Those Who Stay (Episode 3)
COLD OPEN
Huge plumes of snow whip and swirl across the windshield of Bo’s car, the wind howling over his hood.
Perhaps it was the Football Gods roaring their disapproval at these Ohio-bred football minds as they headed toward Ann Arbor, Michigan – trying to rope the cars in and hold them home where they belonged.
Or maybe it was the opposite. Maybe it was a behemoth tailwind in the the angry throes of betrayal. Colored scarlet and gray, conjured from a perfect Woody Hayes 3 pt. stance: back flat, head up, slamming it’s ice-capped helmet into their rear bumpers with a stiff forearm shiver, sending them sprawling up I-75 toward the state line with sneer of good riddance toward the traitors.
It didn’t matter. Bo was damn near giddy. He had cooked Christmas breakfast just like he promised. Eggs, sausage, bacon, toast, orange juice. A buffet for Millie and the boys. All ready by 5am. Presents opened by 6:30am and by 7am he had picked up Jim Young, Jerry Hanlon and Chuck Stobart and pointed his sedan north. Gary Moeller was right behind him with Dick Hunter and Larry Smith.
They were leaving the comforts of Miami of Ohio – a place reverently referred to as the “Cradle of Coaches” – and slowly climbing up the snowy passage toward Ann Arbor with dreams of reviving one of the most storied programs in college football history.
This was their destiny…maybe.
“You’re lost,” Hanlon said.
“I’m not lost,” Bo snapped back, his hands strangling the steering wheel. “None of you sonsabitches have even been to the state of Michigan – don’t tell me I’m lost!”
(5 minutes later)
“I’m lost!” A shivering Bo yells into a pay phone outside a ‘Closed For Christmas’ gas station after dialing the home number of his new secretary, Lynn Koch.
“Who is this?” Koch said. 31 years old, two kids of her own, she didn’t have time to mince words.
“It’s Bo.”
“Who?”
“Bo Schembechler – the new head football coach!”
“Ohhh, yes, hi Coach…Schlem…”
“Schembechler. Bo.”
“Coach Schembechler. Got it. Merry Christmas, Bo, nice to meet you.”
“Oh well hell, I’m sorry – Merry Christmas and nice to meet you too.”
“Okay so, you’re lost. What do you see?”
Bo looks up, squinting into the driving snow. “A gas station.”
“Clark or BP?”
“Clark.”
“Gotcha. Canham has you all bunking at the golf course until you find houses so take the next right on Newhall – “
“Lynn, with all due respect, not one of my coaches will be seeing a goddamn golf course in the daytime until the Spring of 1970 at best. There’s only one place in the world we need to be and that’s the football office.”
THE GHOST OF YOST
“Over here,” Gary Moeller called from the bottom of a staircase inside Yost Fieldhouse. Five minutes earlier, Stobart and Hunter had boosted Hanlon up through an unlocked window and he’d come around and let them all inside.
Canham wasn’t joking. There was no heat. You could hang meat in there. A small sign was on the wall, particle board painted blue, its maize writing read: Football Coaches Locker Room with an arrow pointing up the stairs.
Hanlon, Hunter, Stobart, Smith, Young and Bo behind, all bounded up the steps, excited to explore their new Christmas present. The facilities couldn’t be as bad as people said – this was Michigan, after all.
They reached the top, in total darkness, and slowly eased into…somewhere.
“Where’s the goddamn light switch?” Bo barked.
Someone stumbled into a string hanging from the ceiling and pulled – CLICK.
A single, bare, dim bulb came on, its light struggling to reach the walls of what they now squinted to see was a small, square room. Twelve feet by twelve feet, tops.
Stobart pushed a rusty, dented folding chair against a wall after nearly tripping over it. Moeller eyed the cracks in the ceiling. Hanlon pointed to nails in the walls, spaced out evenly around the room, “Those must be…our lockers?”
“What the hell, ” some poor soul muttered. “We had better stuff at Miami.”
“The hell we did!“ Bo snapped. “I don’t want to hear any bellyaching about one goddamn thing here, understand? You see this chair? Fielding Yost sat in this chair. See that nail? Fielding Yost hung his hat on this nail. And you’re telling me we had better stuff at Miami? No, men, we didn’t. We have tradition here. Michigan tradition! And that is something that no one else has!”
The coaches nodded sheepishly and looked away. They knew this wasn’t a Pollyannish pep talk. Bo meant every word. And they were strong words from a former Buckeye who’d only been in Wolverine country for an hour. But that was Bo. When he said he was in, he was all in.
Of course, it helped that he had truth on his side. Bo had an admirable quality of ignoring the useless clutter and always cutting to it – the truth. Michigan did have a very special heritage and Bo loved it. Not solely as a motivational and a recruiting tool – Bo was not that transactional – no, he loved it because he believed in it. Deeply. He believed in the power and magic of a such a history. The blood, sweat and tears shed by the thousands of players and coaches since 1879 – many of them the early pioneers of college football – Bo somehow already had that in him. Now he just had to get it in his coaches and his players. And it started immediately.
“Well, I am certainly ready to play after that speech.” Bump Elliott stands at the top stairs.
Bo grins as they shake hands. “Great to see you, Coach.”
“I’m not ‘coach’ anymore,” Bump smiles. “That’s your job now.”
Bo nods. If there was a classier guy in college football, Bo didn’t know him.
“My wife and I would love to have you all over for Christmas dinner.”
The coaches look expectantly to Bo.
“I appreciate the offer, Bump, but we already have plans for the evening.”
Bump nods, smiles, puts on this derby hat, “Some other time. Merry Christmas to you all.”
Merry Christmases all around as Bump heads down the stairs. He’s gone.
Hanlon turns to Bo: “Aw Bo, I’ll bet his wife had a big, fat, juicy ham waiting for us.”
The Number 50
Half an hour later, Bo and the coaches, bundled up in parkas and hats, unwrap cheeseburgers and fries in a small office as Young feeds film into a projector. He flips a toggle, turns a switch and the machine whirs and the film click-click-click-click’s through the projector.
And there, up on the wall, is the only opponent they care about: the Ohio State Buckeyes.
Rex Kern at QB. Jim Otis at Fullback. Jack Tatum and Jim Stillwagon lead a vicious defense. And it’s that defense Bo is watching now. He rewinds and watches a play again. And again. And again. He stops the film and slurps his milkshake. Then –
“Jim, we’re gonna run a 50 defense this year.”
He’s talking to Jim Young, his Defensive Coordinator. Young is an excellent coach. A real student of the game and one of the first to intensely study the tendencies and statistics – both of opponents and his own defenses – in order to help form a game plan. Young could tell you how many centimeters apart a guys’ fingers were when it was a run play versus a pass play, day game versus night game, cross-referenced by various weather patterns.
But they’d been coaching a 4-3 defense for a few years now. They knew it back and forth and it had worked. They won a lot of games at Miami.
“A 50? Why would we do that?” Young asks.
“Because Ohio State runs a 50,” Bo said evenly. “And we have to beat Ohio State if we want to win a championship and the only way we’re going to beat their defense next November is if our offense plays against a 50 every goddamned day between now and then.”
Young nods. Looks like they’re running a 50.
Bo takes a burger bite, a few fries and a big pull on his milkshake.
“Run it again, Jerry.”
And for the next five hours that what they did. Ran the film back over and over and over.
BOARD (NOT-SO) IN CONTROL OF ATHLETICS
“What the hell is going on, Don?” Bo snaps.
Bo and Canham hustle through the cold and up the stairs of an admin building. Neither one of them is happy.
“The Board in Control of Athletics – of which I’m the Chairman – there’s been a meeting called by a professor, a Dean, who has some concerns about –”
“What concerns?”
“It’s nothing. It’s a bunch crap, Bo, it’s – “
“You said you and Plant and Bump had the say so on me.“
“We do. I do. This guy is just being a pain-in-the-ass, that’s all.”
“What’s his name?”
“You don’t need to get involved, I’ll handle this.”
“I drove up here on Christmas – with my staff! – so, too goddamned late, I’m involved.”
They’re striding down a hallway, beige tile floor and brown-ish walls. If anything screams “institutional” it’s this. Don stops outside a door marked: The Crisler Room.
“I’ll handle it. I need you to sit tight here in case they want to talk to you – which I doubt they will.”
“Tell ‘em I’ll be right here. I’m not going anywhere. If Rosenstein wants to meet me, I’m right here.”
“I’d love to meet you.”
Bo and Canham spin around. Rosenstein is unbuttoning his overcoat, briefcase in hand. Very scholarly.
“Marc Rosenstein, Dean of History, a pleasure.”
Bo grabs his hand – firm but not aggressive. He not the kind of guy that needs to do the handshake thing.
“A pleasure to meet you too.”
“This is nothing personal, Bo.”
“I don’t know what ‘this’ is but it already feels very personal.”
Rosenstein nods, a tight smile. “Don can fill you in.” He heads inside the Crisler Room.
Bo looks to Canham who hesitates.
Bo: “I got coaches up here. Our wives are selling our houses in Ohio. I need you to tell me right now if this is going south.”
Canham grits his teeth. This is bullshit. Not Bo’s reaction but having to jump through Rosenstein’s hoops.
“Rosenstein is trying to shutter the football program.”
“He’s trying to shutter the football program? My football program??”
“He’s floating the idea. It’s not going to happen. It’s too late. You’re hired. This is all a show.”
Bo is livid. “You tell that sonofabitch that – better yet, I’ll tell him myself!” Bo moves toward the door but Canham stops him.
“This is my field. Rooms like this and people like Rosenstein. You handle your team in Michigan Stadium on Saturdays and I’ll handle the faculty and politicians in goddamn conference rooms on Tuesdays. It’s going to take both of us to be successful and that’s how we do it, okay?”
Bo eyes him. Canham talks tough for an Athletic Director. He better be able to back it up.
Bo nods. Canham nods back, steps inside and shuts the door.
Bo looks around. Nothing. Nobody. Just this antiseptic university hallway outside a small conference room where the fate of he and his staff and their families would be decided.
For the next hour, Bo paced. He didn’t put his ear to the door though he was tempted. But he didn’t need to. There were enough raised voices to hear it all through the door. Bo didn’t understand why the hell Canham didn’t just end the meeting and toss Rosenstein out. Canham was the Chairman. Rosenstein wasn’t even on the Board In Control. Bo figured it must go higher. And then he stopped trying to figure. He just paced like he did the sidelines on Saturdays. That’s all he wanted to do – pace the sidelines of Michigan Stadium on Saturdays. A full stadium, the electric air, a marching band. A championship on the line. That’s what it was all about. Always had been since he was a boy. The purity and the finality of playing football. You practice and prepare and you play your ass off. The other team does the same. And you see who’s better. Simple. Where else in life is it ever that clean?
Certainly not in the Crisler Room right now. Canham, bless his soul, was fighting a whole different kind of fight. Politics. The type of fight that raised Bo’s blood pressure
Finally, the raised voices stopped. Five minutes of much more muffled talk. Quieter. It was over and one way or the other, Bo thought, one way or the other –
The door opens. A few people Bo didn’t know walk out and down the hallway and disappear. Marcus Plant is one of the last to go. He nods at Bo but gives nothing away.
Rosenstein comes next. He too just nods and keeps on going.
Canham finally appears. And before Bo can speak, Canham says, “Congratulations, it’s official. We’ll introduce you to the press on Monday at 3pm.”
Bo understands the look on Canham’s face because he’s had it before. The one that says, “I am so goddamn angry I had to deal with this bullshit but it’s done and let’s get on with it.”
“Sound good,” Canham asks.
“No,” Bo answers. “We have our first team meeting Monday at 2:30pm. Tell ‘em 12 noon or nothing.”
“I can’t do 12. 1pm?” Canham counters.
Bo eyes him. Canham doesn’t seem like the type to do the whole back-n-forth as a power play. And he’s wasn’t.
Bo nods, “One o’clock works. But I’m walking out at one-thirty no matter what.”
“No problem, I’ll hold the door for you. Give you a ride?”
“To the office, thanks. Mind if we stop and get some cheeseburgers?”
“I’ll see your cheeseburgers and raise you a Manhattan.”
They head down the stairs and out the front door, leaning into a stiff Michigan wind, chins down, collars up.