Wally Weber - Football Coach and Raconteur at Michigan

Football Coach and Raconteur At Michigan

In 1931, Weber accepted a position as an assistant coach at Michigan and continued in that position for 28 years. Hercules Renda, a Michigan fullback in the late 1930s, said: “Wally Weber was the ideal freshman coach. He would call you by the place you were from, and the state you were from. Can you imagine? Think of the memory that man had? He would also use those big words. That was Wally. You were perfectly at ease with him at any time."

When Weber stepped down as an assistant coach in 1958, he became a full-time recruiter for Michigan. At the time, a Michigan sports columnist wrote of Weber: "For 23 years Wally has blown the whistle on freshman football players. . . . The polysyllabic Weber is Michigan's foremost representative on the banquet circuit. In fact, he's about the only one of the staff to get out and stump the state . . ." His official position was public relations, which one paper said "in blunt terms means recruiting chief."

In the 1950s and 1960s, Weber was a popular banquet speaker renowned for his "polysyllabic fluency," "mind--boggling after-dinner speeches," and his often humorous talks about the history of Michigan football. It was noted that he would "regale with dubious rhetoric" audiences before whom he would thunderously and whimsically "expatiate upon" Michigan's storied history. Another described Weber's unusual speaking style this way: "He still sounds like an educated foghorn, and still flips that king's English around in a manner to amaze and apall old Noah Webster." Praising a piledriver spotted among a current crop of Wolverines, the coach would exclaim, "When he hits 'em, generations yet unborn feel the shock of the impact!" Jim Brandstatter wrote in his book Tales from Michigan Stadium that Weber was still a regular visitor at the football offices when he enrolled in 1968. He recalled Weber as a master story teller and a favorite among the students at pep rallies: “Who can forget Wally Weber rolling his pant legs up to his knees as the student body roared before he spoke so eloquently about his beloved Michigan?” Weber also held positions in the 1960s and early 1970s in alumni relations and the physical education department. Weber also provided color commentary on WPAG radio's broadcasts of Michigan football games with Bob Ufer for several years. He retired in 1972 at the same time as Oosterbaan. With the exception of four years at Benton Harbor, Weber had been a student or employee of U-M for 48 years at the time of his retirement.