Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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WHERE HAVE YOU GONE? in the Heisman as a senior and started (34) and won (29) more games than anyone else at QB under Parseghian. Yet Parseghian's lone Heisman re- cipient came in his first at-bat with senior John Huarte. He and classmate, receiver and fellow California native Jack Snow manifested individually the collective renaissance of one of Notre Dame's most memorable seasons ever. Huarte had logged approximately five minutes of playing time during an injury-riddled sophomore season for a 5-5 team in 1962, head coach Joe Kuharich's final campaign. The 2-7 implosion the following year under interim head coach Hugh Devore saw Huarte finish the season as the No. 3 quarterback, behind Frank Budka and Sandy Bonvechio. It marked the fifth straight season in which Notre Dame had failed to finish above .500, and 1964 didn't look much better even with the arrival of first-year head coach Parseghian from Northwestern. "Lack of a consistently good quar- terback could again prevent Notre Dame from having a successful sea- son," wrote the 1963 Notre Dame Foot- ball Review, previewing the 1964 sea- son. PREPARATION MEETS OPPORTUNITY Huarte and little-used halfback Snow envisioned the future differ- ently. Anaheim native Huarte and Long Beach resident Snow saw an op- portunity to carpe diem — and it actu- ally occurred two years earlier when the backup sophomores watched Par- seghian's No. 3 Northwestern team stomp the Irish 35-6. "We were watching his quarterback, Tommy Myers, throw to a guy named Paul Flatley," Huarte recalled. "Jack and I were not being used and as we watched the other team advance the ball with the passing attack, we would kind of nod to each other with the full knowledge that we could do the same thing." While establishing himself as the starting QB during the 1964 spring, Huarte also suffered an injury late in the process that jeopardized his foot- ball future. "The first three doctors said there had to be surgery," Huarte said. "Ara Parseghian then asked [assistant coach] Tom Pagna to drive me to Chi- cago, where we could see a specialist friend of his from his days at North- western. "The specialist's decision was the For The Record • The 10.05 yards per pass attempt (2,062 yards on 205 throws) John Huarte averaged in 1964 is a Notre Dame record that still stands for a minimum of 100 attempts. Kevin McDougal's 1993 season is second at 9.69 yards. • Huarte averaged 18.1 yards per completion in 1964, another school standard (minimum 50 completions) that remains. • The 28‑6 victory versus Stanford in which Huarte passed for 300 yards, marked Notre Dame's first‑ever win in which its quarterback reached 300 yards through the air. • Until Huarte's 2,062 yards passing in 1964, the most yards a Notre Dame quarterback had ever passed for in a season was 1,374 by Bob Williams for the 1949 national champs. — Lou Somogyi