MIAMI — Like grown children do with aging parents, sports fans know the day is coming for beloved old coaches who have faded from sidelines and headlines but never from our hearts.
We have so long to prepare for the day, so many years, yet somehow we always feel unprepared when the news hits.
Howard Schnellenberger — father of the Miami Hurricanes football dynasty but with an impact so much greater — passed away early Saturday. He had turned 87 two weeks earlier.
We forgive hyperbole in eulogies, but sometimes what might seem like a statement too big is just right:
"Without him there is no Miami football," the Hurricanes program tweeted simply.
The passing of Schnellenberger, under care in Boca Raton, came 11 months after South Florida football fans said goodbye to another coaching titan in Dolphins icon Don Shula, who died at 90.
The two giants intersected in Schnellenberger's half century indelible imprint across all levels of the sport.
He delivered the UM Hurricanes' first national championship in 1983, of course, tipping the domino that would lead to four more of those over the next 18 years.
Schnellenberger would have been around for some of those titles that followed had he not left after the '83 championship to become coach of a Miami USFL team that never materialized.
Years later he said of leaving UM, "If you look at it objectively, it was the dumbest thing a human being could do."
Though he left, the lingering perfume of mystique and aura that buoys Canes football to this day, any claim of swagger — Howard started that.
That ride upon players' shoulders at the Orange Bowl that championship night might have been Schnellenberger's crowning achievement. Or, it might not have been.
Few coaches in any sport have had resumes fuller.
Schnellenberger coached under Bear Bryant at Alabama and recruited Joe Namath to the school.
He coached with the Dolphins from 1970 to '72 and from '75-'78, and won a Super Bowl with Shula in 1972.
He did nothing less than rescue UM's football program from near extinction when he took over in 1979.
He did the same for the Louisville Cardinals program.
Later in this life and career, instead of resting on a mountain of laurels, he birthed the sport at Florida Atlantic University, creating a football program from a blank canvas and getting an on-campus stadium built.
And those were just the highlights.
Schnellenberger was a pro and college champion coach, his teams were 6-0 in bowl games, but his impact could not be confined to won-lost records.
At Miami, at Louisville, at Florida Atlantic, no man stands taller in the football history of each. Most coaches are lucky to matter that much on one campus; Howard did on three. He was the genius nomad.
All he meant was why, unsuccessfully though with passion, I campaigned with several columns for Schnellenberger to be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. I knew how much that mattered to him.
All he meant was why, more than 37 years after he lifted Canes football to the top of the national map, his name still resonated, as if time had frozen.
I knew Schnellenberger well and enjoyed his company. He could be intimidating, with that basso profundo rumble of a voice, but his humor left a twinkle in his eye, and a small smile that was a prize if you could find it under that pushbroom mustache.
I had last seen Howard a couple of years ago, at a community party Dan Le Batard and I hosted to honor the life of another South Florida sports legend, Miami Herald columnist Edwin Pope, who had died at 87.
They were contemporaries, those men. Across decades they mattered so much in our lives, and still do, even as their passing makes them memories.
Pope, like Shula, and now Schnellenberger, felt like a loss in the family.
What each accomplished and meant will stand for all time, in history, and in hearts.
