The Michigan football program was floundering at the end of
1968. The Wolverines had suffered losing campaigns in four of their
last seven seasons, and Michigan Stadium frequently had tens of
thousands of empty seats on gamedays.

But Don Canham changed all that in his reign as Michigan’s
athletic director from 1968-88.

This week, Michigan Daily sports editor Chris Burke talked with
Canham about his experiences running the University’s
athletic department.

The Michigan Daily: First off, people are very familiar
with your time as Michigan’s athletic director. But not as
many know that you were a successful track coach here for 20
seasons. Can you compare the experience of coaching at Michigan to
being Michigan’s athletic director?

Don Canham: I think the most important things are the
relationships that you have with the athletes. (Former athletic
director) Fritz Crisler was not popular — he was respected.
It helped me as athletic director an awful lot to know what,
particularly, those football and basketball coaches go through.
(Former Michigan football coach Bo) Schembechler has said that he
can’t see how someone could be an athletic director if they
hadn’t been a coach.

TMD: Was making the move from coach to athletic director
a difficult one at all?

DC: It was difficult to me for a strange reason. I owned
a business that I started when I was the track coach and when Fritz
retired, I was going to quit coaching and run my business. When I
was first offered an interview for the athletic director job, I
turned it down. I had no ambition to become athletic director. Some
of the other coaches … came to me and said, “Look,
take the interview and if they give you the job, just do it for
five years.” So I said “OK.” We had some problems
— we weren’t drawing any people for football; we had
50,000 people in that damn stadium at the time.

TMD: With those problems in mind, how were you able to
turn the football program around?

DC: I was lucky because I had been on the (University of
Michigan) staff for 17 or 18 years. I knew what the problems were
and I had no doubt it my mind that we could do it. I knew I was
going to hire a coach — I thought I was going to hire (Penn
State coach Joe) Paterno, to tell you the truth because he was a
friend of mine when I was a track coach. Paterno was the only guy I
offered the job to. I saw Schembechler on TV the other day saying
that I offered it to everybody in the country before I came to him,
but that’s not true. I talked to everybody in the country,
but the only guy I offered it to was Paterno.

TMD: Why’d you end up choosing Bo?

DC: He had the background, head coaching experience,
knowledge of the Big Ten — he had worked at Northwestern and
Ohio (State) and was a winner. His personality just struck me right
away. I hired him 15 minutes after we began to talk. That was the
turning point in my career as athletic director. That’s
because he started winning right away, we didn’t have to wait
four or five years — the reason was that
(Schembechler’s predecessor) Bump Elliot had left him a lot
of good material.

TMD: Going back to Paterno, what happened that kept him
from coming to Michigan?

DC: I met Paterno, I think, on Dec. 5 in Pittsburgh. I
was on my way to New York to go to the Hall of Fame dinner and Joe
met me at a hotel. He’d only been coach (at Penn State) for
three years, so he was just another great young coach in those
days. Paterno was not as well known as some of the other guys that
I was talking to. I’ve known Joe for 40 years and I like him
very much personally — (at the time), he was going through
his first bowl game that he’d ever gone to. He said,
“Don, let me think about it, I’ll call you in three
days” — so I went to New York and when I was talking to
people, Bo’s name kept coming up. Three days later, Joe
called me and said, “Don, I can’t make a decision until
after the bowl,” and I told him I couldn’t wait until
January to hire a football coach for Michigan. The next week, I
hired Schembechler. He’s the one that impressed me the most
at that time.

TMD: Like you mentioned, the crowds at Michigan football
games were pretty small before Bo took over. What specific things
did you do to increase those numbers?