Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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46 DECEMBER 2024 BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED T he demarcation at the beginning of the duration of the 2004 sea- son was clear for third-year Notre Dame head coach Tyrone Willingham. On one side, five former Notre Dame head coaches since 1918 finished un- beaten and/or won the national title. Four of the five (Knute Rockne, Frank Leahy, Ara Parseghian and Dan Devine) are enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame, and a fifth (Lou Holtz) soon will be unless his insatiable hunger to compete leads to a seventh college head coaching position. On the other side of the spectrum are five Notre Dame head coaches whose third-year regular season ended in misery. • Hunk Anderson (1933) was 3-5-1 in Year 3. • Terry Brennan (1956) was 2-8 in his third year, although a case can be made that the skids were greased for him. Nevertheless, when expectations were high two years later with a veteran squad, the descent in Year 3 played a role in his ultimate firing after a disap- pointing 6-4 finish in Year 5. • Joe Kuharich (1961) posted a 5-5 ledger in his third year. Amazingly, his Irish team defeated four College Foot- ball Hall of Fame coaches that year: Oklahoma's Bud Wilkinson, USC's John McKay, Purdue's Jack Mollenkopf and Syracuse's Ben Schwartzwalder. If there was a past Notre Dame coach whose third year resembled Willing- ham's, it was Kuharich. The Irish were often at their best against big-name opponents in 1961, but they lost to the "academic-oriented" schools such as Northwestern, Navy and Duke. Yet even then Notre Dame's academic standards were regularly cited by the media to ex- plain the Irish downfall. • Gerry Faust (1983) seemed to turn the corner with five straight wins in Year 3 to raise the record to 6-2, but he lost his final three regular season con- tests by a total of 10 points to finish 6-5. • Finally, Bob Davie (1999) concluded Year 3 with four straight losses — the last on the final play against Willing- ham's Rose Bowl-bound Stanford Car- dinal — to finish 5-7. NO DRAMATIC CHANGE Generally, you will find that a coach's winning percentage at Notre Dame after Year 3 isn't dramatically altered throughout the duration of his career. Leahy was .850 after three years and .857 in his final eight. Brennan was .633 after three seasons and .650 in his fi- nal two. Parseghian was .866 through three campaigns and at .822 in his final eight. Faust was .544 after three seasons and .522 in his final two. Davie was .568 (21-16, close to Willingham's 21-15) and .601 in his final two. Holtz experienced a more dramatic curve. After three years, he was 25-10 (.714). In his final eight, he was 75-20-2 (.783), an increase of nearly 70 percentage points. However, in his case an affirma- tive answer was given on the direction of his program when it improved from 5-6 to 8-4 and 12-0. This is what makes Willing- ham's Year 3 ledger of 21-15 so disconcert- ing. The past does not equal the future, yet Willingham has his own past at Stanford that equates to an unsettling consistency. In Willingham's first three years at The Farm, the Cardinal was 19-15-1 for a .557 winning percentage. In Willing- ham's four ensuing seasons, Stanford was 25-21 — a .543 winning percentage. As stated previously in this column, comparing apples (Stanford) to oranges (Notre Dame) is bananas. Notre Dame's administration was intelligent to look beyond Parseghian's 36-35-1 record at Northwestern and Holtz's career .637 winning percentage prior to coming to Notre Dame. Nevertheless, once you are at a tradition-rich program that ranks among the top 10 in history — Notre Dame, USC, Alabama, Oklahoma, Texas, et al. — ev- idence is needed by Year 3 to make the fan base and administration truly believe "we've hit the jackpot with this coach." ALWAYS EXCEPTIONS Can Willingham turn it around? The man has done it before and takes pride in not flinching. Back-to-back 5-6 and 3-8 campaigns at Stanford were fol- lowed by a trip to the Rose Bowl. An- other 5-6 season in 2000 preceded a 9-3 mark a year later. Notre Dame is a different animal, though. I wouldn't say he can't rebound, but history says it's unlikely he will be deemed the answer for the long haul. It would take an ex- tremely special campaign — not merely a 9-2 regular season as Davie produced in 1998 and 2000 — to restore belief. Exacerbating the task is the specter of Urban Meyer. It's well documented that one of the nation's most prized coaching commodities has the Notre Dame clause, just as Leahy and Holtz did. (Incidentally, Leahy was 20-2 in his two seasons at Bos- ton College before coming to Notre Dame, including 11-0 and a No. 5 finish in his second season. Meyer is 21-2 at Utah, 11-0 this year with a potential top-five finish.) If Meyer takes the Florida job, many Irish fans will be irate about a missed opportunity, and their wrath likely will be directed to athletics director Kevin White and Willingham. Yet if Meyer doesn't take the Florida position, that's only going to heighten the anticipation of his future availability, making Will- ingham's job all the more unnerving. These are not pleasant days, reinforc- ing that misfortune does sometimes come in threes. ✦ BEST OF THE FIFTH QUARTER ✦ LOU SOMOGYI ✦ DEC. 17, 2004 After Year 3, What You See Is Often What You Get EDITOR'S NOTE: The late, great Lou Somogyi possessed an unmatched knowledge of Notre Dame football, and it was his mission in life to share it with others. Those of us at Blue & Gold Illustrated would like to continue to provide his wis- dom and unique perspective from his more than 37 years covering the Fighting Irish for this publication. Tyrone Willingham posted a mediocre 21-15 record in his first three seasons as Notre Dame's head coach and was fired. PHOTO COURTESY NOTRE DAME ATHLETICS