Article: Everyone knew the public Bo:...

Everyone knew the public Bo: the man on the sidelines berating referees, screaming at players, and smashing his headset against the Astroturf. All true, of course. But the public Bo had little to do with the Bo I came to know-the same one his family, friends and former players loved so much.

I first met Bo in 1974, when I was a ten-year-old attending a Michigan hockey game. In the second period the p.a. announcer paged "Bo Schembechler" to meet someone under the north stands. My buddy and I figured, How many Bo Schembechlers can there be? We dashed to find out.

Sure enough, there he was, chatting up some old friends, while we waited nearby, nervously rolling up our programs. When he saw us standing there, he interrupted his conversation to bellow, "Now what can I do for you young men?" He signed our programs with care - no small feat when your last name is twelve letters long-- and thanked us for supporting the Wolverines.

They say your character is what you do when you think no one is watching. I've seen Bo pass that test a thousand times, but none was more important to me than that first encounter. If he had ignored me 32 years ago, I wouldn't be writing this today.

Since I became a sportswriter fifteen years ago, I've learned the hard way that meeting your childhood heroes as an adult is usually a bad idea. But getting to know Bo the past ten years has been one of the highlights of my life.

Contrary to his "football-mad" reputation, Schembechler was interested in just about everything-from the Ann Arbor bus system to teacher training to deficit spending -and he had an opinion about all of it, too.

Bo was a voracious reader, too, with a weakness for Tom Clancy novels. He also loved music, from Cole Porter to Tina Turner (the latter thanks to Cathy). He hummed constantly. It resonated in his chest, occasionally bubbling up to form a verse, which he sang in a deep baritone -- "With YOU, I've gone from RAGS to RICHES. I feel like a MILL-ion-AIRE" -- then he'd return to humming while filing some papers.

Copyright 2007, John U. Bacon