LARRY AND BO SHOW : Smith, Once a Schembechler Protege, Wants to Beat Master at His Game

While Larry Smith was being interviewed for his first full-time college coaching job, his wife, Cheryl, sat in an outer office waiting for her husband.

The door opened and Bo Schembechler, the Miami of Ohio football coach, ran a power play on the young wife.

“He said to me, ‘Are you going to be one of those . . . wives that complain every time I send your husband out on the road to recruit?’ ” Cheryl Smith recalled. “He was nose to nose with me and I was only 24-years-old at the time. But I thought that I wasn’t going to let this guy intimidate me.

“So I said, ‘If I was, he sure as hell wouldn’t be working for you.’ ”

“Then, he slapped me on the back and said, ‘You’re all right.’ And we’ve been friends ever since.

“He had this reputation of being this tough, gruff person and he didn’t intimidate me. Those kind of people really want to know that they’re up against somebody with a little backbone.”

The year was 1967 and it was the beginning of a relationship in which Cheryl had a part in introducing Bo to his wife, Millie. Later, when Schembechler suffered a heart attack before the 1970 Rose Bowl game against USC, Larry and Cheryl would live in Bo’s house at Ann Arbor, Mich., taking care of the coach’s children.

Smith was an assistant coach under Schembechler at Miami of Ohio for 2 years. Then, when Schembechler became Michigan’s coach in 1969, Smith joined him for 4 years.

Now their relationship has taken a different turn. Smith, a proven head coach at USC, will be opposing his former mentor, Schembechler, Monday in the 75th Rose Bowl game.

“I’ve dreamed of meeting up with Bo in the Rose Bowl since I was coaching at Arizona,” Smith said.

Schembechler, who has won more games than any other active coach, is already a legendary figure at Michigan. However, Cheryl said that she doesn’t believe her husband is in awe of Bo.

“I remember when Bo was coaching against Woody Hayes, his mentor. Bo loved it,” Cheryl said. “It’s just an opportunity to coach against a guy you have the most respect for. Larry would love to beat him because he would realize that he’s beaten the best coaches and players.”

Smith said that some of his coaching philosophy has been shaped by Schembechler. He has also been influenced by Jim Young, a former Schembechler assistant coach, who is now Army’s coach.

Young left Schembechler’s staff to become coach at Arizona, taking Smith with him.

Smith stayed with Young for 3 years at Arizona before becoming Tulane’s coach in 1976. He returned to Arizona in 1980, spending 7 seasons at the school before moving on to USC--and the eventual meeting with Schembechler.

As a young coach at Miami of Ohio, Smith recalls his indoctrination under Schembechler.

“Bo was a guy who was very dedicated to football,” Smith said. “He was a staunch disciplinarian, but a very fair person. He really stressed fundamentals and all the minute details. We’d discuss one play for days.”

It has been said that Smith coaches his coaches. If so, Schembechler had an early impact on him.

“One time we had a big scrimmage and I was coaching the outside linebackers,” Smith said. “One of my linebackers didn’t chase deep enough on a play that went away from him.

“My guy was about a yard behind the line of scrimmage and he was supposed to be four, or five yards. I got a 30-minute chewing out from Bo for not doing a good job of coaching fundamentals.”

Smith said that Schembechler was a driven man during those days at Ohio.

“As a bachelor, he had nothing else to do but work on football,” Smith said. “His whole life was the football program, the players and coaches. He would go fishing in the summer for a week or two, but that was the extent of any outside activities.”

Cheryl recalled that she and her husband lived close to Schembechler in the university town of Oxford, Ohio. They shared a duplex with the Miami of Ohio trainer and his wife, Merle Pollins.

“One time the coaches and the trainer were out of town, so Merle and I called Bo and said, ‘Listen, we need our garbage carried out. Come down and we’ll give you a beer.’

“While he was there, Bo said he was going to California with a stop over in St. Louis. Merle said, ‘I’ve got a great friend that you have to meet in St. Louis.’ So we called Millie from my apartment and introduced Bo to her over the phone. They met and were married about 6 months later.”

When Schembechler became Michigan’s coach in 1969, he brought Smith, Young and Chuck Stobart (USC’s offensive coordinator) with him as his assistants.

Michigan won the Big Ten championship in Schembechler’s first year, setting up a Rose Bowl meeting against USC.

“The team and coaches stayed in a monastery the night before the game, so we wouldn’t see them until after the game,” Cheryl said. “When we (coaches’ wives) got to the game, we realized that Millie wasn’t there and Bo wasn’t on the field.

“My first thought was that Bo had to be dead. There’s no way you could keep him off the field if he was alive.”

Schembechler had suffered a heart attack, a condition that would necessitate surgeries in ensuing years.

“At the time, the game was irrelevant,” Cheryl said. “I don’t remember one thing about it (USC won, 10-3). We just sat there not knowing what had happened and in a panic over thinking the worst. We didn’t find out about Bo until after the game.”

Schembechler remained in a Pasadena hospital for several weeks. So Larry and Cheryl, who didn’t have any children at the time, moved into Bo’s house to care for Millie and Bo’s three oldest boys. A younger son, Shemy, was with Millie and Bo in California.

“From that we developed a tie with Bo that will last forever,” Cheryl said. “He expressed how much it meant to him to have us in his house with his kids and not have to worry about them.

“That was still his tough, gruff time. However, he said, ‘I can’t thank you enough for what you did. I’ll love you forever.’

“Everyone has a gentle spot and he does as well. I think he’s mellowed out a little bit now, but not in his coaching.”

Said Smith: “I don’t think he’s more mellow. I just believe he’s taking things more in stride. He still works as hard as ever, pushes his coaches and players and is an intense competitor.

“However, football isn’t the only thing in his life now. Three, or four bypass surgeries might have had something to do with it.”

Schembechler was an assistant under the late Woody Hayes at Ohio State and has been compared to him in manner--gruff, abrupt and demanding.

“Bo is a little bit like Woody,” Smith said, “but Bo is different from the standpoint that he’s more wordly and has adjusted more to the times.”

Smith said that Schembechler’s players respect him even though he’s a disciplinarian.

“When his players are freshmen and sophomores, they pay the price,” Smith said. “He’s very hard on younger players because he says that’s where discipline is established.

“With the seniors it’s more of a personal relationship. I try to be the same way. When the players are freshmen and sophomores, you’ve got to carry a heavy stick. But, when they get a little bit older, you can sit down and talk more on a man-to-man basis.”

Asked how Schembechler has influenced him from purely a coaching standpoint, Smith said:

“You’ve got to have a great defense and kicking game to win championships. Offensively, you must be sound. Run first and pass second and don’t beat yourself.

“As a head coach, my number one function is to get the team ready to play from a mental standpoint. The assistant coaches do it from a teaching and fundamental standpoint. However, the head coach is in charge on game day. He may not call all the plays, but he’s in charge.”

Cheryl Smith said that her husband and Bo are alike inasmuch as they both value integrity highly.

“They also believe in the work ethic. Larry goes by the old saying that hard work guarantees nothing, but the lack of it does. Loyalty is also a big part of their makeup.

“However, they’re different personalities. They’re not alike in their manner at all.”

So who has the edge in the matchup between the coaches?

“You know that Bo is working his butt off and you know there’s a lot of ways that he can attack you,” Smith said. “You can drive yourself crazy on what he’s trying to do--knowing what you know that he knows that you know.”

It’s most likely a ploy on his part, but Schembechler hinted that Smith has an edge when he said:

“When I played Woody, I had the advantage because I studied him more than he studied me.”

Smith doesn’t buy a word of it.