By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
August 12, 2013

Within a few minutes on Friday morning, a couple of stories that the DSR has been tirelessly working for months broke wide open.

You already know about 105.1 flipping to a sports station, but we were also all over the hot water that Frank Beckmann found himself in with the University of Michigan over his Bobby Knight-esque column telling African-Americans that their historical connection to fried chicken is inevitable and the blacks should just lay back and enjoy the Popeye’s.

(I would link Beckmann’s outrageous opinion piece here, but the Detroit News has removed it from their archive.  Even though the paper’s Editorial page Editor Nolan Finley made a similar racially motivated point in a column just LAST WEEK regarding Kevyn Orr and the possibility of the Detroit Emergency Manager ordering fried chicken and waffles.)

On May 29th of this year, I penned an article on this subject detailing the following:

• U of M head coach Brady Hoke was extremely agitated over Beckmann’s perceived racist diatribe and wanted Beckmann gone before other school’s could negatively use it against the Wolverines in recruiting battles over 17-year old black kids.  Hoke wanted Beckmann ousted immediately. 
• While Michigan respected the opinion of their recruiting monster of a  coach, the university was worried that firing him over the column would lead to a legal entanglement that Mary Sue Coleman did not desire.
• Many of the Michigan trustees (including Denise Ilitch, who once was considered a potential Democratic opponent versus Rick Snyder back in 2010) wanted Beckman removed as they did not want to be associated with his far-right political beliefs.

So …. when the news broke on Friday that Beckmann was retiring after the 2013 season, it wasn’t very difficult to connect the dots and determine that this wasn’t Beckmann’s decision.  At all.

But Tea Party Frank wasn’t about to make it appear that his racist dumbfuck thoughts cost him the U of M play-by-play football gig, so this so-called farewell tour was the bargain his agent obviously made with the school to keep the whole ordeal out of the courts.

The funniest part about all of this is Beckmann wasn’t even prepared with a solid alibi™ (Aaron Hernandez) to explain away this “personal decision”.

After intimating that this was all HIS decision and that he didn’t even receive much outside input (I guess a sharp rebuke from the university didn’t count), this is what the old fart loser told Detroit News Michigan beat writer Angelique Chengelis about his decision making progress:

Beckmann said he and (Jim) Brandstatter had dinner with Michigan athletic director Dave Brandon in the spring, a tradition they’ve had since Brandon took the job. Beckmann then discussed retirement.

Beckmann discussed this potential decision before “Fried-Chicken-Gate” with his color commentator, so I am sure Brandstatter was-well prepared for this announcement.

Well, here is Chengelis’ account of her conversation with Brandstatter after the news broke:

Brandstatter, who described his relationship with Beckmann as being like “an old married couple,” said he was caught off-guard by the announcement.

“Yeah, I’m surprised,” Brandstatter said in a phone interview. “Nobody has been a better partner, nobody has been a better play-by-play guy.

If Beckmann had given his work “wife” a heads-up about his potential retirement, why was Brandstatter “caught off-guard” and “surprised?”

Oh, pick me, pick me, pick me!!!!!! I know, I know ……. BECAUSE THIS IS A DOG-AND-PONY SHOW AND THE DECISION WAS THE UNIVERSITY’S AND NOT BECKMANN’S.  DUH!!!!!!!

Beckmann is only 63-years old (even though he looks about 15 years older) and said he has no plans to quit his weekday right-wing spewfest on WJR, which has to be more taxing than calling 12 games a year with only five of them on the road plus one cushy Bowl appearance in a warm climate over the holidays.

It is pathetic that I even have to write this article, but not ONE person in the mainstream media wanted to call a spade-a-spade™ (Frank Beckmann), so I’ve got to set the record straight.  As always.

And now that we have solved this mystery, I want to know why Frank has TWO “N’s” in his last name.  You’d think one would suffice.  Hmmmmm ……