Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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WHERE HAVE YOU GONE? opposite of everyone else's. He said, 'Just leave it alone and it will be fine.' If they had done surgery, you never would have heard of me. To aid the healing I did a lot of swimming, rested, and in six to eight weeks it gradually returned to normal. By the time fall came, I was fine." The physical setback was overcome, but there was still a psychological hurdle. "A few days before our first game at Wisconsin, Ara said, 'You have the skills. If you make a mistake, don't worry about it. You're my quarter- back.'" Huarte said. "… I needed to hear that because I had not played much for three years." In the 1964 opener at rainy Wis- consin, Huarte passed for 270 yards, highlighted by 61- and 42-yard scor- ing tosses to Snow, who would finish fifth in the Heisman balloting, in a 31-7 romp. The two continued to thrive and a new Irish legend was born en route to a 9-0 start and No. 1 ranking be- fore a gut-wrenching and controver- sial 11th-hour 20-17 loss at USC in the finale. Notre Dame finished No. 3 in the 1964 Associated Press poll, but the team was awarded the MacArthur Bowl (emblematic of a national title) and laid the groundwork to future prosperity. News of receiving the Heisman back then was not the pomp and circum- stance it is today. "It was a shout down the hall from a guy named George Keenan, who was a roommate of mine on the second floor in Walsh Hall," Huarte said. "He answered the phone and he shouted down the hall, 'John, you got it!' "I got on the phone and [sports in- formation director] Mr. Charlie Cal- lahan with his raspy voice confirmed that I had been awarded the Heisman Trophy and I would be going to New York with my parents." RIGHT PLACE, RIGHT TIME Despite the distance from Califor- nia, Huarte grew up listening to Notre Dame games on the radio because his high school coach at Mater Dei was a Notre Dame graduate and his older brother David was a 1960 graduate, too. "The fact that Notre Dame was struggling … well, maybe they needed some better players and I might be able to help," Huarte said of not hav- ing misgivings about his selection. "I didn't really think too much about that. "It was quite common that there were articles in the newspapers and around campus that maybe Notre Dame should de-emphasize football because they couldn't play with the big schools. I was kind of surprised about that. Being a young person, it's pretty hard to measure that. "Gradually over my freshman and sophomore years, I began thinking we have some pretty good talent. I kept thinking that it was a lot of small breakdowns that were causing us to lose games." The epiphany arrived with Par- seghian. "It takes a lot of forces on the outside — coaches, opportunity, teammates