COLUMN: Willingham will win the Irish way
By TED FOX
Fox Sports...Almost
Just in case you were caught up in the nail-biting BCS season, with 13 points down being the closest any of the losing teams ever finished, Tyrone Willingham was named Notre Dame's head football coach on Jan. 1.
It turned out that throwing me out of a fictitious sleigh in a column right before exams isn't the only thing former Notre Dame coach George O'Leary hasn't done.
Calling him a `former Notre Dame coach' doesn't even sound quite right, does it? I mean, how long was he here? Five days?
I may not have always been waving the banner of the Bob Davie Fan Club, but he at least earned the right to be called a Notre Dame head football coach through five years of hard work.
What we had on that Friday that finals kicked off was a muffed snap, a shanked punt. More embarrassing than a 5-6 season or a 41-9 bowl loss could ever be, the University of Notre Dame, one of the proudest academic and athletic institutions in the country, got duped by a trick play.
Paid attendance that day? The entire sports world.
As a community, whether student or student-athlete, the best tradition in all of sports had become a sports page laughing stock.
We thought that possibly Jon Gruden would be our Pauly Shore, albeit with considerably more grit, and instantly stop all laughter from any team that even thought of playing the Irish.
Well, the laughter has stopped, and Gruden is still the coach of the Raiders.
Athletic director Kevin White did indeed get his coach from a program in California but from a college near Oakland.
At the press conference to announce his hiring, Willingham talked of the effect Notre Dame had on him when he was a child, saying: `... initially I developed a longing, some type of desire, some type of motivation to be at this place when I watched those [Notre Dame] highlights on Sunday, that something ticks, something special was there.'
That same attitude was what endeared Gruden to most of the student body.
While Willingham's accomplishments at Stanford during seven years weren't drastically different from Davie's five years under the Dome, he now has the added resource of the Notre Dame name — the place synonymous with big time college football.
At least it should be, and it still can be. When asked if the Irish can still be a perennial top ten team, Willingham wasn't waylaid by tough academic standards or a tough schedule.
Instead, winning is not only his goal, but a requirement.
"That's why I am here: to reach that level of excellence that this university has always had. I believe it can be accomplished, and that's why I am here," he said.
He echoed that sentiment at halftime of the men's basketball game on Saturday, in between receiving raucous support from the student section and a lone guy simply yelling out: "Beat Michigan!"
Describing the hiring of a head football coach as "better late than never" appears to be as appropriate here as anywhere. It took them a little while, with a blown play along the way, but, by all accounts, Notre Dame got an excellent man for its most high profile job.
While he was accepting that job on the first day of 2002, one thing Willingham said stuck with me.
"There is no question that this is the most high profile university in this country," he said, "and with that, it brings [a] bright light. But I have always said to my wife that if you are doing the right thing it does not matter how bright the lights are or how many lights, but if you are doing the wrong thing, it only takes a flashlight."
After the past few seasons, people have said that Notre Dame can't win again by having such high standards. Some have suggested these standards should be lowered, others, perhaps, that the great Irish tradition should be allowed to lapse.
Tyrone Willingham, a man who comes to South Bend with a better record than either Ara Parseghian or Dan Devine did, stands in direct opposition to both of these schools of thought.
Notre Dame will win, and win by its standards.
That's the only way it can be here.
Contact Ted Fox at tfox@nd.edu. The views of this column are those of the author and are not necessarily those of The Observer.
All Sports Stories for Tuesday, January 22, 2002
