Coaching Legend Howard Schnellenberger
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Howard Schnellenberger has been called one of the greatest coaches in the history of college football – not so much for his overall record – but for his ability to make something out of nothing with the teams that he coached. He took the Miami Hurricanes from a program that had almost been dropped from the athletic department to a National Champion. He took the Louisville Cardinals from one of the worst team in Division I-AA to a proven winner at the D-1 level and now one of the top teams in the NCAA. And he took the Florida Atlantic Owls from a school that did not even have a football team to a regular Bowl game participant. He joined Chad on Flight 750 Friday to discuss his remarkable career.
Schnellenberger insists that his decision to take over the Miami Hurricanes was one that he thought long and hard about.
“I had studied it and I knew that having a team in South Florida – A wonderful school like the Univerisyt of Miami even though they hadn’t had but two winning seasons in the previous 13 years…They had a lot of assets. They had an Orange Bowl that they themselves thought was too big and old time – I saw it as the greatest stadium in the Southeast…So I looked at it as an asset rather than a liability.”
Schnellenbeger also talked about his time being groomed by perhaps the greatest college football coach ever, Bear Bryant.
“Coach Bryant was an exceptional person, probably the best college football coach of all time. When he went to Alabama in 1958 – in the two previous years they had won one game in two years, with Bart Starr as their quarterback. Alabama had had a great tradition before that, but they were at an all-time low…He went in there and brought in a group of players that was the best group of players he could put together in 1958. And by 1961, they went from one win in 2 years to undefeated and a National Championship. And he did it by putting them through drills and a training camp that was tougher than anyone else in the country…He was the ultimate coach.”
And with all the great success that he had in his time as coach, there was one place where he just never seemed to get it going. That place is of course down in Norman, Oklahoma.
“I think it didn’t work there because of the situation that was out there. I wasn’t the pick of the President of the University. I was the pick of Donnie Duncan, who had been brought in when Switzer was into retirement.”
Take a listen to the interview and be sure to check out freesafetext.com and download the app that Schnellenberger has been endorsing. It helps saves lives and lets you earn free Taco Bell.
Tags: Chad Doing, Howard Schnellenberger