“Cheer, cheer for Old Notre Dame,
Wake up the echoes cheering her name,
Send a volley cheer on high,
Shake down the thunder from the sky!”
The position of head football coach at Notre Dame is one of the iconic jobs in the sporting world. Along with manager of the New York Yankees, head coach of the Dallas Cowboys, Notre Dame head coach is the stuff of legends. How many college football coaches have been memorialized in feature-length films that you might still be able to regularly watch on Turner Classic Movies?
While Notre Dame’s 11 national championships still rank towards the top of college football elite programs, none have come since 1988 when Lou Holtz led Notre Dame to an undefeated season and a Fiesta Bowl victory. Recent years have found coaches on a regular shuttle in and out of South Bend. One coach, Brian Kelly, earned the enmity of all Notre Dame alumni by leaving the school to become head coach at Louisiana State University. After Kelly’s exit, the school turned to Marcus Freeman, who became the first Black head college coach to lead his team to a National Championship game.
Taking that history into account, Notre Dame football fans might argue that their last great coach, in the image of Rockne and Frank Leahy, was Ara Parseghian, the coach at Notre Dame from 1964 through 1974, winning two National Championships during his tenure. Mark Hubbard, who is associated with Notre Dame and has previously written on their football history, is the author of an authorized biography of Coach Parseghian. Granted access to a great deal of Parseghian’s letters, recollections and football memorabilia for Ara: The Life and Legacy of a Notre Dame Legend, Hubbard has presented an interesting and thoughtful history of a man who was far more complex than the stereotypical football coach one might expect. Hubbard’s biography is valuable because it reminds football fans of all ages how the game has changed in so many ways. Unhappily, many of those changes have not improved the college game.
Parseghian died in 2017 at the age of 94. His college coaching career began in 1950 and ended with his retirement from Notre Dame in 1974. After retirement from Notre Dame, he declined offers to return to coaching, working instead as a television commentator for college football on ABC and CBS. College football had not yet become the dominating sport of mega-conferences, multimillion-dollar salaries for coaches, national playoffs and players earning more money in college than in professional football. But one constant in the world of coaching has existed since the first days of football. Coaches are often hired through a combination of contacts and being in the right place at the right time.
Parseghian’s first college job came about because he had played professional football for Paul Brown, a legendary football coach whose assistant coaches represent the largest coaching tree in college and professional football. At Miami of Ohio, often referred to as the cradle of college coaches, Parseghian succeeded Woody Hayes after Hayes moved to Ohio State. After three years at Miami, Parseghian moved to Northwestern, turning a Big 10 doormat into a conference contender. But Parseghian had a dispute with the athletic director at Northwestern and left at the expiration of his contract. His first salary at Notre Dame was $20,000 a year. He almost turned down the position because he considered himself to be a nonobservant Catholic.
Hubbard’s authorized biography granted him substantial access to Parseghian’s personal letters and files. One chapter of the book includes an exhaustive analysis of the Notre Dame playbook, the hard-copy notebook given to each member of the football squad. College teams of Parseghian’s era practiced longer and more competitively than the practice schedule followed by current squads. Hubbard also observes that during Parseghian’s coaching tenure scholarships and player eligibility were far different that in present-day college football. In the past eras, football players had only three seasons of playing ability; freshmen could not play regular season games. The number of scholarships was limited and considered a four-year commitment. In present-day college football, players transfer on a routine basis and some play varsity seasons for more than four years.
During Parseghian’s tenure at Notre Dame his teams won two national championships. The first was controversial and involved a highly publicized game against Michigan State in 1966 that ended in a 10-10 tie. Parseghian was criticized for not attempting to score towards the end of the game but Hubbard fully presents and discusses how the game was concluded. Interestingly both Michigan State and Notre Dame did not play in post-season Bowl games that season. That season, as in many seasons, there was no college football playoff. In coming years the college football playoffs will be expanded, adding additional teams and playoff games in December and January of each year. A team could play as many as four additional games in their season. ESPN will pay $7.8 billion to televise the playoffs for the next six years.
Because he retired from coaching at a youthful age 51 but lived to be 94, Parseghian had a rich post-coaching life. He was a football commentator, appeared in many commercials, spoke at charity events across the country and played golf in many charity events. He suffered personal tragedy as well – the death of a daughter and the loss of three grandchildren to the rare genetic Niemann-Pick disease. The Ara Parseghian Medical Research fund continues funding research in hopes of developing a cure. The final portion of Hubbard’s biography includes Parseghian letters, speeches and recollections of his devotion to helping others.
Ara: The Life and Legend of a Football Legend includes substantial material for die-hard college football fans regardless of your views on Notre Dame football. But anyone interested in America during the tumultuous decades of the 60s and 70s and the interaction of sports and history will find this biography offers insight into that period of history. Mark Hubbard’s biography of Ara Parseghian is a worthy reminder of an era of life and college football worth recalling.
Retired judge Stuart Shiffman of Springfield frequently reviews books on a range of subjects for Illinois Times.
This article appears in The impossible task of providing child care.
