Bo Schembechler, the football coach who grew to embody the ideal of the Michigan man, died yesterday. He was 77.

Before retiring in 1989, he became the all-time winningest coach in Michigan football history. In 21 years as head coach, Schembechler won 13 Big Ten titles, went to 10 Rose Bowls and compiled a 194-48-5 record.

He collapsed yesterday morning in the studio of WXYZ-TV in Southfield while taping a show. He was pronounced dead from heart failure at Providence Hospital at 11:42 a.m.

In the 10 years before he became head coach in 1969, Michigan's football team had won barely half of its games.

From the beginning, Schembechler brought a new fire to the team.

The night before the Rose Bowl at the end of his first season, Schembechler suffered his first heart attack. He received periodic updates in his hospital bed about the game, which Michigan lost to Southern California.

Schembechler stood on the sidelines in silence during practice the next spring. His doctors wouldn't let him coach.

One afternoon, Jim Betts, a second-string quarterback, threw a pass to halfback Tommy Darden.

Darden's eyes locked onto the ball, and he ran to catch it. But Schembechler stood in his way. Darden crashed into the weakened coach and knocked him unconscious on the field.

A trainer ran to revive him with ammonia capsules.

When Schembechler came to, he stood up, looked at the crowd that had gathered and repeated one of his favorite phrases.

"Hot damn," he said. "That would have killed an ordinary man."

Schembechler was no ordinary man.

Those who knew him consistently described him with one word: gruff.

Below that prickly exterior, they said, was one of the most compassionate men they had ever met.

"For being so gruff, the guy loved people and he always saw their potential," said author John Bacon, a professor of American culture and history who has been collaborating with Schembechler on a book.

Glenn E. Schembechler was born on April 1, 1929 in Barberton, Ohio. He got the name Bo from his sister, who couldn't pronounce the word "brother." It was his mother who instilled a love of sports in him, Bacon said.

As a seventh and eighth grader, he suited up for his town's high school football team because his grade school didn't have a squad.

Years later, Schembechler would come home after Michigan games to face the only critic he listened to: his mother.

She would be waiting at the kitchen counter for him with a bottle of Chivas Regal scotch, Bacon said.

Schembechler went on to play college football at Miami (Ohio), where he started at offensive tackle. Late in his career, he played under Woody Hayes, then Miami's coach. Hayes went on to coach at Ohio State.

After graduating from Miami in 1951, Schembechler signed on as a graduate assistant under Hayes, who had taken over the head coach's job at Ohio State. There, Schembechler earned his master's degree in physical education.

Following a tour of duty in the U.S. Army and brief assistant coaching stints at Presbyterian College in South Carolina, Bowling Green and Northwestern, Schembechler returned to Columbus as one of Hayes's assistants. He served under Hayes for five more seasons before being hired as Miami's head coach in 1963. Schembechler led the Redskins (now the Redhawks) to a 40-17-3 record in six seasons with the team.

While coaching at Miami, Schembechler received job offers from Tulane, Vanderbilt and Pittsburgh, Bacon said. Schembechler turned them all down. His sights were set on another job.

"He was utterly passionate about Michigan," Bacon said. "He knew as a kid growing up in Ohio about Michigan's great tradition."

In 1969, Michigan Athletic Director Don Canham needed someone to rebuild a program that had floundered during Bump Elliott's 10-year tenure.

After interviewing Schembechler, Canham knew he had found the right man to return Michigan to its former glory.

"His personality just struck me right away," Canham told The Michigan Daily in 2004. "I hired him 15 minutes after we began to talk. That was the turning point in my career as athletic director."

Schembechler didn't take long to cement his legacy at Michigan. In his first season, the Wolverines came into their matchup with Ohio State as 17-point underdogs against an undefeated Buckeye squad.

But the oddsmakers didn't account for the new man on the sideline.

"He knew which guys to kick in the pants and which guys to pat on the head," Bacon said. "He was the single best motivator college football has ever seen."

"If you were in his office delivering water jugs or sandwiches, he would motivate you before you left," he said.

In practice the week before the game, Schembechler taped "50-14" on the back of his players' helmets to remind them of their devastating defeat a year earlier.

The Wolverines came out of the tunnel at Michigan Stadium with a new determination.