Notre Dame football
is the star of one new sports book and a principal character in another.Notre Dame football
is the star of one new sports book and a principal character in another.
In Talking Irish: The Oral History of Notre Dame Football, author Steve Delsohn weaves together remembrances about Fighting Irish teams from Frank Leahy
's in the 1940s to Lou Holtz's final season of 1996. Among the quoted: players Creighton Miller, Johnny Lujack, Angelo Bertelli, John Huarte, Jim Lynch, Terry Hanratty, Tom Gatewood, Clarence Ellis, Willie Fry, Gerry DiNardo, Ken MacAfee, Bob Golic, Greg Bell, Blair Kiel, Dave Duerson, Allen Pinckett, Chuck Lanza, Tim Brown, Mike Wadsworth and Renaldo Wynn. Also coaches Ara Parseghian, Dan Devine, Gerry Faust and Lou Holt, and administrators Father Ted Hesburgh and Mike Wadsworth.
In Onward
to Victory: The Crises that Shaped College Sports, author Murray Sperber, a
professor of English and American studies at Indiana University, explores how the attitude
toward college football competition changed from the idealistic
Sperber, author of Shake Down the Thunder: The Creation of Notre Dame Football, gives Notre Dame high marks for traditionally keeping its priorities straight. He notes, for instance, that during the late 1940s and early 1950s, when many universities devised basket-weaving curriculums to babysit academically inept athletes, Notre Dame insisted that athletes maintain a 77 percent grade-point average to be eligible to play. At the time, a regular ND student needed only 70 percent to remain in good academic standing.