Different people impact your journey through life in different ways. You remember those moments forever.

My friendship with Howard Schnellenberger began in the late 1970's when I was a young writer out at Miami Dolphins camp searching for the right career path and Schnellenberger was a relatively anonymous member of Don Shula's coaching staff whose life ambition was to be the next Bear Bryant.

A few months later we both arrived almost simultaneously at the University of Miami, Howard as the new head coach of a program that almost got shut down and myself a wide-eyed young freshman beginning college.

I sat down across from him at his desk as he lit his trademark pipe. Schnellenberger looked me in the eye and without even the slightest of grins uttered words that 42 years later I remember as if they were spoken just five minutes ago.

"We are on a collision course with the national championship," Schnellenberger told me. "The only variable is time."

Time?

Jim Kelly had yet to throw a pass as a college quarterback.

Bernie Kosar and Vinny Testaverde were just beginning high school.

What exactly did "time" mean?

Howard didn't try to define it and this mesmerized 18-year-old kid certainly didn't dare ask. He simply implored me to spread the word of the Canes. So I did and have never stopped since.

We got on the phone that day and called Tom Curtis, a former Michigan and NFL player who was publishing Dolphin Digest at the time. Schnellenberger asked Curtis to allocate a page in every issue of the Digest to Miami Hurricanes content and told Curtis that I would produce it.

Fact was, as Schnellenberger embarked on this new journey, not that many people in town cared about Hurricanes football the way Schnellenberger now wanted them to.

He would be a different kind of head coach, part Bear Bryant, part P.T. Barnum. Schnellenberger knew that a key element of his job was going to be functioning as the face of Miami football and promoting the program. Local interest would be critical in the execution of his plan.

Schnellenberger had already declared his recruiting territory south of Orlando as the State of Miami. But people had to actually care for the young kids growing up in those areas to want to become Hurricanes.

Schnellenberger figured that the first place to start mining for fans was within the base that the Dolphins had built in the 1970s. But let’s be honest. It wasn’t the perfect fit. Curtis had every reason to nix the plan. People like us, who are in the content business, learn very quickly to pay proper attention to the integrity of our content or else we won’t be in that business for very long. So there was no way Curtis was going to go along with this plan of watering down the pages of his pro football magazine with articles about a mediocre college team beset by attendance problems that nobody really cared about. That wasn’t going to sell subscriptions or move the needle at the newsstand.

I hung up the phone and told Schnellenberger that Curtis had said no go.

But Howard had spent a lifetime making adjustments at halftime.

“Well,” he bellowed. “If he isn’t going to give us the space, we will buy it. How much is an ad?”

What would evolve 10 years later into CaneSport Magazine and today's CaneSport.com was born.

Howard paid for the space each week and I filled it.

And what followed was going to be the interview that would allow me to produce the first story.

Howard sat back in his chair and I could swear I saw a twinkle in his eye.

He laid out his whole plan. He would mine the streets of Miami’s inner city and entice kids to come to school at the University in Coral Gables who in the past would dot the rosters at Penn State or Alabama or Notre Dame. He would focus on that recruiting territory, the State of Miami, and would own it, taking on all comers and swatting them away like flies.

He would find quarterbacks, great quarterbacks, guys who would play in the National Football League one day, and would have them operate the most innovative passing offense that college football had ever seen.

He would win and the fans would fill the Orange Bowl and the rise would captivate the city and I would be right there with a front row seat to tell anybody who would listen all about it.

It was funny and seemed far-fetched, let’s be honest. But you have to have had the experience of sitting in a room like that with Schnellenberger to understand how absolutely spectacular a moment this was. The man had such a unique presence. He was always impeccably dressed. His pipe was always protruding from the side of his mouth. He always had a deep growl for a voice.

And he always had a vision of what should happen next.

For the next several years, as Miami football slowly emerged on the college football map, Schnellenberger and I preached his gospel to the most passionate football fans of South Florida. Schnellenberger never forgot. A couple decades later, when he started the football program at Florida Atlantic University, he summoned me to Boca Raton and we together created the FAU Sports Digest.

Football in Paradise.

Imagine that.

My memories of Howard simply never end. It is so hard to fathom that he no longer is with us in physical presence because everywhere we look he truly remains right there in front of us.

Had Howard not taken the head coaching job at Miami, we would not know of what still is affectionately known as The U.

There would not likely be any national title rings, much less five of them.

Look at all the coaches who failed before him. Look at all the coaches who have failed since.

Jimmy Johnson was able to adequately take over the program Schnellenberger left behind when he made the biggest mistake of his 87 years to join a fledgling USFL franchise. Johnson won the 1987 national title.

Dennis Erickson carried on when Johnson went to the NFL and won two championships.

But make no mistake. Howard Schnellenberger was the best football coach to ever walk into the Hecht Athletic Center.

His pro-style passing game transformed college football, allowed Miami to pull off the Miracle In Miami against Nebraska despite a huge talent disparity. The foundation Schnellenberger built in Coral Gables evolved into one of the greatest 10-year runs in college football history.

So as I thought about his impact on my life upon news of his death, there were three moments I shared with him that most came to mind.

The first was of that meeting in his office in 1979 when he laid out his vision for Miami Hurricane football.

The second came five years later as he was getting ready to lead the Hurricanes against Nebraska in the Orange Bowl game that shocked the world.

A helicopter descended onto the field at the old Orange Bowl and dropped Schnellenberger at media day. He strode from the door with his pipe wedged in the side of his mouth, upstaging Nebraska Coach Tom Osborne in a foreshadow of what was to come in the game. It was the grandest entrance you would ever see a coach make. To this day, I have never seen anything quite like it and Schnellenberger and I would joke about that day from time to time in our conversations through the years.

The third happened by accident.

It was an April Saturday night a few years back, before the horrible fall in his Boynton Beach home that ruined the quality of the final years of his life.

I was walking into Joe’s Stone Crab on Miami Beach for dinner with a group of family and friends. And there he was, standing just inside the entrance about to enjoy a birthday celebration for his wife, Beverlee, a phenomenal woman whom I had also gotten to know quite well through the years.

Most people whose passion is sports have no idea what kind of lives football coaches live. Very few of these men accomplish anything in their profession without unwavering dedication to their craft. You hear many people talk about devoting themselves to their jobs 24 hours a day, 52 weeks a year, 365 days a year. Trust me, most of the time, it’s all talk. You come to realize that when you get close to people who truly do live their jobs and Howard was one of those.

So I could only chuckle when Schnellenberger greeted me in that deep, growl masquerading as a voice and told me that this was his first time eating at Joe’s, a Miami institution, in about 20 years.

Howard and I always had so much to talk about. We had stayed in touch through all of his well-documented post-Miami journeys to the University of Louisville and then a brief cup of coffee at Oklahoma before a rebirth in South Florida at FAU. Howard never ran out of stories or experiences to reflect upon that in some way provided perspective to guide someone in managing elements of their own life.

The coach was beaming amid the spectacle that usually is a Saturday night at Joe’s. We weren’t talking for 15 seconds before I suddenly found myself standing there taking pictures with Howard and people who I didn’t even know. Howard introduced me as the guy who runs CaneSport which covers the Hurricanes. Howard instructed me to stand there and pose for the pictures they wanted to take alongside him - literally with him.

I wasn’t surprised at all by the celebrity that Schnellenberger still owned. The thing he accomplished at Miami was that big, the kind of iconic achievement that always survives time. But standing there smiling for strangers pictures alongside him in the middle of the waiting area at Joe’s would definitely classify as one of those unique moments in life that you never forget.

Suddenly the voice of Joes maitre d' Ed Witte sounded through the restaurant's speaker system.

“Coach Schnellenberger,” Witte said. “Coach Howard Schnellenberger.”

Beverlee and their friends moved to the front of the line and were escorted to their table. Howard would be a few minutes behind. Every step he took, there was someone else there waiting to take a picture or remember the good old days when he took the Hurricanes to prominence.

Howard was loving every bit of it. I looked over toward my wife and friends and chuckled.

“OK,” I said. “We can go eat now.”

And so we did, actually got a table a few yards from Howard’s and had the chance to sing Happy Birthday to Beverlee along with everyone in their dinner party. My mind can often wander from time to time but I am not sure it ever has traveled as many miles as it did that night in Miami's iconic restaurant.

How did Miami become the top program in college football, Schnellenberger's title jumpstarting a decade of dominance that would become one of the greatest eras in sports athletically and culturally?

How did it fall apart, only to be rebuilt by Butch Davis, who left town before he could reap the benefits of his genius in crafting one of the greatest rosters in college football history.

And how was it torn down yet again, now mightily struggling for nearly two more decades to regain its former glory while a program in Tuscaloosa Alabama, where the Howard Schnellenberger story came to life as an assistant under Bear Bryant, has morphed into what it once was.

Schnellenberger wanted to be a modern day Bear. Had he stayed at Miami, he would have been, winning many more titles.

But you know what?

In his own way, to so many people whose lives he touched, Howard Schnellenberger was bigger than that.