'I Look Back Only With Fondest Memories' Michigan's Wally (Wizard Of Words) Weber Retires
The Ann Arbor News, Sunday, July 2, 1972
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Michigan’s Wally (Wizard Of Words) Weber Retires
‘I Look Back Only With Fondest Memories’
By Wayne DeNeff
(News Sports Editor)
‘‘Republican taxpayers and Democratic officeholders. . .
“Brother, you and I can handle it. . .
“How are you, my taxpaying friends . . .
“Dean of action . . .”
Those phrases belong to only one man, Ann Arbor’s Wally Weber, former Michigan fullback, coach, recruiter and emissary who retired Saturday at age 69.
Wally has been regaling listeners with “doubtful Ciceronian rhetoric” for most of those 69 years and although he's retiring, Michigan fans haven’t heard the last of him.
He’ll be around for radio comments when he’s asked, an occasional after-dinner speech, which he handles so well, and he’ll again see all the Michigan football games — at home and away — just as he has done for years and years.
Wally is big, gruff, a quick man with words and has a contagious grin that spreads from ear to ear. There’s usually a twinkle in his eye and he knows more about Michigan football over the last 50 years than any man alive.
Weber gained his fame (1) as a charging fullback and devastating linebacker with Coach Fielding H. Yost’s championship Michigan teams of the middle 1920s, (2) as a terrific high school football coach at Benton Harbor High where his teams lost only three games in four seasons, (3) as a trusted assistant for coaches Harry Kipke and Fritz Crisler, (4) as a freshman coach who introduced hundreds and hundreds of young athletes to the “Michigan system,” and (5) as an entertaining speaker who was Michigan’s pipeline to all the high schools in Michigan and the surrounding states.
Weber has no challengers in the Knife and Fork League and has come face to face with more roast-beef, mashed-potatoes, and peas-and-carrots dinners than any man in America.
“Do you follow me, or am I like the balcony — over your head?”
“Michigan — Shrine of Minerva, Athens of the West, Fount of Learning.”
“Longest pass in the world — from pole to pole — Mazakowski to Janciekowski.”
"Their punter is like their alumni — always kicking.” “Colder than a mother-in-law’s osculation.”
They were sure laugh-getters on the banquet circuit and Weber had a million of them. His delivery and manner made them funny even the second time around.
Wherever he went, Weber preached the story of Michigan. He was informal and fun and who knows how many high school stars set their sights on Michigan after listening to the ‘‘Wizard of Words.”
Weber appeared from Alhambra, Calif., to New York City and from New Orleans to London, Ont. During one particularly busy week at the height of his speaking activity, Weber spoke to 17 gatherings in one week in the Upper Peninsula.
Yost was Weber’s favorite coach and he likes to tell the story of how even Yost got lulled into overconfidence.
“I can still see and hear him,” says Weber. “We were traveling by train to Annapolis (1926) and Yost was singing, ‘I’m Sitting on Top of the World.’
“He didn’t have a care in the world. Navy figured to be easy. We had beaten them the year before, 54-0, and we started ’26 by beating Oklahoma A & M, MSU, Minnesota and Illinois by pretty big scores. We had given up only two field goals in four games.”
Yost’s overconfidence wasn’t at all diminished by a stopover in Washington where he and the Wolverines were greeted like visiting royalty.
“You could sense the team losing all perspective of its real mission,” says Weber. “That night our sleep was constantly disturbed by the ringing of bells at the Naval Academy.”
Needless to say, the Wolverines were no more ready to play a football game than some of the Big Ten’s Rose Bowl representatives.
Navy won, 10-0, an upset that shocked the East and shook the foundations of the Athens of the West.
Weber says the trip back to Ann Arbor was the longest he ever made. The team came back in humiliation and anger and won its final three games from Wisconsin, Ohio State and Minnesota.
As freshman coach, Weber was a taskmaster whose job was to toughen the high school stars into durable college players.
They may have been allstaters and known lovingly back home as Tom, Mike and George, but once they stepped onto the practice turf at Ferry Field they became names like Traverse City, Chicago and Toledo.
‘‘Hey, Toledo, whoever taught you to block like that?” Weber would boom.
Or, “What’s the matter, Flint, the game getting rough?”
But Wally’s young players liked him anyway. There was no viciousness behind his harsh words. He taught from the experience as a member of two Michigan Big Ten championship teams in 1925 and 1926, from his experiences at Benton Harbor where he molded a state championship team and from his days as backfield coach when Kipke’s teams won three straight championships from 1931 through 1933.
He brought Chuck Bernard from Benton Harbor to Michigan and Bernard became a two-time All-America at center.
Weber played high school football in Mt. Clemens in 1920 and 1921 and enrolled at Detroit City College which later became Wayne State University. He also was a fullback at Wayne before moving over to Michigan.
His reputation as a coach, his knowledge of football and his outgoing personality created countless friendships and some of his best were the coaching greats of the time.
He was a close personal friend of Bob Zuppke of Illinois and even though Weber’s duties included scouting the Mini each season, Zuppke always had him stay at his home on Weber’s visits to Champaign.
“The joys of my job always have been the high-quality people I have been associated with,” says Weber. “I look back only with the fondest memories.”
It’s going to be different without Weber around as an official member of Michigan’s athletic administration but Ann Arborites can look for the same old answer to the oft-asked question, “How are you, Wally?”
“Substantial, substantial.”
Michigan Fullback, 1926
Wally Weber looked as strong and as tough as he really was when he played fullback and linebacker for Michigan’s 1926 Big Ten championship team.