New Notre Dame defensive coordinator Al Golden is a football lifer. Golden, 52, comes fresh off a Super Bowl appearance as the linebackers coach on the Cincinnati Bengals but has had stops at Miami (FL), Temple, Virginia, and Boston College collegiately before his time in the NFL.
Golden’s playing career in college was at Penn State from 1988-1991 where he played under Joe Paterno, a coach he was asked about during his introductory press conference last week.
“The thing about Joe just being with him every day for five years basically is the same thing, right? It really meant something to him that we would be developed as total people. At the core of his belief, in what was called the grand experiment back then, was that if you can win with integrity, and develop young people in the classroom and in the community, that ultimately they’ll be better people and better athletes on the field. I think there’s a correlation there. And there’s a lot of that in the root of what we did at Temple to try to get that thing turned. Because we weren’t very good. So we had to learn how to be good in other areas to develop sport confidence. And we did that in the community. We did that in the classroom. The last thing that came ultimately is what we did on the field.” – Al Golden
Golden comes to Notre Dame as an assistant but September won’t be the first game he’s seen in the stadium as he caught the game-tying touchdown pass in Penn State’s 1990 upset of the then top-ranked Fighting Irish. It was also the last touchdown scored at Notre Dame Stadium in a game that didn’t air on NBC (or USA or Peacock).
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