Blaise and Bo: It's 183 Days to Michigan

Playing in his first Husky Stadium football game, against Big Ten powerhouse Michigan no less, Washington Huskies kick-blocker Blaise Chappell already was wide-eyed.

Then he ran up the tunnel at halftime and couldn't believe what he saw or heard -- a man berating a game official in a totally unrestrained manner, calling the guy in the striped shirt every name in the book.

It was Wolverines coach Bo Schembechler.

"Having grown up watching college games on TV, I was fully aware of who Bo was," Chappell said. "He was just as imposing at times as Coach James."

The difference was, unlike the Huskies' Don James, Schembechler had no filter. He could be as ruthless and crass as any football coach when he felt he'd been wronged.

Bo made such a scene in this instance in 1983 that Chappell slowed down and watched out of curiosity for a moment before hustling to his locker room.

With the current Huskies opening next season at home against the Wolverines, this is the latest in a series of memories involving the schools' previous matchups and used in a countdown to the Sept. 5 match-up.

With Chappell's story, actually two tales here, it's 183 days to Michigan.

The UW walk-on was used on kicking situations that day and with every opposing attempt he got closer and closer to swatting one down. The Wolverines didn't block him.

Chappell got so close, in fact, he felt the rush of the air from the football on his fingertips and he heard the crowd groan when he just missed.

However, his persistence likely unnerved barefoot placekicker Todd Schlopy, who later had a tryout with the Seattle Seahawks and is now a motion-picture cameraman.

Late in the game, Schlopy missed a 32-yard field goal that would have wrapped up things for Michigan, with Chappell yet again applying pressure. Blaise likes to think the kicker was thinking about him. Given a reprieve, the Huskies went on to pull out a last-second 25-24 victory.

Now 37 years later, Chappell can't be faulted if his ears are still ringing from the meltdown by Schembechler, who died in 2006. The range of Bo's cuss words was significant.

"That was the first time I'd ever seen a coach, at any level, go in to that much detail," he said, a former assistant coach himself for two decades, "in letting the ref know how he felt."