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HAIL TO THE GREATEST VICTOR
Nov. 17, 2006
It was just another
beautiful sunny afternoon in Southern California. I hurried into the
bleachers on the Citrus College football field, with a spring in my step.
Fresh out of college, in
my first job as a professional journalist, I had scored a plum assignment
of covering the Michigan Wolverines as they got ready to play in the Rose
Bowl. Life was good.
And it was about to get
better.
As I climbed into the
bleacher seats, notepad in hand and excitement dancing in my head, I
noticed an older gentleman sitting alone a few rows up. Could it be …
I cozied up to the man,
"Hi, Coach," I said. I introduced myself and before I could even work up
the nerve to ask to sit next to him, he tapped the bench and insisted that
I stick around.
For the rest of the
afternoon, Bo Schembechler and I talked … no, make that, Bo talked and I
listened, about all things Michigan. There was no one else around — as I
would later brag to my editors and friends, "just me and Bo."
He had coached his last
Michigan game two years before. At this time, he had the dual roles of
president of the Detroit Tigers and television analyst for ABC Sports. His
protege, Gary Moeller, was now coaching the Wolverines, with a roster
still stocked with his recruits.
But Bo wasn’t a meddler.
He had too much integrity and respect for his former assistant. He was not
going to do anything to take the spotlight away from Moeller. For the
entire week, he shunned the media, turned down every request for an
interview and was downright elusive.
So much so that the Los
Angeles Times, the biggest paper in town, had to lift a couple of quotes
from my story (without attribution, as my editor bitterly complained) —
because their guy never got to talk to Bo.
Why did Bo talk to me? I
think because he saw me as a kid, young, innocent, earnest and respectful.
For an old school coach like Bo, who’s had his battles with the media, he
just liked that.
"Sure, I miss the game
and I miss the kids," I am now stealing my own Bo quotes. "But after 25
years, it was just a little too much. … Besides, nobody could’ve done a
better job with this team than what (Moeller) has done."
On that glorious
afternoon, above the same field where Bo’s first Rose Bowl team also
practiced, our conversations covered about the entire history of Michigan
football, a little bit about the Tigers and the television industry and
advice on how I could get ahead in life.
"Sam," yes, he called me
by my name. "You have to believe that you are the best at what you do. You
have to believe that you can write sports better than the next guy. But
you have to work at it. If you work as hard as you can, you’ll go places.
Don’t worry about it."
I’ve been to a few
places, a Super Bowl here, a Final Four there, a Masters or two, the World
Cup, among other things. But when I think back to my career as a
journalist, no event was quite comparable to that December afternoon in
Glendora.
As I walked into my
restaurant this afternoon, my eyes first came upon the bank of television
sets above the bar. I saw Bruce Madej, the longtime Michigan SID on the
screen, just above the text of "Bo Schembechler, dead at age 77."
My eyes welled up. My
restaurant manager came up to me and asked me if everything was all right.
I said no, and retreated to my office.
It’s been at least seven
years since I last spoke to Bo. Almost 15 years since I first met him in
those bleachers. And I don’t even write about sports anymore. But on this
day, I felt compelled to write something.
Before I became sick of
talking to forked-tongue agents, double-dealing general managers, whiney
players and egomaniacal coaches, I bought into the romanticism of sport.
There was a man who talked of only what he believed and worked for the
love of the game, not the money and the glory.
That man is now gone, but
not before leaving an indelible mark both as a sportsman and a gentleman.
And all the lives he
touched, including this one. Thank you and goodbye … Coach.
BCS GURU
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