College basketball powerhouses finally took notice of Haywood. He was choosing between UCLA and New Mexico when Detroit Mayor Jerome Cavanagh and Michigan Governor George Romney reached out to him and asked him to attend the University of Detroit; the school’s coach, Bob Calihan was entering his last season. “They said they will give Will Robinson the coaching job at the University of Detroit,” Haywood said of the Detroit high school basketball coach who served as his legal guardian. “They were trying to resurrect Detroit because we had just gone through the ’67 riots.”