Hyde: Schnellenberger’s legacy is unique, his void unfillable | Commentary

It was a great life all the way. It reads like a sports novel when you hear the details, right to the last page Friday night when Beverlee Schnellenberger tucked in the bed covers for her husband of 61 years at his medical facility in Boca Raton. She then hugged and kissed him good-bye for another night.

“I love you,” she said. “See you in the morning.”

“I love you, too,” he said.

Howard Schnellenberger didn’t wake up Saturday morning. He was 87. He was a giant among us, a founder of South Florida sports, a man who helped create our greatest football stories — offensive coordinator of the 1972 Miami Dolphins’ Perfect Season, coach of the University of Miami’s first national championship and, in his last chapter, creator of the Florida Atlantic football program.

“My greatest moment?” he once said in answer to my question. “They were all the greatest in that moment.”

He grew up in a time before sports bred millionaires and in Kentucky with only hardscrabble sports. His high-school friend and life-long brother — the only guy who didn’t knock at his office door — was NFL great Paul Hornung. Schnellenberger played for Blanton Collier at Kentucky, then became a young assistant with two other young assistants: Don Shula and Bill Arnsparger.

It was 1959, and that’s where our South Florida story all started. It’s how the rare minds and football savants became friends and later mixed their talents on a pallet of greatness. Schnellenberger even helped the Shulas, Don and Dorothy, married just a year, to find discount housing on the Kentucky campus. Beverlee, dating Howard, then stayed in that house with the Shulas on her visits to town.

Schnellenberger went his own way for a while. He coached under Paul “Bear” Bryant. He recruited quarterback Ken Stabler to Alabama by, “giving his momma a fifth of bourbon,” as he said. He also was told by Bryant to go recruit a Pennsylvania quarterback — Joe Namath.

“A three-day recruiting trip turned into 10 days,” Schnellenberger once said. “I was out of money and had to buy him a plane ticket to return with me. I wrote a bad check to Eastern Airlines to get both of us to Alabama.”

That’s the stories his life bred. He came to the Dolphins after coaching the Los Angeles Rams under George Allen, where he was asked to spy on opponents’ practices. The original Spygate. Schnellenberger didn’t follow through, telling Allen he couldn’t see anything and was happy to get to the Dolphins — and even happier to bump his pay from $21,000 to $23,000 a year.

“Whether it was the stars aligning, an act of God or simple good luck — everything was present from the roster to a great coach (Shula) with a great mind and great work ethic to a staff of hungry assistants,” he said.

Being offensive coordinator was easy on that team, Schnellenberger said.

“Just call the play, ‘P-10,’ " he said.

Fullback up the middle.

“If they couldn’t stop Larry Csonka, we’d run him all day,” he said.

He became head coach at Baltimore, where he was fired at halftime for kicking owner Robert Irsay off the sideline — his life was a novel, all way, remember. He returned to the Dolphins where after the 1978 season he decided to take over a floundering University of Miami program.

Shula asked what everyone did: “Are you sure?”

Schnellenberger possessed the quality anyone who achieves big had. He could dream big. He envisioned the magic before it happened. He brought Earl Morrall from the Dolphins to teach Jim Kelly how to play quarterback. He upset Penn State’s Joe Paterno in Happy Valley. He recruited two of the top high-school quarterbacks in the country in 1982 — Bernie Kosar and Vinny Testaverde.

“One we had rated the top quarterback in the country and one the third,” he once said. “I’ve never said which was which.”

He then smiled. “I still won’t say.”

In 1983, Schnellenberger directed the original “Miracle of Miami,” the upset of that old-school powerhouse Nebraska for the national title. He had his old recruit, Namath, who led the Super Bowl III upset, speak to the team the night before the game. He introduced Namath as the “special assistant in charge of the upset.”

Schnellenberger always had that dramatic touch to him. Miami won the title, 31-30, when Nebraska’s two-point conversion fell incomplete. He didn’t sleep that night — “I didn’t want to miss a moment of it,” he said.

It wasn’t all wins and celebrations. No life ever is. Schnellenberger’s grown son, Stephen, suffered from cancer and spent his final years in a wheelchair. Schnellenberger would walk him along the beach, the old lineman stopping before a long ramp and saying, “Here’s where I do my sled work.”

He went to the USFL team in Orlando, built at Louisville and had a bad chapter in Oklahoma before returning to Florida Atlantic. He needed a final challenge. FAU needed someone who dreamed big. He built a winning program out of the subtropical air from the team colors to the rivets on the new stadium.

Several years ago, following the death of a mutual friend, Schnellenberger and I sat on a stone bench outside a church and he talked of life and death in that rumbling voice that always came like a storm across the Everglades. At one point, he said, “Oh, I’ve had a I life I couldn’t have imagined.”

It was that way right to the end, his loving wife tucking him in, kissing him good-bye a month before their 62rd anniversary and each saying one final time, “I love you.”