Bollinger’s ongoing crusade: To reconnect University with its past
By ROB HOFFMAN
News Staff Reporter
Ann Arbor News, Oct. 22, 2000
    A framed, handwritten note hangs on the wall in Lee Bollinger’s office.
    The missive is from playwright Arthur Miller, expressing his pleasure at having a theater named after him at the University of Michigan, his alma mater.
    “The theater is a lovely idea,” said Miller, who wrote his first play during his sophomore year at the University of Michigan. “It seems right for Ann Arbor.”
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Coleman earned respect in Iowa
New U-M president is known for 'connecting in critical ways'
By ROB HOFFMAN
News Staff Reporter
Ann Arbor News, May 31, 2002
    IOWA CITY, IOWA - Her resumé says that newly appointed University of Michigan president Mary Sue Coleman is a biochemist, a scientist with a Ph.D. who knows the ins and outs of molecular reactions.
    Around the University of Iowa, where the 58-year-old Coleman has served as president for the last seven years, she is known for so much more than that.
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Coleman expects to stay the course
"I don't have a game plan going in," new U-M president says
By ROB HOFFMAN
News Staff Reporter
Ann Arbor News, June 2, 2002
    IOWA CITY, Iowa - How will Mary Sue Coleman at Michigan differ from Mary Sue Coleman at Iowa?
Don't ask Coleman that question. The new University of Michigan president has no idea.
    "I don't have any preconceived notions about how things should be done," the 58-year-old Coleman said Thursday.
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U-M project could alter ways teams prepare for games
By ROB HOFFMAN
News Sports Reporter
Ann Arbor News
Aug. 30, 2001
    Forget "Everybody Loves Raymond."
    Consider this sitcom moment from Klaus-Peter Beier's real life in 1999.
    Here he was, a German-born research scientist who had seen, at most, five football games in his life. And he was staring right into the eyes of University of Michigan coach Lloyd Carr, who was eagerly awaiting Beier's answer to the day's burning question.
    "Can you do the wishbone?"
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During the summer, thousands of teen-agers and pre-teens flock to the University of Michigan to hone their skills in their respective sports
By ROB HOFFMAN
News Sports Reporter
The Ann Arbor News, July 29, 2001
      From the parking lot outside the offices of the University of Michigan athletic department, a series of "thwacks" emerges from the first-base side of Ray Fisher Stadium.    
     Most visitors would guess that the sounds are from some University of Michigan baseball players, using this typically hot summer afternoon to get the kinks out of their swings.
     Well, no.
     Upon closer inspection, the truth is revealed. 

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Varsity letter a sweet reward 52 years later
By ROB HOFFMAN
Ann Arbor News column
July 31, 2001
    The most compelling sports stories aren't always about wide receivers with a 4.2 in the 40-yard dash, 18-year-olds with 110 mph shots or 6-foot-8-inch power forwards with deadly outside shots.
    Sometimes they are about 78-year-old men with bad wrists and painful memories that won't go away.
Mort Cohn falls into that last category.
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U-M professor coaches mental patience
Tom George helps athletes use their brains
By ROB HOFFMAN
News Sports Reporter
Ann Arbor News
Sept. 2, 2004
     If only Tom George the minor league baseball player had met Tom George, the University of Michigan professor.
     Perhaps he wouldn't have been known as a good-field, no-hit shortstop during his three seasons in Class A ball.
     Perhaps he wouldn't have experienced that woeful July during his first season as a Philadelphia Phillies farmhand, a period where George didn't bang out a single hit.
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Public says goodbye
Mourners line up, pay respects
BY ROB HOFFMAN
News Sports Reporter
Ann Arbor News
November 20, 2006
    Slowly but surely, they all found themselves at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in downtown Ann Arbor on Sunday afternoon.
    The diehard University of Michigan football fans, sporting everything from Wolverine sweatshirts to block "M'' earrings. The former players, many of them with Rose Bowl rings on their still-beefy fingers. The average citizens, dressed in funeral attire to pay their final respects to one of the university's last remaining icons.
    They all came as part of a public tribute to longtime Michigan football coach Bo Schembechler, who died Friday at the age of 77.
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A local baseball marriage in the making
By Rob Hoffman
Ann Arbor News column
Friday, August 24, 2001 

    Pull up a chair, Michael.
    That's what you used to tell me during our days together at the Ames Tribune in Iowa. Pull up a chair, and we'll go over that train horn story you just wrote.
    Two years ago, I was Rob Hoffman, the Tribune's city reporter. You were Michael Gartner, former NBC News President, 1997 Pulitzer Prize winner and owner and editor of the Tribune. Like me, you have since switched gears, becoming Michael Gartner, principal owner of the Iowa Cubs Triple-A baseball team.
    Last week, you purchased the Michigan Battle Cats, a Single-A team based in Battle Creek. Because the Midwest League franchise is floundering at the gate, averaging a scant 965 fans a game this season, the thinking is that you will move the 'Cats to either eastern Iowa or Flint.
    Before you do, I wish you would give someone a call.
    His name is Bill Martin. He is the University of Michigan's athletic director.
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