LOOK: Michigan honors late former assistant coach Stan Parrish
Former Michigan football assistant coach Stan Parrish has passed away at 75. On Monday, Michigan tweeted a tribute to Parrish, detailing his impressive time with the program, and giving their thoughts and prayers to everyone who came in contact with Parrish.
“Michigan Football is saddened by the passing of Stan Parrish, the program’s former QB coach (1996-99) and offensive coordinator (2000-01),” tweeted Michigan Football. “Our thoughts and prayers are with his family, friends and all of the players that Stan mentored during his career. Rest in Peace.”
While at Michigan, Parrish was the team’s quarterbacks coach from 1996-99, and then offensive coordinator from 2000-01. While with the Wolverines, Parrish was essential to the development of none other than a star quarterback who would go on to become the consensus greatest quarterback of all time — Tom Brady.
Throughout his coaching career, Parrish made multiple stops at different programs. Outside of Michigan, Parrish was a head coach at Wabash College, Marshall, Ball State and the interim coach at Eastern Michigan. He even spent some time in the NFL, coaching quarterbacks for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers from 2002-03.
As a head coach, Parrish accumulated a record of 64-62-3 throughout his time. Moreover, the former Michigan coach had an impressive collection of championships — possessing a ring from the 1997 national championship season for Michigan, and the Buccaneers’ Super Bowl XXXVII victory.
In an article written by Angelique S. Chengelis of The Detroit News, she detailed how former Michigan offensive coordinator Al Borges would meet Parrish every Tuesday for coffee at the Saline Inn. The two former Wolverines coaches would talk about everything — football, politics, baseball, life.
“I went there today,” Borges said of their coffee meeting locale, via Chengelis. “And it’s hard to walk in there.”
While Borges was the offensive coordinator at Michigan almost a decade after Parrish, their friendship was strong. To illustrate, Chengelis writes that at times, their coffee meetings lasted almost three hours. Of course, the duo would break down the previous weekend’s games, among other things.
“Trust me, when we talked, we knew what we were talking about,” Borges said. “We would start with Michigan usually. Then we’d go on to every other team, usually Ohio State, because Stan’s wife (Ruth) was an Ohio State fan.
“You’ve got to remember, we called over 50,000 plays between us. We’ve got more football to talk about than you could count. But we didn’t just talk about that, we talked about politics, we talked about everything.”
As you can see, Parrish and Borges were connected by Michigan football, but their relationship grew to be so much more than that. Since Borges retired from football as well, he revealed Parrish has become his closest friend.
“This is a void,” Borges said. “I can’t say that it isn’t.”
Stan Parrish won’t soon be forgotten, for his tremendous coaching career, and the way he made people feel — on and off the field.