OPINION

By Harry Atkins

updated 9:06 p.m. ET Nov. 17, 2006

Shortly after becoming president of the Detroit Tigers, a job he knew little about, Bo Schembechler said, “If there’s no stress, there’s no fun.”

That was Bo.

The man was best known as a football coach. Maybe the last of the one-name coaches. Yet his zest for life was such that he refused to be tied down to any one thing.

He coached, sure. And he ran a baseball team for a couple of years. But he also was a world traveler and loving father. He served on many corporate boards. He was a loyal friend.

And now he’s gone.

Schembechler, who died Friday, will be remembered most fondly, of course, for his glorious tenure as Michigan’s football coach.

Bo transformed Michigan’s program into one of the best in the nation and, aided by the salesmanship of the late Don Canham — the athletic director who hired him — they began to regularly fill the university’s giant stadium. The Wolverines haven’t had a home crowd under 100,000 since.

Between Miami of Ohio and Michigan, he coached for 27 years. He lost only 65 games in all that time. That was one reason, by his own admission, that baseball was so hard on him. The Tigers would sometimes lose that many games by early August.

“People tell me, ’Hey, they play 162 games a year.’ But I don’t give a darn,” Bo said back then. “I only see one at a time.”

Schembechler never shied away from challenges. That’s why he took the Michigan job. That’s why he took the Tigers’ job. He wasn’t looking for an easy paycheck.

When he stepped down as Michigan’s athletic director to join the Tigers in 1990, Bo’s doctors wanted him to take a less-stressful job. He wouldn’t listen.

“If you don’t have some stress in your job, you don’t have anything,” he said.

His coaching record was 40-17-3 at Miami of Ohio and 194-48-5 at Michigan.

Thirteen of Schembechler’s Michigan teams either won or shared the Big Ten championship. Fifteen of them finished in The Associated Press Top 10, with the 1985 team finishing No. 2.

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Seventeen of Schembechler’s 21 Michigan teams earned bowl berths. Despite a .796 regular-season winning percentage, however, his bowl record stunk. Bo’s postseason record was 5-12, including 2-8 in Rose Bowls, making him the winningest coach never to win a national title.

“I’ve never been interested in honors,” he said.

What he was interested in was doing things the right way. Bo easily earned his reputation as being tough, hard, irascible, and uncompromising. And loud. VERY LOUD.

Yet his players grew to love him.

He spent $150 to have a sign made. It said, “Those Who Stay Will Be Champions” and it still hangs over the locker room door. It’s a fancier locker room, now, however. In a building named Schembechler Hall.

So, he might not have been the easiest guy in the world to get along with. But no one ever questioned Bo’s integrity.

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It seemed somehow appropriate, then, that word of his retirement from football leaked out when he was speaking to a sociology class. When he had an opinion, Bo never could keep it to himself.

And despite his gruff exterior, he was fun to be around. The air fairly crackled when Bo, wearing those tinted glasses, would swagger into a postgame news conference. Over the next 10 minutes or so, reporters knew they were going to learn something they didn’t know about the game they had just watched.

Practices were special, too. Schembechler was the image of a field marshal, walking around the practice field with a 3-foot ruler in hand.

Whap!

If he didn’t like the way the offense was performing, he might rap the right tackle on the back of the leg.

Equipment manager Jon Falk always kept a supply of yardsticks on hand for workouts. Three broken rulers generally meant a good day on the practice field.

Somehow it worked.

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“The toughest thing I’ve ever had to do was give up my football team,” Schembechler said, choking back tears, on the day he announced he was stepping down, handing the coaching job over to Gary Moeller. “But, it’s the right thing to do, so I’m doing it.”

That was Bo.

He had lived for the X’s and O’s, for his relationships with his players, for Saturdays. Especially for Saturdays. But, mostly, he lived for life. He never wasted a minute.

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