He Always Comes Back for More

Glenn E. Schembechler is one of the greatest football coaches of all time. He has won more games than Rockne or Lombardi. He has been--or will have been--in more Rose Bowl games than any coach who ever lived, and that includes Howard Jones, John McKay, Woody Hayes, Pop Warner. All of them.

He has won more games than any major-college coach alive. He has been to 13 straight bowl games. Like all great coaches, he has a school of pupils. His former assistants are all over the place. The Schembechler method will be used in bowl games from coast to coast in late December and early January: Don Nehlen at West Virginia, Jim Young at Army, Bill McCartney at Colorado. And the man he’ll be playing Jan. 2, Larry Smith of USC.

By all rights, he should be a statue in a public square in Ann Arbor. He’s the most important man in college football today. Only Penn State’s Joe Paterno comes close. He should have field houses, Little League football named after him.

Know what he’s going to be remembered for?

Right! Not the 223 games he has won, but 7 he has lost. Not the record number of Rose Bowls he has been in but the record number he has dropped.

In a sense, you could call Bo Schembechler Mr. Rose Bowl. If you do, duck.

What the iceberg was to the Titanic, what Little Big Horn was to Custer, Waterloo to Napoleon, Tunney to Dempsey, the Rose Bowl is to Bo Schembechler.

To the rest of the world, it may be this glorious flower-flecked arena, shimmering in sunlight, full of cheerleaders and movie stars. To Bo Schembechler, it’s Dracula’s castle.

Never mind the snow-capped mountains, the orange blossoms, the card tricks, the marching bands. To Bo, it’s like seeing a pirate ship off the port bow when you have a cargo of gold. Or hearing a hammer click on a gun in a dark room. You can keep the breathtaking scenery. It looks like the South Bronx or West Beirut to Bo.

Pasadena is to Bo what Philadelphia was to W. C. Fields. His epitaph, a la Fields, will probably read: “All things considered, I’d rather be here than Pasadena.”

Because when he leaves, his headstone is never going to mention the games he won, the times he beat Ohio State, the Big Ten championships he won, the 10 of his teams that won 10 or more games a season, the 16, to date, that went to bowl games. No, it’ll say--Bo is sure--something like:

Here lies Bo ,

He was quite a show .

He was on a roll

Till he hit the Rose Bowl.

It’s all anyone ever mentions.

“I go to a banquet and it’s the first thing they bring up,” Schembechler admits ruefully. “If they don’t, I thank them for not bringing it up. That way, I bring it up.”

You got to be a pretty good pitcher to lose 20 games. You got to be a great coach to lose 7 Rose Bowl games.

It’s not only that he lost 7 of 8 games, but the first Rose Bowl game Bo Schembechler ever coached, he had a heart attack and never made the kickoff.

You would think, with a record like his, that Coach Schembechler would take out an insurance policy against his ever being found in the city limits of Pasadena, that the only way he would go to the Rose Bowl would be in chains or in the bomb bay door of a plane sent to wipe it off the face of the earth.

But here he was Wednesday, affable, wearing a suit and tie, polished shoes and a broad grin, back in Pasadena, looking for all the world like a guy who had just won a lottery and not a trip to Devil’s Island.

Bo Schembechler--you’re never going to believe this-- likes the Rose Bowl! The Titanic wants another crack at the iceberg. Custer thinks the Indians were just lucky.

“There’s not a coach in the country who wouldn’t rather be in the Rose Bowl than any other game,” insists Bo. “It’s the premier postseason game. The others are just games. The Rose Bowl is history.”

Bo is like that Somerset Maugham character who is in love with a waitress. The worse she treats him, the more he loves her. She throws drinks in his face, she mocks his limp, she runs off with his best friend or a white hunter--and he keeps coming back for more. In fiction, her name was Mildred. In this case, the name is Rose.

Is there hope his affection will be requited?

Probably not. There’s something about Bo that just ticks off the old bawd. She keeps him hanging around the stage door, then throws his flowers and candy in the gutter. The 7 games he has lost at Pasadena, he only lost by more than a touchdown once--and that was by 10 points. He lost once by 1 point.

He gets to play his pupil Jan. 2. Larry Smith’s first coaching job was under Bo. At the press conference Wednesday, Smith looked uncomfortable, as though he expected Bo to tell him to go out and conduct the agility drills at any moment.

Bo only lost 2 games and by a total of 3 points this year. He held Notre Dame, victor over USC by 17, to a 2-point margin. It would seem, on the face of it, as though he had a pretty good chance.

But it always looks, on the face of it, as if he has a pretty good chance.

And anyway, even if he finally wins another one, it might not matter. The next trip he goes on, in the Sahara or the docks of Port Said, he’ll introduce himself to some guy wearing a robe and turban and the guy will say, “Schembechler! Oh, sure! I know you. Ain’t you the guy who loses all those Rose Bowl games all the time?”

It’s nice to be famous for something.