Bo Knew Toughness

The phone rang at about 11:15 yesterday morning. My friend and producer Matt Kelliher was calling with the news that Bo Schembechler had collapsed while taping a television show and was in critical condition in a suburban Detroit hospital. My reaction was completely nonchalant.

Schembechler was 77 years old. He had a 37-year history of heart disease and was diabetic. But it hardly crossed my mind that Schembechler would die now -- not on the eve of the biggest Michigan-Ohio State game ever, not the morning after addressing the Wolverines in Ann Arbor, Mich., before they would set out for Columbus, Ohio. Schembechler was one of those men you couldn't really see giving in to death. His life was one stubborn comeback after another. Bo himself called it cheating death.

"Bo could convince you a banana was really an orange," ESPN analyst Lou Holtz said of former Michigan coach Bo Schembechler, above. (By Mandi Wright -- Associated Press) No. 2 Michigan at No. 1 Ohio State Obituary: On the eve of No. 2 Michigan's game against top-ranked Ohio State, ex-Wolverine coach Bo Schembler dies at the age of 77. » Wilbon: Bo Knew Toughness » Remembering Bo » Death Quiets Hype » Video: Doctors on the Scene No. 1 Ohio State schedules its date with the BCS after topping second-ranked Michigan, 42-39, in Columbus. Ohio State and Michigan will play in this year's "Game of the Century." College Gameday (PDF) Wilbon: This may be the BCS title game. Heated rivalry now packs a 1-2 punch. Michigan's dean of students offers a warning to students planning to head to Columbus for the game. Area College Football For the fifth straight season, Navy beats Army, this time by a 26-14 margin in the 107th installment of one of college football's most storied rivalries. » Summary Maryland accepts an invitation to play Purdue in the Champs Sports Bowl on Dec. 29 in Orlando. After ending the regular season on a six-game winning streak, Virginia Tech will face Georgia in the Chick-fil-A Bowl on Dec. 30. Around the Nation Florida leapfrogs Michigan in the final BCS ratings to earn a berth in the national championship game against undefeated Ohio State. Michael Wilbon: Everyone should have been rooting for Michigan to be No. 2 solely to anger so many people that it may have pushed college football towards a playoff. On Our Site Complete Bowl Schedule Top 25 Scoreboard Rankings Who's Blogging? Read what bloggers are saying about this article. Martini Republic Thought Dissipated into Cyber Full List of Blogs (2 links) » Most Blogged About Articles On washingtonpost.com | On the web Save & Share Article What's This? Digg Google del.icio.us Yahoo! Reddit Facebook

Schembechler did that on the eve of his first Rose Bowl in 1970. He did it after his quadruple bypass in 1976.

He slipped right past death after his second heart attack, in 1987, and once again after his second quadruple bypass in December of that same year. Just last month, after collapsing in that same television studio, Bo spent a few days in the hospital and emerged, his photo appearing under the newspaper headline, "I'm a Miracle!" It's hard to imagine anybody was tougher than Glenn Schembechler. During that hospital stay, a nurse reportedly asked Schembechler how much he weighed and he answered, "205 pounds of twisted blue steel."

The next phone call, just after noon, brought the news that Schembechler had died, unbelievably about 27 hours before "The Game" was to kick off. Almost immediately, we began seeing the clips of Bo stalking the sideline, or Bo and Woody Hayes, or Bo throwing a clipboard to the ground with such force he fell on his can . . . probably at the Rose Bowl, a game that he failed to win in his first five trips.

Even Schembechler had to die sometime, and there's something poetic about him dying now, at a time we can fully immerse ourselves in "The Game," in his role in making it the single greatest college football rivalry in America, in his charismatic 21-year run as head coach at the University of Michigan.

Truth is, I was one of those sons of the Midwest who grew up hating Michigan. There was no real reason to hate the Wolverines; probably it was because my brother Don loved them, loved Bo. But even as a teenager, I came to realize you only hate worthy teams, winners, consistent powerhouses who didn't appear to need any help or assistance in beating anybody, teams such as the Yankees and Celtics, Notre Dame and Michigan.

I always rooted for Ohio State to beat Michigan, so it was stunning to see undefeated and top-ranked Ohio State, one win from a shot at a second straight national championship in 1969, lose to Michigan and its first-year coach, Bo Schembechler, 24-12. The whole thing must have overwhelmed Bo, too, because he had a heart attack six weeks later.

Of course, after that, it was on. Michigan had three straight seasons ruined by Hayes and the Buckeyes. Hayes wouldn't refer to Michigan by name, only as "the school up north." The saddest thing about Hayes hitting that Clemson player in some bowl game at the end of the 1978 season was that Bo vs. Woody was done forever. The rivalry endures, but it's not as much fun. The games aren't as Neanderthal. During the Ten-Year War, as it's called in the Midwest, Woody's Ohio State teams threw a total of three touchdown passes, and Bo's Michigan teams threw a grand total of four. Nobody scored more than 24 points.

It took Schembechler six tries to win a Rose Bowl, and I reveled in every defeat. I wondered why Bo seemed to take all of his football philosophy from Hayes, under whom he played for one season at Miami (Ohio), and none from the father of the passing game, Sid Gillman, who coached Schembechler his first three years in college. Every trip to Pasadena against those modern-passing Pacific-10 schools would bring Bo so much misery.

"Five times, my team and myself have been lower than a snake's belly," Schembechler said in reflection.

He coached the Wolverines long enough for me to become a sportswriter, covering college football for The Washington Post in the mid-1980s. I remember being completely nervous before an interview that had been set up in Schembechler's office in Ann Arbor. I was told I had 10 minutes. Bo wasn't as big as I expected, but he looked younger. His voice sounded exactly the way I imagined Gen. George Patton's voice sounding.

He sort of barked at me, "You're pretty young to be working for The Washington Post. . . . Where did you go to school, young man?" I told him I'd gone to Northwestern and he said, "Did you know I worked as an assistant at Northwestern?" I had run across that in his résumé the night before. I didn't know he had coached with a fellow named George Steinbrenner on Ara Parseghian's staff in the late 1950s.

Schembechler told me stories about his two years at Northwestern. We talked about how difficult it was to win there.

My 10 minutes turned into 20, then 30. He was a lot of things Woody Hayes wasn't, such as interested in the world outside football. He had the cadence of a great orator and wasted no words. God, the man could talk.

Lou Holtz, the former great coach who is now an ESPN analyst, likes to say that "Bo could convince you a banana was really an orange. You'd wind up saying, 'Yep, it's an orange.' "

So, just like most Ohioans who met Bo Schembechler, I had to make a concession, that I couldn't possibly dislike him, even though he never won a national championship. He was too charismatic, too smart, ran too clean a program at a time when, say, the Southwest Conference was a shambles and about to disintegrate. He also was a fine enough coach to win 10 games 11 times in his years at Michigan. He told me not to screw up my career, to make my school proud, and sent me on my way.

Bo only coached three or four more seasons after that; fittingly, he beat Ohio State in his final try to get to the Rose Bowl one last time.

But that didn't mean his influence at Michigan was waning. (Even President Bush, from Hanoi, issued a statement of condolence upon hearing of Schembechler's death.)

Bo, in fact, does have one NCAA championship to his credit . . . well, probably.

In 1989, when the Michigan basketball team was preparing to start the NCAA tournament, Bill Frieder had accepted the head coaching position at Arizona State but planned to coach Michigan in the tournament. Schembechler, then Michigan's athletic director, testily said: "I don't want someone from Arizona State coaching the Michigan team. A Michigan man is going to coach Michigan." And with that, Frieder was shown the door, and Schembechler replaced him with Steve Fisher . . . who led the Wolverines to the Final Four, then the NCAA championship. Most athletic directors would have let lame duck Frieder stay, but not Bo.

So "The Game" goes on Saturday, as it should. Some folks, even those in Ohio who grieve for Schembechler at the same time as they hope the Buckeyes whip the Wolverines, still don't believe Bo is really dead. A friend of a friend joked yesterday afternoon that Bo Schembechler, considering what's at stake today, probably ducked out of that TV studio in suburban Detroit and checked into a hotel in Southfield or someplace, giving his Wolverines the ultimate motivational device. And given the pleasure he got out of beating Ohio State and cheating death, how great a weekend would that make? Only if it could be true.