Former Notre Dame Athletic Director Gene Corrigan Dead at Age 91

Gene Corrigan is responsible for hiring perhaps the two best coaches in Notre Dame’s recent history in Lou Holtz and Muffet McGraw.

One of my favorite things that has happened since I took over managing Fighting Irish Wire back in October is that things you thought you were aware of or hip to get magnified ten-fold.

That could be assistant coaches being hired or fired, recruiting information or simply something from the history of Notre Dame.

I’ll be honest here (I always am but that’s a way to transition myself out of my comfort zone a bit):

I had no idea who Gene Corrigan was until his death at 91 years old was announced Saturday.

Some quick research helped me discover he wasn’t just the former commissioner of the Atlantic Coast Conference, but was Notre Dame’s athletic director from 1981 to 1987.

That made me realize that hey, Gene Corrigan is responsible for hiring perhaps the two best coaches in Notre Dame’s recent history in Lou Holtz and Muffet McGraw.

I had no idea that Corrigan had three children graduate from the University of Notre Dame, or that one of them, Kevin, had been the lacrosse coach at Notre Dame since 1998.

It’s fascinating to read about a man who graduated from Duke in 1952 then got his start in coaching by leading the basketball, soccer and lacrosse teams of Washington and Lee in 1955.

From there he took a job at the University of Virginia where he spent time again coaching a variety of sports before becoming athletic director at Washington and Lee.

That led him again to Virginia where he was athletic director for a decade before a decade before he took the Notre Dame A-D job, replacing the legendary Edward “Moose” Krause.

I also didn’t know until reading Eric Hansen’s piece Saturday that Lou Holtz was anything but a knockout hire at his time and had been coming off a 6-5 season at Minnesota at the time of his hiring.

Corrigan would go on to commission the ACC after leaving Notre Dame in 1987 through 1995 when he became president of the NCAA.

Corrigan clearly lived an incredible life and oversaw the Notre Dame athletic department at an incredibly fascinating time.

Even if I didn’t know anything about him a day ago, he impact on Notre Dame athletics is clearly without end.

All the best to those who knew him and if you’re like me and didn’t even know of him until now, here’s to hoping you also learned a bit about his important legacy to Notre Dame and college sports.