ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) -- Bo Schembechler, who became one of college football's great coaches in two decades at Michigan, died Friday after taping a TV show on the eve of the Wolverines' No. 1 vs. No. 2 showdown with perennial rival Ohio State. He was 77.
Mike Dowd, chief investigator with the Oakland County Medical Examiner's Office, confirmed Schembechler's death at 11:42 a.m.
"You only meet someone like that once in a lifetime," Michigan executive associate athletic director Mike Stevenson told the Ann Arbor News. "In the history of Michigan athletics, nobody had a bigger impact. He was passionate, bright, and an unbelievable leader. He loved Michigan."
Schembechler became ill and collapsed while taping the show, Big Ten Ticket, at WXYZ in Southfield, the station said, and he was taken by ambulance to an area hospital.
The Detroit News reported that Schembechler, just before taping the show, visited the restroom and collapsed.
Schembechler also was hospitalized Oct. 20 after becoming ill at the same location.
Police were sent to the station around 9:25 a.m. along with the city's fire department and escorted an ambulance to Providence Hospital, Southfield police spokesman John Harris said.
The Detroit Free Press reported that friends and family soon began to arrive at Providence Hospital, including former Wolverines coach Gary Moeller.
At Schembechler's Ann Arbor home, a family friend told the Free Press: "It wasn't time for him to go. He wasn't ready. He knew that he had a problem with his heart, but he wasn't ready to give up."
The friend said Schembechler's wife, Cathy, was on her way back to Ann Arbor from Providence Hospital.
Shortly before 1:30 p.m. on Friday, Michigan's team buses left Ann Arbor to travel to Columbus, Ohio, site of Saturday's game. Television news footage showed a visibly grim Michigan coach Lloyd Carr getting on the bus along with several forlorn looking players and staff members. The team was expected to arrive in Columbus at 4:30 p.m.
Schembechler met with the media earlier this week to discuss The Game.
"I'm as excited as you are about this game, because I love to see Ohio State and Michigan come down to the end," Schembechler said. "I see this game as being a great classic and I hope the weather's nice. And I hope the people behave on both sides, because sometimes we get too emotional about this game and we should not do that. And may the best team win."
During the news conference, the 77-year-old discussed the device that was implanted to regulate his heartbeat after he was hospitalized last month.
He said the device covered about half his chest and that doctors still were making adjustments to it.
Schembechler said he did not plan to attend the game in Columbus and that he didn't attend road games anymore.
"This is an extraordinary loss for college football. Bo Schembechler touched the lives of many people and made the game of football better in every way," Ohio State coach Jim Tressel said in a statement. "He will always be both a Buckeye and a Wolverine and our thoughts are with all who grieve his loss."
Schembechler had a heart attack on the eve of his first Rose Bowl in 1970 and another one in 1987. He has had two quadruple heart bypass operations.
In his 1989 biography, Bo, the coach addressed his history of cardiac trouble.
"Will I die from a heart attack? I've pretty much accepted that," Schembechler wrote. "I'll probably go through another episode before I'm finished here on earth."
The seven-time Big Ten coach of the year compiled a 194-48-5 record at Michigan from 1969-89. Schembechler's record in 26 years of coaching was 234-65-8.
"Bo was Bo," said Don Nehlen, an assistant on Schembechler's staff at Michigan until becoming head coach at West Virginia in 1979.
"He had such a unique ability to motivate players and motivate his coaches," Nehlen said. "The hallmark of any great football program is complete honesty between the coaches and the players. There's got to be a trust between the two. And Bo was always, always honest and so sincere. There was such a bond between the coaches and players at Michigan, because he was so highly respected by the players because he told it like it was. He didn't tell them what they wanted to hear."
Schembechler's Wolverines were 11-9-1 against the Buckeyes. But fans in both states generally agree that the rivalry's prime years were 1969-78, when Schembechler opposed his friend and coaching guru, Woody Hayes. Michigan prevailed in those meetings, going 5-4-1.
"It was a very personal rivalry," Earle Bruce, who succeeded Hayes as coach, once said. "And for the first and only time, it was as much about the coaches as it was about the game.
"Bo and Woody were very close because Bo played for Woody at Miami of Ohio, then coached with him at Ohio State. But their friendship was put on hold when Bo took the Michigan job because it was the protege against mentor."
Thirteen of Schembechler's Michigan teams either won or shared the Big Ten championship. Fifteen of them finished in The Associated Press Top 10, with the 1985 team finishing No. 2.
Seventeen of Schembechler's 21 Michigan teams earned bowl berths. Despite a .796 regular-season winning percentage, his record in bowls was a disappointing 5-12, including 2-8 in Rose Bowls.
The mythical national championship eluded Schembechler, but he said that never bothered him.
"If you think my career has been a failure because I have never won a national title, you have another thing coming," Schembechler said a few weeks before coaching his final game. "I have never played a game for the national title. Our goals always have been to win the Big Ten title and the Rose Bowl. If we do that, then we consider it a successful season."
His last game as Wolverines coach was a 17-10 loss to Southern California in the 1990 Rose Bowl. One week later, Schembechler -- who also had been serving as Michigan athletic director since July 1988 -- was named president of the Detroit Tigers.
Schembechler's signature moment as athletic director probably came in March 1989, when basketball coach Bill Frieder accepted a job at Arizona State on the eve of the NCAA tournament.
An angry Schembechler declared, "A Michigan man will coach Michigan, not an Arizona State man." He refused to accept Frieder's 21-day notice and named assistant Steve Fisher as interim coach.
The Wolverines went on to win the national championship by beating Seton Hall 80-79 in overtime.
Schembechler's tenure as Tigers president was less rewarding.
Schembechler fired beloved broadcaster Ernie Harwell after the 1991 season. Harwell was brought back in 1993.
Schembechler tried to turn around Detroit's unproductive farm system. He hired extra coaches for every farm team, upgraded all the facilities and introduced football-style strength and conditioning programs.
But those moves bore little fruit at the big-league level. The Tigers' last winning season was in 1993 until they advanced to the World Series this season.
Schembechler was an intense disciplinarian and his gruff persona belied his devotion to his players, both during and after their playing days in Ann Arbor.
"He preached the team from day one, and it's still being taught now," offensive guard Reggie McKenzie, who played for Schembechler from 1969-71, said when he was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2003.
McKenzie said Schembechler's iron hand almost prompted him to quit. But, he said: "I learned to beat him by doing it the right way every time, all the time. That's the attitude we had at Michigan."
While Schembechler loved coaching, he was less enamored with some other aspects of college football. In his biography, co-written with Detroit Free Press sports columnist Mitch Albom, Schembechler decried drugs, sports agents and the pressures of recruiting.
"Recruiting is the worst part of college football," he wrote. "I no longer look forward to it. I can't wait until it's over. It makes me feel like a pimp."
Tigers owner Tom Monaghan fired Schembechler as Tigers president the day before he sold the team to Mike Ilitch in August 1992 -- and 13 days before Schembechler's wife Millie died at age 63 of adrenal cancer. Bo Schembechler sued, claiming Monaghan had broken a contract the Domino's Pizza owner had jotted down on a napkin. They settled out of court in 1994.
After Millie's death, Bo Schembechler sponsored an annual golf outing that raised money for cancer research at Michigan.
Schembechler was born April 1, 1929 in Barberton, Ohio. He graduated in 1951 from Miami of Ohio, where he played for Hayes. He earned a master's degree in 1952 at Ohio State, where he served until 1953 as a graduate assistant under Hayes.
After serving in the Army, Schembechler held assistant coaching jobs at Presbyterian College in 1954 and Bowling Green in 1955, then joined Ara Parseghian's staff at Northwestern in 1958 before returning to Ohio State as an assistant to Hayes.
Schembechler was named head coach at Miami in 1963, winning two Mid-American Conference titles in six seasons. In 1969, he took over a Michigan program that had posted six losing seasons over the previous 11 years. He did not have a losing season at either school.
Michigan's most valuable player award and the football building on campus are named for Schembechler. The office he maintained in the building after he retired prominently displayed a picture of him with Hayes.
Schembechler worked as an ABC Sports football broadcaster and analyst in 1991-92 and was a popular motivational speaker for many years.
Schembechler was inducted into the Miami University Hall of Fame in 1972, the State of Michigan Sports Hall of Fame in 1989, the University of Michigan Hall of Honor in 1992, the Rose Bowl Hall of Fame in 1993 and the National Football Foundation Hall of Fame in 1993.
Bo and Millie Schembechler had one son together, Glenn III. Schembechler and his second wife Cathy married in 1993.
Rest in peace, Bo.
