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11
Yesterday: Just a game
Footbal
from I
in recent years for its less than pristine
record. Many argue with the notion that
a system that breaks rules to recruit
players, uses them to keep the football
stadiums filled, and then releases them
after four years without a college
degree and with little more than a few
bonus checks from grateful alumni
boosters builds much character.
College football exploits, the critics
charge, and the players are the ex-
ploited.
But Lewis and his classmates, who
played on a Michigan team that was
ranked number one for most of their
senior year, have a vastly different
perspective on their years in school.
Now, several years into their various
careers-as salesmen, engineers,
firemen, pro football players, and even
doctors-the seniors of 1976 look back
on their days under the protective wing
of coach Bo Schembechler with the ut-
most admiration and respect for the
man who many of them describe as the
most important person in their lives.
Tomorrow's game is the sixth
Homecoming since the 16 seniors left
Michigan Stadium in uniform for the
last time. The years haven't tempered
their feelings; they still love Bo Schem-
bechler.
They credit Schembechler with
giving them the discipline, which they
translate into "a competitive edge,"
necessary to make it in a world without
football.
"You're out there sweating your butt
off on hot August days and running
wind sprints-and he's screaming at
you because you're not hitting as hard
as you can," reflects Roger Szafranski,
now in marketing with an Atlanta
baking company. "Then you're out
there on cold, rainy, slushy days in
November, when you're breathing on
each other's faces just to keep warm.
And he's saying hit harder. Sure there
are times yqu hate him, when you want
to say, 'Just leave me alone.' "
A $1.5 million indoor football complex
completed in 1980 took care of the
climate problems, Szafranski notes, but
the former secpnd-string middle guard
is sure the spirit is still the same.
"Even with all the pain, you knew if you
followed his direction, you'd be cham-
pions, you'd be winners. And that just
continues through life."
T HE MAN they hated at times,
he man who yelled at them, rattled
their heads, pushed them further than
they wanted to be pushed, is now the
man they adore. That man and his foot-
ball program, says one player, taught
them all a work ethic.
"You learned personal discipline,"
says Lewis, "When everybody else was
off having fun, going to the movies or
other places, you couldn't because you
bechler's influence has kept him a pro
in the face of a long series of injuries.
The coach's attitude that "nobody beats
you," Lytle says, is the reason he's
been able to come back from five
operations.
"In pro ball," says Michigan's second
all-time leading rusher, "it's just a
numbers game. It would be very easy to
say I'm not going to work too hard to
get back into shape. But Bo taught us
that nobody beats you. Even if you're
totally outmanned-as we were in the
(1976) Orange Bowl against
Oklahoma-we never felt it. Some
people might think you're cocky, but I
think it's a great attitude."
Then juniors, Lytle and his
classmates lost that Orange Bowl by a
14-6 score, though the game wasn't that
close. And they lost their only Rose
Bowl to USC the following year. But
none expressed disappointment with
their experiences at Michigan.
Each has his own favorite game, his
own special moment. For many, the
1976 season-ending shutout over Ohio
State at Columbus was the most impor-
tant, the most emotional moment in
their careers.
Others take the emphasis off the
games and, put it more on their lives on
campus.
Smith says the most important
moment for him was meeting the
woman he later married. "Look, foot-
ball is just a game..."
For Jim Hall, who describes himself
as a "peon engineer" for a California
missile manufacturer, graduating was
the high point.
And for Lewis, who came back to Ann
Arbor earlier this month for the
Michigan State game, "it's the
sweating, the weight rooms, the con-
versations in the locker rooms" that he
recalls. "I watched the MSU game, but
I couldn't remember too much of the
field experience. But walking through
the empty locker rooms or across the
practice field-those were the times I
remembered."
Their Michigan careers had low poin-
ts, too. They were so used to the vic-
tories that each of the few losses and
ties stands out a little more sharply.
Most, though, remember the rude
awakening of their freshman year.
For many of them, adolescent
dreams of Heisman Trophies and the
NFL quickly were dimmed as they
moved from high school superstars to
reserves on a team filled with stan-
douts. Along with that came the
realization that football wouldn't make
much of a future.
"When I was a senior in high school, I
didn't give education a thought," says
John Ceddia, a highly recruited quar-
terback who wound up with fewer than
10 minutes of playing time in four years
for Schembechler. "But after becoming
12th string quarterback my first year,
some realism set in."
Says Hall, who considered himself a
pretty good student in high school: "My
first semester grades almost gave me a
heart attack. I didn't know what I was
doing. I was young, stupid, naive, and
not getting the help when I needed it."
But under Schembechler, the players
say, that "young, stupid, and naive"
high school star grows up pretty
quickly. The coach and his boss, Don
Canham, may refer to their athletes as
"kids," but the players report they
were never babied.
And Schembechler pushed them as
hard to earn their degrees, they say, as
he did to make them perform better on
the field. "He always told us if-we were
there just to play football, we weren't
doing anything," sayd Hall.
"Bo pushed to the point where it was
like living with your parents-which is
good," adds Smith, who didn't earn his
degree in his four years at Michigan
before turning pro. Smith returned in
recent off-seasons and graduated in
1981.
It recently was revealed that many of
Schembechler's most successful
athletes-almost a third of his players
still in the NFL-don't have their
diplomas. Those were the players
Schembechlerscouldn't motivate
academically.
Oneof those players, 1970 Michigan
All-American and St. Louis Cardinal
Dan Dierdorf told his old coach "to go
to hell," Schembechler jokes, "because
he's making twice as much money as I
do." (While not uncommon for a
professional athleteuthat's not doing
badly, considering Schembechler's
combined University and television
salary reportedly exceeds $150,000.)
But most of Schembechler's former
players regard a degree much more
Losing
out
By Michael Baadke
Dead-Eye Dick
by Kurt Vonnegut
Delacorte Press, 240p.
THERE AREN'T very many happy
life stories in Kurt Vonnegut's
tenth novel, Dead-Eye Dick. Then
again, life isn't always happy on this
planet. Vonnegut would probably be
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one of the first to acknowledge that
fact.
Most of Dead-Eye Dick takes place in
Midland City, Ohio. One of the minor
characters in the book sums up the
citizenry of Midland City by saying,
"Everybody here is a fake." In some
ways that is a fairly accurate
statement: no one in Midland City suc-
ceeds at much of anything. And most of
them die. About one hundred thousand
people die in Dead-Eye Dick. Some of
them have their own individual death
scenes. Most of them all die together, in
one big flash.
Long-time fans of Vonnegut's writing
may already be familiar with Midland
City, Ohio; it was the setting for a novel
he wrote about ten years ago, Breakfast
of Champions. Some of the characters
from that book appear again in Dead-
Eye Dick, including Swayne Hoover,
owner of Exit Eleven Pontiac Village,
and Dwayne's wife, Celia Hildreth
Hoover, who dies by ingesting drano.
Their lives weren't particularly happy
in Breakfast of Champions, and they
aren't particularly happy in Dead-Eye
Dick.
Rudy Waltz, the narrator and prin-
cipal character, is, in fact, "Dead-Eye
Dick," a cruel nickname permanently
pinned on him at the age of twelve,
when he accidentally shoots and kills a
pregnant woman named Eloise Met-
zger from six blocks away. This in-
cident transforms Rudy's life; he
becomes what he terms "egregrious."
Outside of the herd. He is a sexual
neuter, and a virtually emotionless
narrator of the happenings around him.
As such, Rudy is the best possible
narrator of the proceedings. We see the
hollow lives of the citizens of Midland
City through Rudy's objective gaze,
and we also see their constant sadness.
Rudy's parents are oblivious to the
realities of life, even when Rudy and his
father are taken off to jail as a result of
Rudy's careless marksmanship.
Rudy's brother Felix tries to find suc-
cess outside of Midland City, but seems
unable to shake the family's curse of
failure.
AndRudy sees all the other failures
as well. Dwayne and Celia Hoover, his
English teacher Naomi Shoup, who is
"old and alone," and of course, Eloise
Metzger and her unborn child. Even
that "double murder," which he refers
to so frequently, he seems to view with
detachment, unable to fathom the
emotion the reader is forced to feel for
him.
Rudy's life is also an unhappy one,
beginning with his sadly lost parents,
the shooting incident, and continuing on
through his adult life. He's a success as
an all-night pharmacist, but a
disastrous failure as a playwright. He
never finds love in the course of his life,
but he never went looking for it either.
The one person who claims to love him,
Celia Hildreth Hoover, is an aging
crazy, trying to obtain from Rudy's
stock of drugs some Pennwalt
Biphetamine, "black beauties." And
that love turns quickly to hate when he
denies her request.
For all of his own failures, Rudy ends
up more fortunate than most of the
citizens of Midland City. He survives.
And considering what he has to live for,
he may not be all that lucky.
But Rudy survives fairly nicely, with
a hotel in Haiti which he runs with his
brother. And perhaps it is this which
Vonnegut wishes his readership to
realize; that despite the emptiness life
might hold, it's better than no life at all.
The message isn't clear, but it seems to
hover over the book from beginning to
end; it's Vonnegut's concept that life is
sacred, and it's a point he has made
before.
Other messages are made clear in the
book. Guns are bad. Bombs are bad.
And walking through life with an empty
head seems bad too. These are fairly
simple messages, but Vonnegut presen-
DI
E
Dead-Eye Di(
ts them in a wa;
like very impor
Lest the read
should be mei
Dick is not ne
novel. Although
lead seemingly
still Vonnegut's
the reader thr(
one of the prem
comedy school
face of overwh4
out between t]
scenes, and it
tinue through'it
Dead-Eye Di
best Vonnegut
honor probably
known work, Si
it is a carefully
proves that at
negut is still or
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Vonnegut: Gunfighter
'You have those people who thought the
athletic department supplied you with
women the night before the game . . I
think it's jealosy or insecurity on the part of a
lot of ex-jocks.'
-Roger Szafranski
former football player
Getting
smart
By Steve Miller
My Wisdom
by Jean Thompson
Franklin Watts, 360p.
JEAN THOMPSON'S My Wisdom is
a presumptuously-titled look at one
woman's life in the turbulent '60s. Mary
Ann Edwards lives her life in a deter-
mined effort to be part of that turbulen-
ce. But her efforts only reveal the
banality behind the political activism,
the drugs, the sex, marriage,
everything.
She starts the quest for her wisdom
by going away to college, not with any
goals or questions in mind, not even
particularly open-minded about the
whole experience, but simply to get
away from home. Quietly and almost
inexplicably, she gravitates into the
company of a small crowd of dopers
and wordy revolutionaries. She never
has much to say to them, and they
wouldn't listen to her anyhow. She's
only there to observe the sordid
uselessness of other people's lives.
Soon enough she decides to blow the
college scene and head for California.
It's a stock decision for students in the
'60s, but she needs the change as much
as anyone.
Red and Bunny, two more examples
of vacuous banality, though this time
minus the ideological nonsense, give
Mary Ann a lift. Her spirits should have
been lifted too, because she's finally
leaving the Midwest, but Mary Ann
manages to see the worst in any
situation. She tries to enjoy herself, but
once again she is trapped with people
who can barely talk, and who certainly
have nothing in common with her.
It is difficult to say who is really to
blame for Mary Ann's inability to
communicate with anyone. She is not
a sympathetic narrator at all. Besides,
the people around her would have to be
mind readers to figure out what, in fact,
she does want to talk about. She cannot
explain her problems to others, she
cannot explain them to herself; it
makes for a lot of frustration and
bickering.
Back on the California trail, Red's
truck makes it as far as Colorado
before it dies. Red, Bunny, and Mary
Ann don't quite make it out of the Mid-
west, leaving them stranded. They split
up to hitchhike the rest of the way. For
the first time in her life, Mary Ann is
completely on her own. No more
teaming up with revolutionaries, no
more Red and Bunny to complain
about-nothing but the empty road
ahead.
This lasts for about five minutes. A
truck comes along and gives Mary Ann
a ride, and she's teamed up again.
Graham Green, as typically Midwest as
they come, enters her life. Fortunately
for him, he doesn't have much to say, so
Mary Ann can't complain.
Maybe that's why she ends up
marrying him. He's handsome, devoid
of personality, and safe. It doesn't take
long before the nondescriptness catches
up with Mary Ann, though. She can't
explainher problem to any of the small-
town folks around her, and she finds it
harder and harder to play the wifely
role. Frustration, futility, and
bleakness build up daily.
When her neighbor goes insane and
murders his family right in front of her,
Mary Ann takes it as a sign to pack up
and leave. Underneath the thin layer of
small-town security, she realizes an ab-
sence of any challenges in her life, so
she goes to California.
She visits her sister in San Francisco,
and ends up back in the world of politics
that she left at college. People trying to
change things are all around, but the
endless political discussions seem as
empty as before. Her life doesn't
change.
Who's to blame for Mary Ann's
troubles? What does it take to satisfy
her? Mary Ann has no answers herself,
she can't even decide on the right
didn't have time to study when
everybody else was."
And those constraints on time can
apply to anything one does, says Lewis.
"As a physician, there are times I have
to do certain things to make myself bet-
ter-Maybe read another medical jour-
nal."
Performing in front of 100,000 people
was character-building in itself, Lewis
adds. "At Michigan, there were a lot of
successes, but we had our failures too.
You learn to accept that."
For Rob Lytle-one of two '76 seniors
still playing professional football (at
least until the strike began)-Schem-
their collegiate careers. Even Lytle,
who played in the 1980 Super Bowl, and
one-time Michigan wide receiver Jim
Smith, who plays for the former NFL
champion Pittsburgh Steelers, say
nothing can compare to their college
years.
"In the pros, we play these games
and make money for something we en-
joy doing," says -Smith. "The college
years are far more memorable. There
was no money incentive-we were just
playing for each other and the school."
As for the rest of the team-all those
who played only a few years in the pros
or never made it there-none regrets
My Wisdom: I
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other characte
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