Irish coach Tyrone Willingham takes on his former Stanford players
By ANDREW SOUKUP
Sports Writer
Normally, hell has a better chance of freezing over before Tyrone Willingham admits a football game is anything more than a football game.
Yet the Irish head coach shocked the world Tuesday by saying Saturday's game will be a little more difficult for him to coach.
Willingham knows every single player on Stanford's roster, knows each player's parents, sat in their living rooms and convinced them to play for the Cardinal, and then left the team he wanted to build for South Bend, Ind., dragging most of the Cardinal coaching staff with him.
Willingham won't exactly wax poetic on the emotional importance of Saturday's game. But for him to even suggest Notre Dame-Stanford has any significance for him is quite a leap for a man accustomed to dodging questions about his personal feelings.
For 10 years, Willingham worked at Stanford, three as a running backs coach under Dennis Green and seven as a head coach. For 10 years, Willingham poured his entire existence into making the Cardinal a football power. He spurned NFL jobs, college jobs, any kind of job, until Notre Dame came along.
Then he hopped on a charter plane from Palo Alto to South Bend, leaving the program he worked at for a fifth of his life for another program where success comes to so few.
In his wake, Willingham knows he left a Stanford football team anxious to play their own coach. And he knows they circled Oct. 5 on the calendar even as Willingham stood before national media on New Year's Day as the Notre Dame football coach.
"As much as execution is a part of the game, so is emotion, and if a team can reach an emotional level, it can accomplish great things," Willingham said. "So this football team, Stanford, is not only skilled, in my opinion, but they will bring their highest level of emotion that maybe they have had in quite sometime."
Early beginnings
In 1988, Willingham was busy toiling in obscurity in the college coaching ranks. He'd sloshed through losing seasons at Michigan State, North Carolina State and Rice, always wondering whether or not he'd get a shot at moving up in the coaching ranks.
During a program with the San Francisco 49ers, Willingham met Green, who desperately needed a racquetball partner early in the morning. The two talked often, and when Green got the Stanford coaching job, he offered Willingham a spot on his staff as running backs coach.
Three years later, Willingham followed Green again, this time to Minnesota to coach the Vikings. And after Bill Walsh left Stanford, Cardinal athletic director Ted Leland called Willingham and offered him his first head coaching job, an offer Willingham leapt at.
When Willingham took over, the Cardinal had a reputation as a scrappy team that rarely made any noise outside the Pac-10.
His impact was immediate. The year before Willingham arrived, the Cardinal finished 3-7-1. In his first year, Willingham turned the team into a 7-4-1 squad that played in a bowl game. Three years later, Stanford won the Pac-10 and played in the Rose Bowl.
As the offers poured in for coaching jobs, Willingham stood pat. Although his Bay Area club was overshadowed by multitudes of California professional teams in many different sports, Willingham wasn't fazed. He even rejected an offer from his alma mater, Michigan State, in 2000.
But when the Irish called, Willingham listened.
"There is a great deal of passion about both programs. Stanford's is displayed a little bit different probably by a few less people but still at the same time great passion," he said. "Notre Dame is displayed by a lot of people and has tremendous past."
After two losing seasons in three years, Willingham wanted to try his hand at waking up the echoes in South Bend.
Changing places
Teyo Johnson remembered being surprised when he heard the news Willingham left to coach the Irish. The 6-foot-7 Stanford wide receiver barely got a chance to say goodbye to his former coach, that's how fast Willingham left Palo Alto and moved to South Bend.
"I personally felt that when you have a coach in college that's as good as Coach Willingham, you don't expect him to be with you for very long," Johnson said. "I personally thought he would go to the NFL, but when I heard he got the job at Notre Dame, I was more upset at George O'Leary than anything else."
Johnson and his teammates keep tabs on their former coach — although it's not a difficult thing to do considering the national media attention surrounding Notre Dame's 4-0 start. What the Cardinal wide receiver notices is how Willingham is essentially the same coach with the Irish that he was at Stanford. And likewise, Johnson noticed that the Irish play with an attitude Willingham used to inspire in the Cardinal.
"The proof is in the pudding as far as what he goes out there and does. He's 4-0," Johnson said. "At first, when he comes in, it seems like it's too much, but you see how much of a better player you become."
Swirl of emotions
Saturday's game will be a reunion for Willingham and many other Irish coaches, as he will face much of Stanford's team for the first time since he flew to Notre Dame as the Irish head coach, just days after the Cardinal's final game of the season.
"He hasn't said much about it," Irish cornerback Vontez Duff said. "But I think it's a big deal for him."
Willingham still maintains close connections to the Stanford community — connections he hopes to preserve for the rest of his life. Before the game, he expects to shake hands and reminisce a little with his former players. After the game, he expects to spend time on the field with men he recruited, trained and coached for years.
It's a reunion many Stanford players are looking forward to.
"We don't blame him at all," Johnson said. "I think if we were in his situation, we would have left as well."
Willingham and the six other former Stanford coaches on the current Irish staff know the emotional impact of Saturday's game.
But at 1:30 Saturday afternoon, emotions will give way to reason.
"Once we get to the ballgame what I know from those guys, having been with them, that they will be fierce competitors when game time arises and they will do all the things that competitors do to put themselves in a position to be successful," Willingham said. "Before we will have emotions and after we will have emotions and there will probably be a lot of hugs and conversation.
"But by game time, I think they will be fierce competitors and I know that will be the mindset that I will be in."
All Sports Stories for Friday, October 4, 2002
