Big Ten Football: Missing Bo Schembechler and His Legacy at Michigan

I wasn't a fan of Glenn "Bo" Schembechler, Jr. when he took over the head coaching job at Michigan.

As a young boy, I used to run rolls of film from the Michigan sidelines to the press box at the stadium in Ann Arbor. My uncle Ted, who worked for the university, had gotten me the job.

I was hypnotized by the 1965 Wolverine team of Bob Timberlake, Mel Anthony and Carl Ward  They won the Big Ten title and then beat Oregon State, 34-7, in the Rose Bowl. The head coach was Bump Elliott. who led the Michigan football program from 1959 to 1968.

Elliott resigned in 1968 after a humiliating 50-14 loss to Ohio State, He was particularly upset, because Ohio State's legendary coach Woody Hayes tried (and failed) to tack a two-point conversion onto the score after the Buckeyes' last touchdown late in the game.

My fondness for Elliott outweighed my initial perception of Schembechler.  Bo was coming from Miami University (the one in Ohio) to follow in the footsteps of Fielding H. Yost and Fritz Crisler.

Schembechler won me over in the 1969 Ohio State game. The Buckeyes entered the game with a 22-game winning streak and a No. 1 national ranking.  Woody Hayes' team featured quarterback Rex Kern, running backs Jim Otis and John Brockington and wide receivers Jan White and Bruce Jankowski.

Michigan came into the game battling for a Big Ten title and a trip to the Rose Bowl, though they were a 17-point underdog.  Bo, however, was a master at motivation.  He had the number 50 taped everywhere in the Michigan locker room and also on the players' practice uniforms.

To get a sense of how great a head coach Bo was during his 21 years at Michigan, you need to consider he had a 79.5 winning percentage (194-48-5). His Big Ten winning percentage was an incredible 85 percent (143-24-3). In his first 10 years at Michigan, Schembechler and the Wolverines won the Big Ten title outright once, shared the title seven times and finished second twice. 

Schembechler had a tremendous command of the game and a sometimes flammable personality. Under Bo's guidance, the Wolverines were strong in the fundamentals, fierce competitors on the field and typically featured dominating offensive and defensive lines.

The coaching fraternity considered Bo Schembechler as a man of high personal integrity and the ultimate coach's coach. The Michigan brass was so happy with Bo's results that when he left the head coaching job after the 1989 season, they hired two of Schembechler's assistant coaches, Gary Moeller and Lloyd Carr, to run the Michigan program for the next 18 years.

Bo passed away on Nov. 17, 2006, at the age of 77.

New Michigan head coach Brady Hoke is a byproduct of the Schembechler lineage.  He was an assistant coach on Lloyd Carr's staff from 1995 to 2002.  He left behind the assistant head coach and defensive coordinator jobs at Michigan to become Ball State's head coach in December, 2002. 

Maybe Hoke can tap some of that "Bo energy" as he participates in his first Big Ten season as Michigan's head coach this fall.