Notre Dame Legend Ara Parseghian Dies At Age 94
Notre Dame and college football coaching immortal Ara Parseghian died today at age 94 after some recent health setbacks.
The architect of the amazing revitaliztion of a moribund Fighting Irish football program that he returned to elite status, Parseghian was 95-17-4 in his 11 seasons from 1964-74, highlighted by consensus national titles in 1966 and 1973 and a share of the 1964 title by being awarded the MacArthur Bowl from the National Football Foundation and Hall of Fame.
Prior to Parseghian’s hiring in December 1963, Notre Dame had just experienced its second two-win season (2-7) in four years, and third in eight. The football team’s 34-45 record from 1956-63 had put the once most venerated program in the land on the scrap heap of irrelevance and living on the perfume of a vanished flower.
Behind the leadership of Parseghian, it took only six games to return to the summit. During the 9-0 start, six teams that had defeated Notre Dame the previous year while limiting it to 50 points (8.3 points per game) were this time vanquished by the new Fighting Irish, who were averaging 30.6 points in those same encounters.
Not being able to hold a 17-0 halftime lead and controversial officiating cost Notre Dame a consensus national title in the finale at USC, but the Fighting Irish renaissance was in full force again.
Born on May 21, 1923, Parseghian broke the mold of all six previous non-interim Notre Dame coaches from 1918 through 1963. He was neither a graduate of the university nor Catholic.
Yet the Presbyterian was evidence of how a “Notre Dame man” goes beyond possessing a degree from the school. His character, charisma, competitiveness, integrity, innovation and production placed him alongside Knute Rockne and Frank Leahy in the program’s pantheon when he retired at the young age of 51 while admitting the job had made him emotionally drained and physically exhausted..
Parseghian’s father, Michael, immigrated to the United States from Turkey in 1915 while escaping the Armenian Genocide during World War I. Born in Akron, Ohio, Parseghian enrolled at the University of Akron in 1942 but shortly therafter joined the United States Navy for World War II service.
After the war, he enrolled at Miami (Ohio) and earned Little All-American honors as a 1947 halfback under Sid Gillman, who along with NFL legend Paul Brown was one of his two greatest coaching influences. Parseghian played for Brown’s Cleveland Browns in 1948-49 before a severe injury ended his playing days.
He was hired by his alma mater Miami (Ohio) as its freshman coach under varsity boss Woody Hayes. When Hayes took the Ohio State job the next season, Parseghian was promoted to his position and led Miami to a 39-6-1 record from 1951-55, winning the Mid-American Conference title his last two seasons and finishing No. 15 his final year with a 9-0 ledger.
In 1956 he was hired by Northwestern, which had not won a game the year prior and had become the doormat of the Big Ten. After his own 0-9 season in 1957, Parseghian orchestrated a remarkable turnaournd in the ensuing years that included defeating Hayes’ vaunted Ohio State machine three times over four years, a 4-0 sweep of Notre Dame in 1959-62, and crushing Bud Wilkinson’s Oklahoma teams in consecutive years.
The Wildcats climbed to No. 2 nationally during the middle of the 1959 season and even reached No. 1 with a 6-0 start in 1962 before finishing 7-2. A falling out with Northwestern athletics director Stu Holcomb led Parseghian to call Notre Dame executive vice president Rev. Ned Joyce C.S.C. shortly after the 1963 season to inquire whether the head coaching job was still open because of the interim status of Hugh Devore. In later years, Joyce would refer to that call from Parseghian as “bread from heaven.”
When the confident Parseghian opted for an original three-year contract for more money rather than a five-year deal for less, he outlined his reasoning: “If I can’t get the job done in three years, it’s not going to get done in five.”
Although he was approached by numerous NFL teams after his 1974 retirement, Parseghian opted to remain out of coaching and served as a college football game analyst for both ABC and CBS until his retirement in 1988.
Devastated by personal setbacks such as a daughter Karan getting afflicted with multiple sclerosis — she passed away at age 61 on Feb. 11, 2012 — and losing three of his grandchildren, Michael, Christa and Marcia, to the rare but deadly Niemann-Pick Disease Type C from 1997-2005, Parseghian continued to wage the courageous battle in all endeavors.
He had been the oldest living national championship coach in college football, ahead of Florida State’s Bobby Bowden (who turns 88 this Nov. 8). That bit of trivia is dwarfed by so many other on-the-field achievements. Here are just a few Parseghian “By The Numbers.”
0 Back-to-back games lost in the regular season during Parseghian’s 11 years at Notre Dame. Since the hiring of Knute Rockne in 1918, Parseghian is the lone Irish coach among the 14 hence who did not see that occur. (The Irish did lose the 1972 regular season finale at USC, and then the Orange Bowl to Nebraska, but consecutive losses in the regular season never happened.)
.8362 Winning percentage posted at Notre Dame from 1964-74 with his 95-17-4 record. Since 1964, the only major college football coaches who won a better percentage with at least 10 years at the same school are Alabama’s Nick Saban at .857 in the 10 years from 2007-16 and Oklahoma’s Barry Switzer — .8368 from 1973-88.
Close behind Parseghian are Nebraska’s Tom Osborne (.8355 from 1973-97) and Alabama’s Bear Bryant (.8274 from 1958-82).
3 Passing combinations at Notre Dame under Parseghian that earned first-team All-America honors from the AP or UPI: John Huarte to Jack Snow (1964), Terry Hanratty to Jim Seymour (1968) and Joe Theismann to Tom Gatewood (1970). A fourth, Tom Clements to Pete Demmerle (1974), saw Clements finish fourth in the Heisman Trophy balloting and Demmerle earn consensus All-America recognition.
4-0 Record at Northwestern (1956-63) against Notre Dame, with the victories occurring from 1959-62. It is tied for the best winning percentage of any coach who has faced the Irish at least four times in his career since the 20th century. Saban was 3-0 versus Notre Dame from 1997-99 when he was at Michigan State, and it improved to 4-0 with his victory at Alabama in the Jan. 7, 2013 BCS Championship.
7 More wins Notre Dame posted in Parseghian's first season (1964) than the Irish did the previous year without him. The improvement from 2-7 in 1963 to 9-1 in 1964 is the best in Irish football annals. No. 2 is the five-game improvements from 1956-57 (2-8 to 7-3) and 2001-02 (5-7 to 10-3).
14 The lowest finish ever in the Associated Press poll under his direction (1972). The Irish placed in the final AP Top 10 nine times in Parseghian’s 11 years, including seven times in the top 5 while twice capturing the consensus national title (1966 and 1973).
37.6 Points per game averaged by Parseghian’s 1968 unit — a school record since the Jesse Harper era commenced in 1913. The next closest is 37.2 by Lou Holtz’s 1992 team that finished 10-1-1.
50-2-1 Record of the five bowl opponents Parseghian played once Notre Dame rescinded its non-bowl policy in 1969. Both Texas teams he faced in the 1970 and 1971 Cotton Bowls were 10-0, and both Alabama outfits in the 1973 Sugar Bowl and 1975 Orange Bowl were 11-0. Nebraska in the 1973 Orange Bowl was merely 8-2-1. Parseghian posted a 3-2 mark against them — 3-1 against the four unbeatens.
213.6 Yards yielded per season by the Notre Dame defense under Parseghian. The Irish never finished lower than 15th in the nation in total defense during his 11 seasons, and the worst total was 258.3 in 1972. Since 1981, the best figure at Notre Dame was 270.0 in 1996. The stellar unit from 2012 finished at 305.5.
350.2 Yards rushing per game averaged by the 1973 national champs. That qualifies as one of the unbreakable marks in Notre Dame football history. The closest any Irish team has come since then is 287.7 by Lou Holtz’s 12-1 outfit in 1989.
510.5 Yards of total offense averaged per game by Parseghian’s 10-1 team in 1970 — a record that still stands. Notre Dame averaged a balanced 257.8 yards rushing and 252.2 yards passing en route to a No. 2 finish in the AP poll, highlighted by the 24-11 upset of No. 1 Texas in the Cotton Bowl to end the Longhorns’ 30-game winning streak.
That Notre Dame team also averaged 92.4 plays per game — still a single season NCAA record.
Look for more on the Era of Ara in the coming days.
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