One Shining Moment (The Football Version)

Rarely is there a moment that everyone watching hopes will never end.

Of course, there was Muhammad Ali lighting the torch at the 1996 Atlanta Games; there was Jack Nicklaus walking up 18 at Augusta in 2005 for the final time; there was the tiebreaker between Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe in 1980. Ali was moving, Nicklaus was cyclical, and Borg-McEnroe, well, you didn’t care who won, so long as the tiebreak went on forever.And Friday night, there was Howard Schnellenberger at the site of the national championship game, guiding unheralded Florida Atlantic to a convincing victory over Memphis.

Schnellenberger, who once got fired at halftime because he wouldn’t bench the quarterback.

Schnellenberger, who once had the foresight to leave the defending national champions to coach a team in the USFL that would never play a game.

Schnellenberger, who once said that Louisville, then a doormat with ten losing seasons among its past twelve, would win a national title.

Schnellenberger, who once lasted one season at Oklahoma before being forced out because of drinking and smoking problems.

And yet, at the age of 73, Schnellenberger is again the youngest man in college football, merely 24 years after he won the national title at Miami.

If you watched the game, you heard the story. Heck, you may have known it before the game. Schnell, as I’d like to call him from now on, took over a Miami job that not even Lou Saban could do. The south Florida school, with no other major competition within 300 miles, had already dropped basketball. Had it not been for Schnell, it would have dropped football as well.

His first season wasn’t spectacular, save for a stunning upset at Penn State. The following year, Miami was in its first bowl game since 1967. Then in 1983, Miami upset a Nebraska team in the Orange Bowl that was arguably the best Tom Osborne ever had, better than even the 1995 team that beat Florida 62-24 for the national title.

However, good sense was never Schnell’s greatest asset. He left for the USFL, never coaching a game with the Miami franchise that never came to be.

Unemployed after leaving a job he could have had until he died, Schnell took an even worse position at Louisville.

In possibly the most prophetic quote since Nixon said “I am not a crook,” Schnell claimed “We are on a collision course with the National Championship. The only variable is time.”

Although he did not win a title with the Cardinals, he did get them into the Fiesta Bowl where they defeated Alabama.

Soon after he left for Oklahoma, the “House that Schnellenberger Built” opened, a stadium that not just would not have been possible had it not been for Schnell, it would not have been necessary. Louisville, like Miami, was considering dropping its program before Schnell’s arrival. Notice a trend?

And you know the rest of the story: how he failed at Oklahoma, how at the cozy age of 64 he was asked to start a football program at Florida Atlantic and decided to name himself the head coach. You don’t need me to go through it, but I will.

This is one story that bares repeating because it’s one you just cannot hear too many times.

Schnell was named as the head of football operations in 1998 and told to find a head coach. In 1999, he named himself the head coach. In 2000, he opened practice with more than 100 walk-ons. In 2001, he upset the #22 team in 1-AA in just the program’s second game.

In 2003, the program’s fourth year, Florida Atlantic was in the 1-AA semifinals. The following year was a transitional year to 1-A, so he put together a 9-3 record that had no postseason reward.

No worries. In just their third season in the Sun Belt, the Owls upset North Texas on the road in the season finale to win the conference and get an invite to the New Orleans Bowl.

So there it was: Howard Schnellenberger, the man who made as many bad career moves as Napoleon, once again on top of college football, if only for a Friday night before Christmas. His recognizable white mustache glimmering, his gentlemanly suit drenched in Gatorade, his bowl record still perfect.

If you didn’t smile, if you didn’t nod your head, you must be crazy. Even if for some odd reason you have a fetish for Memphis football (there’s no such thing as a Memphis fan, just people with Memphis fetishes), you had to appreciate this moment.

A moment that you can only wish can go on forever for there isn’t a man who deserves vindication more than Schnellenberger.

He never left a program in disarray (Oklahoma excluded because it was in disarray when he arrived), he never put a program on probation. No, Schnell did everything the right way and won games because he was the superior coach.

I won’t say he wasn’t dumb; heck, if he still drank, you could probably get him to say so himself. But Howard Schnellenberger has always been a class act and won the correct way.

I wish that every bowl game had such a character. I wish that every bowl game had its Howard Schnellenberger.

Instead, I’m stuck with BYU-UCLA. Please wake me up when the real games start.