Schnellenberger's Return
June 09, 2004 11:01 AM | General
June 9, 2004
Howard Schnellenberger is one of those college football coaches you just can’t forget.
 |
||
| WVU running back John Holifield scores one of his three touchdowns against Louisville during the '85 season opener. (WVU Sports Communications) |
Back in his heyday in the early 1980s Schnellenberger wore a distinctive suede jacket and a conservative striped tie, his wavy graying hair carelessly parted from the left in stark contrast to his neatly trimmed mustache. Underneath, his teeth clenched a pipe that became one of his most prominent trademarks. His professorial appearance may have fit well on college campuses, but his look was dramatically out of place on the football field.
But football was his trade. He learned the game playing for Blanton Collier and Paul “Bear” Bryant at Kentucky and later coached with Bryant at Alabama, where they developed a quarterback from Beaver Falls, Pa., named Joe Namath before he was known as “Broadway Joe.”
From there Schnellenberger went to the pro ranks, helping Don Shula’s Miami Dolphins to two world titles and an undefeated season in 1972 as an assistant coach. Yet his first try as a head coach was a disaster. His 1973 Baltimore Colts team suffered through a 4-10 record and his second team went winless through its first three games before the Colts finally cut their losses and let him go.
Schnellenberger eventually wound up at the University of Miami in 1979 where he was assigned the difficult task of reviving a Hurricane football program on life support.
"In 1979, nobody seemed to want the Hurricanes job,” Schnellenber was quoted in the St. Petersburg Times back in 1999. “Don James was a UM alum, but he had a great program going at the University of Washington. Miami tried for George MacIntyre, another former ‘Canes player, but he preferred to stay at Vanderbilt. I also turned it down, but my wife said UM was paying $25,000 more than my Dolphins position, so I changed my mind and took the plunge.”
His first team went 5-6 and a year later behind the strong arm of Jim Kelly, Schnellenberger led the Hurricanes to a 9-3 record. Two more winning seasons preceded Miami’s first national title in 1984.
Either sensing his luck was about to run out or still too euphoric to completely come to his senses, Schnellenberger walked away from what was to become one of college football’s most dominant programs to coach a Miami professional football franchise in the USFL that ended up folding before it ever started. Undeterred, the Louisville native weighed his options in 1984 and came to the conclusion that Kentucky was where he belonged and he took over an ailing Louisville program that had endured six straight losing seasons from 1979-84.
At his introductory press conference Schnellenberger caught everyone’s attention when he proclaimed that Louisville football was “on a collision course with the national championship.” The only variable, he said, “was time.”
What few eyebrows that statement didn’t raise were taken care of by his high-maintenance wife Beverlee, who actually had her own photographer travel with her to away games. She introduced the Bluegrass State to a South Florida sophistication the likes of which it had never seen.
Schnellenberger’s first task was to get an out-of-shape, deadweight Louisville team ready to face West Virginia in the 1985 season opener in Morgantown. Schnellenberger inherited an offensive line too bulky for a pro-style passing system he planned to use. So in an effort to make the best of what he had Schnellenberger put his team through a weight reduction program that would have made Jenny Craig proud. He claimed his team lost a collective 600 pounds during the process. He also lost some players because of it.
Starting with 98 players at the beginning of spring practice, he was down to a group of just 78 that included 29 freshmen and walk-ons by the time his team left for Morgantown to take on the powerful West Virginia Mountaineers.
West Virginia was coming off its fourth straight bowl appearance in 1984 and was putting the finishing touches on a stadium bowl expansion in the south end of the stadium above the football offices that pushed its capacity to more than 60,000.
A 41-19 record, bowl victories against Florida, Kentucky and TCU, and wins over rivals Pitt and Penn State had transformed Mountaineer football into another form of religion in West Virginia. But WVU backed its way into the Bluebonnet Bowl in 1984 after turning an impressive 7-1 start and a Top 10 national ranking into a 7-4 belly flopper of a finish. WVU was also looking to break a late October-November spell that saw the Mountaineers win just 16 of 30 games. At the same time, in games prior to mid-October WVU was 25-5. In 1985, Coach Don Nehlen was hanging his hat on a stronger defense that featured 10 returning starters.
It was the offense that was Nehlen’s biggest concern. Following spring drills the coach decided on 6-foot-5, 220-pound sophomore John Talley as his quarterback. Talley, the younger brother of All-American linebacker Darryl Talley, was as talented as he was erratic. One of the criticisms unfairly levied against him was that he paid too much attention to the oncoming pass rush and less attention to wide-open receivers running downfield. Even though WVU was breaking in three new starters along the offensive line, Talley had one of the nation’s best pass protectors in 6-foot-5, 295-pound tackle Brian Jozwiak.
Junior John Holifield, a former walk-on from Romulus, Mich., teamed with senior Tommy Gray to give the Mountaineers an adequate running game. Freshman Undra Johnson from Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., came on later in the year. The self-labeled ‘Dukey Boys’ of Keith Winn, Calvin Phillips, Harvey Smith, Grantis Bell and Robert White made up the wide receiver corps.
Nehlen’s program was firmly in place but he was far from being satisfied heading into the fall of 1985, “After you become a winner, you set some other goals, and we became a winner a little faster than we thought we might; we got a little lucky,” Nehlen told Pittsburgh Press writer Gene Collier.
“We’ve never won a Lambert Trophy. We’ve never been able to beat Penn State a couple of years in a row. We’ve never gone to any of the major bowls. We’ve never done a whole lot of anything to be honest about it,” he added.
Schnellenberger saw things in Morgantown much differently. At the time he estimated WVU was several years ahead of his Louisville program and he unsuccessfully tried to get a game scheduled before the West Virginia opener to help ease the transition.
“West Virginia would be a great opponent for the best teams in the country,” said Schnellenberger between puffs on his pipe.
“Their program is five years ahead of us. West Virginia has been in the Top 20 and in bowl games for the past four years. And in Don Nehlen, they have one of the premier coaches in the country. It will be a situation of an infant program, like we have, going against a very established program,” he added.
Schnellenberger proceeded to play up the Mountaineers and poor-mouthed his team some more, “Unfortunately or fortunately, as the case may be, the games are won or lost by the players on the field. I know Coach Nehlen, and I have a pretty good idea of what he is going to do. But even if we knew the plays they were going to run, I doubt if we could stop them,” he said.
Schnellenberger’s poor-mouthing and the odds makers having the Mountaineers as an 18-point favorite were enough to make Nehlen choke on his baloney sandwich.
“I don’t know who makes these heavy favorite deals,” Nehlen growled. “I’m not interested in who’s favored or not favored.”
The West Virginia coach then picked up more steam, “They have more lettermen and starters back than we do … and we had trouble beating them in the past,” he said with a straight face.
“I don’t believe all this crap about Louisville not having any football players. If I were one of their players reading this stuff, I’d get fired up. I just wish you media guys would write more about Louisville’s team and less about Schnellenberger,” Nehlen concluded.
But the truth of the matter was the cupboard at Louisville wasn’t bare: it was gone, too. Instead of having Jim Kelly and Bernie Kosar running the show as was the case in Miami, Schnellenberger saddled up junior quarterback Ed Ruppert, a strapping 6-foot-5, 220-pounder who threw 18 touchdown passes in 1984 to go along with 28 interceptions.
“Twenty eight interceptions aren’t good,” Schnellenberger said.
Louisville was just 2-9 in 1984 including a 30-6 loss in Morgantown.
According to Ron Steiner, a one-time WVU sports information director who caught on with Schnellenberger at Miami and was among several people Schnellenberger convinced to move with him to Louisville, the Cardinals were a work in progress.
“Schnellenberger is getting things rolling here, but it’s going to take a few years. But things are off to the right start,” Steiner said at the time.
The right start included two new practice fields adjacent to the stadium, new red and white uniforms, renovated offices, an in-house film room, an enlarged weight training center and bigger locker rooms. Louisville fans bought 19,000 season tickets for its 35,000-seat stadium and Schnellenberger initiated the plans for constructing a new football stadium (what was to become Papa Johns Stadium).
Steiner said Louisville’s strongest player bench pressed 430 pounds and its biggest starter weighed only 262 pounds. By comparison, all of WVU’s starting linemen benched more than 400 and both lines averaged 275 pounds.
“Every football game … you’re apprehensive,” said Schnellenberger. “Every opening game, I’m doubly apprehensive. Every time I’ve opened with a new program, I’m triply apprehensive. You never know what a football team will do in this situation.
“I’m delighted to finally get the season kicked off. Eight months of preparation have gone into this moment.”
After Louisville tied the score early in the second quarter, Schnellenberger’s tune soon changed. West Virginia reeled off 28 unanswered points to take a commanding 35-7 lead into the locker room at halftime. By game’s end at around 4 o’clock his team lost by 39 points, 52-13.
Even as the late afternoon sun began to slip behind the mountains it did nothing to deter the searing heat at Mountaineer Field. It was estimated that the temperature on the stadium’s Astro-Turf surface to be more than 110 degrees. Schnellenberger stubbornly wore his jacket the entire game, refusing to even loosen his Windsor-knotted tie even as he watched his team sink deeper into futility.
Meanwhile, upstairs in the air-conditioned press box, wife Beverlee glided from room to room sporting an expensive pink outfit and matching heels. The Schnellenbergers traveled a great distance from Miami to Morgantown and they got a first-hand look at how the other half lived. Schnellenberger’s last game before the ’85 opener was a triumphant, last-second win over Nebraska in the Orange Bowl to claim the 1984 national title.
Now, he was trying to come up with an explanation for the way his team played against West Virginia. After a few moments he delivered a brief address to the modest gathering of sports reporters lurking outside the Louisville locker room, “Certainly today was no beginning toward building national prominence,” he said. “Today was very disappointing to me, my staff and all those concerned with making Louisville a great football school.”
Schnellenberger made his remarks with his suede jacket on and his tie still tightly formed underneath his collar.
On the other side of the stadium, West Virginia’s false sense of security was eventually taken care of the following week when Steve Sloan’s Duke Blue Devil team nearly pulled out a stunning tie. The Mountaineers needed a sack with 29 seconds to left on a two-point conversion attempt to survive, 20-18.
John Talley, the nation’s top-ranked quarterback after a 13-of-17, 166-yard, three-touchdown performance against Louisville, misfired on his first nine pass attempts against Duke and soon lost his starting job. The Mountaineers won seven games and tied one in 1985, but its three losses to Maryland, Penn State and Virginia were by a combined score of 82-7. After a losing campaign in 1986, the Mountaineers got back on track with three straight bowl appearances in 1987, 1988 and 1989.
There were also better days ahead for Howard Schnellenberger and his Louisville program. By 1988, he had the school’s first winning season in nine years and he led the Cardinals to a remarkable victory over Alabama in the 1991 Fiesta Bowl to cap a brilliant 10-1-1 season. Ironically, quarterbacking Louisville in the Fiesta Bowl was Browning Nagle, who spent a year at WVU as a redshirt freshman. Nagle was smart enough to realize that he couldn’t beat out Major Harris and soon transferred. Incidentally, Nagle’s Cardinals beat WVU in Morgantown, 9-7 in 1990 on the way to the Fiesta Bowl.
 |
||
| Howard Schnellenberger is still coaching at Florida Atlantic University. (FAU photo) |
Schnellenberger spent four more years at Louisville before taking one more stab at the big time at Oklahoma in 1995. But his tenure at Oklahoma lasted only one season before he was asked to pack his bags. Sooner supporters say he was rude to fans, disrespectful to the program and hard on the media. Schnellenberger says former coach Barry Switzer was working behind the scenes against him and wanted his man, John Blake, to run the program. Whatever the reason, Schnellenberger’s 5-5-1 record probably didn’t help the cause.
Today Schnellenberger is still at it, coaching at Florida Atlantic. Last year FAU won 11 games and this year it is beginning its first season as a Division I-A program competing in the Sun Belt Conference. Time has certainly taken some of the edge off of Schnellenberger. He sometimes now discards the sport coat and tie for a golf shirt and his wavy hair has completely gone gray, though he still parts it from the left. He no longer smokes his pipe having given that up after his son Stephen was diagnosed with cancer.
Now 70, Schnellenberger is ready to resuscitate his third Division I program. His FAU Owls open the 2004 campaign at Hawaii on Sept. 4 and one of the quarterbacks on his roster is another WVU castoff: Danny Embick. After Hawaii come schools like North Texas, Middle Tennessee State, Illinois State and Troy State before the season finale against Edward Waters College.
Edward Waters College may not be Nebraska or Florida State, but it’s still a challenge nonetheless.
No, a one-of-a-kind coach like Howard Schnellenberger can’t easily be forgotten. And we West Virginians were delighted to be a small blip on his radar screen.
