November 18, 2006

...aired during halftime of the Michigan-Ohio State Game in Columbus Ohio 

When Bo Schembechler died Friday, people said “it was his time.”  But it was not his time.  Friday morning at a hospital was not his time.  His time was Saturday afternoons from September to November.  His time was chilly autumn practices as the sun disappeared.

 
His time was any minute he spent on the Michigan campus.  Almost everything about Bo Schembechler was contagious.  His laughter.  His passion.  But mostly his fierce loyalty to his school.
 
When he first arrived in Ann Arbor, the facilities he inherited were meager.  But when assistants complained about folding chairs and hooks on the walls, Schembechler said, “Men, this may be the hook Fritz Crisler once used.  There is great tradition here.”
 
He made that tradition precious.  He won more games than any Wolverine coach in history, he fought his mentor Woody Hayes in the ten year war, he made Michigan-Ohio State arguably the biggest rivalry in all of college sports.
 
There is not an element of the program today that is not touched in some way by Bo, from the current head coach to the team’s facilites.  As a teenager, Bo and his father once sneeked a peek at a Michigan practice through a gate by an empty field.  Today, that field houses a building called Schembechler Hall.
 
When he finally retired, Bo kept an office in that building.  He was never more than a hallway away from the coach and players.  Even Friday, his last day on earth, he was breaking down Michigan-Ohio State for a weekly TV show.
 
That’s when death finally blindsided Bo, done in by the very organ that defined him:  His heart.  It stunned us, because he’d survived so many scares, we all thought he was indestructible.  And part of him still is.  Like the part that lives in the memories of his players.  He stood up in their weddings, visited them in hospitals, counseled their children.  He was their coach even after they stopped playing.
 
Bo Schembechler could fill up a room and fill up a moment.  He could, as Kipling said, walk with kings and not lose the common touch.  So it was his time to go, but it was not his time.  That time is this afternoon, when a whistle blows and a foot meets a football.  For the first time in nearly four decades of Michigan-OhioState, Bo may not be watching.  But he’ll be everywhere you look.