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The Miami Herald from Miami, Florida • 54

Publication:
The Miami Heraldi
Location:
Miami, Florida
Issue Date:
Page:
54
Extracted Article Text (OCR)

fi-C ooo THE MIAMI IITRALD Sunday Dec 14 1980 UM Coach Never Strays From Pu siwihtin CTY- ny 4r' i a 1 SCH NRIENBERGER Age 21: Some Fast Company on The Associated Press All-America Team POPE From 1C and said you Imagine what this place will be like when we come in here Proulx was stunned were coming off a 5-6 season and he was talking 11-0 We make it We went in 7-3 and came out 8-3 But when it really sank in on me what kind of man he is He has a lot of Bear Bryant in Two months later Miami handed Florida State its only loss 10-9 Nearly four months latei Schnellenberger walked back into Gainesville and wiped out the University of Florida 31-7 the first time since 1962 that the UM had beaten both teams Another week passed and a friend mentioned a trip to Tallahassee happening up Schnellenberger asked solemnly you know? Florida and Florida State are Schnellenberger half-whispered off?" For second place in the state Poker-face humor Poker-faced force is way even in humor hard to tell when kidding and when he says Scott Atwell one of George publicity assistants scared to laugh and scared not Wide receiver Pat Walker smiles at his own early perceptions of Schnellenberger a year and a half I thought he was just a mean man with all those rules he gave us I thought I would never hear him tell a joke But then he started smiling and joking around every now and then We just didn't know he had another Beverlee Schnellenberger knows all of what Pat Walker is saying and much more She is first Mrs Howard Schnellenberger and second the mother of three handsome sons Steve 20 Stuart 19 a Duke University tight end and Timothy 13 and third a multimillion-dollar sales producer for Realty Associates Better Homes and Gardens taking a brokers' course and shooting to own her own company many funny stories about Howard" she says is just such a right person Deep Loyal He cares and shares" Privately intensely husband and wife and sons have shared physical travail He will return to the University of Florida next month after a year in which he lost both adrenal glands and a kidney in operations to correct an ailment that left him with high blood pressure and splitting headaches has handled it better than I ever could" Howard says Steve has handled it because of his family- Wife expounds joys It is difficult to describe either Howard Schnellenberger or his closely bonded tribe without sounding like Digest Beverlee counterpoints Howard's outward reserve with a continuous upbeat a fantastic day!" her voice leaps from a telephone recording if she home Axiomatically few college head coaches succeed without the help of their wives Beverlee puts life to the axiom She expounds joy tell our boys always good down the road We know how hard it is for teenagers to just exist every day they have so many obstacles we We try to listen and hear and talk and encourage Steve particularly has gone through a lot Individually and as a family we work hard and look at the bright side We count our blessings always Steve has taught this family so much He's just so Steve comes by it naturally UM defensive end Mike Goedeker testifies to Pop toughness Goedeker was one of the first members of the Breakfast Club a definitely non-honorary society of rules-breakers compelled to report at 6:30 am daily and run 3 2 miles among other lovely chores only did defen-sive tacklej Charles Cook and I have to run Breakfast Goedeker says "but we were kicked off the training table for a month and had to eat in the student cafeteria" Those meals were paid for as part of scholarship The feeling of exile was not reimbursable "One afternoon we get out of practice until about 6:30 and the cafeteria was he recalled asked Coach if I could eat at the training table that one Schnellenberged responded "Do you have your cafeteria meal card?" eat two meals there tomorrow night" would you want to go?" The Irish did not want him He points from his office to the Miami practice field and muses know I scrmmaged out there once for 2 12 hours? They had me down for a tryout It wasn't against the rules then and it was a better system than we have now because you could save a lot of mistakes for both the school and the kids by working them out You could see the flaws in some people who had a lot of publicity and the strengths in a lot who Hamilton Tiger-Cats over a $6000 offer from the Washington Redskins was cut just before the playoffs and promptly drafted into the Army where he served 21 months a clerk-typist and a damned good Actually because he put in a stint in Air Force ROTC only branch of the service I never touched was the Nobody ever accused Schnellenberger of being a slow learner After he had butch- ered a 40-yard clocking as a 228-pound Tiger-Cat he pared his weight to 198 in campus atmosphere the real college spirit has to come from our own stadium We always have schedules like We have to have a high season-ticket base without relying on day-of-game sales as we do in the Orange Howard Schnellenberger life story can be largely summarized by what Raymond Sokolov the biographer of AJ Liebling calls gratification even today when he arises at 5:30 am is at his desk before 7 if he has not spent the night on his office couch and seldom returns home before 9 pm His paternal grandfather worked as a stonemason in St Meinrad Ind a German-dominated hamlet of some 300 centered around a Benedictine abbey when Howard was born to Rosena and Leslie March 16 1934 father eventually became more or less incompatible with his own father and moved his family to Shively Ky outside Louisville when Howard was two Later came sister Sara and brothers Larry and David kid busy good kid" Rosena Schnellenberger recalls of Howard the boy a busy He had to be Father Leslie borrowed money to buy a tractor-trailer and hauled freight and worked other jobs while Rosena alternately worked as a waitress and pouring gunpowder into sacks in a munitions factory in World War II "Howard and Sara had to help out because they were the Rosena says would wash dishes cut the grass paint the basement Anything I He got a few lickings "When you get he says need as many later By 16 a Louisville Flaget High junior he starred as a receiver on a team whose 1950 programs lists as a sophomore quarterback That was llomung who would win the 1956 Heisman Trophy at Notre Dame Schnellenberger says he have been the player responsible for the expression could catch the ball in a I was always catching it in a crowd because I was so slow I never could get out of the He looks wistfully at a photo of himself in full gallop with an entire Covington High team chasing him guy on the left caught he says of my playing Irish spurn him He wanted to go to Notre Dame Catholic kid from Louisville? Where else He intended to sign with the UM in '52 But when Bear Bryant the man who was to exert the heaviest male influence on youth offered a scholarship the boy chose Kentucky He remains unimpressed by his All-America selection along with such lasting names as Michigan State quarterback Earl Morrall who coaches UM quarterbacks after helping Miami Dolphin offense through the historic 17-0 season of '72 Maryland center Bob Pelligrini one of Dolphin assistant-coaching predecessors Paul Wiggin then a Stanford line coach now back as head coach tribute to our press agent Ken Schnellenberger says that The Marines thought he was very good He spen college summers in training at ico Va and emerged from platoon training with a phenomenal leadership rating He never became an actual Marine when it was time to commission me I wanted to play pro football for six months They don't do things that He chose a $9000 contract with Cana- line during the third straight loss of the next season demanding that Schnellenberger play young Bert Jones ahead of veteran Marty Domres Irsay either did not know or care as UM quarterback Jim Kelly deposes today that Schnellenberger things his own The coach told the owner to clear out and was fired for it The Baltimore experience was bitter both emotionally and financially Schnellenberger earned $50000 a year as head coach about the same as his UM basic salary But he took a four-way beating on home prices by the time he returned to the Dolphins in When Lou Saban precipitously resigned from the UM Jan 4 1979 sports writer Henry Seiden called UM Vice President John attention to Schnellenberger He was hired four days after Saban walked Headline tells story The full upthrust of his first two seasons in Coral Gables never was better told than through a unique headline UM Coach Honored Shuns Job Overtures Schnellenberger was named the top independent coach the day he was mentioned as a possible successor to Doug Barfield at Auburn glad he leaving Miami" mother Rosena says has worked hard and has a good thing He has had a lot to prove He was accused of overconservatism for trying a tying field goal before losing to Florida 16-13 last year and at times this year His retort is history The 258 points and 3732 yards in total offense against a rough schedule are school records Next schedule will be even harder with eight opponents from this bowls Schnellenberger believes he must have a commitment from the UM to support his on-campus stadium before next season He knows that dreadful home-attendance average of 24001 a decidedly generous figure should move sharply upward in when Florida Houston Vanderbilt Penn State Virginia Tech and Notre Dame play in the Orange Bowl He knows the next question: Why does UM need a 42000-seat campus stadium when it can draw 50000 or more for top games in the Orange Bowl? "The campus atmosphere the real college spirit has to come from our own he says "We always have schedules like We have to have a high season-ticket base without relying on day-of-game sales as we do in the Orange Bowl Mostly though we must have a stadium that is a vital part of the Gets extension offer Schnellenberger was hustling to make an airplane for a recruiting trip this week when UM President Dr Henry King Stan) ford telephoned "I am calling to tell Dr Stanford said the athletic policy committefe has recommended that we replace the remaining three years on your contract with a new five-year contract at an increase in Schnellenberger smiled and thanked Dr Stanford looking forward to talking to you about he said First he had a good deal of recruiting to do Then he would do more talking with Dr Stanford than he would about his recruits Part of learning process was a realization that he said too much about some prep hot shots a year ago and people wondered why say freshman runners Speedy Neal and Keith Griffin did not step right in and play this fall do the best recruiting we can and then comment after the players have done something" Receiver Larry Brodsky understands that Brodsky has a lot of his head and hands and lack of speed Coach Schnellenberger Brodsky says "you listen He just radiates strength I like that style" the Army "I thought it would make me faster I did the 40 in 515 seconds at 228 and 51 at 198 So much for correlating weight and Meets wife in Canada He returned to Canadian football with the Vancouver (British Columbia) Lions The worst thing that happened to him there was preceded by the best Three thousand miles from his home he met a lovely tourist named Beverlee Donnelly who was 3000 miles from her own Montreal home girls are aggressive" Beverlee says "After Howard was cut he invited me to his home in Kentucky Of course I went We were married May 2 1958 I know that nobody in Louisville ever gets married on Kentucky Derby day But we Tim Tam won the Derby Big deal Thus began life as what Howard fondly refers to "a social He coached two years at Kentucky under the still-revered Blanton Collier before a call came from old paraclete Bryant at Alabama "Talk about a trip Our car was so beat up I had to borrow my Ford to drive from Lexington to Tuscaloosa with two baby boys less than a year They were driving through Bessemer suburb when Beverlee was startled by a man in a white sheet motioning cars into a large field "Whatever do you suppose that she asked Schnellenberger laid it out for her: a Ku Klux Klan rally They drove on Fast Helps Bryant win Schnellenberger helped Bryant produce national champions in 1961-64-65 and won a rating from former Alabama star Noah Langdale now president of Georgia State University not far from Atlanta Stadium where the Hurricanes will play VPI in the Peach Bowl as "the finest offensive coach in He recruited Joe Namath and Ken Stabler and coached them and another fair hand named Steve Sloan as well before moving on to work under George Allen with the Los Angeles Rams from through Don Shula called Schnellenberger when he took over the Dolphins in The lineup of Shula Schnellenberger (offense) and Bill Arnsparger (defense) sounded like a Cincinnati law firm at first It sounded more like a Super Bowl championship combination two years later career on paper shows only one period that might be considered a failure The fact Is he never was allowed to succeed as Baltimore head coach in 1973-74 After his first Colt team had gone 4-10 owner Robert Irsay stormed the side- Age 16: Family Portrait With Stuart Steve Beverlee and Timothy niftiOrui i 1.

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Pages Available:
9,276,292
Years Available:
1911-2024