Eastern Michigan Athletics
A Walk Through History: Genyk's Firecracker Farewell
10/10/2019 11:23:00 AM | Football, General
Author T.C. Cameron tells unknown tales from EMU Football's Past
YPSILANTI, Mich. (EMUEagles.com) -- It's a game any university dreads: a dead man walking game.
The season has gone poorly, the head coach isn't returning and a few games remain. Sometimes it's unsaid, sometimes it's announced publicly. It's always awkward.
But once in a while, magic happens.
The final game of Jeff Genyk's five years as head coach, Nov. 28, 2008, turned into such a game for Eastern Michigan. Unexpectedly, the day after Thanksgiving turned into an unforgettable moment in time and Rynearson Stadium swirled with emotion.
In 2004, Genyk, a Milan native, returned home to command a program that had been producing great players without great results. Immediately, Genyk's ability to develop talent was noticeable. Andrew Wellock and Jason Jones earned All-American status, while Jones and T.J. Lang enjoyed long NFL careers.
The Genyk era started well enough. EMU swept Western Michigan and Central Michigan in 2004 to capture the inaugural Michigan MAC trophy, the CMU victory a 61-58 overtime classic at Ford Field. In 2005, the Eagles went to Mt. Pleasant and beat Central again, 23-20, before returning in 2007 to do it again, 48-45.
But obscuring those successes were losses that, had EMU won, may have changed the trajectory of the program.
A 28-26 loss at Cincinnati opened 2005. A few weeks later, EMU lost to Miami, 24-23, when Wellock missed the PAT on the game's final play — a bad snap was at fault — negating the heroics of Tyler Jones, whose touchdown pass in the back of the end zone should have tied the game. A pair of losses to Northwestern in 2006-07 should have been split. A 33-22 loss at Michigan in 2007 was much closer than even the final score indicated.
In 2008, two chip-shot field goals were missed in a 17-13 loss to Army. A week later, EMU blocked a potential game-winning field goal with 15 seconds to play against Akron, but the Zips recovered, ran for a first down and later, scored the game-winning touchdown with two seconds to play. A 28-point, fourth quarter rally came up short in a 55-52 loss at Temple.
The Monday before the CMU game, the last of the season, speculation was swirling about Genyk's fate when athletic director Dr. Derrick Gragg announced the coaching staff would not return.
"We knew about coach Genyk's situation, but it was the last game for our seniors and Central Michigan, a very big rival," said Jones, who played quarterback for three years before switching to receiver.
"It's only a rivalry if you're winning, and we had a chance to beat CMU for the fourth time in five years."
Michigan's MAC games mean and nasty because most in-state recruits played with or against one another in high school, turning winning and losing these games into a referendum on your choice of school.
"These games have become some of the most competitive in all of college football," said Butch Jones, CMU's coach from 2006-09. "There's familiarity between players, pride between schools, and because the MAC is an outstanding developmental league, players usually don't leave early; player are more refined and polished than most people realize."
A year earlier, an EMU captain ran through CMU's stretch lines in Mt. Pleasant, and the memory of that incident was a likely accelerant to a shouting match that quickly escalated into pushing and shoving as pregame warm-ups concluded. Officials and coaches worked several minutes to deescalate the situation. The Detroit Free Press reported an unruly exchange between Butch Jones and EMU position coach Josh Buis, a report Jones denies to this day.
What's undeniable is how Eastern used the incident to light an already hot fuse. EMU quarterback Andy Schmitt was walking out of the training room when the Eagles came inside.
"Our guys were breathing fire…as ready as we'd ever been to play," Schmitt said.
He'd practiced on Thursdays only due to a shoulder injury for most of the season, but Schmitt was now healthy, so Genyk implemented a five-receiver formation for the game at Temple a week earlier. Eastern torched the Owls for 552 total yards, and Schmitt's 76 passes without an interception broke the previous NCAA record of 70.
EMU took the first possession and was immediately marching up and down the field against CMU, too. Schmitt ran for an 8-yard touchdown, then threw touchdown passes in five of the next six possessions. After every score, Genyk celebrated with over-the-top enthusiasm. After one touchdown, he told every player he could find on the bench to run to the end zone and celebrate. That stunt earned an unsportsmanlike foul. On a few scores, he turned to 'salute' Gragg watching from the athletic director's suite.
CMU stayed close thanks to their quarterback, Dan LeFevour, who ran for a score and threw four more touchdowns. EMU held a 42-35 halftime lead as the two quarterbacks put up video game-like numbers. Eastern picked up two more unsportsmanlike fouls as CMU waded through the Eagles' bench.
"An official threw his flag and when it landed, one of our linebackers picked it up and whipped it into the air as high and hard as he could and got another foul," Schmitt said, laughing. "It was a wild scene and we kicked off from the 7 1/2 yard line because of it."
Central went up, 45-42, to open the third quarter, but a pair of 1-yard touchdown runs by Terrance Blevins put Eastern back in charge, 56-45. The Eagles led, 56-52, with 13:56 to play, and the defense would clinch the victory by defending four consecutive LeFevour passes in the final two minutes to force the game-deciding turnover.
"As third down became fourth down, it was an edge-of-your-seat type moment," Schmitt said. "The defense gets that stop and they came flying off the field … an unbelievable moment."
Schmitt's 58-of-80 effort broke the Division I record for completions in a game, previously shared by Purdue's Drew Brees and Wake Forest's Rusty LaRue. Tyler Jones tied an NCAA record for single game completions with 23.
"I dropped the pass that would have given me the record, but I've never been upset about it because we won the game," said Jones, now deputy athletic director at Cleveland State. "Beating Central four times was a big part of an outstanding student-athlete experience at Eastern."
After the game, the programs continued to move in opposite directions. CMU earned a berth to the Motor City Bowl and lost; EMU hired Michigan defensive coordinator Ron English as head coach. Not until Eastern hired Chris Creighton in 2014 did EMU's trajectory change.
Schmitt's EMU career ended four games into 2009 when he tore the anterior cruciate ligament of his right knee at Michigan. He earned a tryout with the Detroit Lions but never played again. Today he's a math teacher and head football coach at St. John's (Mich.) High School.
LeFevour played three NFL seasons and another five in the Canadian Football League. Antonio Brown, who had seven catches for 172 yards and a touchdown that day, has retired after being cut by Oakland and New England this past summer following nine years with Pittsburgh.
Butch Jones went to Cincinnati in 2010, then Tennessee from 2013-17. He's spent the last two years as an off-field assistant under Nick Saban at Alabama.
"Being from Michigan, I understood and enjoyed that rivalry, but people don't understand how difficult it is to win in the MAC," Jones said. "There were about 11 or 12 players in that one game who played for a very long time in the NFL."
The capital investment being made in EMU's program belies the underfunding Genyk and his staff faced, and the long odds it created in recruiting, too. After Eastern, he served as an assistant at California, Wisconsin, Vanderbilt and Northwestern twice, where he's been at since 2018.
"What I remember most is working with an outstanding staff, coaching players like Lang and Jones and Schmitt," Genyk said. "I'm still proud today of everyone's effort that day to come up victorious."
— T.C. Cameron is the author of Miracle Maples (2019) and Navy Football: Return to Glory (2017). A 1995 graduate of EMU, he's lived in Annapolis, MD since 2009. Follow him on Twitter: @ByTCCameron.
