Before he took the job, he met with the football coach.
He asked what the program needed to be successful, what the coach needed to return the team to glory, to produce national championships and Heisman Trophy winners again.
Because even before Kevin White took over as athletic director at Notre Dame, he knew his time in South Bend would be defined by the football team’s success, or lack thereof.
According to his biography in the Notre Dame media guide, White’s first three years “qualified as the most successful across-the-board years in the history of athletics at Notre Dame.”
But four years into his stay, Notre Dame’s signature sport is a nettlesome problem.
The Irish have touched football success in the last four seasons, but they haven’t been able to grasp it. Saturday’s dismal 38-12 loss to Syracuse left them with a 5-7 record in Tyrone Willingham’s second season, after he’d rekindled optimism with an 8-0 start and a 10-3 mark last year. Notre Dame has had three losing seasons in the last five, a low point in school history.
The team once synonymous with national championships hasn’t won a bowl game in a decade, going 0-7 since a Jan. 1, 1994, victory over Texas A&M in the Cotton Bowl.
Notre Dame hasn’t been ranked No. 1 since Nov. 20, 1993, a week after beating then-No. 1 Florida State in South Bend.
Why have the Irish fallen so far and so fast? Can they return to glory?
Former coach Bob Davie, who was fired in 2001 after a 5-6 record left him 35-25 for his five seasons, believes they can. But not without some changes.
“I knew that program better than anyone when I took that job in 1997. I knew what the reality was,” Davie said. “That doesn’t mean you can’t win, or shouldn’t win, but to say you’re going to do it every year, there’s a lot of foundation issues that need to be addressed.”
In Davie’s mind, a killer schedule is first and foremost.
While the Ohio States and Michigans of the world are warming up against the likes of Central Michigan and Houston, Notre Dame has opened its last four seasons at Texas A&M, at Nebraska, against Maryland in the Kickoff Classic and against Washington State at home.
Davie brought his 1998 team to USC on Thanksgiving weekend with a 9-1 record, on track for a Bowl Championship Series game. But, playing without injured quarterback Jarious Jackson, the Irish lost 10-0, then lost to Georgia Tech 35-28 in the Gator Bowl.
“And in 2000 we were a 9-2 team and went to a BCS game,” Davie said. That year the Irish were hammered 41-9 by Oregon State in the Fiesta Bowl.
“The difficulty is sustaining it year to year because the reality is you’re going to play a lot more close games [because of] the schedule,” Davie said. “When you play really good teams early in the year, there’s little margin for error.”
Schedule set to 2012
Davie’s is not an after-the-fact analysis.
“Before he was on campus, [White] asked me to give him a list of issues in order of things he needed to deal with, and my first thing was the schedule in 2001,” he said. “Playing at Texas A&M, playing at Nebraska, and at Purdue in September, that was the first issue.
“The second thing I talked about was 2006: UCLA, USC and Michigan, and then they went and added Penn State,” Davie said. “Obviously my concerns went on deaf ears because the game they added was Penn State. It’s not making excuses, it’s reality.”
White declined to be interviewed for this story, providing a written statement that said: “We are continually evaluating and re-evaluating any future football scheduling philosophy. However, with that said . . . we are scheduled out to 2012.”
Willingham might agree with Davie’s assessment. He found his first-season record of 10-3 impossible to duplicate after opening with a gantlet of Washington State, Michigan, Michigan State and Purdue. After a “breather” against Pittsburgh, the Irish faced USC, Boston College and Florida State in succession.
By NCAA standards, Notre Dame had the nation’s toughest schedule this season, its 12 opponents finishing with a combined winning percentage of .667. Alabama was second, Florida was third, Texas A&M was fourth and Iowa State was fifth in strength of schedule.
And of those five, only Florida (8-4) finished with a winning record.
“What makes it really fun but challenging is that everybody who plays Notre Dame, that’s their biggest game of the year,” said Jim Colleto, the Baltimore Ravens’ line coach who was Davie’s offensive coordinator in 1997-98 and the head coach at Purdue before that. “Every game you play you’re going to get the other team’s best effort.”
Colleto acknowledges that a take-on-all-comers philosophy is part of the Notre Dame mystique.
“Notre Dame is a national program, and I don’t think it would sit well with the administration people or the fans or the alums for Notre Dame to play a bunch of teams to just roll the ball out and be far superior,” he said.
Tony Fisher, an Irish tailback from 1998-2001 who’s now a Green Bay Packer, says the national schedule helps Notre Dame recruit top talent. On the other hand, “It’s tough to play a schedule that hard every year,” Fisher said. “We have one of the toughest schedules. . . . It shouldn’t be that hard week in and week out.”
The difficulty of the schedule is partly attributable to Notre Dame’s one-of-a-kind TV contract with NBC, which broadcasts Irish home games to the nation. NBC will accept an occasional Rutgers or Navy, but it wants quality games in return for its investment.
And it’s not just whom the Irish play, but when.
When Ara Parseghian took over in 1964, Notre Dame’s schedule was more evenly balanced, with tough games sprinkled throughout the season. The 1966 showdown with Michigan State, one of the most famous games in school history, took place on Nov. 19, Notre Dame’s ninth game in a 10-game season.
But the Big Ten didn’t like a non-conference game overshadowing its conference schedule and eventually decreed that all non-conference games, including those with Notre Dame, be out of the way before the onset of conference play.
Since 1969, Notre Dame has never played Michigan State later than Oct. 7. The annual Purdue game is similarly front-loaded.
Thus the Irish have to hit the ground running, with little time to get their legs underneath them.
“What team starts out the season the way we do? No one,” Fisher said. “Everybody at least plays one or two games to ease their way into the season.”
For the Irish, the easier portion of this season’s schedule came at the end: Navy, Brigham Young, Stanford and Syracuse in the final four weeks. Had they opened with those teams, the offensive line might have had a chance to come together, freshman quarterback Brady Quinn might have gained some valuable experience outside the lion’s den and tailback Julius Jones might have emerged as a gamebreaker before the fifth week.
“They need a breather . . . They should play a couple of MAC (Mid-American Conference) teams,” said retired college football guru Beano Cook, a longtime Notre Dame observer.
One way for Notre Dame to adjust the schedule is to relinquish its long-held football independence and join a conference.
“Notre Dame ought to get in the Big Ten,” Colletto said. “[They] play Purdue, Michigan and Michigan State every year, it’s gone on for years, and you’re right in the middle of the Big Ten. It would be a very logical thing.”
Cook concurred.
“Either join the Big Ten or don’t join any conference,” he said. “To join the ACC would be like Australia joining NATO.”
Brand name weaker
Notre Dame may still be a glamorous name, but it’s no longer the destination of choice for many top recruits. Allen Pinkett, the Irish’s No. 2 career rusher behind Autry Denson, recalled “all the best players leaving the state” when Notre Dame was recruiting him out of Sterling, Va., in the early ’80s. “You didn’t even think about going to Virginia Tech,” Pinkett said.
Now Virginia Tech is more likely to field a top-10 team than Notre Dame is.
Pinkett also cited the examples of Tim Couch (Kentucky) and David Carr (Fresno State), who were No. 1 overall picks in the NFL draft despite playing at schools that aren’t college football powers.
“The signal that sends is I need to get somewhere where I can play, and if you can play, they’re going to come find you,” Pinkett said.
And though the Irish may boast the only exclusive national television contract in college football, the addition of cable outlets and satellite television has spread the TV exposure around more in the last 20 years.
So the Notre Dame brand name, while still strong, is not as potent as it once was. The only way to rectify that, Pinkett said, is to win more. He cited Oklahoma, which survived a down period, hired Bob Stoops as coach and will be playing for its second national championship in four seasons in next month’s Sugar Bowl.
“It all runs in cycles,” Pinkett said. “I look at USC now, but I’ve got to remind folks that we had a 10-year stretch when we were just killing them.”
Notre Dame went 12-0-1 against its archrivals from Southern California in 1983-95. Under Pete Carroll the Trojans have roared back, drilling Notre Dame 44-13 and 45-14 in their last two meetings.
Pinkett’s explanation? “It’s their turn now.”
Neither USC nor Oklahoma screens potential student-athletes as stringently as Notre Dame does. The school’s unyielding approach to admissions has cost the Irish some very good, very smart kids over the last few years, including 2002 Heisman Trophy winner Carson Palmer of USC; Casey Clausen, three-year starting quarterback at sixth-ranked Tennessee; Marcus Vick, who followed older brother Michael to Virginia Tech; and Jarret Payton, starting at running back as a fifth-year senior at Miami.
Several standouts from the 1988 national champions have acknowledged that they probably wouldn’t get into Notre Dame under the current admissions policy.
“Maybe they should lower their standards a little bit,” Fisher said.
But Cook advised against drastic measures, saying, “I don’t think you can judge Willingham for three or four years.”
Davie believes it might not take that long.
“I really think the schedule is conducive to winning in 2004 and 2005,” he said.
Notre Dame has a tough season opener against Michigan next season, but plays five of its first seven games at home. The early road games are at Michigan State on Sept. 18 and at Navy on Oct. 16 at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., where the Irish claim a strong following.
The arrogance factor
Before the 2002 season, college football historian Cook compiled a list of the top 25 teams of all time.
No. 1 was the 1947 Notre Dame team that included Johnny Lujack, that year’s Heisman Trophy winner, and Leon Hart, who won the Heisman in 1949.
Cook’s 10th-, 15th-, 17th- and 24th-best teams of all time were also Notre Dame teams.
But the Irish have not won a national title since 1988, or challenged for one since 1993. Their last Heisman winner was Tim Brown in 1987. And Notre Dame’s fading football luster sometimes seems a wan reflection of past glory.
“Logic tells you that Notre Dame should consider joining a conference, but ego and logic are two different things,” Davie said.
“There’s an arrogance at Notre Dame. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing, there’s just an inherent arrogance. They like to imagine they’re something special.”
Now they have to prove it.
– – –
Been a long time
Last bowl victory
1994 Cotton Bowl over Texas A&M (0-7 since)
Last time No. 1
Nov. 20, 1993
Last national title
1987-88 (haven’t challenged for one since 1993)
Last Heisman winner
Tim Brown, in 1987
Diminishing bowl returns
YEAR REC. COACH BOWL, RESULT OPPONENT
1988-* 12-0-0 Lou Holtz Fiesta, W, 34-21 West Virginia
1989 12-1-0 Lou Holtz Orange, W, 21-6 Colorado
1990 9-3-0 Lou Holtz Orange, L, 10-9 Colorado
1991 10-3-0 Lou Holtz Sugar, W, 39-28 Florida
1992 10-1-1 Lou Holtz Cotton, W, 28-3 Texas A&M
1993 11-1-0 Lou Holtz Cotton, W, 24-21 Texas A&M
1994 6-5-1 Lou Holtz Fiesta, L, 41-24 Colorado
1995 9-3-0 Lou Holtz Orange, L, 31-26 Florida State
1996 8-3-0 Lou Holtz None —
1997 7-6-0 Bob Davie Independence, L, 27-9 LSU
1998 9-3-0 Bob Davie Gator, L, 35-28 Georgia Tech
1999 5-7-0 Bob Davie None —
2000 9-3-0 Bob Davie Fiesta, L, 41-9 Oregon State
2001 5-6-0 Bob Davie None —
2002 10-3-0 Tyrone Willingham Gator, L, 28-6 N.C. State
2003 5-7-0 Tyrone Willingham None —
*-won national championship
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