Blue and Gold Illustrated

January 2014 Issue

Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football

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T By Dan Murphy he small contingent of Miami University athletic officials who visited South Bend the first week of December needed less than two hours to get what they wanted. The small plane left Indiana bound for the Oxford, Ohio, campus the same afternoon it came with an extra passenger, former Irish offensive coordinator and the new Miami RedHawks head coach Chuck Martin. 1950s before winning a couple national championships at Notre Dame. Miami has been an incubator for other college football greats such as Michigan's Bo Schembechler and Ohio State's Woody Hayes, among others. For Martin, who grew up a Notre Dame fan on Chicago's South Side, Parseghian holds the highest esteem in Miami's long tradition. "He was talking about how Miami has to get this one right," Martin said. "They have to get it back. Just the fact Moving On Offensive coordinator Chuck Martin leaves Irish to join the 'Cradle of Coaches' Martin officially accepted the job the next day, Dec. 4, at a press conference on his new campus. A new job as the head of a program with a long history of creating legendary college coaches in the Midwest was an easy decision for Martin. "It's an awesome, awesome, awesome opportunity," said Martin, a coach never afraid to show enthusiasm or speak his quick-witted, frenetic mind during the four years he spent at Notre Dame. A day before Miami arrived to whisk him away, Martin sat at a local barbershop and heard a former coach from the school discussing the open job. That man was Ara Parseghian, who started his career with the RedHawks in the that Ara Parseghian is talking about the job I was getting ready to take kind of sends chills down my spine." After a 0-12 season in 2013, the Miami team Martin inherits won't be the same program those big names left behind. Still, he felt the chance to help rebuild a once-proud program was too good to turn down. Martin's exit leaves Notre Dame with some opportunities of its own. Head coach Brian Kelly said he doesn't plan to fill the vacancy on his staff until after bowl season, which gives him a few more weeks to figure out who to add and how to shuffle them into a group that remained largely intact the past two years. One option is to promote from within

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