46
coach spotlight
50
years
A Storybook Career
By: Matt Adams
Thirty minutes, tops, I am told. The Wildcat public relations
staff is adamant about that; defensive coordinator Mike
Hankwitz is a busy man, they say, far too busy to talk with
some writer for more than half an hour, which is already a
generous enough amount of time.
I understand. After all, the season is about to begin and he
has more important things to do than wax poetic about his
career with a tape recorder in front of him. You know, like
figuring out how to slow down high-flying offenses that have
grown increasingly more sophisticated and unpredictable in
recent years; an unenviable job most would agree.
Still, how do you unpack a man like Hankwitz in that
short amount of time? This is a guy who played for Bo
Schembechler, who came up in the golden era of smash-
mouth, two-back, ground-it-out football and evolved with
the times to such a degree that in this age of explosive
offenses his defenses regularly rank among the top units in
the country in points allowed, yards allowed, and turnovers.
He's a sage in the sport, a strategic mastermind whose teams
have won 390 games and counting, who has coached in
every big bowl game you can think of. And next year, should
he decide to keep going, he'll have been in this game at this
high of a level for parts of seven decades. It would take days
of interviews just to scratch the surface of what he's done.
