Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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UNDER THE DOME For Mike Sanford, the Fiesta Bowl might just have represented a case of the path chosen and the one not taken. The Notre Dame offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach concluded his first season with the Irish, but he just as easily could have been in charge of the Ohio State offense at the Fiesta Bowl. Sanford, who coached at Boise State in 2014 after working at Stanford for three years, was a candidate to replace Tom Herman when the former Buckeyes offensive coordinator left to take the head coaching job at Houston last offseason. Sanford, whose ties with Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer run deep, admitted Dec. 28 it was a possibility. "Yeah, there were conversations," Sanford said. "Absolutely. It was a great opportunity and on both sides of the spectrum it just wasn't the right fit from a people standpoint." Sanford said he worked for years trying to return to Boise State, where he served as a backup quarterback from 2000-04. After be - ing on the staff for only one season, he wasn't looking to leave right away. "It really shaped who I was as a player and then leading into my coaching career I had a chance to be around some of the best coaches in the business: Chris Petersen, Mark Helfrich, Dirk Koetter — some really good coaches," Sanford said. "I wanted to be a part of that legacy of coaching. I've been trying to get back to Boise for 10, 11 years. My family moved there, we had a son that was born there dur - ing the season. "It was kind of one of those years where we wanted to stay put. We really didn't think about leaving." Once Irish head coach Brian Kelly called him when a position opened up on his staff around National Signing Day, he had to reconsider. "Notre Dame is a place that, to me, I thought is the perfect place to do college athletics," he said. "Having been at a place like Stanford where you can sell an unbelievable degree, a top-15, top-20 degree in all of collegiate America, that's a big part. At the end of the day, we're recruiting, we're sales people, we're selling a product and you want to feel really good about the product you're selling to a family in terms of the degree you're going to get. "So that component of Notre Dame was really important. … As a coach, you want to be part of a place that has expectations that maybe at times are unrealistic because you want to stay on the edge and have that chip on your shoulder on a daily basis and demand that from your players. "I feel like Notre Dame has always been that place where you don't play for a conference championship or play to get into a confer - ence championship game. You're striving and straining to do everything you can to play in the national championship game. That's what we're — on a daily basis — working toward." That's what Sanford has been working to - ward during the past year, but the postseason served as a reminder of another course he could have taken. — Andrew Owens FIESTA BOWL REPRESENTED WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN FOR MIKE SANFORD