FanNation

Just to warn, you I don't have attention deficit disorder but I have been inspired by the LOST, season 7 trailer, so pardon me if I inject a few LOST elements, flashbacks and flashforwards into this story but the parallels in the Parcells-Schnellenberger universes are startling.  Both brought their Midas touches to transplant winning attitudes into tarnished franchises and programs, now they play prominent roles in South Florida athletics and nearly crossed paths at the beginning of their odysseys.  However, one doesn't get his due.

I have to chuckle at a school whose first first intercollegiate contest was a 40-7 loss 7 years of ambigious luck ago, to juggernaut Slippery Rock University(not to be confused with the Black Rock).  In 2000, the Florida Atlantic Owls hosted tryouts to assemble a makeshift Division I-AA roster in 2001, and wasted no time before debuting at the Division I-A level in 2005.  It's 2007, and Iast month, Florida Atlantic not only became bowl eligible with their 6th win but helped their cause by emerging victorious over Troy to win their first of possibly many Sun Belt Conference titles.

First glimpse back and wipe the slate clean, like I had to do on the keyboard if you mistook Florida Atlantic for Florida International, the Miami Hurricanes bar fight opponents last season.

While every sport has it's coaches who milk championships off the sweat, tears, trial and error of the blueprints their predecessors laid out, there are those nomadic college football shamans, who can cure any program's enigmatic maladies.  

I'm writing this because I've thought for a while now, I've though that everyone should know the John Locke-like infinite wisdom of Howard Schnellenberger. 

An astute coaching guru who apprenticed under the tutelage of Bear Bryant, Redskins great George Allen and Don Shula would inevitably became a sage coach.  If the sports universe of collegiate football were a metaphorical island, Schnellenberger has been the definition of Darwinism for his adaptive qualities. 

While Jim Tressel is synonymous with the red vest, Bear Bryant with his trademark houndstaff hat, Steve Spurrier's domestic battered visor, Bobby Bowden's southern drawl"Dadgummit's" or Joe Paterno's cro*tch crushing highwaters, Schnellenberger spurns conventional coaching attire with his meticulously pressed suit and blazer. Before walking onto the field Friday, On ESPN2, you could visibly see Schnellenberger would not budge from the tunnel until he finished adjusting his buttons. His sideline appearance appearance bears a resembles to a cross between Granddad, the car salesman from Problem Child and Back to the Future's "Doc".  Combined with his name, my brain spurs images of a German quantum physics discussing tachyons and atoms than an expert teacher of X and O's.

Bobby Bowden and JoePa, may have etablished a niche in their burrowed hatches but somehow Schnellenberger instantly unlock(e)d it's mysterious properties for victories upon his arrival.

Of the miracle program twists of fate in college football lore including Greg Schiano at Rutgers, Bill Snyder at Kansas State, Dan Hawkins in Boise State, Jim Leavitt at South Florida and June Jones at Hawaii, Howard Schnellenberger has been the architect of the two most historically relevant.

Flashback: (Feel free to insert flashback windsound or that Law & Order gavil depending on your preference.) His tour through the NFL ranks as a head coach was especially memorable.  17 and a half subpar games into his post-Unitas stint as Baltimore Colts head coach, owner Jim Irsay berated Schnellenberger at halftime demanding a quarterback change for the winless Colts.  Schnellenberger's  refusal prompted Irsay to fire Schnellenberger on the spot to which he retorted, "You've got to wait until after the game to fire me.  Now go upstairs"

That confrontation would be the"Beginning of the End" of his NFL experience.

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While Louisville and Florida Atlantic have been his two most recent restoration projects, the white haired septuagenarian with antipathy towards headsets lifted a dead end football program on the brink of termination and the depths of failure to the pinnacle of a 25 year streak of boundless prosperity.

His impeccable judge of talent lured Joe Namath to the Crimson Tide, and savvy as an offensive coordinator made him the offensive coordinator for 3 of Bryant's 6 national championships at Alabama before a stint under Don Shula in Miami, where he coordinated the '72 Dolphins offense during their undefeated season and subsequent Super Bowl victory. He was just getting started.  As a Miami Hurricane, Schnellenberger would coach and recruit Hall of Fame Jim Kelly, Bernie Kosar, and Vinny Testaverde.  At Louisville, Howard lured Browning Nagle, a transfer from West Virginia(who was not yet their arch nemesis) who was later drafted one pick after Brett Favre and Jeff Brohm, the Cardinals current offensive coordinator and sole recruiter of program changer Brian Brohm.

Flashback: "We are on a collision course with the national championship. The only variable is time.” The year was 1985 when Schnellenberger proclaimed this at his introductory press conference at Louisville, amid threats from the administration that the football team would be terminated in the wake of six straight losing seasons and ten in the previous twelve.

Schnellenberger applied the tactics he presumably learned from Bear Bryant by putting the Cardinals through an excruciating training camp, Bryant's Junction Boys wouldn't envy.  Renowned for his superfluous hyperbole, Schnellenberger blazoned that his team lost a collective 600 pounds.

Without Schnellenberger's contributions there is no John L. Smith, who beget Bobby Petrino, and Brian Brohm, who led the Cardinals into their Big East era.  But it was Schnellenberger who coached the Cardinals to their second and third bowl games in school history including a watershed victory over Alabama in the 1991 Fiesta Bowl, only a single loss and it's first Top 25 ranking in the final polls at #11.

Schnellenberger did not mince words then, nor did he a decade later, when his travels landed him in Norman, Oklahoma.

Flashback:  "They'll write books and make movies about my time here."  He must have foresaw the latent potential Bob Stoops would eventually capitalize on.  However, Sooner Nation was too prideful to witness his vision as he resigned after just one season. This time at a more established program, his words would sting the fanbase.  Perhaps, it was his asinine proclamation to make fans forget legends Barry Switzer and Bud Wilkinson but his experiment with a national power, reminded him how fickle fans who were familiar with success really were and was the impetus to his next destination.   His "Man of Faith" persona would better serve a football team built from scratch.
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FlashForward: As a GM, Parcells, now holds the fate of rookie head coach, Cam Cameron in his grip. He's just closed out a 1-15 season which saw the Dolphins execution compared to that of a high school team, however, he will reach an impasse. Will Parcells harken back a quarter century ago and sympathize to his tumultuous 1st year experience or will he unceremoniously cut Cam Cameron's noose?...




Flashback:  When the athletic department first announced FAU was jumpstarting a football program, Schnellenberger would come into the cafeteria with a stump, stand on it and talk to anybody who would listen.  That's how irrelevant the program initially was.

-- D.J. Dunson