Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/195693
Electric Win An excerpt from the book Faith Restored, which provides a behind-the-scenes look at Notre Dame's 2012 season Note about the author: John Heisler is in his 35th year as a member of the University of Notre Dame athletics staff. He was named to his current post of senior associate athletics director for media and broadcast relations in 2004 after spending 16 years as sports information director. He has written or edited eight other books on Notre Dame football, including collaborating with Lou Holtz on The New York Times bestseller The Fighting Spirit. He's a member of the College Sports Information Directors of America Hall of Fame. Thursday, October 25 Fox Sports today published a feature by Greg Couch about Manti Te'o that told volumes about the Notre Dame linebacker. Here are excerpts: Manti Te'o didn't even know Bridget Smith. They were two people from two worlds: A Mormon football star at Notre Dame who is a Hawaiian of Samoan descent. A dying 12-year-old Catholic girl from suburban Detroit. "Dear Mr. and Mrs. Smith." Te'o wrote an emotional letter, via email. Picture a big, tough linebacker sitting at his computer, "definitely crying," as he said, over someone else's pain, some stranger's pain. All he had known about Bridget, all he had been told through a mutual friend, was that Bridget's brain tumor was finally proving too powerful and that she wasn't going to get out of the hospital again. And she loved Notre Dame football and Manti Te'o. "My whole thing was just to reach out and let them know I'm here. I wrote her parents," Te'o said in a private moment the other day. "Just letting them know that the heavenly father is always there. Although it may not seem like it right now, He's always there to help. It was definitely hard to write." On the other end of that email were Brian and Louise Smith. Brian, a Notre Dame alum and fan, and Louise, a