9001010261
DETROIT FREE PRESS
900103
Wednesday, January 03, 1990
METRO FINAL
1E
MITCH ALBOM
Copyright (c) 1990, Detroit Free Press
DAY AFTER IS FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF BO'S LIFE
NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. -- The car rolled toward the hotel exit. Bo
Schembechler, squinting in the morning sun, pointed a finger at it, like a
traffic cop, and it quickly came to a halt.
"What?" asked senior lineman Mike Teeter, the driver, rolling down his
window. "Am I doing something wrong, Coach?"
Bo grinned. "Hey," he said, "I'm not your coach anymore, Mike. I'm just
your friend."
Teeter smiled and slowly drove away.
What is that expression? The first day of the rest of your life? For the
occasion, Bo Schembechler wore a blue warm-up suit and a white T-shirt. No
Michigan insignia. No whistles. Football-wise, he was a civilian now. He dug
his hands in his pockets and tried to act casual.
Not that he had stopped thinking about football. The Rose Bowl disaster
was still fresh in his mind. He had come back to the hotel Monday night and
immediately popped in the film of the game. He fast-forwarded to the
controversial play, the holding penalty on a fourth-quarter fake punt, and
watched it over and over. Even when his wife, Millie, persuaded him to watch
a movie on TV -- "Lassiter," starring Tom Selleck -- he kept the little
projector near him. On commercials, he watched the play again.
"Still a ridiculous call," he insisted Tuesday morning. "That call will go
down in history along with The Phantom Touchdown by Charles White and all the
others. It should never have been made. The man they say was held wound up
making the tackle 30 yards downfield."
He shook his head. Never mind that ABC-TV showed a close-up replay of
Bobby Abrams. Never mind that the TV announcers said, "Oh, he was definitely
holding." The coach had seen it. He had made up his mind.
"I slept better knowing I was right, too."
Bo. You are a piece of work.
Saturday's hero will mosey on
What will Saturdays be like without him? What will Michigan be like
without him? And make no mistake, he will be gone. There is no way Bo will
keep the athletic director's job, it's not him, he was never a paper pusher,
and he knows his legend would shadow his successor and friend, Gary Moeller.
"People only listened to me because I was Coach Bo, not Athletic Director
Bo," he admitted Tuesday.
He'll quit the AD's job, I'm guessing, within a week or two. And he'll
have something else already lined up. That's Bo's way. While he denies any
plans, I suspect the Tigers -- which means friend and Bo-fanatic Tom Monaghan
-- will hire him to succeed Jim Campbell as president.
Why? It makes sense. Bo wants to work. Bo wants to stay in sports. He just
needs, at age 60, to take it a little easier.
"I gotta get in shape, I gotta lose 20 pounds," he said, laughing, tugging
at his warm-ups. "I gotta lead a reasonable life. I've never done that, you
know."
No. He was always flying to Milwaukee or Denver or Ft. Lauderdale looking
for that one extra recruit who could help the team. He was always rushing to
another meeting or another charity event, stuffing a sandwich in his mouth as
he ran. He was always taking five calls, six meetings, seven rolls of film,
eight play sheets, nine stacks of mail.
Now, on the first day of the rest of his life, he looked 100 pounds
lighter. Funny how much that whistle weighs, isn't it?
"What will you do today?" he was asked.
"Welllll," he said, like an old cowboy, "I'm gonna go back and see this
girl, Millie, see?
"You know her?"
He shuffled his feet, dug his hands in his pockets and gave that mile-long
grin. "I slept with her last night," he said.
The crowd cracked up.
Good or bad, people react to Bo
You know the first thing Bo did in 1963, the day he became a head coach
at Miami of Ohio? He moved into the players' dorm. Ground floor. Left his door
open at night. The message was clear: "I am part of your lives. For better or
worse. I am your coach."
And Monday night, 27 years later, he was still part of their lives. So
much so that Alex Marshall, a big, hulking linebacker, was sobbing like a
baby after the game. "I want to apologize . . . to Bo Schembechler . . . for
the way we played. . . . He deserved . . . to go out . . . better than this. .
. ."
Alex, you were crying for the man. What could be better than that?
This is the magic of Schembechler: He makes you feel something toward him,
anger, frustration, usually affection. He is not just the coach on the
football field, he is the coach with his family, his friends, with people he
meets on the street. He barks, he slaps, he laughs, he takes charge. You half
expect him to enter a department store, blow a whistle and say, "Clothes
shoppers over here! Appliances over there!" And people would do it.
He is, in one word, magnetic.
And he is history. Our loss. Millie's gain. He leaves behind a team that
should contend for the Big Ten title next season and a landscape full of
former assistants who would like, one day, to be as good as he.
You want to know what Bo's final words were to his team after Monday's
Rose Bowl? "Men, I'm sorry I couldn't win it for you. . . . I love you all. .
. .
"Now get dressed!"
Like I said. He's a piece of work.