Schmidt Told Ford, Lions Where They Could Stick Their Edsel

There they sat, the two Lions football greats – one still playing, the other out of pads but still on the sidelines every Sunday. And they spoke at a watering hole, tossing down beverages of their choice.

“I can’t take it anymore,” the retired player, by now the team’s coach, said to the player/drinking partner, in so many words. “They’re killing me. Sometimes I don’t know what they want from me.”

More drinking, and more words of frustration and anger were spewed by the coach. It was a moment from a long-ago era. Can you imagine Bill Parcells complaining about Jerry Jones to a player? And over a beer?

The player listened to the coach and thought for a moment.

“Well, then, why don’t you quit?,” he asked the coach, who was once his teammate on some of the greatest football defenses ever seen in Detroit.

The coach looked the player square in the eye.

“That’s the stupidest ---damn piece of advice I’ve ever gotten!,” the coach bellowed before taking another swig of beverage.

This was the scene, according to former Lions defensive tackle Alex Karras, as described in his book, Even Big Guys Cry. He was drinking some pops with coach Joe Schmidt, circa the late 1960’s. Schmidt was in the midst of his six-year run as head coach.

Little did anyone know that those six seasons would be looked at now, some 34 years after they ended, as the salad days of Lions football – post-championship years of the 1950’s.


Schmidt giving it to the Packers in his inimitable way


Schmidt was, in some folks’ eyes, the greatest Lion ever, as a player. The oft-credited inventor of the middle linebacker position. A Pittsburgh kid who fit in nicely in the shot-and-beer town of Detroit, where he played from 1953 to 1965. Where he won some championships, and knocked on the door of a few others. And he appears to be, as history grows kinder and kinder to him, one of the franchise’s greatest coaches ever, too.

The latter honor is bestowed accidentally, but there are always the numbers.

Schmidt coached the Lions from 1967 to 1972, supplanting Harry Gilmer, whose feeble two-year run ended with fans in Tiger Stadium throwing snowballs at his cowboy hat-attired head as the team ran off the field following a season-ending loss.

In those six seasons, Schmidt’s record was 43-34-7, plus a playoff loss following the 1970 season. In his last four seasons, Schmidt went 34-19-3. If a Lions coach accumulated such a record nowadays, the mayor’s residence would await him. Maybe even the governor’s mansion.

He didn’t quit that time, as described above, sitting and sharing some drinks with Karras, his old teammate. Something caused Schmidt to stick it out. But in January, 1973, Joe Schmidt told the Lions to take their job and shove it. Right around this time of the month, in fact.

General managers of our teams have been one of two types, it seems. The wildly successful, walk-on-water guys whose every move sails through unquestioned by even the scalawags talking into cell phones in their cars to the sports talk radio stations. Or, they are the objects of disdain, disgust, and contempt. No in-between.

Russ Thomas was the latter type. Oldtimers like me can’t help but chuckle during this current era of disdain, disgust, and contempt with Lions president and de facto GM Matt Millen, for we never thought another Lions executive could turn a town off like Russ Thomas turned everyone off during his decades-long run as Lions GM. But we were wrong.

Thomas was cheap. He was stubborn. He didn’t get along with coaches. He was abhorred by players. And his teams rarely were anything more than a plodding, .500 ballclub. Yet he was in the good graces of owner Bill Ford Sr., and thus was able to retire and leave the team on his own accord, after the 1989 season.

Sound ghoulishly familiar, at least some of it?

Schmidt was stubborn, too, and a damn good football coach. The records during the seasons from 1969 to 1972 were, as follows: 9-4-1; 10-4; 7-6-1; and 8-5-1. So it’s reasonable to assume he had a firmly-planted cleat as Lions coach.

But Schmidt couldn’t abide Thomas, and it’s presumed that he was one of the “they” Schmidt was complaining about to Karras that night over drinks.

After the ’72 season, Schmidt believed the team needed A,B, and C. Thomas must have thought they needed D, E, and F, because the two were butting heads. Schmidt took his beefs to Ford, and basically issued an ultimatum, according to those who might have known: Me, or him (Thomas).

Ford opted for him.

Ziggy is the word, and Joe Schmidt is credited with coining it. It means a coach got fired. And it’s distinctly a Detroit word.

So the apparent loser of an internal power struggle, Schmidt committed a self-ziggy. He quit the Lions, shiny record and all, and got out of football entirely.

You know the rest, for the most part.

It is Schmidt, along with – gasp! – Wayne Fontes who rank #2 and #1, respectively, in career coaching wins accumulated after 1964, when Ford bought out the consortium of over 100 partners and became sole owner. But it is only Schmidt who is the possessor of a winning record, of anyone who wasn’t an interim coach, in that time.

Had Ford somehow been able to broker an arrangement back in 1973 that would have enabled Schmidt to remain as coach of the team, I believe he – Schmidt – would have been coach here well into the 1970’s, at least. And I think winning football would have been the order of the day.

Today the Lions have Rod Marinelli, and I still am among those who believe he can be the right guy, if provided with the proper talent. In Schmidt’s six seasons as Lions coach, the team won 43 games. In Millen’s six seasons as de facto GM, the team has won 24 games. But Millen is in no power struggle with his head coach. And even if he were, it would be wiped out by his close bond with Ford.

Just like Russ Thomas’ close bond with Ford, the strength of which led to the departure of the greatest Lions coach since the Kennedy administration.

We just didn’t know it at the time.

Chelios' Return To Red Wings Completely Unimportant Right Now

I don't know when Red Wings defenseman Chris Chelios is going to be back in the lineup, and frankly I don't care. The horrific events that occurred at his Cheli's Chili Bar Tuesday morning, the details of which are even worse than I imagined, render the question of his return to game play absolutely moot.

Employees Mark Barnard and Megan Soroka were brutally stabbed to death Tuesday morning by, police allege, a 17-year-old fired employee, Justin Blackshear, who had gone to the restaurant asking for his job back. Blackshear has an 18-year-old pregnant girlfriend, who herself was also fired from Cheli's.

According to police reports, Blackshear got into a fight with cook Barnard, stabbed him ten times, then lured Soroka to the scene, where he then stabbed her multiple times.

Soroka, it was revealed in the reports, had been speaking with Chelios via telephone just minutes before she was killed. She reportedly told her boss that Barnard was in a fight, and that she was going to "check on him."

So Chris Chelios was the last person to speak to Soroka before she was murdered.

Hockey is hardly important this morning to him, and for who knows how many more mornings going forward.

We at Motor City Sports Magazine sat on pins and needles all day Tuesday, because the IDs of the victims weren't released, and we know one of the female managers at Cheli's. Was she the one who was killed? It wasn't a very pleasant afternoon.

But the fact that Soroka was not our contact did not make this crime any less tragic, of course.

The week has been unkind in the world of sports. Denver Broncos cornerback Darrent Williams was slain in a drive-by shooting last Sunday.

Understandably, Red Wings management is giving Chelios however much time he needs before he chooses to rejoin the team. Currently he's helping police in their investigation.

Mark Barnard was 52. Megan Soroka was 49.

It's safe to say that Detroit doesn't exactly feel like Hockeytown to Chris Chelios right now. But in time it will again, most likely. The ice and pucks will someday be a welcome elixir for the 22-year NHL veteran.

There is a life to still lead, after all -- even if it's a drastically changed one.

Saban's Lies Pre-Dated By Rogers' Whoppers

The denials came, fervent and repeated. The college coach wanted the ink stained wretches and TV talking heads to know that he was no way, no how, leaving his current position to take another, at a university in the southwest. Then one day, just 24 hours after the last denial, the news was broken: college coach was leaving, to that opportunity in the desert.

A few years later, the same college coach, tanned now but perhaps restless again, issued more of the same denials. And the same boobs that report such things bought it again, though there were some more skeptics than before.

NO! I am NOT leaving the desert to enter the NFL as a head coach.

The denials were being spewed, right up until the time the press conference was being announced that the NFL team had found its new coach. Then the denying coach hopped a plane and went from the heat of the desert to the cold of a Michigan winter.

This was Darryl Rogers, back in the 1980's. First he said he wasn't leaving MSU for Arizona State. Then he did anyway. Next, he said he wasn't leaving Arizona State for the Detroit Lions. Then he did anyway. In neither case did our teams come out ahead on the deal.

I couldn't help but think of Rogers and his false denials -- the second of which was uttered even as the presser was being arranged to announce his hiring by the Lions -- as the latest Nick Saban drama played out.


Saban explains himself to Dolphins owner Wayne Huizenga


Here I thought we'd heard the last of Saban rumors for awhile when he accepted the job as Miami Dolphins head coach, before the 2005 season. Well, hoped was more like it.

Saban is a fine coach, but I'm tired of him. Tired of him being rumored for every stinking NFL job when he was in college. Tired of him being rumored, once he left for the NFL, for every stinking college job. Football's Larry Brown.

Now he's gone again, off to Alabama, despite those same indignant, repeated denials -- similar to those issued by Rogers (who wasn't near the coach that Saban is) -- uttered, once again, almost right up to the moment he penned his signature on the Crimson Tide contract.

Nick Saban, like Darryl Rogers 20+ years before him, lied. To everyone. Forget the media, because who doesn't lie to us? He lied to his players, his owner, and who knows who else. He signed an eight-year contract, but what does that matter, really? Saban had three years left on his Dolphins contract, after all. So how long before Saban is, once again, bantied about as being the perfect choice for another NFL team?

I'm already bracing myself.

Maybe Saban left the Dolphins because he feels that, deep down, he's a college coach, not an NFL coach. Fine. But he didn't even feed us the standard non-denial/denial, which if he had, wouldn't make him look like such the false prophet that he appears to be this morning.

No, I'm not leaving! No way! No how!

Until I sign my next contract, at the next locale, that is.

Some People Never Change, And That's Good In Yzerman's Case

Some people never change, appearance-wise. You know the type. Forever young, maybe a few pounds heavier. But you'd still recognize them upon first look. These people are blessed with good stock.

Then there are the people who never change, inside. Life's experiences never seem to change their countenance. Of course, this could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on the person.

In Steve Yzerman's case, it's a good thing. A very good thing.

Listening to Yzerman speak last night at his jersey retirement ceremony, as I was tucked away near the Zamboni entrance (doing some freelance work for Fox Sports Detroit), and hearing him give everyone credit except himself for his amazing career, I realized he was basically the same person, at age 41, as he was at age 18, when I first encountered him.

It's a story I've often told, but here it goes again. October, 1983. I'm working as a cub reporter for The Michigan Daily (U-M's student newspaper), and the assignment is a Red Wings game, opponent long forgotten. And irrelevant. For the story, to me, isn't the game, but the scene afterward, in the lockerroom.

The Wings have won this one, and the cameras and microphones and notepads are surrounding the established veterans: John Ogrodnick; Brad Park; Ron Duguay. I'm crowded around them, too, being jabbed away by the brutish camera operators. Standing behind me, dressing quietly by himself, is this teenager who looked more in place in a high school dressing room than that of the NHL.

I asked him a few questions. His answers, I don't recall. But I remember clear as day how they sounded: quiet, barely audible in the din of the lockerroom. He seemed almost ready to blush, that I was speaking to him, when there were grizzled veterans in the same room.

Today, there's been little change.

It happened again last night. Fetching Yzerman for a post-ceremony interview on FSD, he shook my hand and accorded me nothing less than cooperative courtesy. When I tracked him down in late October at the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame dinner, he was the same way.

"I got a kick out of Jimmy Devellano saying, 'We think he can contribute,' during that video," I said to Yzerman, referencing Jimmy D's induction video, when he was describing the drafting of #19 in June, 1983.

"Well," Yzerman said, with that shy grin, "we really didn't know back then, did we?"

Perhaps not. But we know now. Oh, how we know.

***********************************

During the game, I sat in the suite occupied by Red Wings alumni, along with coaches Scotty Bowman, Jacques Demers, and Dave Lewis. The three of them sat, along with Ted Lindsay, beside me as we watched the game below.

Listening to these guys talk hockey, past and present, as the players of today skated, was wonderfully surreal. Bowman and Demers gabbed for a while, Jacques his usual animated self. Lindsay watched the game intently, as if he was an opposing GM scouting players for possible trades.

Sometime during the second period, I started in on Larry Murphy.

"How badly did you want out of Toronto?," I asked Murphy, who was acquired from the Maple Leafs by the Red Wings at the trade deadline in 1997. Toronto fans took to booing Murphy relentlessly near the end of his career as a Leaf.

"Well, it's all about winning," Murphy said.

Did the booing and catcalls bother him?

"Naah. Not at all."

"They booed you in Toronto for years afterward," I said. "Get over it!"

Murphy laughed and agreed.

I asked Steve Duchesne, a 2002 Cup winner in Detroit, about goalie Dominik Hasek.

"Is he playing as well," I asked, "as when you won the Cup with him in '02?"

"Maybe," Duchesne said. "But he gets hurt a lot. Sometimes he breaks down."

True.

Lindsay finally looked up from his intense viewing and spoke at one point.

"It's a skater's game," Terrible Ted said, to no one in particular.

True again. Not that Ted was much of one. He played with a brute force that is often missed in today's game. But I think he'd like to get on the ice and show the kids a thing or two.

***********************************

I really enjoyed one particular moment last night.

In the suite was longtime Red Wings team physician Dr. John Finley. I remembered a quote about Dr. Finley from Gordie Howe, and I recounted it to the doc to his glee.

"Someone once asked Howe, 'Who has the hardest shot in the league? Gordie said, "Dr. Finley."'"

Dr. Finley remembered the quote, as I suspected he had. But he was no less happy to hear it again.

Memo To Lloyd Carr: Call Jim Harkema

He took his group of college football kids out west, to that scene of usual horrors, in that goofy, flaky state called California. Another Michigan school figured to get the stuffing beat out of it by a hometown Golden State institution of higher learning.

There was nothing, really, that suggested a victory for the Washtenaw County-based university. But maybe they could go out there and give their opponents, who once again held home field advantage of sorts, a tussle and make their faithful back home somewhat proud.

They did. And more.

Eastern Michigan University – the Hurons back then, before they bowed to the PCers and became the Eagles – was hardly a bastien of good football. They still aren’t, truthfully. Maybe they will never be.

But in 1987, perhaps sprinkled with some sort of magic pixie dust, the Hurons, coached by the no-nonsense Jim Harkema, captured the Mid-American Conference (MAC) title and thus qualified for the old California Bowl, played in Fresno. Sometimes they called it the California Raisin Bowl. No joke.

So Harkema took his kids westward, marching them into an expected tail-whipping, if you listened to the sure-fire experts – the ones who bothered to even pay the California Bowl any attention to begin with.

The opposing school was San Jose State, and they were hotshot. They had a firewagon brand of offense. And they had the prerequisite of any team playing a school from Michigan in a bowl located in California: they were from California themselves.

It was the curse of the Rose Bowl that for years taunted the University of Michigan Wolverines: playing, essentially, a road game in the postseason. The Wolves would traipse onto the field, led by crusty Bo Schembechler, and across from them would be USC or Stanford, perhaps having ridden their bikes to the stadium.

But the Hurons were even bigger underdogs than any U-M team had been in a Rose Bowl. Their history was part of the reason why.

I was a shaggy student at EMU in the early-to-mid 1980’s, and there were times when it was questionable whether the MAC would even allow my school back into its conference for football. Things were that bad.

“I Survived The Big MAC Attack,” the shirts said, emblazoned on the front, and we wore them with whatever pride you muster when you’ve staved off extinction. The mighty Hurons, when I arrived on campus in 1981, were in the throes of a long losing streak in football that would eventually reach in the low teens. I remember the student body president taking a signed petition to EMU President John W. Porter, calling for the removal of head coach Mike Stock.

Stock stayed – for a little while longer, until early 1982, when he finally got the ziggy. But the losing continued, even after the Great Losing Streak had been snapped. Attendance at Rynearson Stadium for fall Saturdays was somewhere between that of a Rotary Club dinner and an appearance by Michael Richards at the Apollo.

It was right about then that the MAC launched its Attack.

Get those attendance numbers up, the conference decreed, or we won’t let you join in our football games any longer.

So the university pulled out all the stops to get as many fannies into Rynearson seats as they could. It didn’t matter how blatantly overt their efforts were. It didn’t even matter if the attendees paid any attention to the action on the field. It only mattered that they have their ticket stubs removed at the gate, and that the turnstile clicked once more.

They brought in comedian Skip Stephenson to perform after a game against Central Michigan. If you’ve never heard of him, rest easy. Hardly any of the fans had either. There was singer Lynn Anderson, who so badly lip-synced “You Never Promised Me A Rose Garden” that the school paper ran an editorial cartoon the next day of her photo being flushed down a toilet.

They even flew the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders in for a game. Male attendance soared. But the beer-filled, chunky testosterone brutes had their collective hearts sink when the girls appeared on the field. This is because instead of their signature halter tops, mini-skirts and knee-high white cowboy boots, the cheerleaders wore blue sparkly spandex jumpsuits. Too cold out for the signature suits. And no skin, no fun, you see.

While all this sideshow stuff was going on, the team wasn’t getting all that much better. But I went to most of the games, usually to see the Hurons give Northern Illinois or Toledo or CMU a tussle before collapsing into defeat sometime in the fourth quarter. Maybe 5,000 others were in the stadium with me.

Yet somehow, the university met the MAC’s requirement for attendance, and by the enforced deadline. I’d still like to measure the noses of the regents who communicated to the conference that the school had gotten the requisite tushies into the seats. Surely those books are in the fiction section of the university library.

Regardless, the MAC let Eastern stay to play football in its conference, and by the middle part of the 1980’s, the school had hired Harkema as coach. Not long after, the wins started to flow, as opposed to trickle, as before. In 1987, with Taylor kid Ronnie Adams at quarterback and Gary Patton running the ball, the mighty Hurons ticked off wins at an alarming rate. Before anyone knew it, EMU was going to the California Bowl.

Westward, ho!

The game, in December 1987, against San Jose State was a classic. Back and forth point-tallying. SJSU would score, and Adams would chuck a touchdown pass. San Jose would score again, and Patton would rip off a long run. Adams would throw another TD pass.

The Hurons scored late, and won 30-27. In fact, in the 11-year history of the California Bowl, EMU was the only school from the state of Michigan to win the thing. Western and Central each had a shot, and failed. The MAC went 4-7 against the Big West champs in the bowl.

So a school from Michigan flew home from a bowl game in California as winners. It wasn’t, at the time, a common occurrence. It still isn’t.

U-M coach Lloyd Carr might want to seek out Jim Harkema and ask him how it’s done, before he takes his Wolverines into Pasadena to take on USC.

Anyone who can survive a Big MAC Attack ought to know a thing or two, I reckon.