He was not on the list.
Howard Schnellenberger, the architect of the FAU football
program and head coach who led the University of Miami to its first national
championship, has died, FAU announced on Saturday. He was 87 years old.
Schnellenberger's career in coaching spanned more than 50
years, starting as an assistant in 1959 at his alma mater Kentucky and ending
in 2011 with Florida Atlantic, where he started the university's football
program and turned it into a Division I program in four seasons.
Perhaps his most renowned coaching achievement came in
leading the University of Miami to its first national championship just years
after the program's future was being reconsidered by university officials.
After serving as offensive coordinator for the Miami
Dolphins under Don Shula, Schnellenberger was hired by the Hurricanes in 1979
to turn around their football program. Five seasons later, Schnellenberger coached
Miami to an upset victory over No. 1 Nebraska in the 1984 Orange Bowl to win
the national championship.
In 1985, Schnellenberger returned to his hometown where he
reinvigorated a fledgling University of Louisville football program,
culminating in a win over Alabama in the 1991 Fiesta Bowl.
"Howard always allowed me to be a part of his football
life," Schnellenberger's wife Beverlee said in a statement released by
FAU. "Watching him on the sidelines was an opportunity that gave us a
special closeness—win or lose—that not many wives get.
"... Howard always treated me special, like a queen,
and was truly a husband that every Canadian girl dreams of. You will always be
my love, now and forever. I'm proud to be your wife. You were a great leader of
men and the leader of our lives."
Schnellenberger is survived by his wife of 61 years,
Beverlee, sons Stuart and Tim, three grandchildren and three
great-grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his son Stephen.
Schnellenberger's cause of death was not released.
Schnellenberger was born to German-American parents in the
tiny hamlet of Saint Meinrad, Indiana. Schnellenberger graduated from Flaget
High School in Louisville, Kentucky, where he played football, basketball and
baseball before earning a scholarship to the University of Kentucky.
Schnellenberger was a 1955 (AP) All-American end at Kentucky and worked as an
assistant coach at Kentucky under head coach Blanton Collier in 1959 and 1960.
There he joined the Pi Kappa Alpha Fraternity. Schnellenberger also served as
offensive coordinator under his college coach Bear Bryant at Alabama, helping
Alabama win three national championships in 1961, 1964 and 1965 before leaving
in 1966 to take a job in the NFL as receivers coach of the Los Angeles Rams
under George Allen, then was hired by Don Shula in 1970 to become the offensive
coordinator for the Miami Dolphins, where he helped coach the Dolphins to a
perfect 1972 season and a Super Bowl victory.
Schnellenberger signed a three-year contract to succeed John
Sandusky as head coach of the Baltimore Colts on February 14, 1973. He was
reunited with general manager Joe Thomas, both of whom had been colleagues with
the Dolphins. He joined a team in the midst of an influx of younger players.
The Colts went 4–10–0 in his one full season but managed to
upset the defending Super Bowl champion Dolphins towards the end of the 1973
season, though the Dolphins second team played most of the game.
His time with the Colts ended after a 30–10 defeat to the
Philadelphia Eagles at Veterans Stadium on September 29, 1974 which extended
its season-opening losing streak to three. While stalking the Colts sideline
during the second half, team owner Robert Irsay, who had a preference for Bert
Jones as the starting quarterback over Marty Domres, asked Schnellenberger
about when he was going to make such a change. Schnellenberger's sarcastic
reply resulted in his postgame dismissal. Irsay had first gone to the press box
to inform Thomas that he was the new head coach and then to the locker room to
announce his actions to the Colts players before breaking the news to
Schnellenberger in a heated discussion in the coaches office.
He returned to the Dolphins coaching staff the following
year and remained there until he was offered the head coaching job at the
University of Miami.
chnellenberger arrived to a Miami program that was on its
last legs, with the program having almost been dropped by the university just a
few years prior. Drawing from the boot camp methodology learned from mentors
Bryant and Shula and a pro-style pass-oriented playbook not yet the norm in
college football, Miami developed a passing game that allowed them to have
advantage over teams not equipped to defend such an attack. By his third season
at Miami, the team had finished the season in the AP Poll top 25
twice—something that had not happened there since 1966.
Schnellenberger revolutionized recruiting South Florida high
school talent by building a metaphorical "fence around South Florida"
and recruiting only the "State of Miami." His eye for talent in this
area led to many programs around the nation paying greater attention to south
Florida high school prospects. Under his "State of Miami" plan, Schnellenberger's
teams took the best from the three-county area around the city, went after the
state's best, then aimed at targets among the nation's elite recruits; it
became a model of how to recruit in college football.
He coached Miami to a national championship in 1983,
defeating Nebraska in the Orange Bowl. Following the season, Schnellenberger
resigned to become part-owner, president, general manager and head coach of The
Spirit of Miami of the United States Football League—a relocated Washington
Federals franchise. In August, however, the USFL announced that it would shift
to a fall schedule. The owner-to-be for the Federals backed out of the deal,
knowing he could not hope to compete head-to-head with the Miami Dolphins. A
new backer moved the team to Orlando as the Renegades, but Schnellenberger
opted not to follow the team to Central Florida. Schnellenberger was replaced
as head coach of the Hurricanes by Jimmy Johnson.
Schnellenberger was interviewed about his time at the
University of Miami for the documentary The U, which premiered December 12,
2009 on ESPN.
Schnellenberger was inducted into the University of Miami
Sports Hall of Fame in 1993.
In 1985, Schnellenberger returned to his hometown to coach
another struggling program, the University of Louisville Cardinals.
Schnellenberger inherited a situation that was as bad, if not worse, than what
he'd inherited at Miami. The Cardinals had not had a winning season since 1978,
and only two winning records in the previous 12 years. They played at Cardinal
Stadium, a minor-league baseball stadium, and often hosted crowds so small that
the school was forced to give tickets away. They also played in the long shadow
of the school's powerful men's basketball team. The situation was so grave at
Louisville that officials were considering dropping the football program down
to I-AA. Nonetheless, at his opening press conference, he stunned reporters and
fans by proclaiming the program "is on a collision course with the
national championship. The only variable is time."
After going 8–24–1 in his first three years, Schnellenberger
was able to turn the program around and go 24–9–1 the next three seasons. In 10
years, he led the Cardinals to their fourth and fifth bowl games in school
history. They won them both, including a 34–7 thrashing of the Alabama Crimson
Tide in the 1991 Fiesta Bowl, capping a 10–1–1 season and the school's
first-ever appearance in a final poll (11th). The Fiesta Bowl appearance was
the school's first-ever New Year's Day bowl game.
Schnellenberger left Louisville after the 1994 season. He
recalled in a 2012 interview that his departure was a direct result of the
impending creation of Conference USA:
I didn't leave
because of money. I wasn't looking to go anywhere until that president (Dr.
Donald Swain) pulled that baloney and put us in that conference that I didn't
want to be in. I wasn't going to coach in a conference where I didn't have a
chance to compete for the national championship.
Schnellenberger was replaced by Ron Cooper. Although
Schnellenberger's record at Louisville was two games under .500 (largely due to
his first three years), he has remained in the good graces of Cardinal fans due
to the poor state the program was in when he arrived, giving him a reputation
as a "program builder." He is also credited with laying the
foundation for the program's subsequent rise to prominence. The Cardinals went
to nine straight bowl games from 1998 to 2006. The Howard L. Schnellenberger
Football Complex at the current Cardinal Stadium is named after him;
Schnellenberger initially proposed building the on-campus stadium during his
tenure at Louisville and is credited with keeping the project alive.
Late in the 1994 season, Oklahoma head coach Gary Gibbs was
forced to resign, but was allowed to finish out the season. Schnellenberger was
hired to replace him on December 16, 1994. Repeating his bluster upon taking
the Louisville job, Schnellenberger declared, "They'll write books and
make movies about my time here." He also traveled across the state, with
the stated goal of renewing the enthusiasm in what he called "Sooner
Nation." After watching his new team for the first time in the 1994 Copper
Bowl (in which Oklahoma was routed by BYU 31–6), he alienated his soon-to-be
players by declaring them "out of shape, unorganized and unmotivated"
and that they disgraced Oklahoma's rich football tradition.
After a few years out of the limelight, Schnellenberger
resurfaced in 1998. At age 64 he was named director of football operations for
Florida Atlantic University, with the task of building a football program from
scratch: coming up with a strategic plan, raising funds and selecting a coach.
He was able to raise $13 million in pledges (equivalent to $20.39 million in
2019) , lobbied the state legislature, and by the time then-FAU President,
Anthony Catanese, asked him to find a coach in 1999, Schnellenberger selected
himself. Schnellenberger described his interest in FAU by noting "This one
is so different. The others, we were working with adopted kids. These were our
kids."
Schnellenberger married Beverlee Donnelly in 1971; they met
when Howard played for the Toronto Argonauts.
For the next two years, Schnellenberger led the fledgling
team through fund-raising, recruiting and practice. For their first practice in
2000, the Owls had 160 walk-ons and 22 scholarship players. FAU football played
their first game on September 1, 2001, losing to Slippery Rock 40–7 after the
FAU administration failed to certify 13 Owls starters in time to play. The very
next game the Owls upset the No. 22 team in I-AA, Bethune–Cookman, finishing
their first season 4–6. They regressed to 2–9 the following season, but went
11–3 and made the I-AA semifinals in their third. During their fourth season,
the Owls posted a 9–3 record while transitioning to Division I-A, but were
ineligible for both a bowl game and the I-AA playoffs because of their
transitioning status.