The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
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THE WOLVERINE 2016 FOOTBALL PREVIEW ■ 31 BY JOHN BORTON J amie Morris calls it "ground zero." The former Michigan running back doesn't like to return there in his mind, even while honoring a coach he loves so genuinely his emotions gang-tackle his words. Morris sat and sobbed, helplessly, at Southfield's Providence Hospital on Nov. 17, 2006, after doctors unsuccessfully tried to give Glenn E. "Bo" Schembechler more time on the clock. Morris had raced to the hospital with Cathy Schembechler, Bo's wife, dreading what might follow. A massive heart attack ended Schem- bechler's 77-year run. At 11:43 a.m., doc- tors pronounced the death of an all-time Michigan athletics icon. "I was numb," Morris said. "I still have my dad, but I remember losing my mother. It was like losing a parent. It's a tough thing to go through." Hundreds and hundreds of former Michi- gan football players went through it. They were numb, shocked, disbeliev- ing, so stricken with grief that the weekend to come — featuring a foot- ball showdown between No. 1 Ohio State and No. 2 Michigan — spiraled down into meaninglessness. One man still had to coach that game. Lloyd Carr hurt, just like all the others, after losing a man he'd coached under for a decade. He didn't have the luxury of mentally packing it in. But others just couldn't summon up any fervor for a game Schembechler loved more than any other. Dan Dierdorf, an All-American offensive lineman on Schembechler's first Michigan team, will never forget finding out that the man he first feared, then ultimately loved, was gone. "I kind of went into shock," Dierdorf re- called. "I got the call that his heart had fi- nally failed, and he'd passed away." He immediately canceled plans to arrive early in Green Bay in order to prep for his CBS broadcast of a Packers game. Instead, he hopped a flight for Ann Arbor, heading straight to the Schembechler home to grieve and make funeral plans among a handful. "I just had to go," Dierdorf said. "I had to be there." When the Michigan-Ohio State game rolled around, Dierdorf found himself en route to Green Bay, indifferent to the out- come of a football game. "That didn't really matter to me," he said. "If I would have watched it, I'm not sure I would have remembered a lot of it. As hard as this is to say, at the moment, I didn't think the Michigan-Ohio State game was very important. "Those words are sacrilegious, but at the time they were accurate." Ten years later, they all remember: the day, the weekend, but most of all the man. "He's the godfather of the modern era of Michigan football," Dierdorf said. "The pa- triarch. If you're really fortunate in your life, you get to be in the company of somebody like a Bo Schembechler." There are great coaches throughout col- lege football history, Dierdorf concedes. There are few who seem larger than life. There will never be another Bo Schem- bechler. "The word 'charismatic' falls short," Dier- dorf stressed. "He was an extraordinary man, who sucked all of the oxygen out of a room when he went into it. It was like the old E.F. Hutton commercials, where when one guy talked, everybody leaned in to listen. "Bo was that guy. Everybody wanted to be with him. Everybody who knew him knew they were in the company of someone who doesn't just come skipping down the road every day of your life. "You should really appreciate the fact that you were part of that man's life." The Toughest Love Dierdorf and Schembechler's other play- ers couldn't appreciate it upon arrival in Ann Arbor. They were too worried he was going to run them into the ground or out of the football program. "I was terrified of him," Dierdorf insisted. "I didn't even want to make eye contact with the man, because he was so demanding. He pushed us so hard. "He asked us to do things that none of us had ever attempted to do before. We'd never worked that hard or had anyone demand that much." Morris, a 5-7 running back out of Ayer, Mass., didn't exactly get a Schembechler bear hug his first year in a winged helmet. "I remember the first time I walked through the door, down at the coaches' of- fices," Morris recalled. "They were in meet- ings, and I just stuck my head in and I got to come in. "He looked at [running backs] Coach [Tir- rel] Burton, and I remember him saying: 'Tirrel, I don't know what we did. Don't be angry with me. I brought the smallest run- ning back I've ever seen here to Michigan.'" Morris eventually underscored Schem- bechler's expectation of production, be- coming the Wolverines' modern-era career rushing leader. That effort notwithstanding, Morris didn't experience nonstop positive reinforcement along the way. It didn't work that way, Bob Thornbladh assured. Thornbladh, a fullback for Schem- bechler from 1971-73 and later a U-M as- sistant coach, experienced every bit of the unyielding — and uncompromising — de- mands the field general laid down in the early years of a 21-season run featuring 13 Big Ten championships. Thornbladh knew firsthand how tough it was to measure up. "When I was playing, he — like Jim Harbaugh does now — incentiv- ized you," Thornbladh said. "You'd get awarded footballs. They get little Wolverine stickers. We had footballs on the back of our helmets. "There was a list of things you had to do in order to get those. Those things were important to us. We were moti- vated to get that recognition. We would fight like hell to do whatever was re- quired to get those things." Thornbladh came that close one season against Iowa. He performed extremely well against the Hawkeyes, earning Offensive Player of the Game, grading out highly and garnering plaudits for those achievements. "But I gained 99 yards," Thornbladh noted. "He stood up there, and he went through his litany of people. That was part of what he did on Sunday, when he recog- nized how many footballs each guy got, and recognized a player of the game, offensively, defensively and special teams. "He said, 'Thornbladh gained 99 yards.' You get a gold football if you gain 100 yards. But he said, 'Thornbladh, 99 is not 100. Maybe next time, you'll give greater ef- fort, and you'll get 100 yards, and you'll get the football. Because 99 is not 100.'" The old fullback burst into uproarious laughter over the memories. He can picture it today like when he first heard those words. "He set these levels of expectation for players, and you got it or you didn't," he observed. "If you didn't he was there to help you get it. But there was not a moral victory. "He rewarded me in other ways, because I played a great game. But I didn't get a little gold football. I always tell people, 99 is not "He's the godfather of the modern era of Michigan football. The patriarch. If you're really fortunate in your life, you get to be in the company of somebody like a Bo Schembechler." FORMER U-M ALL-AMERICAN DAN DIERDORF A larger than life statue of Schembechler reminds all of the legacy the iconic coach left behind and includes his timeless quote: "Those That Stay Will Be Champions." PHOTO BY LON HORWEDEL