Welcome to the official website of the Duffy Daugherty Memorial Award.
We are pleased to announce that the winners of the 2014 Duffy Daugherty Memorial Award are Barry Alvarez of the University of Wisconsin and Ken Hofer of Menominee High School. Please click here and here for recent press stories about Coach Alvarez and Coach Hofer receiving the award.
Since 1992, the Duffy Daugherty Memorial Award has recognized outstanding contributions to amateur football. Cocah Alvarez and Coach Hofer will join a legendary list of past recipients that includes Bobby Bowden, Eddie Robinson, Bo Schembechler, Keith Jackson, Bud Wilkinson, and Ara Parseghian, among others.
The recipients will be honored at an award dinner on Thursday, April 24, 2014 at the Eagle Eye Country Club in Bath, Michigan. Please click on the “Ticket Information” tab for more information. We look forward to seeing you!
Duffy Daugherty Memorial Award 
My name is Steve Brundige and I consider it a “honor” to have played 4 years of Mendon football for Coach John Schwartz. Coach Schwartz was my Assistant JV Coach during his first year at Mendon in 1975. He was elevated to Varsity Assistant in 1977,- my junior year. I was also fortunate enough to have Coach Schwartz as my neighbor, high school and summer league baseball coach during my junior and senior years.
As a freshman, I was a tremendous football speciman at 5’10” 135 lbs and “Coach” was able to transform my limited physical skillset and mindset into a confident, fundamentally sound 1978 all-conference DB –(Mendon’s first year in the MHSAA Playoffs.) He continues to perform these “football manifestations” for hundreds of Mendon boys and has done this for more than 30 years. Hopefully, he will continue for several more.
Over the years it has become clear to me that it was never about what “Coach” could do with the handful of gifted athletes he had every year, but more about what he was able to do with average and below average “roster” players. Every year “Coach” molded these players into high functioning, “Mendon Football Machines,” and I am continually amazed how “Coach” makes every player “believe” that this is”their time “—year after year.
I spent alot of time with “Coach” during those “formative years” and looking back, I feel as though he was as much a “father figure” to me as he was a coach. I will always hold “Coach” in very high regard as he was not only a great coach but a tremendous human being. He always showed compassion for every player, not only on the field but off the field as well. He had the uncanny ability of knowing when something wasn’t quite right, and would find a way to intervene without you knowing it.
In the winter of my junior year, I lost my father and as my Coach and neighbor, John was always there to make sure that we were OK; made sure I had rides home from school/ practice; made sure my mother was doing OK; always asked if we needed help shoveling snow, doing yard work, etc. He truly cared about us and we always knew if we needed anyting at all we could ask John (and his wife, Joyce).
I am so grateful for having “Coach Schwartz” in my life during those critical high school years and thanful for how he has impacted my life in such a positive way. That confident, competitive spirit that “Coach” instilled in all of us, helps to guide me through those tough times and I continue to share this spirit with those closest to me.
Thank you John for all that you have done for me and the hundreds of other young men in the Mendon Community. You are truly and inspiration and you certainly deserve this prestigous award. Congratulations!
Regards,
Steve Brundige- aka “Bruno”