I spend too much of my life scrolling Twitter. That’s something I’ve known for a long time but still continue to do it. However, late last night I saw a tweet that it was the 28th anniversary of the movie “Rudy” being released in theatres.
I was in second grade at the time and my parents took me to see it that fall right as Notre Dame was in the middle of a national championship race that was only making my young Irish fandom grow by the week. The movie only made me like Notre Dame football more and to this day if its on TV you can bet I’m not going to be changing the channel until it’s over.
That said, I’ve still got a few issues with it.
Joe Montana went through and detailed flaws with the movie long ago but I’ve got a few of my own I need to get off my chest and the 28th anniversary (+1 day) of it’s theatrical release is just the time to do it.
The problem with books about ongoing activities is they can become dated quickly.
The problem with books about ongoing activities is they can become dated quickly. I recently encountered one such book at my local library called “A is for Ara: The ABCs of Notre Dame Football” by Sean Callahan. The book was first printed in March 2007, so it’s no surprise that Charlie Weis is the “W” entry here. However, the explanation of Weis began with this sentence that became both hilarious and depressing in hindsight:
Charlies Weis became the head coach of Notre Dame in 2005 and quickly restored excellence on the field.
In fairness, the book is not totally wrong. The Irish went 19-6 and earned trips to the Fiesta Bowl and Sugar Bowl in the two seasons Weis was coach before the book was published. But we all know how quickly things fell apart in 2007, when the Irish slipped to 3-9. Weis never recovered from that tailspin as the Irish finished only one game above .500 over the following two seasons combined, which played a role in the decision to let Weis go after the 2009 season.
Weis may have “restored” excellence right after the forgettable Bob Davie and Tyrone Willingham eras, but he didn’t maintain it. While Brian Kelly has had a few lean years, he’s upheld Notre Dame’s rich tradition of winning much better, even with no national championship to show for it. Of course, when writing a book clearly meant for kids, you have to write about the present based on the information you have, and Weis was seen as a savior at the time of the book’s writing. Funny how quickly legacies can be altered.
The story of Rudy Ruettiger, while inspiring, can become exhausting if you’re a Notre Dame fan.
The story of Rudy Ruettiger, while inspiring, can become exhausting if you’re a Notre Dame fan. After all, he’s seemingly the only Irish figure other than Knute Rockne whose fame extends beyond the college football world. And as any real Irish fan knows, the movie about him doesn’t tell the whole story. One notable omission is the time he spent in the military before even attending Holy Cross.
A new story from Military.com mentions how Ruettiger joined the Navy in 1968. For two years, he was a yeoman at sea. In fact, his GI Bill benefits allowed him to enroll at Holy Cross in 1972, two years before becoming one of Ara Parseghian’s scout players. So without his time serving our country, who knows if that famous play even happens?
The story goes on to talk about Ruettiger’s frequent visits and speeches with service members. He credits the Navy for changing both his thinking and his attitude. Perhaps that’s what allowed him to tell soldiers about what he calls the four C’s to success: Character, courage, commitment and contribution. Either way, Ruettiger is a proud veteran and deserves to be honored for his service even more than whatever he did on the football field.
It’s hard to imagine now, but Notre Dame and Northwestern once had a true rivalry, playing every year in two different stretches of time.
It’s hard to imagine now, but Notre Dame and Northwestern once had a true rivalry, playing every year in two different stretches of time. If you’ve ever wanted to experience what it was like for these schools to play each other regularly, now you can. And you can thank Northwestern’s online archives for the opportunity.
If you enter “Notre Dame” in the archive’s search engine, you’ll find highlights of numerous times the Irish played the Wildcats between 1931 and 1971. In this particular baker’s dozen’s worth of games, the teams earned six wins apiece and played to one scoreless tie. The games include a 35-6 win for the third-ranked Wildcats in 1962 and a 50-7 victory for the second-ranked Irish in 1971. You’ll also see Ara Parseghian coaching both teams.
With only 114 miles separating the teams’ stadiums, it’s a shame that this rivalry mostly has been dormant for a quarter century. Even during a normal season, it would be difficult to rekindle with Notre Dame’s ACC obligations and annual rivalry games with Navy, USC and Stanford. You have to leave some flexibility for different opponents every year, especially if you remain independent. Still, it’s nice to take a look back at what once was between the schools from South Bend and Evanston.
A inside look at the 10-10 tie against Michigan State in the Irish’s 1966 championship season.
Way back in 1966, the Irish had an opportunity to defeat Michigan State after trailing early, 10-0. With time left on the clock, the Ara Parseghian-led Notre Dame squad had an opportunity to go for the win. Instead Parseghian played it safe and ran the clock out, resulting in a 10-10 against MSU.
In what was dubbed “The Game of the Century,” the final result wasn’t quite what one would expect. Yes, the Irish went on to win the national championship, but it was an odd decision for Parseghain to run the clock out when the Irish clearly had an opportunity to win the game outright.
ESPN looked at that game, along with other controversial games and championship claims. Find out what people had to say about the classic tie against the Spartans.
Former Notre Dame tight end and assistant football coach Brian Boulac has died at 79 after spending his life with Notre Dame.
Former Notre Dame football player and assistant coach Brian Boulac has died. He was 79 years old.
Boulac arrived at Notre Dame in the fall of 1959 and played for the Fighting Irish football team from 1961-63, a run where the team went just 9-20. The tight end would go on to become a graduate assistant at Notre Dame that kicked off a career in coaching and ultimately in the Notre Dame athletic administration.
We’re sorry to hear of the passing of Brian Boulac (‘63, @NDFootball). Brian served @FightingIrish in many capacities, including assistant football coach (1970-82) and as the first head coach of @NDsoftball (1989-92).
Boulac would serve as an assistant coach under Hugh Devore, Ara Parseghian, Dan Devine and Gerry Faust and was also the first recruiting coordinator for the Notre Dame football team.
From 1959 through at least 2009, Boulac either played in or attended every Notre Dame home football game as a fan.
RIP Brian Boulac…. was one of my coaches at ND, coached for years there, such a big deep voice, you always knew when he was around …. such a great coach, such a great man…. thank you for helping me become a man
Boulac was also the first varsity softball coach at Notre Dame and led the Irish to four 30-win seasons and a pair of conference titles despite having only two scholarships to offer.
Certainly this list will create some discussion and without a doubt, Notre Dame will be represented on here a few times over.
Or so I thought.
If you clicked the link and read/scrolled through you probably realized that in that list of 25 teams, Notre Dame was never listed.
Uh, what?
No offense to Bill Connelly, I’m sure he’s a stand-up human but what on God’s green earth are you talking about on this list?
I can see Notre Dame not having a top team on the list but none in the top 25 of it is just absurd. Here are just a few for Mr. Connelly and yourselves to freshen up on as each could have won a title.
I had no idea Don Shula once dreamed of playing and coaching at Notre Dame. I found that out today after the coaching legend passed away.
Don Shula passed away Monday morning at the age of 90. He leaves as accomplished of football coach as the NFL has ever seen with a record 328 career regular season wins and a two Super Bowl titles to his name.
Shula attended John Carroll University where he played football before getting drafted in 1951 and playing seven seasons in the NFL. From there he went to the college ranks to get a start in coaching.
Shula headed the defensive backs at the University of Virginia in 1958 before doing the same at Kentucky in 1959. From there he leaped to the NFL where he coached the Lions defensive backs for a year before running their defense in 1961 and ’62.
He would then become the youngest coach in the history of the NFL at the time when he got the head coach job of the Baltimore Colts in 1963 at 33 years old.
All Shula would do was lead the Colts to a 71-23-4 record in seven seasons, winning the NFL Championship in 1968 before suffering a stunning upset to Joe Namath and the New York Jets in Super Bowl III.
Shula was out of a job after the Colts went 8-5-1 but he quickly landed in Miami in 1970 where he’d stay until his retirement in 1995. His 328 career wins are the most all-time and he led the Dolphins to a pair of Super Bowl championships while getting there and falling three other times.
In reading about Don Shula today though I was left wondering an all-time sports “what if?”
A Notre Dame alumnus, presumably speaking on behalf of the university, once approached Shula in the late ’60s, early ’70s about coaching the Fighting Irish. It had always been Shula’s life ambition to play and someday coach at Notre Dame.
“But after I got into the NFL, I didn’t want to go back into college coaching,” he says.
I had no idea about this ever being a thing before reading and researching about Shula a bit today. The timing is certainly interesting if you know anything about Notre Dame or Don Shula.
It wouldn’t have made sense for it to be late sixties considering Ara Parseghian nearly took Notre Dame to a title in 1964 before ultimately winning one in ’66 which put Ara on anything but a hot seat. After Parseghian left in 1974 then was Shula the first choice to replace Ara instead of Dan Devine?
It would be next to impossible to ever bring a more hyped up coach than Shula would have been in 1974. All he’d done in the three years previous was win the last two Super Bowls and appear in another. I also get why Shula couldn’t go to the college ranks after the start he’d had in his NFL run – it’d have been like if Bill Belichick left the New England Patriots for Notre Dame in 2005.
Yeah, not happening.
I think it’s safe to say things worked out more than alright for Shula afterwards, even if he never did win another Super Bowl. He’d appear in two more while heading the Dolphins and ultimately retire with more wins than anyone that ever coached the game.
And I know some people look back at the Dan Devine era as a disappointment but replacing a legend like Parseghian is a nearly impossible task. Devine only lasted six seasons at Notre Dame but went 53-16-1 in that time, winning a national championship in 1977.
Things didn’t go that way for the Irish though, losing 20-17 to close the year at the Coliseum. What did happen though was John Huarte, pretty much a complete unknown to the nation just months before, walked away with Notre Dame’s sixth Heisman Trophy in program history.
Before there was Joe Burrow or Cam Newton coming out of absolutely nowhere to win the Heisman Trophy, there was a young man by the name of John Huarte.
Huarte split time at quarterback with Frank Budka in 1963 as Notre Dame went just 2-7 in what was a truly awful year. One fall later though, the Fighting Irish had hired Ara Parseghian and began one of the all-time turnarounds in college football history.
Week One of the 1964 campaign saw Notre Dame win big at Wisconsin, 31-7 behind touchdown passes of 61 and 42 yards from Huarte to Jack Snow. Snow would finish the season with 1114 receiving yards and nine touchdowns in what was an all-time turnaround.
What was the 2-7 Irish a year before soared from un-ranked to number one after wins over Purdue, Air Force, UCLA, Stanford and Navy to start the season. Once top-ranked they’d then beat Pitt, Michigan State and Iowa in succession to move to 9-0 and a win over USC away from one of the most unlikely national championships in college football history.
Things didn’t go that way for the Irish though, losing 20-17 to close the year at the Coliseum. What did happen though was John Huarte, pretty much a complete unknown to the nation just months before, walked away with Notre Dame’s sixth Heisman Trophy in program history.
Huarte won the Heisman after setting a dozen Notre Dame passing records in 1964 while also setting a pair of NCAA passing records.
Huarte would go on to play professionally from 1965-75 before calling it a football career. He’d go on to found Arizona Tile a couple years later and turned a small business into a chain of more than 25 stores out west. Just a couple years ago Huarte repaid his alma-mater with a one-million dollar donation.
Texas had beaten Arkansas on Dec. 6, 1969, in the “Game of the Century” and had the national championship presented to it by President Richard Nixon. Yet, the Longhorns still faced an encore: They had to defeat Notre Dame in the Cotton Bowl on Jan. …
Texas had beaten Arkansas on Dec. 6, 1969, in the “Game of the Century” and had the national championship presented to it by President Richard Nixon. Yet, the Longhorns still faced an encore: They had to defeat Notre Dame in the Cotton Bowl on Jan. 1, 1970, to complete the perfect season.
The stakes were raised in Dallas that New Year’s Day because it was the first time Notre Dame was to play in a bowl game since 1925. The school would not consider postseason play for decades until changing its course with the 1969 season.
Interestingly, the 8-1-1 Irish only were the opponent because Penn State had turned down a bid to play the Longhorns before their win over Arkansas. By a vote of its players in mid-November, second-ranked Penn State (10–0) opted to return to the Orange Bowl, and faced sixth-ranked Missouri (9–1).
Penn State had several black players and wished to avoid Dallas due to segregation issues. At the time, the top-ranked team was defending champion Ohio State, who lost the next week at Michigan. team.
The Irish were ready to pull an upset, scoring the game’s first 10 points. Scott Hempel kicked a field goal in the first quarter and Joe Theismann found Tom Gatewood for a 54-yard touchdown pass in the second quarter.
Down double digits, Texas rallied. It took the ND kickoff and drove 74 yards with Jim Bertelsen capping the march with a 1-yard run.
Neither team scored in the third quarter, setting the stage for another rally by the Longhorns in the fourth quarter. First, Ted Koy culminated a 77-yard drive with a touchdown run with 10 minutes remaining to give Texas a 14–10 advantage.
Theismann then led the Irish on an 80-yard drive and threw a 24-yard pass to Jim Yoder for a 17–14 lead with 6:52 left.
The great Dan Jenkins wrote for Sports Illustrated about what went into some gutsy calls by Darrell Royal.
There was a great big time out at the Notre Dame 20-yard line when Texas faced fourth down and two to go with only 4:26 remaining. Street went to the sideline to see Royal, and Bob Olson went to his sideline to confer with Parseghian. Meanwhile 73,000 hearts asked for a transplant. Texas was in field-goal range, but what would a tie do? Make Penn State, which would beat Missouri, or USC, which would beat Michigan, the No. 1 team?
Royal stayed with his triple-option offense, an attack that had made Texas the second alltime rushing team in college football during the regular season. Street faked Worster into the midsection, wiggled down the line and pitched to Ted Koy, who got the two yards by an eyelash just as Bob Olson arrived.
The Longhorns found themselves back in a fourth-and-two situation with 2:26 to play. Jenkins eloquently wrote:
The whole stadium was on its feet, and the bands were blaring out a couple of fairly familiar fight songs, while Street and Olson talked to their brains.
Street said, “How ’bout the counter option fake to the short side?”
Royal mulled it over.
Across the way, Parseghian was certain Texas would either run wide or pass. Olson was told to play the run first. It was percentages.
Out on the field now Cotton Speyrer, his back turned to the Notre Dame defense, was signaling the bench. He was dragging his thumb across his chest in the manner of a hitchhiker. The signal to Royal meant that Speyrer’s defender, Clarence Ellis, was playing him tight and to the inside. It meant that Speyrer thought he could get outside on him for a quick pass.
“Left 89 Out,” said Royal.
Street blinked. It was the Arkansas thing all over again, Royal calling a pass in a moment of supreme stress and James wondering, “Coach, are you sure?”
“Watch for the keep first,” said Darrell. “You might be able to fall for two yards. But if you can’t, drill it to Cotton. He says he’s open on the out.”
Street went to the Texas huddle and said, “Awright, suck it up. This might be our last play of the season, so let’s make it a good one…. Everybody get tough….” Then he looked right at Cotton Speyrer and called the play.
Street took the snap, looked at the end coming up fast, stopped and threw. It was low, but Speyrer did his thing and made the catch. And three plays later, with exactly 1:08 on the clock, another urchin, Billy Dale, a 5’10”, 190-pound junior who had replaced Ted Koy, hugged a hand-off from Street and followed a couple of blocks by Worster and Tight End Randy Peschel into the end zone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n99HKbAtNpk
The final was 21-17 and Texas had its 20th win in a row and 500th overall. T
Malcolm Emmons-USA TODAY Sports
Steve Worster (pictured above against Arkanas) led the rushing attack with 155 of the Longhorns’ 331 yards. Speyrer had 70 receiving yards on 4 catches.
“If you really want to start defining my career, one of the things that really sticks out in my mind is when I was the Offensive MVP of the Cotton Bowl in my junior year,” Worster told Texassports.com long ago. “It was a real punishing football game where we just grinded it out. My performance was because of the linemen and the rest of my teammates.
“When I watch film of the game, I just am tickled to death because that was my type of football. It was north and south, not east and west, and three or four yards play after play. It was like Coach Royal said and that’s you line up your best 11 and we’ll line up our best 11. That game really exemplified Texas football at that time.”
Malcolm Emmons-USA TODAY Sports
A year later, the Irish got even. Legendary coach Ara Parseghian had been priming Notre Dame for a rematch and he got his shot in the 1971 Cotton Bowl.
Led by Heisman Trophy runner-up Theismann at quarterback and a defense spearheaded by end Walt Patulski, who would be the first player selected in the NFL Draft two years later, the Irish began the season 9-0 and accepted a bid to play No. 1 Texas again in the Cotton Bowl. However, it would not be an unbeaten Notre Dame team the Longhorns would face because the Irish lost to USC, 38-28, in a rain-soaked season finale.
That did not dampen the rematch. Texas took a 3-0 lead but Notre Dame erupted for three scores to make it 21-3. The rest of the scoring came before halftime and Notre Dame wound up winning, 24-11. The Longhorns fumbled nine times, five being were recovered by the Irish.
