After running Part I yesterday, Part II questions from our BlueandGold.com message board center on alternate head coaching candidates, surprise seasons (good and bad) and who had the greatest career as a player at Notre Dame.
Jerbach: Why was Tom Pagna never hired as head coach?
Lou: The longtime, loyal right-hand man for head coach Ara Parseghian from 1964-74, Pagna was deemed on the outside as the natural successor.
However, university executive vice president Rev. Ned Joyce C.S.C. had his mind set on former Arizona State (1955-57), Missouri (1958-70) and Green Bay Packers (1971-74) head coach Dan Devine for more than a decade.
After Notre Dame head coach Joe Kuharich abruptly stepped down in March 1963, and with spring practice around the corner, there was little choice but to give the interim tag to assistant Hugh Devore (who had the same title in 1945).
Joyce had a meeting with Devine that summer about the possibility of taking over as head coach, and at that time Devine’s career record was a glittering 64-15-5 while taking both Arizona State and Missouri to unbeaten finishes in 1957 and 1960, respectively.
A main snag was the timing was awkward because spring practice already had been completed.
Devine was still a contender that November, but timing helped make Northwestern’s Parseghian the favorite and eventual choice (see more on that in the next question below). However, Joyce did reportedly tell Devine that the next time the job is open, he would receive the first call to be the new Notre Dame head coach.
That’s exactly what happened. When Parseghian told Joyce in early December 1974 he would be stepping down, Joyce immediately contacted Devine, who was on the hot seat at Green Bay and also pursued by the Washington Huskies.
Devine was named head coach less than 24 hours after the news of Parseghian’s departure broke. It was a done deal before Pagna could have been interviewed for the post.
Johnmichie: Who were the fallback candidates to Brian Kelly and Ara Parseghian?
As stated above, Devine was the man Notre Dame vice president Rev. Joyce C.S.C. wanted in 1963.
Following spring drills under Devore (after Kuharich had resigned that March, Joyce met with Devine about the job that summer. Devine was interested — and Devore indicated he would remain a loyal assistant — but said the timing wasn’t right because he had not had the chance to work with the Notre Dame personnel in the spring.
After the 2-7 finish by Notre Dame in 1963, Northwestern’s season with Parseghian ended Nov. 16 — six days before President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Meanwhile, Missouri still had to play on Nov. 30 after the Nov. 23 game with Kansas was postponed because of JFK’s death a day earlier.
During that interim, Parseghian had a falling out with his athletics director at Northwestern, Stu Holcomb — leading him to call Joyce about his interest in the Notre Dame position if it was still open.
Aiding Parseghian greatly was his Northwestern teams with less talent from 1959-62 had a 4-0 sweep of the Irish in those years.
The other coach talked about as a candidate by the media was the affable Irish-Catholic Hugh “Duffy” Daugherty, who had led Michigan State to a 59-29-3 mark since taking over in 1954, with eight straight wins versus Notre Dame.
Notre Dame president Rev. Theodore Hesburgh C.S.C. was especially fond of Parseghian, although a snafu in negotiations nearly led Parseghan not to take the job.
By that point, Joyce was might have been looking toward Devine again — but Hesburgh was determined to land Parseghian and eventually did in mid-December. Supposedly, Joyce told Devine afterwards, “you are first on the list the next time there is an opening.”
Indeed, when Parseghian’s resignation was announced on a December Sunday in 1974, Devine — on the hot seat with the NFL’s Green Bay Packers — was quickly named the successor less than 24 hours later.
As for Kelly, I believe the next option would have been then 11th-year Iowa had coach Kirk Ferentz.
He started 4-19 his first two seasons with the Hawkeyes, but was 77-36 the next nine with four AP top-10 finishes (11-2 in 2009). Ferentz possessed a clean record, more than a decade of head coaching experience, won big at a difficult place to achieve success, and his teams were annually sound and physical.
I had also heard some talk about Stanford’s Jim Harbaugh, who had revived a moribund program while recruiting at a premier academic institution, but that seemed more superficial.
GroggyGrizzly: What Notre Dame team fooled you the most — a team that you thought had all the pieces and then promptly gassed out.
And maybe a team that you thought would play like petrified poop but had a decent year.
Lou: For the former, it would have to be the 1981 team under first-year head coach Gerry Faust.
From 1964-80, Notre Dame was 148-33-5 (.809 winning percentage) and had captured three consensus national titles and shared a fourth.
In the final year of that 17-year run with a young team under Devine (in his final year), the Irish started 9-0-1, highlighted by wins over Michigan and Alabama, were ranked No. 2 in the country and matched up with No. 1 Georgia in the Sugar Bowl.
In 1981, almost all of the starting lineup was back and “Faust Fever” was in full force. The expectation with the ebullient, shake-down-the-thunder personality of Faust was that the program would reach the level of the 1940s dynasty under Frank Leahy.
After an opening game win versus LSU (27-9), Notre Dame was elevated to No. 1 … and then finished the year 5-6.
Runner-up to that 1981 outfit was the 2016 unit that had no business finishing 4-8.
As for biggest pleasant surprise, it would have to be the 1988 national champs. Although they had recruited well with No. 1-ranked classes in 1987 and 1988, the team was still young and:
• Had lost its last three games the previous year while getting outscored 80-30 and allowing 256 yards rushing per game.
• Had graduated 1987 Heisman winner Tim Brown, and no other returning wideout had caught more than two passes.
• Lost the entire starting defensive line, and all five starters on the offensive line, although Tim Grunhard did have four career starts.
• Quarterback Tony Rice had completed merely 42.7 percent of his passes in 1987, was at only 35 percent in spring scrimmages, and his team lost the Blue-Gold Game, 27-9.
Not what you would consider national championship timber going into a season, right?
HaganDazOO: If you could pick one Notre Dame football player’s college career to have, who would you pick?
Lou: There is nobody in college football history who had a more “perfect” college career than Leon Hart (1946-49).
• He never lost a game during his four years (36-0-2) while capturing three national titles.
• Won the Heisman Trophy (1949).
• Was the No. 1 pick in the NFL Draft (where he would win three more titles and be first-team All-Pro in just his second year).
• And during his student days he earned a degree in engineering.
How many players anywhere in history ever could check all those boxes?
His sons and a grandson also would play here, with son Kevin on the 1977 national title team. Yet Hart was so well-rounded that I was told by Kevin that many of Leon’s colleagues at his funeral were amazed to find out what a great football player he was, too.
If there is a “negative” in Hart’s career, it’s that he didn’t get to experience the sheer ecstasy from being at the bottom and rising to the top. That to me is the ultimate rapture.
So my alternative choices would be consummate Notre Dame men such as Jim Lynch (1963-66) and Andy Heck (1985-88).
Lynch began his career on a 2-7 team, and then captained the national champs as a senior.
Heck was on the first Notre Dame teams to post back-to-back losing seasons in 1985-86 (losing 58-7 to Miami as a freshman), and then as a senior was a captain for the 1988 national champs (defeating No. 1 Miami 31-30).
----
• Talk about it inside Rockne’s Roundtable
• Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes
• Learn more about our print and digital publication, Blue & Gold Illustrated.
• Follow us on Twitter: @BGINews, @BGI_LouSomogyi, @BGI_MikeSinger, @CoachDeDario and @AndrewMentock.
• Like us on Facebook.
