It Isn't Easy Being Griese

"Brian Griese's coolness
and intelligence is all Bob Griese."

As Griese developed a big-time arm, Columbus' quarterbacks coach, Mark Swanson, worried that Griese wasn't a more active leader. "But it's just not part of his personality," Swanson said.

No one questioned Griese's toughness; as a boy, he often emerged from a bottom of a pile, bloody from run-ins with his older brothers.

"They were tough as old boots," Lavelle said about Scott, who became a defensive back at Virginia, and Jeff, who played linebacker and running back at North Carolina.

The Griese boys developed a passion for Scarface, the gangster movie about a Cuban immigrant who conquers Miami's drug underworld. Watching the flick week after week, Brian refined a pitch-perfect imitation of Tony Montana, played by Al Pacino. Griese's cocky swagger is all Tony Montana.

"I don't want to say he's nonchalant, but his demeanor is like: 'There's nothing that's going to bother me. No one's going to get under my skin,' " Clark said.

Brian Griese's coolness and intelligence is all Bob Griese. In 1992, Miami High blitzed Brian on five consecutive plays. Five times he made the right read, and five times receivers dropped catchable balls. Yet, Griese never said a word.

During a tense stretch in another game, a teammate asked the coach, "What are we going to do?" Before the coach could respond, Griese ticked off several potential plays. Taught by his father how to look at film, Brian not only reviewed current film of an opponent, but reels from years past.

"Everything he did was serious," Lavelle said. "He saw the big picture. Focused is the word."

Griese's intelligence also surfaced on a basketball court, where he played center in the body of a shooting guard.

"He was quick and very strong fundamentally. We used to bring him out to the high post - he was a great passer," McKeon said. "I've never seen a tougher competitor. He wants to win very, very, very badly. We played a team with a 6-(foot-)10 center and our game plan was to use Brian's strength to offset the other center's size. He'd done a great job on the kid, he'd worked hard as heck and then a teammate got frustrated and threw the ball directly up in the middle of the key and (the center) just took the ball and dunked it.

"Brian just looked over at me and said, 'What can we do?' I said, 'Absolutely nothing.' "

With a 3.7 grade-point average and 1,170 SAT scores, Griese hoped to play quarterback at a school with strong academics and a highly competitive football program.

But his hurricane-abbreviated senior season hurt Griese with college recruiters, though he received offers from Georgia Tech, Virginia, North Carolina, Washington State, Purdue, Duke and several other schools.

"His attitude was: 'I'll prove to you (that) you should've taken me,' " McKeon said.

"He functions best with his back against the wall. He's always played with his back against the wall because he had to prove he was more than just Bob Griese's son. He's a back-against-the-wall-type guy."

Griese stumbled into several jams at Michigan, where he made a poor first impression.

"He was a little spoiled, a little arrogant and thought he had all the answers," coach Lloyd Carr said. "Brian didn't look at all his faults. He didn't work hard at improving all his weaknesses."

Wolverines quarterback coach Stan Parrish met with Griese to discuss his aloof manner. "I really stressed the importance of talking to people and not down to people on the team," he said.

Redshirted his first year, Griese was a kick-holder in 1994 and won the starting QB job halfway into the '95 season.

Following the '95 season, Griese was arrested for breaking a window at an Ann Arbor, Michigan, bar. In his era, Bob Griese said, a cop would have called the coach "and the coach would've said, 'Hey, I'll take care of this guy. The punishment I'll give him is much worse than you can give to him.' And it never got to the papers. Now, you get a traffic ticket and it gets to the papers."

Suspended for spring practice, Griese ran stadium steps in the track stadium, lifted weights in the intramural gym and watched the football team from afar.

Griese was reinstated but spent the season as a pooch punter and holder. On the eve of the '97 season, Griese had started 10 games over four seasons, winning five, so his status as a starter seemed questionable. But he took the lead in the QB race with his pen, impressing Carr on a questionnaire.

By season's end, Griese had guided Michigan to a perfect season, a victory over Washington State in the Rose Bowl and a co-national championship with Nebraska. The season, and perhaps Griese's legacy, turned in the Iowa game.

The afternoon was vintage Griese. In the first half, he threw three interceptions, and fans greeted him with boos as he came out for the second half, his team trailing 21-7.

"It was time for me to make a decision on whether I was going to be a good quarterback," said Griese, who led the Wolverines to a win. "I made a decision to throw everything away that had happened in the first half and come out and play like I knew how to play. It was a turning point for me."

Brian Griese: "Purdue was never on my list.... They promised me they would not play up the father-son comparisons.... Part of the reason I didn't want to go to Purdue was that I didn't want to invite those comparisons."

Like Father, Like Son?: Brian led Michigan to a national championship in the Rose Bowl in 1998--but, unlike his father, he was named MVP.

CONTINUE