"You Take a Job Here, You'll Need One of Those"

by Ed Michael

I came to this university as an instructor of physical education and head wrestling coach in 1970. My time at the university, from my first visit as a job candidate until now, has been an interesting one for a variety of reasons - some good, some not so good.

I interviewed for a position, which I eventually took, at the university in the spring of 1970. At that time the students had just finished protesting the Vietnam War. I was brought to Clark Hall and taken around to meet coaches of other sports, so I could get a feel for the department and for the university.

I remember walking into one coach's office and seeing a trash pail full of rocks next to his desk. Having grown up in central New York, in Ithaca, where there were gorges and a lot of rocks and water and so on - things that were left by the glaciers - it was easy for us to look for fossils, so we used to do this for amusement. To try to make conversation with this coach, upon seeing the trash pail full of rocks, I asked him if perhaps he collected fossils. He looked at me and said, "Fossils? Hell-" and he pointed to the window that was just a little ways away, and he said, "That's where they came from, and when those S.O.B.s come back again, they're going back out the same way!"

I was initially stunned when he shared that with me, but I went on and met another coach. I looked in the corner of his office, and it looked like he was trying to build a teepee out of baseball bats. He kind of chuckled a little bit when he saw me looking, and he said, "You take a job here, you'll need one of those. I'll give you your choice." "Oh, man," I said to myself, "I don't know. I'm looking for a job, not combat duty."

But there was an excitement associated with the university that was positive as well as negative. We were known as the Berkeley of the East at that time, and I was fortunate enough to be offered the position, and I accepted it for all the right reasons. I've had a very fine career here.