Hesburgh passes on Olympic torch
By JASON McFARLEY
News Editor
In the end, the starring role in Notre Dame's month-long football drama went to man who auditioned for it first.
Four weeks and two recastings after Bob Davie's curtain call, University officials agreed that Tyrone Willingham was best suited for the part.
"Tyrone was the very first person I talked to," athletic director Kevin White said New Year's Day following a news conference announcing Willingham as the University's 28th head football coach. "We simply got absolutely the perfect guy, and I know it's going to sound Pollyanna, but maybe it's divine intervention, but we got the right guy. I'm convinced of it."
Willingham, the head coach at Stanford University the past seven seasons, signed a six-year contract. The 48-year-old North Carolina native became Notre Dame's first black head coach of any sport.
"...it is about, yes, great football excellence, but also about the mind and spiritual development of young people," Willingham said during the news conference with his wife, Kim, and their three children in attendance. "I think that fits very well with Tyrone Willingham.
"This is an exciting moment," he continued. "It is a moment that you often go back in your life and you try to figure out what has brought you to this moment."
What brought Willingham, a 25-year veteran with collegiate and professional coaching experience, to the Jan. 1 introduction as head coach was a series of landmark events dating back to last month.
It began with the Dec. 2 ousting of Bob Davie, the first Irish head football coach to be fired.
On Dec. 9, the University named former Georgia Tech head coach George O'Leary as Davie's replacement. But just five days later, O'Leary announced his resignation following revelations that he embellished his background.
Officials flew Willingham to South Bend Dec. 31 for a meeting with the advisory committee that helped with the coaching selection. Willingham and administrators completed terms of the contract that night, White said.
White would not comment on specific terms of the contract but said he had "virtually no negotiation with Tyrone" and that Willingham would receive the same compensation that O'Leary would have been paid under his six-year deal.
Speculation that the search for a coach cost more than $10 million was off-base, University spokesman Dennis Moore said.
Willingham received the job after two meetings with University officials, once before O'Leary's appointment and once following it. Notre Dame delayed the second meeting until after Stanford's now-ironic appearance against Georgia Tech in the Seattle Bowl.
"We were very careful not to ask for permission [of Stanford AD Ted Leland] to re-approach Tyrone until the day after his bowl game," White said, "and that's exactly what we did."
With students away for winter vacation, Willingham's Jan. 1 meeting with reporters lacked the fanfare that greeted O'Leary just three weeks earlier. Officials introduced O'Leary as head coach before nearly 2,000 supporters in the Joyce Center last month.
If his appearance Jan. 1 was an indication, in Willingham the University has found a witty and frank personality to direct the football program.
Asked what offensive strategy he would incorporate into the program, Willingham told the corps of reporters: "Well, you know what, I am primed for this one. I want you to know that. Because as I understand the Notre Dame tradition, the focus is `win.' So my offense...is about winning." And later, "My defense, before the next person gets the mike, is about winning."
Officials praised his pointedness.
"You just need to do a good job, be focused and have the kind of relationship with your student-athletes and with the rest of the university that we expect of you," Malloy said. "I just want him to be himself. He doesn't have to tell jokes. He doesn't have to spend huge amounts of time in public performance."
The University president noted that Willingham was an all-around institutional fit. At Stanford, he coached players in a rigorous academic environment similar to Notre Dame's.
In seven seasons at the helm of the Cardinal team, Willingham coached Stanford to a 44-36-1 record, including four bowl appearances and a Pacific-10 Conference championship in 1999. His 2001 Cardinal team was his most successful, with a 9-3 record and berth in the Seattle Bowl.
Willingham was twice named PAC-10 Coach of the Year. He was a finalist for the national-coach-of-the-year award in 1995 and won the equivalent of that honor from the Black Coaches Association in 1995 and 1996.
He holds a 3-2 record against the Irish the past five seasons.
The Kinston, N.C., native was a walk-on in both football and baseball at Michigan State University. He graduated received a bachelor's degree from the school in 1977 and began work that year as an MSU football graduate assistant.
He was a secondary coach for Central Michigan University from 1978 to 1979 and then was a secondary and special-teams coach for his alma mater for the next three seasons.
He held those positions also at North Carolina State University from 1983 to 1985.
At Rice University, he coached receivers and special teams from 1986 to 1988.
He spent the next six seasons as a running-backs coach — at Stanford from 1989 to 1991 and with the Minnesota Vikings from 1992 to 1994.
Father Theodore Hesburgh hadn't used his running shoes in four decades. But they carried him the distance on Jan. 4 — two-tenths of a mile on the Olympic torch route.
At 84, Hesburgh, Notre Dame's president emeritus, was one of two runners with University ties to participate in official torch relay that passed through South Bend Jan. 4 en route to Salt Lake City. Debbie Brown, head volleyball coach, also was a torchbearer.
"I hadn't run in 45 years," Hesburgh said in an interview last week in his 13th-floor library office. "My biggest challenge was coming up on 85 years of age in May."
His keepsake Olympic uniform, with white-and-lavender jacket and pants, white gloves and hat was hanging on a nearby shelf. The gray torch was in a chair just beneath the clothing.
Hesburgh said he would put some of the memorabilia on display in the library. Pictures and other items will become part of the University archives.
"It's nice passing along a tradition that goes back 2,000 years," he said of passing the flame during the chilly morning ceremony.
For Brown, the excitement of the event was indescribable.
"The support of the community — it was very patriotic," she said about the crowd that lined the relay route, waving flags and cheering runners. "It's really hard to capture the emotion."
Brown has connections to previous Olympics. She was co-captain of the U.S. Olympic volleyball team but didn't play because America boycotted the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow. She was assistant coach of the U.S. volleyball squad that competed in Seoul, South Korea, in the1988 Olympics.
"Not having an Olympic experience in 1980 was definitely a disappointment in my athletic career,"she said. "I felt like going to Seoul in 1988 gave me a chance to experience the Olympics a little differently.
"[Being a torchbearer] was very short-lived but very exciting," she continued. "There's something about carrying the Olympic flame that's very thrilling."
The route began at the northern edge of campus at Juniper and Douglas roads and proceeded south on Juniper during a seven-mile tour through the city. From South Bend, it headed to Chicago.
In all, the torch will travel 13,500 miles along its route from Atlanta to Salt Lake City, where it is scheduled to arrive Feb. 2, two days before the opening of the 2002 Winter Olympic Games.
All News Stories for Wednesday, January 16, 2002
