The Schembechler Transition

In 1968 Michigan’s football team finished the regular season 8-2 overall and 6-1 in conference. It was a rebound year for the Wolverines after a 4-6 finish in 1967.

The Wolverines started and ended the 1968 campaign on similar down notes, losing to California 7-21 in Ann Arbor for the season opener, and then getting utterly humiliated by a powerful Ohio State team in Columbus 50-14 in the final game. Of course, this was the infamous OSU-Michigan contest where Buckeye head coach Woody Hayes answered a post game interview question as to why Ohio State went for a 2 point conversion after a late touchdown score with the game already well out of reach.

Woody’s flippant response?

“Because I couldn’t go for three!”

And with those words the fires of rivalry hatred were successfully stoked for another 100 years.

At the conclusion of the 1968 season Michigan coach Bump Elliott retired to become the associate director of athletics at Michigan between 1969 and 1970. Bo Schembechler, an unknown football coach at the time from Miami (Ohio) with no historical ties to Michigan, had been hired by Michigan Athletic Director, Don Canham, to take over for Elliott as head coach of the Wolverines in 1969. Schembechler played for two extremely different coaches in his own career at Miami (OH): Sid Gilman, the inventor of the West Coast passing offense and Woody Hayes, a militaristic-style disciplinarian and proponent of “three yards and a cloud of dust”, i.e. unapologetic smash mouth football.

Clearly, Schembechler had been most impressed by Hayes’s approach.

At Michigan, Schembechler introduced his own merciless approach, coaching his players through in-your-face confrontation, an explosive temper, and rigorous conditioning. Bo demanded nothing short of perfection from his players in the fundamentals of the game, particularly blocking, tackling and hustling to the football on every play.

There have been many different accounts of what exactly happened during the change over from Bump Elliott’s system to Bo Schembechler’s system. Schembechler’s first spring camp in 1969 was apparently so physically strenuous and mentally exhausting compared to Elliott’s, that out of 140 players who entered spring camp, only 70+ remained standing at the end.

In 1968, Michigan had 143 players on the roster. 22 players graduated in 1968, leaving 121 players from 1968 available to return to the 1969 Wolverine roster, plus Bo’s own incoming freshmen. I’ve analyzed the 1968 roster, subtracted the seniors and counted up those 1968 players with eligibility that were “missing” from the 1969 roster. This would tell us how many players in total “defected” during the 1969 Spring Camp that Schembechler hosted and perhaps some from fall practice.

My count showed only 37 players left the team between 1968 and 1969. This is pretty much half of what circulating legends have implied. I received many critical comments about my analysis of attrition under Rich Rodriguez at West Virginia (and rightly so) because I included walkons in the analysis. I probably should have centered most of the attention on actual starters (typically scholarship players). It’s difficult to determine who was a walk on and who was on scholarship back in 2001-2002, let alone during the Lyndon Johnson Administration.

I think it it safe to assume that “no walkons became starters at Michigan in 1968 and 1969”. With that assumption, for the 1968-1969 transition to the Schembechler system, I found zero player defections in terms of 1st team and 2nd team starters for both years. Players with eligibility that started for Elliott in 1968, or were in the two deep in 1968, stayed on the team in 1969 to play for Schembechler and/or made the two deep depth chart.

What’s interesting about this finding is that no matter how hellish Schembechler’s practice and coaching methods may have been, a good number of players stayed. Furthermore, there were no career- or season-ending injuries in spring or fall practice in 1969, a la Cory Zirbel, or Terrance Robinson.

Players in bold graduated in 1968.

1968 Offense
Pos	1st Team	No.	Yr	2nd Team	No.	Yr
QB	Dennis Brown	22	Sr.	Brian Healy	24	Jr.
FB	Garvie Craw	48	Jr.	Bob Wedge	38	Sr.
TB	Ron Johnson	40	Sr.	Tom Curtis	25	Jr.
TB	John Gabler	18	Jr.	George Hoey	12	Sr.
TE	Jim Mandich	88	Jr.	Mike Hankwitz	81	Jr.
TE	Jerry Imsland	86	Jr.	William Harris	80	Jr.
OT	Bob Penska	76	Sr.	Tom Goss	65	Sr.
OG	Rich Caldarazzo	56	Jr	Tom Stincic	90	Sr.
C	David Denzin	52	Sr.	Jerry Miklos	94	Sr.
OG	Stanley Broadnax	61	Sr.	Lance Scheffler	45	So.
OT	Dan Dierdorf	72	So.	Daniel Parks	74	So.
1968 Defense
Pos	1st Team	No.	Yr	2nd Team	No.	Yr
DE	Phil Seymour	91	Jr.
DT	Tom Goss	65	Sr.
NT	Henry Hill	39	So.	Jerry Miklos	94	Sr.
DT	Daniel Parks	74	So.
DE	Cecil Pryor	55	Jr.	Jon Kramer	84	Sr.
LB	Tom Stincic	90	Sr.
LB	Ed Moore	97	So.
CB	Brian Healy	24	Jr.	Jerry Hartman	26	Sr.
S	Tom Curtis	25	Jr.
S	Bob Wedge	38	Sr.
CB	George Hoey	12	Sr.

1969 Offense
Pos	1st Team	No.	Yr	2nd Team	No.	Yr
QB	Don Moorhead	27	Jr.
FB	Garvie Craw	48	Sr.	John Gabler	18	Sr.
TB	Glenn Doughty	22	So.	Billy Taylor	42	So.
TB	Bryan Healy	24	Sr.	Preston Henry	44	So.
TE	Jim Mandich	88	Sr.	Mike Keller	90	So.
TE	William Harris	80	Sr.	Paul Staroba	30	Jr.
OT	Jack Harpring	71	Jr.	Fred Grambau	92	So.
OG	Richard Caldarazzo	56	Sr.	Al Carpenter	94	So.
C	Guy Murdock	53	So.	Peter Newell	82	Jr.
OG	Bob Baumgartner	60	Sr.	Henry Hill	39	Sr.
OT	Dan Dierdorf	72	Jr.	Marty Huff	70	Jr.
1969 Defense
Pos	1st Team	No.	Yr	2nd Team	No.	Yr
DE	Mike Keller	90	So.
DT	Fred Grambau	92	So.
NT	Henry Hill	39	Sr.
DT	Peter Newell	82	Jr.
DE	Cecil Pryor	55	Sr.
LB	Mary Huff	70	Jr.
LB	Ed Moore	97	Jr.	Mike Taylor	33	So.
CB	Barry Pierson	29	Sr.
S	Tom Darden	35	So.	Frank Gusich	14	So.
S	Tom Curtis	25	Sr.
CB	Brian Healy	24	Sr.

Bo brought in a hard-nosed approach that probably shocked many of the 1968 players. However, most of the veteran, scholarship players stuck it out. Bo was fortunate not to have lost many players to injury during the transition. Michigan was 3-2 at one point in 1969 preparing to play Minnesota, a team that won share of the Big Ten in 1967. The Gophers possessed Little Brown Jug from the 20-15 win over UM a year earlier. Under Schembechler the Michigan team decked the Gophers 35-9. I’m not saying that was THE turning point, but following the road loss to Michigan State one week earlier, one can imagine the Wolverine team finally starting to believe in this new Bo character after such a decisive win.

Perhaps it is ridiculous to think we can compare 1968-1969 with 2008-2009. College football has changed in so many ways over 40 years time, not all of them good. I suspect that the biggest differences have been the amount of sensationalist media coverage of college football, and the amount of money that has saturated the sport. The glorification of high school athletes and college football recruits, and the multi-million dollar salaries of the head football coaches would probably have appear rather strange to Bo and his contemporaries back in 1969.

Rodriguez isn’t exactly running a country club at Michigan either. Including injuries, medical leaves and players transfers, Rich Rodriguez is approaching year 2 at Michigan. Two of the fourteen were injury related, which leaves the remaining 12 for “other reasons”. All 14 were scholarship players.

So should Michigan fans be worried?

The time to start worrying is whenever Rich Rodriguez’s own 2008 and 2009 crop of scholarship recruits would begin heading for the exits.