Michigan fans of any significant duration paused to think about Bo Schembechler Tuesday. Fourteen years earlier, to the day, the news broke that the heart of Michigan football had finally given out.
The ending wasn’t a shock. After all, Schembechler’s first heart attack occurred 37 years earlier, on New Year’s Eve, 1969. The loss was a shock to the system for so many.
He’d spoken to Lloyd Carr’s football team on Nov. 16, 2006, the day before he passed. He urged them to fight like hell against the Buckeyes in a No. 1 versus No. 2 battle two days hence.
He never lived to see it. Without Schembechler, many simply didn’t care about the game anymore.
“It just didn’t matter,” former U-M All-American and current radio analyst Dan Dierdorf recalled. “It didn’t even exist.”
The drive to Columbus proved very different. Phone calls with Bo’s players and furious writing about the man who drove them to greatness consumed it.
Only after the smoke cleared from Michigan’s gut-twisting 42-39 loss to the Buckeyes did the time present itself for real contemplation of everything lost.
Schembechler proved a great friend to The Wolverine. He wrote a letter singing its praises, which ran on the inside cover of the very first issue produced. He urged Michigan fans to subscribe.
He also paid attention to it himself. He’d routinely invite (command) the editor of the publication to come into his office at Schembechler Hall to talk about it, and football, and life.
“I like that magazine,” he once said, with a look from which nobody looked away. “And you know what I like about it? We know you’re for Michigan, but you guys put everything in there — the good and the bad. I like that.”
There’s a lot Bo wouldn’t have liked over the past 14 years. There are developments in and around Michigan football he’d have absolutely hated and raged over.
Here are a few…
• Bo would have hated the loss at Ohio State in ’06, when the Wolverines forgot to bring their defense. He’d have had company, too. Years later, recalling that loss caused Carr’s eyes to brim with tears, while he sat at the entrance to the Michigan Stadium tunnel, doing a one-on-one interview.
It hurt Carr deeply, on behalf of the players, who came that close to making the national championship game. Bo understood the deep pain of almost. He’d have anguished over that game, and been absolutely livid that the Wolverines have beaten the Buckeyes once since then.
• Bo wouldn’t have appreciated one bit Carr not getting to name his own successor in 2008. Fans talk about the lack of clear candidates that understood and could have built upon the foundation already laid.
But there are several who could have dodged the disaster and internal strife that ensued. Michigan plunged into an oblivion from which it has not fully recovered.
• Bo would have fulminated over the utter capitulation to Michigan State in the heart of the Mark Dantonio years. The old man lost to the Spartans his first season and learned very quickly that just does not happen, at least with any regularity. He made it so.
He won the next eight, and in 21 years as Michigan head coach, dropped four games total to the Spartans. Carr lost three to them in 13 years, including a couple of heists at Spartan Stadium. Since then, the Wolverines are 4-9 versus the Spartans, including this year’s defeat against arguably the worst MSU crew since a 2-9 team in 1982.
• Bo would have been beyond furious had he gotten a sense that his old quarterback couldn’t breathe fire as Michigan’s coach. The Wolverines reached their zenith thus far under Jim Harbaugh on a crisp November afternoon in Columbus in 2016.
They had the Buckeyes, 17-7, in OSU’s stadium, past the midway point of the third quarter. Their best defense since 2006 hadn’t allowed a point, the Buckeyes scoring only on an interception return after U-M threw out of its own end zone (Bo wouldn’t have liked that much, either).
From there, it all came apart — close plays, with close (or crooked) calls. Harbaugh carried Bo’s spirit that day — firing his clipboard, raging up and down the sidelines, excoriating the officiating afterward.
That’s what excited Michigan fans when Harbaugh hit town — that passion, that intensity, that inspiration. If Bo thought anyone told Harbaugh to dial it back, tone it down, etc., the reaction would have been volcanic.
And on point.
There’s plenty about Michigan football Bo wouldn’t have liked over the past 14 years. It’s no surprise there’s plenty those who appreciated him haven’t liked, either.
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