The last time I sat down for an interview with Howard Schnellenberger was 17 years ago when he was just starting the fledgling football program at FAU and he sat in his office underneath a painting of his old college coach — Paul “Bear” Bryant.
I asked him then if he ever thought about what might have been if he hadn’t left the University of Miami all those years ago to take a supposedly high-paying job with the United States Football League — a job that never, ever materialized.
Schnellenberger admitted he used think about it a lot, but on this particular day he was in no mood to talk about it.