Bo Grew On Me, And That's A Good Thing

I never met Bo Schembechler. We weren’t, that I can ever recall, even in the same room together. Yet I knew him.

He was that way. One of those sports icons that everyone seems to know, from your Aunt Gertrude to your teenaged neighbor – male or female. And I don’t mean just someone that they’ve heard of. There are plenty of those around, and not too many of them would you like to know, anyway.

With Bo Schembechler, the legendary University of Michigan football coach who passed away Friday at age 77, you felt like you truly knew him, because of all the stories others have told, and through television and radio and newspaper interviews. He was one person who you could just envision meeting if you hadn’t; you almost could imagine precisely how such an encounter would go. You might even have fooled yourself into thinking you had met Bo. His reputation truly preceded him.

I put Bo in the same category of athlete and coach who I began loathing, or at the very least dismissing, but who I then eventually came to appreciate, and then admire.

Larry Bird was one. I used to sneer in disdain at Bird and his squawking beak when he was at his heyday with the Celtics as a player. It pained me to admit how great of a player he truly was. But after he retired, and became coach of the Indiana Pacers – and eventually the team’s GM – I looked at Bird in a different manner. I enjoyed the way he approached the coaching gig. He was honest, for one. A refreshing change from some of the snake oil salesmen who’ve masqueraded as coaches.

“I don’t really coach the team,” Bird would say to anyone who’d listen. “I let my assistants do that. I guess I’m there to call the shots during the games, but my assistants coach the team, really.”

And this: “To tell you the truth, I really don’t like coaching.”

True to his word, Bird quit coaching after a couple of seasons – which included a trip to the NBA Finals – kicking himself upstairs in the process.

Through it all, I found myself admiring Larry Bird. He wasn’t the “hick from French Lick (IN)” any longer. He had matured into a savvy basketball person.

Wayne Gretzky was another that grew on me.

I saw #99, at first, as an anointed heir to the throne previously occupied by Gordie Howe. But with a cache of lieutenants to protect him on the ice. There was a lot of crybaby about him, back in the day.

But, like with Bird, as Gretzky became older and was nearing the end of his marvelous playing career, my opinion of him changed. Maybe it was his maturity, once again. Or mine, frankly. Regardless, I am now rooting for Wayne Gretzky in his role as coach and part owner of the Phoenix Coyotes.

Bo Schembechler, I had no use for, for a number of years. First, I wasn’t a Michigan fan. I got that from my dad, who loathed the university. He would always complain that the players that played in Ann Arbor were college carpetbaggers – athletes from other states who wouldn’t know Warren from Dearborn, or a catalytic converter from a hole in … the wall. It goes on all the time now, of course – the wooing of the out-of-state athlete – but my father gave no quarter when it came to U-M.

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Bo loved Michigan, and Michigan loved him back.
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So it was that Schembechler represented a sort of Evil Empire at the college football level, to me. I barely rooted for Michigan against even Ohio State, believe it or not. And when I came to be a freshman at Eastern Michigan University, a mere keg roll away from Ann Arbor, my resentment of U-M grew. I’m sure jealousy was part of it. That, and the arrogance. It was there, I’m sure of it.

Then, Bo did himself no favor with me when he had become president of the Tigers in 1990, and later that year took the bullet for canning radio announcer Ernie Harwell. He might as well have tripped Santa Claus and shoved his face in some yellow snow. That was perhaps the nadir of my admiration, such as it was, for Schembechler.

But once again, a transformation occurred. And, right on schedule, it coincided with retirement. Bo left the Tigers in 1992, and once he became the former coach, the former athletic director, the former baseball team president, I kinda got a hankering for the old codger.

Maybe, as with Bird and Gretzky, it was my maturity that kicked in. Upon reflection and an inventory of Schembechler’s career, and realizing his deep love for Michigan football, I thought he was alright. Gradually, Michigan became my school of choice to root for. It didn’t hurt that the current coach, Lloyd Carr, is one of the best people in sports today. I’ve met him.

Bo loved Michigan, and Michigan loved him back. He was fiercely loyal to the school, and I gotta tell ya, he ran a squeaky clean program in a time when that wasn’t always the norm. Or cool. And I had come to enjoy reading and hearing his thoughts about the university, college football, and just about anything else.

He was back at it again earlier this week.

Speaking to reporters in impromptu fashion, Bo was railing about Michigan’s last trip to Columbus, two years ago, when bomb-sniffing dogs were used to search the team and its entourage upon arrival. The thought of that disgusted the old coach.

“Whoever decided to allow that …,” he fumed. “They’d better not do it this year. By God, they’d better not do it to Michigan.”

I read that and could practically hear Schembechler saying it. How many people can you say that about? When you can read a quote in India ink on white newsprint and close your eyes and imagine the speaker launching them verbally, as if the newspaper suddenly turned into a radio? And I smirked. Old Bo. Still a defender of Michigan. Still cranky about Ohio State week.

I never met Bo Schembechler. But yet I at first disliked him, then dismissed him, then grew to admire him. If he only knew.