‘I Didn’t Know.’ How Michigan Football Failed to Protect One of Its Own From Sexual Assault

He didn’t want to tell his own brother what he is about to tell you.

Coach Bo Schembechler tells him instead, “You’re a fullback.” Bunch doesn’t like it.

The Wolverines’ backfield coach tells Bunch that if he moves to fullback, he could start the next year.

Bunch had been a high school star, but that was in his small hometown of Ashtabula, Ohio.

Players say, “Get ready for your physical” in the same tone they might use for “get ready for wind sprints.” Bunch’s roommate, running back Chris Horn, has already had an exam, and he tried to warn his teammates.

But the idea that an older male doctor might assault a male college football player is beyond the scope of his previous life experience.

Schembechler has already told Bunch how he feels about him: “I don’t like you.

But Bunch is acutely aware of the foundation upon which this new love is built: “I was one of his favorites because I was one of the tough guys.

Bunch says now, “If you weren’t playing hard enough, or if you were missing assignments or whatever, it was that you were trying to get out of it because you wanted to go see Anderson.

And even with the fear that Schembechler might think they were soft, players had to go see Anderson frequently, because they broke bones and pulled muscles and, as they said back then, got their bell rung.

But Bunch makes the point that it was so widespread that it was hard to recognize it as abuse.

It all registers enough that Bunch will remember it in detail years later, but as a college student in the 1980s he can’t fully understand how wrong it is.

Bunch even tells that doctor what Anderson has done, and the doctor says, “That’s not right.” But Bunch still does not understand that Anderson has been violating him.

One night in the offseason he’s hanging out with friends at a pool when a dog darts in front of him.

“You did not want to have a bad report from Anderson, or any doctor,” he says now.

Besides, Bunch’s conclusion from all of these experiences is not that Anderson is some serial abuser of patients.

He has already won four Big Ten titles, so he is ready for the NFL and all that it entails: stronger players, bigger collisions … and medical exams at least as rigorous as the ones he had at Michigan.

As a detached observer, one might expect him at this point to realize that what happened in Ann Arbor was terribly wrong.

In his second NFL season Bunch runs for 501 yards, at 4.8 per carry—outstanding numbers for a fullback.

When the season ends, team doctors tell Bunch that he has two surgical options: realignment, which will keep him out for the next year; or a lateral-release procedure, which will allow him to come back sooner.

Instead he ends up on the physically unable to perform list, gets cut at the end of camp, signs with the Raiders, plays three games, lacks his former explosiveness … and soon his career is over.

In the ensuing years, for a period of time so long that he can’t even remember when it started, Bunch feels pressure above his groin.

He will wonder, someday, if he needed so many procedures because he waited so long.

The Michigan scandal has exploded and Bunch tells his wife, Robin, about the “physicals” that Anderson gave him.

Regardless of what you were there for, he asks that you ‘drop your drawers’ and cough.” In ’79, two psychological counselors at Michigan reported concerns to Thomas Easthope, the school’s assistant vice president of student services.

Soon after, Anderson began working full-time for the athletic department, where he was ready to ambush a kid from Ashtabula, Ohio.

Now Bunch sees what happened all too clearly.

Michigan’s board of regents released a statement in March saying, in part, “We are sorry for the pain caused by the failures of our beloved University.” But the school has not settled the case.

Neither man enjoys sharing this truth, but Bunch thinks it is important to do it at least once because he owes it to other players who spoke up recently, like little-remembered Gilvanni Johnson or Daniel Kwiatkowski.

But he didn’t want anything that’s gonna mess up his program.” That program has long been promoted as different, special, on higher moral ground than other big-time programs. Schembechler preached as much.

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