Miami Dolphins gateway to Hurricanes for Schnellenberger, perfect season’s ‘last [coach] standing’

Miami Hurricanes coach Mario Cristobal played tight end as a high school freshman, but the greatest catch he ever made, at least according to big brother Lou, was as a Miami Columbus High sophomore offensive lineman with legendary coach Howard Schnellenberger sitting in his home.

Schnellenberger, at that point, already had his Super Bowl ring as the 1972 offensive coordinator for the Miami Dolphins, already had his 1983 national championship ring as the Hurricanes head coach, and already had his three national title rings as the Alabama offensive line coach under Paul “Bear” Bryant.

But on this day, the impeccably groomed, mustachioed man with the captivating baritone voice that continually delivered inspiration, was the head coach at Louisville, where he grew up. And he badly wanted Lou Cristobal, then a senior offensive lineman being recruited from Columbus High, to join him at Louisville.

“So, Howard is in our living room and the whole block — a very tight-knit block of Cuban exiles — is outside,’’ Lou Cristobal recalled. “My mom must have told the neighborhood ladies, ‘Coach Schnellenberger is here!’

“Anyway, Coach is going through his recruiting pitch and Mario is kind of checking out Coach’s Miami national championship ring. Coach realizes it, looks at Mario and says, ‘Here, Mario. Take a closer look’ — and throws it across the room! To me, it was in slow motion, and I was thinking, ‘You better catch that, dude!’

“It was wild! Thank God Mario caught it.’’

“Before Coach Schnellenberger left, he told Mario, ‘I’ll be back for you in two years.’ I remember it like it was yesterday. The guy means so much to Miami football. That’s the dude who started it all.”

But well before he started it all in Coral Gables, Schnellenberger, who died at 87 in March 2021, was winning that Super Bowl to culminate the Dolphins’ perfect 1972.

The Miami Dolphins, where Schnellenberger’s long football coaching career landed as an assistant from 1970 through 1972 and again from 1975 through 1978, was the gateway to his career as the Miami Hurricanes head coach from 1979 through that glorious 1983 season.

Bride Beverlee

And no one but Beverlee Schnellenberger, Howard’s bride of 61 years, lived with him as intimately through every minute of it. Beverlee, now 85 and living in their same home in Boynton Beach, told the Miami Herald last week that “the national championship of the University of Miami and undefeated season by the Miami Dolphins are in the lock box of my heart” — and were in her husband’s as well.

Schnellenberger had 13 special football rings for exceptional team achievements, Beverlee said, but “the only ones he wore every single day of his life” were for the Dolphins 1972 Super Bowl victory and Hurricanes 1983 title.

“He wore them whether he was going to Costco or going to a gala,’’ she said. “He was proud of them, and when people would stop him and say, ‘Is that a Super Bowl ring?’ or is that ‘the Miami Hurricanes championship ring?’ he’d happily take them off for them to try on. From little children to old folks, women and men. On airplanes, at Costco, wherever. Oh my God. Everywhere.’’

Beverlee and Howard had three sons, first Stephen, who had cancer and predeceased them in 2008; then Stuart, now 61 and a former backup center on the UM national title team; and Tim, now 52.

“Timothy was 2 years old when we came from the L.A. Rams to the Miami Dolphins,’’ Beverlee said. “He grew up a Miami Dolphin. The Arnspargers [Bill Arnsbarger was the Dolphins defensive coordinator from 1970 to 1973 and 1976 to 1983] lived right next to us in Miami Lakes and Coach Don Shula and his family lived about three streets away.

“That 1972 season was the best time the Schnellenbergers as a family had in our whole lives,’’ Beverlee said. “Our two oldest boys were Dolphins ball boys and and Don Shula always made sure it was a family thing. Howard and I always talked about that ‘72 season, and he’d say he was the last living coach.

“’I’m the last man standing,’ he said before he died. “We had a lot of joy during those years.’’

Long career

Schnellenberger’s football career began as a tight end (eventually an All-American) for the Kentucky Wildcats from 1952 to 1956, the first two years under the famed Bryant. He went on to play two years in the Canadian Football League for the Hamilton Tiger Cats and then BC Lions as a 6-1, 215-pound tight end who finished with a cumulative 24 catches for 356 yards and three touchdowns. Canada is where he met Montreal native Beverlee, who was a majorette for the Montreal Alouettes. He proposed just after Christmas of 1958, when she met his family in Kentucky. She said she was heartbroken when his gift to her under the tree was two cashmere sweaters instead of an engagement ring.

The ring was soon to follow.

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“A couple days later we went out and got pizza and when it was time to pay the cashier he opened his hand and said, ‘Beverlee, help me get the money out to pay.’ I was digging around the nickels and dimes in that big old hand and there was the diamond ring. I cried and cried and cried.’’ They were married in Canada on Kentucky Derby day, May 2, 1959, the same year Schnellenberger’s coaching career began as a tight ends/receivers assistant for Kentucky and continued from 1961 through 1965 at Alabama (where he recruited Joe Namath).

Schnellenberger was an assistant with the NFL’s Rams from 1966 through 1969 until he came to the Dolphins in 1970. He got his first head coaching job in In 1973 with the Baltimore Colts, and was fired after his third game of 1974 when the team was 0-3 and Schnellenberger refused Colts owner Bob Irsay’s demand in the middle of the game to bench quarterback Marty Domres. He returned to the Dolphins as the offensive coordinator from 1975 through 1978, then took the job that ultimately made him a household name — and a South Florida icon.

Miami Hurricanes

Schnellenberger replaced UM coach Lou Saban (9-13 in 1977 and 1978) before the 1979 season, but only after he initially turned down the job offer, Beverlee said.

“When I came home, Howard told me he said no to the Hurricanes,’’ she said. “I said, ‘Honey, why don’t you call them back and tell them you’ll go? It’ll be fun.’ He called right back and said, ‘OK! Let’s go.’ The reason he said no was because seven other prominent head coaches had turned down the job. It wasn’t a prestigious job. But the building part was the best. Getting those young men to believe was better than everything.”

On the final play of Schnellenberger’s final UM game, the Hurricanes, led by young quarterback Bernie Kosar, won the 1983 national championship in the Orange Bowl with defensive back Kenny Calhoun’s deflection of an attempted two-point conversion pass that would have given Nebraska the title had the Cornhuskers secured the ball.

Beverlee wore a full-length, black mink coat to the game, and then a full-length white mink coat to the national championship parade on Biscayne Boulevard. “Howard loved it,’’ said Beverlee, who Howard called his “assistant head coach” and who still attends Hurricanes and Dolphins games.

Schnellenberger was named the Eddie Robinson Coach of the Year, but resigned from UM to become coach and part-owner of a Miami team in the United States Football League. Everything fell apart when the league announced it would go to a fall schedule, and the franchise backed out, refusing to compete with the NFL’s Dolphins.

UM hired Jimmy Johnson, and the Hurricanes went on to win four more national titles through 2001.

Schnellenberger went on to coach at Louisville for 10 seasons, at Oklahoma in 1995 and finally from 2001 to 2011 at FAU in Boca Raton, where he finished 58-74 but helped launch the program and secure funding to construct a 30,000-seat stadium before he retired.

But the Hurricanes are what catapulted Schnellenberger into Miami lore.

Players remember

Former Miami fullbacks Melvin Bratton, now an NFL agent, and Alonzo Highsmith, now the UM general manager of football operations, were recruited by Schnellenberger in 1983. Both are in awe of their first college coach, who came through with his promise that he would deliver a national championship to UM within five years.

“He came into my house and brought that trademark pipe with cherry-flavored tobacco,’’ Bratton said. “He intentionally left it at my house, and I brought it to Miami Northwestern High and was acting like Coach Schnellenberger. The other kids were blown away.

“He was very much a reason I chose Miami. I loved his synergy and energy and direction. He had a plan and told me, ‘If we keep you home and others like Alonzo, we’ll change this program.’ The dude’s presence was so powerful — and we could smell the cherry pipe before we’d see him. The whole locker room would stop when we smelled that cherry pipe.’’

Bratton, who redshirted in 1983, played the part of Nebraska quarterback Turner Gil on the UM scout team leading to the title game. “I was killing those guys in practice because I was so dialed in. I got scout team player of the week, and afterward Coach Schnellenberger came to me and said in that deep voice, ‘Mel, you did a hell of a job.’”

Highsmith, the USA Today high school defensive player of the Year at Columbus High, said he thought he was going to Florida — until he got recruited by Schnellenberger.

“I knew he had coached for the Dolphins, but didn’t know much about the UM football program,’’ Highsmith said. “I truly believed in the words he told me about his vision. He was a very intimidating man and very direct. He had a presence, his voice was stern and he spoke with conviction. He said, ‘You’re one of the best football players in this state, but you’re going to have to prove it on the field.’ My dad, who was a football coach, loved it.

“There was no backing down, It was all work ethic.”

Don Bailey Jr., the longtime color analyst for Miami Hurricanes radio broadcasts, played center at UM from 1979 through 1982, and said he was “the only kid from a Dade County high school [Miami Lakes] that signed with Miami in ‘79.

“I only have a few people that I would say are irreplaceable in my life, and Howard Schnellenberger was one of them,’’ Bailey said. “The lessons were endless. Not everybody understands how hard you have to work to be great. Coach Schnellenberger understood.’’

Earl Morrall, the Dolphins quarterback for most of the undefeated season, was the UM quarterbacks coach from 1979 through 1982. Larry Seiple, a punter and tight end for the Dolphins during that undefeated season, became the UM tight ends coach while Bailey was there. “So we had three guys walking around with Super Bowl rings. What more is there to say?”

Morrall’s two sons were ball boys when Schnellenberger coached in Miami — Mitch, 54, now the chief administrative officer for the Orange Bowl Committee, with the Hurricanes; and Matt, 64, a Fort Lauderdale attorney, with the Dolphins in the preseason and occasional games.

“He was legendary,’’ Mitch Morrall, former director of the Carquest Bowl, said of Schnellenberger, who served one year as the Carquest Bowl chairman. “Howard was poised in stressful situations. And his recruiting mentality changed the Hurricanes mantra in keeping the best kids in South Florida.

“Howard always gave back to football, even after coaching.”

Dolphin and Hurricane

Jay Brophy, 62, a longtime high school coach outside Akron, Ohio, was a linebacker for both the Hurricanes and Dolphins. Brophy played at UM from 1979 to 1983 and was named a first-team All-American for Schnellenberger’s national title team. He was drafted in the second round by the Dolphins in 1984 and played four seasons in the NFL.

After his freshman UM season, Brophy said he left school “struggling,” but Schnellenberger allowed him to return in in 1981 after a change of heart. “Sometimes second chances work out for the best,’’ Brophy said. “Because of Coach Schnellenberger giving a 19-year-old knucklehead like me a second chance, I was able to play in 1983 and win a title.

“I played at UM for the coach who was the offensive coordinator for the legendary Don Shula, and then played for Shula,’’ Brophy said. “Coach Schnellenberger sold us on a dream. We really didn’t have facilities. We didn’t have anything. But damn it, when he looked you in your eyes and said we’d challenge for a national championship in five years, I believed him.

“And he was right.’’

Cristobal’s decision

Mario Cristobal, who took over at UM last December, never made it to Schnellenberger’s Louisville. Instead, he followed his older brother to UM as an offensive lineman who won national titles in 1989 and 1991. And he never was a Dolphins fan, he told the Herald, just a diehard Pittsburgh Steelers fan.

But he also said he wanted “to make clear that I was a Don Shula fan.’’

And Schnellenberger?

“Howard Schnellenberger made an unbelievable impression on my family and myself, starting with my brother when he recruited him,’’ Cristobal said. “We thought long and hard about playing for him because it was him.

“If he could do it all over again, Howard Schnellenberger would have stayed with the Hurricanes forever. He had an aura, a demeanor and a commanding presence combined with tremendous football knowledge and people skills.

“Everyone in the room knew that he was going to be the toughest, hardest-working person in the building, and that he was never going to compromise the principles and values of the program.

“That goes a long way.’’