Historical Perspective: Bump to Bo Questions
Over the past couple of weeks I have been doing some self-admitted 'browsing' of the tenure of Bump Elliot. At first glance Coach Elliot had five losing seasons, some 5 and 6 win seasons (9 game schedule) and a 8 and 9 win seasons respectively. Ohio State had a 50-14 win against Bumps '68 team which caused him to resign shortly after. Don Canham hired Bo. Bo and Canham were both quoted that they were "loyal" to Bump and "supported" Coach Schembechler during his early tenure.
I was not around during this time and I am curious to know the perspective from someone who was there or has historical references during the Bump to Bo transition.
Common knowledge tells us Bo was an outsider, was he initially accepted?
Any story, fact or comment would be gladly accepted to help me fill in this void of Michigan Football History.
My understanding is that a huge number of players quit the team in the spring of '69, prompting Bo to put up the "Those Who Stay Will Be Champions" sign. (One wag then wrote underneath, "And those who quit will become doctors, lawyers and captains of industry.")
You can't say it had nothing to do with him being an outsider. Bo was new, and not particularly high-profile. (His record at Miami (Oh.) was decent but not eye-popping.) He had not recruited these guys. No one knew if he'd win here or not. If those players had been more convinced he'd succeed, they'd have probably stuck around. Bo didn't get any softer after that, but he never again had the same mass defections he did that first year.
Bo was not an unknown, he had two stints with Woody Hayes at OSU and one as defensive assistant at Northwestern under Ara Parseghian. Coaches in the Mid-west knew him, he had turned down one head coaching job before as he didn't think it was a good fit (I can't remember the school) But he was definately not unknown. His 40-17-3 record over 6 seasons is nothing to sneeze at.
I'm pretty sure it was Wisconsin.
The story is told in John U. Bacon's "Bo's Lasting Lessons."
Bo went and interviewed, and during the interview with the Wisconsin search committe a student member of the committe was apparently being a bit of a smart-ass and an elderly committe member fell asleep. Bo left the room at the end and immediately called the Wisconsin AD and withdrew his candidacy. The job went to an assistant Notre Dame coach who only lasted 3 seasons, winning only a few games in the process (like one or two).
A few years later while at Michigan, Bo got a call from his friend Bob Knight who was the head basketball coach at Army (they had met at OSU when Bo was an assistant coach and Knight was on the basketball team). Wisconsin was looking for a new head basketball coach, and Knight wanted to know what Bo thought. Bo told Knight about his experience interviewing there but told him to make his own choice. Knight decided not to go for the Wisconsin job and ended up at Indiana shortly afterward.
The lesson to be learned is that when you are interviewing for a job, you are interviewing the company as much as they are interviewing you, and the company can blow it as well, as Wisconsin did with Bo. Had the Badgers played their cards right they would have had Bo Schembechler coaching football and Bob Knight coaching basketball...at the same time.
There is a middle ground between "unknown" and "high-profile." Hardcore fans knew who he was, but to the average guy, Bo was some MAC coach coming in to take a much bigger job than he'd ever held.
Likewise, 40-17-3 is decent, but not incredible, especially given that Miami is a historical MAC power. That's a .691 winning percentage. To put that into perspective, that's 10 percentage points lower than what he ended up posting at Michigan (.794). Bo's 1968 season (7-3) was actually a game worse than Bump Elliot's (8-2), against weaker competition. Hiring Bo was a major gamble on Canham's part that fortunately paid off.
Bo was a trusted assistant under Woody Hayes, who'd won a national championship the previous year (and allegedly he'd been considered as Hayes' successor). He'd also been an assistant under Ara Parseghian, who'd won a national championship at Notre Dame a couple years before that. He was also highly recommended by Joe Paterno, who had an undefeated #2 team the previous year. He had been successful as a head coach.
So while there's never a guarantee that a coach will succeed in his next job, I don't think Bo was such a big gamble.
There's a big, big difference between being a head coach and being an assistant. We've seen that time and again. With the benefit of hindsight, we can say it wasn't a gamble, but it was. Bo was a good coach at Miami, but he wasn't some Urban Meyer type who ran roughshod over everyone before his big break. He had gone 6-4 and 7-3 the two previous seasons at Miami (Oh). Again, his winning percentage was a full 10 points higher at Michigan than Miami. You can't predict that kind of thing. (And it's hard to imagine that anyone would have in 1968, when we had won one Big Ten title in the previous 17 years.)
I have to believe alot of Bo's early "street cred" came from his win over Woody at the end of the '69 season. If that had not happened, and in fact if OSU had blown out UofM as expected, the players might not have bought into Bo's new approach to the same degree and everything might have turned out differently.
That is what RR needs, desperately, at this point. He needs to outperform. At least one major upset (e.g., a win over PSU, WI, IA or OSU) and a better than projected season this year (e.g., 8 wins). It could make all the difference in terms of the players' and fans' willingness to give him the benefit of the doubt and buy fully into what he is trying to do for another couple of years. I hope he gets it.
While I wasn't even alive when he took over, the HBO series that looked at the UM-OSU rivalry dealt with some of that.
They talked about how Bo embraced the tradition at UM so completely. When he went into the locker rooms, he didn't see facilities that were decades past their prime. He saw the place where Fielding Yost had given speeches.
"Look! That hook right there! He hung his hat RIGHT there!"
That reverence and the enthusiasm and passion for what he was doing went a long way.
For those that were at UM in ~1967 to 1970, how big of a deal was football?
That was a pretty busy time. Tom Hayden, SDS, the asassinations of MLK and RFK, the sexual revolution, the drug revolution, the racial revolution, the rise of black militancy, Vietnam, the election of Nixon, the draft, the Summer of Love ending with the bombings the ROTC headquarters at Univ. of Wisc. the previous year, hippies, the Beatles getting ready to break up, Charles Manson, the race riots in Detroit, Newark, and all across the midwest, the escalation of Vietnam, the guy at the University of Texas who shot those people from the Bell Tower...
If you were born in 1950, it had to feel like the world was getting ripped apart on a near-daily basis.
Bo talks about it in Bo's Lasting Lessons co-written by John Bacon. It's a crazy good book that's not just about football. Very interesting to read against the backdrop of the Rodriguez tenure.
Summarily, Bo had the backing of Canham obviously but more importantly Bump. The players loved Bump, but when they went to see him to complain, he told them to suck it up. Bump had Bo's back in unambiguous terms.
MCalibur's right-- Bo was loathed not only for the grueling practices, but also because they'd grown so accustomed to the laid-back, country club, aw-gee-shucks everything'll be alright atmosphere of Elliot's practices and program.
This were a little too cushy, and the record showed. So Bo came in and growled at everybody from the starting center to the cleaning lady, and not everyone liked it. At least, not until he knocked off Woody.
was interested in speaking to Joe Pa about the M football position but the PSU coach was not interested in leaving State College. He did act as a consultant to Canham and highly recommended Bo. The rest is history. I remember when Bo was hired and everyone said "Who?"
The transition between Bump and Bo appeared seamless to the public. There is a historical picture of the three men participating in a TV interview long before 24/7/365 sports talk radio and ESPN. It is well established how tough Bo was on his players during his first year in preparing for the 1969 season. Several players quit the team with no one complaining that Bo lacked "family values" back then- he just had to kick ass and take control of a program that had become soft. Both Don Canham and Bo would not have tolerated people within the athletic department who were not 100% loyal to them back then.
Bump wanted to be an AD and got the opportunity at Iowa where he did a good job from 1970-1991.
"Tradition", by Bo Schembechler, with Dan Ewald. "Bo's Lasting Lessons" is a nice one too, but Tradition discussed the greatness of Michigan Football.
An excerpt from the section titled, "The Elliott Legacy" Jim Conley speaking, (captain of the 1964 team that won the Conference Champtionship and 1965 Rose Bowl under Bump Elliott.
<After that Rose Bowl victory, the Wolverines scuffled for the next three seasons. "Bump was a terrific coach," Conley said. "Sometimes people don't realize how tough it is to follow a couple of legends like Crisler and Oosterbaan." Before leaving, however, Elliott assembled a championship team in-waiting. His 1968 team finished the year with an 8-2 record and was ready for Bo to ride them to a Big Ten championship and another Rose Bowl appearance the next season. "I always joke with Bo that we helped to se the table for him," Conley cracked. "But I think he had a pretty good idea of what he could do.">
so yes, Bo came in and inherited just as much talent as Woody have been recruiting. It was talent that just needed the right attitude. Bo wasn't well known out side of die hard football knowledge freaks, and Canham hadn't heard of him when Paterno turned down the offer. So there was a section of the Alumni who questioned Canham's choice of an untested and high profile coach to lead Michigan. But the path to shut up all the critics was shorter, and with much less limelight and public scrutiny than goes on today.
Remember that in 1969, football on TV was just starting to take off. Monday Night Football was a "weird" concept that many didn't think would work. Bo established himself at just the right time and on the right stage.
But get the book, "Tradition" if you really want to understand the foundation of Michigan Football. And the DVD, " Michigan Football Memories". They can get you through the summer.
the origins of the name, "Bump?" I've always wondered about that. Thanks!
And his brother was "Pete." You figure. (I personally like the name "Chalmers." My freshman Philosophy TA was a "Chalmers." Nice guy.) As to why "Bump," versus some other non-Chalmers, I don't honestly know...
Most of these issues have been covered in the numerous "Bo" and "Bo & Woody" books.
~ People sometimes forget that not only was Bo new; but Canham himself was relatively new to the AD job, although he had been the Track Coach.
~ There was a conversation between Bo and Canham, to the effect that Bo was wondering about the pressure on him to win, or else Canham might fire him. Canham said, "If you don't win, we'll both be fired."
~ Bo was a total unknown when he came to town. Sportswriters were laughing at the spelling of his name. Nobody had heard of him. Nobody knew anything about what had been happeneing at Miami, except that is where Paul Brown, Woody Hayes and Ara Parseghian had all coached. Bo was from "The Cradle of Coaches." Bo really, really relied on that rep to get through his first months, which were really hard.
~ Canham wanted Bo to keep all of Bump's staff. Bo said "No." Bo insisted; he brought all of his own guys, including Jerry Hanlon.
~ Bump's whole adult life (along with his brother Pete) had been focused on Michigan; he was in no hurry to leave -- they made him an Associate AD until he took the job at Iowa.
~ I don't know about things between Bump and Bo, but I do know that Bump got the game ball from the 1969 OSU game. I wonder where that ball is now; Schembechler Hall? It's like an original copy of the Constitution. It is a supreme tribute, of the focus by both men on Michigan's success, no matter what. And when Bump turned the team over to Bo, there were a bunch of guys, all Bump Elliott recruits, who would later be All-Big-Ten and All-American football players.
~ Oh, and this: Before Bo won the The Big Game in '69, we were SLAUGHTERED by Missouri. I think it was a home game. I think the score was 40-0.
The Mizzou game was lost by a score of 40-17, IIRC.
I was a kid and went to that game. You could buy student (meaning pre college) walk up tickets for about $2 on game day. Dan Devine was the Missouri coach before going to Notre Dame. I think Michigan scored but did get killed. One of the bigger butt kickings I've seen first hand along with Oregon and Syracuse.