RESURRECTION: The Miracle Season That Saved Notre Dame Football
Jim Dent
Thomas Dunne Books
Sports
ISBN: 9780312567217
Send a volley cheer on high,
Shake down the thunder from the sky!
What though the odds be great or small,
Old Notre Dame will win over all,
While her loyal sons are marching
Onward to victory!
Love them or loathe them, the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame represent the game and history of college football unlike any other university. In the 1920s and ’30s, the Knute Rockne-coached Irish were the dominant team on the nation’s sports pages. The legendary Four Horsemen became household names, and Notre Dame played to packed stadiums from Los Angeles to New York City. Ten years after Rockne’s death, Frank Leahy took command of the program, and the football juggernaut remained a national powerhouse.
Success, however, can yield unintended consequences. Rockne and Leahy became more powerful than Notre Dame itself. The school, longing for recognition as an academic institution, was instead viewed as a football factory. In the 1940s Notre Dame President Father John Cavanaugh and athletic chairman Father Theodore Hesburgh commenced a campaign to rein in the football program. Scholarships were reduced, and in 1953, Leahy was relieved of his head coaching duties for health reasons. The next decade would find Notre Dame football on a downward spiral that brought the program to the brink of collapse.
RESURRECTION chronicles the 1964 football season that returned Notre Dame to national prominence. Author Jim Dent, whose college football histories include THE JUNCTION BOYS and THE UNDEFEATED, has written a compelling and fascinating history of coaches and players who wanted nothing more than an opportunity to show the football world that they could rise to the quality long expected of a football powerhouse. The goal was accomplished, honestly and within NCAA rules, through hard work, brilliant coaching and, as might be expected, some pinches of good luck.
While the decision to de-emphasize football perhaps went too far, Notre Dame’s football demise also came from a failure to modernize the program. After Leahy’s departure, Terry Brennan, Joe Kuharich and Hugh Devore led the team to successively worse seasons. All had played and been connected with the glory days of Notre Dame football, yet none had the coaching ability to continue the winning Notre Dame tradition. But non-members of the Fighting Irish family were not invited to join the University.
Notre Dame’s resurgence came about when the coaching mold was smashed. A new coach, Ara Parseghian, was not a Notre Dame graduate and was not even Catholic. He was an Armenian who had built a successful program at Northwestern University. Indeed, his Wildcat teams defeated Notre Dame four consecutive seasons. But Parseghian was only available because Northwestern had not extended his contract. Notre Dame did their homework and found in Parseghian a young, hard-working, honest coach who followed NCAA rules and would run an honest program. At Notre Dame, Parseghian found the things he lacked at Northwestern: a national stage and a football tradition.
Upon his arrival in South Bend, Pareseghian brought on a host of talented players. In the 1950s and ’60s college recruiting was far different than it is today. Notre Dame, the Catholic College of America, always had great players who wanted to attend the school simply because of its reputation and because they were Catholic. The players were not the cause of Notre Dame’s losing seasons. All those who turned the program around in 1964 had been recruited by Devore and were on campus to greet their new coach. While Devore brought great players to his program, he could not coach his way out of a paper bag.
From spring until fall, Parseghian feverishly prepared his team for the upcoming season. The first game was a resounding victory over Wisconsin. In that contest the passing duo of quarterback John Huarte and receiver Jack Snow emerged. Parseghian disdained a smash-mouth running game and modernized Notre Dame’s offense with a strategy of throwing the football downfield. Huarte would win the Heisman Trophy in 1964, but could not even bring a letter jacket to the award ceremony because in previous years at Notre Dame he had mainly occupied a seat on the bench.
RESURRECTION is the story of how football games are won and legends are born. The formula is still the same today as in 1964. Innovative coaching and devoted players lead to victory. Almost every starting player on the 1964 squad was overlooked by prior coaching staffs or played a different position. Running backs became defensive linemen for Parseghian. Players lost on the bench became stars. No detail was overlooked, even uniforms were redesigned to accentuate speed. The Notre Dame Cinderella season ended in defeat in Los Angeles as USC rallied to defeat the Irish and end their hopes of a national championship. It’s hard to remember that, in 1964, the administration at Notre Dame would not even send their squad to a bowl game. In future years, as college football became a financial gold mine, that policy would change and Parseghian would lead the Irish to bowl games and national championships.
While recent years once again have not been kind to Notre Dame football fortunes, reminiscences of the 1964 season remind fans that the potential for a turnaround in football is only a few games away. Jim Dent has written a wonderful book that reminds us all how exciting college football was in the era before money, television and the Bowl Championship Series tarnished the game. Football fans, regardless of their feelings toward the Fighting Irish, will enjoy this saga of a glorious era in college football.
--- Reviewed by Stuart Shiffman
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