, Pat, and former MSU standout receiver Courtney Hawkins.

I'm absolutely certain EMU hired the best candidate it was afforded in its search. I simply wonder if EMU missed hiring the best candidate as it relates to EMU's long-term success.

~T.C. Cameron is the author of Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries, available from Arcadia Publishing.

With apologies to those I've kept in the dark (that's you, M.L.), here's the skinny on the trivia question I offered for five free books at my signing this past Thursday at the Bloomfield Hills Barnes & Noble.

Question No. 1: What metro Detroit high school did Al Fracassa coach at before assuming the football fortunes at Birmingham Brother Rice?

Fracassa was also the coach for the Knights of Royal Oak's Shrine High School in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Surprised? With Jim Manilla at Royal Oak High in the late 50s, and his stable of assistants that included 'Pin' Ryan, 'Ivy' Loftin, Paul Temerian and Frank Joranko, Royal Oak was a football hotspot during the high school sock-hop era.

In '62, Fracassa's Knights were 6-1-1. They tallied wins over notables like Detroit Holy Redeemer (15-0), Redford St, Mary's (19-0) and a 27-6 win over newly-opened Birmingham Groves. Shrine tied Detroit Servite in a 20-point stalemate for both teams. The only loss for Shrine was a 25-6 setback to Grosse Pointe St. Ambrose, which leads us to the conclusion of Question No. 2.

Question No. 2: What metro Detroit high school did George Perles lead before his days with the Pittsburgh Steelers and later, the Michigan State Spartans?

Perles was head coach at Grosse Pointe's St. Ambrose High. In '62, Perles and his Cavaliers went a perfect 9-0 in marching to the Catholic League championship and Goodfellows Game title. In that Goodfellows Game, St. Ambrose blanked the 8-0 Cardinals of Detroit Cooley, 19-0, on the floor of Tiger Stadium. It was the second-straight domination at 'The Corner' that day, because hours earlier, the Detroit Lions manhandled the previously-undefeated Green Bay Packers 26-14 in the now-famous Thanksgiving Day Massacre. The Lions sacked Hall-Of-Fame quarterback Bart Starr 11 times before the Cavaliers sacked Cooley's state championship dreams.

The state's Associated Press poll rewarded St. Ambrose, which closed in the spring of 1972, with the No. 3 ranking in the final Class B poll of '62. Also of note in Class B that year was West Bloomfield (7-0-1), which earned the 6th position, followed by Dearborn Divine Child (8th / 8-0) and Clawson High's Trojans, 10th with a record of 7-1.

Despite the loss, Detroit Cooley was awarded the No. 4 slot in the Class A poll in '62. Frank Joranko's Ferndale Eagles were sixth with the identical 8-1 record Ferndale High achieved this season. Hamtramck's Cosmos were 9th with a 7-1 slate and Seaholm was 10th at 8-1. Ann Arbor's Pioneer was the state champion in Class A for 1962.

The Fabulous Falcons! Perhaps the best story to emerge from the 2008 high school football season statewide might be the Farmington High Falcons. On September 12, Farmington was humiliated in a 63-0 loss to Rochester Adams High School, the Falcons' 15th-consecutive loss dating back to a 7-0 loss to Royal Oak's Ravens, coached by Terry Powers, on Oct 13, 2006.

I can't state for certain if it's ever happened before, because I don't have the time to go through the records of nearly 800 high schools, some closed many years ago, dating back to 1975, but I would imagine the list of schools who have lost 15 consecutive games in any stretch of seasons and found enough wins in any season to a) break the streak and b) make the playoffs is a short one.

In fact, if I were a betting man, and I'm not, I would say it's probably never happened before.

To pen a story that details 15 straight losses, capped by a 63-0 loss, followed by six-straight wins, including the school's first win over Farmington Hills Harrison in 31 seasons and a win over rival North Farmington to earn a state playoff berth, would probably get most Hollywood script writers laughed into the circular file.

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction but no matter what happens to the Falcons in the playoffs, Farmington's revival is one of the great stories of Michigan's 2008-09 scholastic year.

Michigan and Michigan State -- the state's great football game -- is upon us once again. Today Michigan's Wolverines host Michigan State's Spartans play on the weekend of the traditional high school rivalry week, the ninth week of the season. Is there a better week of football in the state of Michigan this side of Thanksgiving and pumpkin pie?

If nothing else, there's always room for another great story as it relates to the annual football game between the maize n' blue and green n' white. That lesson wasn't lost on those who attended the Detroit Sports Broadcasters Association's (DSBA) annual media day for the 101st edition of the annual rivalry game Tuesday at Ginopolis Restaurant in Farmington Hills. The afternoon was filled with a lot of good-natured ribbing, some candid observations and some great stories and laughs.

Frank Beckmann, Jim Brandstatter and Rich Strenger took up the Michigan cause while Spartan stalwart George Perles headlined the state of affairs for the green n' white. MSU's Sherm Lewis was a late scratch due to an unforeseen circumstance. The luncheon was a lot like a back-n-forth volley to prove state supremacy even before the ball gets kicked off Saturday in historic Michigan Stadium. And one other thing's for certain: There's both no memory and a lot of history that goes into this game when it takes center stage each year. Michigan State hasn't won since 2001; something the Michigan contingent didn't allow to be overlooked. At the same time, the Michigan State faithful are quick to point out that every year is a new year and another chance at redemption, in a very Brooklyn Dodger-kind of way.

Here are some of the highlights:

"I remember in 1983, my first year as head coach, we're playing Michigan up at our place and it's in the pregame when the coaches usually make small talk at midfield," Perles recalled of his first game with Michigan's legendary Bo Schembechler. "Instead, I told Bo, 'I'm nervous (about this game)". He looked me straight in the eye and said, 'You ought to be!'

Michigan won that '83 game 42-0. That was the infamous "We beat the pants off of them" game. When Perles was hired to assume the Spartan sideline, he immediately made the statement after his first year of recruiting that, "We beat the pants off the guys in Ann Arbor!" Of course, those recruits didn't get on the field much in Michigan's 42-0 win, but Perles also remembered something Bo said that endeared the gruff Michigan coach to him.

"When I got hired, he came right into his coaches' locker room and said, 'Boys, the picnic's over!", referencing the fact that Schembechler knew Perles would turn the MSU program into one that Michigan would have to contend with after several dormant years in the late 1960s and 1970s.

Of course, the Paul Bunyan Game -- the axe-wielding figure of the game's trophy -- is more than bragging rights. It's a season's redemption or re-birth. Sometimes it signals the end of the hopeful campaign for the loser. Usually both schools have played Notre Dame and each school awaits their season-ending rivalry game, with Michigan and Ohio State paired up annually and Michigan State's Land Grant Trophy game with Penn State as their season's natural bookend.

"People always bring up Ohio State, but I worried about Ohio State only after we played Michigan State," said former Wolverine tackle and current radio commentator Jim Brandstatter. "It's a game about mutual respect, especially for the guys from the state of Michigan. You have to remember, I played at East Lansing High School. My brother (Art) was a Spartan. My mother was left to wear maize n' blue - as only a mother could - among all those Spartan fans. I was playing classmates out there. To me, there was no bigger game on our schedule."

Perles, who champions his Motor City Bowl game on a near-daily basis, and Beckmann, the play-by-play voice of the Wolverines for 28 seasons, were the center of some verbal poke-n-jab when the discussion of Michigan's bowl prospects arose.

"Would Michigan go to the Motor City Bowl?" Beckmann asked rhetorically. "Absolutely -- as long as they don't have to play Toledo!" Beckmann said with a good-natured laugh. "Seriously, any coach in America would take those extra practices. Michigan's played four good quarters of football this year, but none of those quarters have come in the same game. You better believe Michigan would go. George, did you bring an application with you?"

Beckmann has become a bit of an YouTube sensation, with the emphasis depending on which color shirt you don during this game for his call of the final two plays of 2001's game. Spartan tailback T.J. Duckett caught a two-yard pass for the winning score after the clock was stopped with 0:01 left. The game even has a Wikipedia page titled Clockgate that details the Michigan frustration with the game's result, a 26-24 win for MSU.

Beckmann even goaded Perles to admit his famous pressbox quote from Spartan Stadium in the moments after that '01 game. "After Duckett caught that ball, George Perles walked out into the hallway and said, "Well, I guess Spartan Bob (then MSU's timekeeper) earned a game ball today -- isn't it true, George"

Perles, with a sly grin, replied, "Yes, it's true, although he doesn't get to keep the clock anymore these days," among a room full of laughter.

Finally, Beckmann made no apologies for his unabashed viewpoint of 2001's final two plays.
"We are advocates for our school," Beckmann said with an unwavering tone. "We are the broadcasters for the 12 games Michigan plays, just like George Blaha and Jim Miller (the MSU radio tandem) are for Michigan State."

~ T.C. Cameron is the author of Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries. Cameron's blog, The Write Referee, is syndicated by 27 papers throughout Michigan by The Oakland Press. His second book, Metro Detroit's High School Basketball Rivalries, is due in September of 2009.

I'm at the Barnes & Noble on Telegraph Road in Bloomfield Hills, starting at 6 p.m., to sign copies of my book, Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries.

I'll give a FREE BOOK to the first five people who can tell me the correct answer to either of the following questions:

1. What Detroit-area high school did Brother Rice coach Al Fracassa coach at before he took over the Warrior sideline?

2. What now-closed Detroit-area high school team did George Perles command before he went to the Pittsburgh Steelers and later, Michigan State?

It's almost gift-giving season and nothing says, 'I have the holiday spirit!' like a football book about rivalries, the long-standing role prep football has played in our metropolitan communities, the games that have withstood the test of time and the great theater that is prep football.

Long live high school football!

DSBA: In other news, the Detroit Sports Broadcasters Association (DSBA) took a flyer on my Friday post and ran with it for their site as a review of the media luncheon they hosted for the Michigan - Michigan State game on Tuesday afternoon. It all went down at Ginopolis Restaurant in Farmington Hills at Twelve Mile and Middlebelt Road.

You can read the entire post of the Paul Bunyan Game throwdown here, or wait to read the post Friday here!