Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM NOV. 7, 2026 15 tion in the spring and being added to the roster in 1987. Heading into the Michigan game in 1988, Ho had one career point on his ré- sumé, a PAT kick during the Irish's 8-4 season in 1987. That team started 8-1, but ended the year with three straight losses. Perhaps because of that late-season fade, the 1988 rendition came into the season — Lou Holtz's third as head coach — ranked a modest No. 13 in the Associ- ated Press' preseason poll. That was lower than the next nine Irish teams would rank heading into their respective seasons. "We all thought we were good, all thought we had potential," said line- backer Ned Bolcar, who captained the 1988 team along with offensive tackle Andy Heck and running back Mark Green. "But a national championship? I think someone would be lying to you if they thought this team was going to end up doing that. But we started stacking wins, and we started to believe." Holtz started to believe in the pre- season, less than two weeks ahead of the Sept. 10 opener at Notre Dame Stadium. That was the first of many practices that season in which Holtz and his assistant coaches would swallow their whistles to see if the chaos would pull the team together or tear it apart. "If we become a good team, mark down August 29th," Holtz told the South Bend Tribune's Bill Bilinski, walking off the field with a little more bounce in his step. Bilinski would go on to write the book "Champions: Lou Holtz's Fighting Irish" to chronicle the 1988 title march. "Never once," Holtz explained later, "did this team ask why. They only said: 'What do we have to do?'" T h a t m ea n t a cce p t i n g p os i t i o n switches, like Miami game hero Pat Ter- rell being converted to safety from his preferred wide receiver position, and established players like safety Corny Southall, defensive end Darrell "Flash" Gordon and reigning All-American Bol- car putting team first when their indi- vidual roles were diminished in 1988. Fighting each other apparently be- came part of the "what do we have to do?" winning formula as well. "The one thing about the coaching staff, they let us get after each other quite often," Bolcar recalled, "so much so that we called Wednesday practices 'Fight Night.' Sure enough, there would always be a fight that would break out because somebody's overly aggressive. Pretty much every Wednesday." And the Irish had enough fight in them on Saturdays to follow the Michi- gan white-knuckler with four straight double-digit victories to climb to No. 4 in the AP poll heading into a mid-Octo- ber showdown with No. 1 and defend- ing national champion Miami at Notre Dame Stadium. The Irish didn't just figuratively fight their way to a 31-30 upset on Oct. 15 in the iconic "Catholics vs. Convicts" clash. They fought with their opponent before the game in the stadium tunnel. Notre Dame moved up a couple of spots to No. 2 after the Miami win. The Irish stayed there for a couple of weeks, with UCLA ascending to the top spot. Notre Dame's own ascent to No. 1 actually came immediately following a lackluster 22-7 dismissal of Navy on Oct. 29 in a game the Irish were favored to win by 4 touch- downs. But UCLA got upset by Washing- ton State that same weekend, 34-30. And that boosted unbeaten Notre Dame (8-0) and Southern Cal (7-0) to the Nos. 1 and 2 spots, respectively, Nov. 1. And there they'd stay heading into their showdown in Los Angeles in the regular- season finale for both teams Nov. 26. The night before that game, Notre Dame's leading rusher at the time — Tony Brooks — and Notre Dame's leading receiver and No. 1 punt returner, Ricky Watters, were 40 minutes late to a team meal. That came after being late for a team meeting the night before, when they claimed they couldn't find their car in the parking lot at a California mall. The popular narrative is that Holtz put the players on a plane back to South Bend on Friday night. The real story is that their teammates did. "Coach Holtz called 11 of the team leaders into a meeting and let us decide whether to send them home," Bolcar said. "And the vote was 11-0, because we trusted our team to rise to the occasion." The Irish did by a 27-10 count, capi- talizing on big plays on offense and consistently dominant play on defense. Then they capped the national title journey by taking out No. 3 West Vir- ginia, 34-21, in the Fiesta Bowl on Jan. 2. Quarterback Tony Rice, magical in the running game all season, won Offensive MVP honors in the Fiesta Bowl with his passing prowess — a then-career-high 213 yards passing with 2 touchdown strikes and an interception. Defensive end Frank Stams, a con- verted fullback, was the Fiesta Bowl De- fensive MVP and one of two consensus All-Americans for the Irish that season. Linebacker Mike Stonebreaker was the other. Four other players earned at least one first- or second-team All-America honor — Heck, Watters, nose guard Chris Zorich and linebacker Wes Pritchett. But it wasn't just great pieces in the national championship puzzle; it was how they fit together — something Gor- don, a demoted defensive end who won his job back late in the season, embod- ied. In fact, Holtz told Gordon not to even bother coming back for a fifth year in 1988 after starting for two seasons. Gordon, after throwing and breaking most of the things in his dorm room after that talk, convinced Holtz to let him come back anyway. It mattered in the big picture. "After we won a national champion- ship, I came to find out that Holtz actu- ally wanted me back all along," Gordon said. "He said, 'Flash, I needed to get you at your highest level, and that's how I did it.' I didn't know that at the time. I just thought he didn't want me any- more, and I'm a competitive individual. "I felt like I needed to step my game up, and I practiced every day, I worked every day, and I gave him everything I had. That changed my life, but I think it also changed the culture of the team." And its history. Forever. ✦ Head coach Lou Holtz built a legendary, disci- plined and team-first culture at Notre Dame that transformed a struggling program into a national champion. PHOTO COURTESY FIESTA BOWL FOUNDATION