Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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www.BLUEANDGOLD.com PRESEASON 2017 7 UNDER THE DOME upon three things he wished to instill within his teams. "1. Effort — The complete physical explosion of muscle and strength — 100 percent. "2. Execution — The correct tech- nique to increase the chance for success. "3. Endurance — Sustaining the activity to the completion of the play. "Effort, Execution and Endurance meant do it hard, do it right, do it until it is done. Those 'Three E' com- mands were what the word 'INTER- VAL' contained. "If you said 'interval' to a player, he knew immediately what it rep- resented. Not only was it the first page in the playbook, it was enforced by the student manager blowing a whistle four seconds after the start of any practice play. This ingrained giv- ing effort until you heard the whistle. "When Ara asked a room full of young men ready to do battle — 'Can you give Our Lady of Notre Dame five minutes of your best time?' — it would be very hard to say no. The Great Interval and its creation by a great coach was a turning point for all who understood." Parseghian improved from 0-9 to 5-4 in his third season at Northwest- ern (1958), rocketed all the way up to No. 2 in the Associated Press poll at one point in 1959, and even took former Big Ten doormat Wildcats to a No. 1 ranking in 1962 after a 6-0 start. The best was still to come for him at Notre Dame, where more talent combined with leadership, motiva- tion and The Great Interval would intertwine. About 60 years later, those rules still aren't outdated for the 2017 Fighting Irish. ✦ Judging Talent — And More A laundry list of errors or second-guessing from last season's implosion could be assembled. Upon further reflection, one that head coach Brian Kelly believes was overlooked or underrated was basing playing time more on talent than attitude. He emphasized that the 2017 camp was going to concentrate more on intangible traits — mental tough- ness, assignment awareness/execution, follow through, etc. — that possibly can help prevent losing five games like it did last season in which the Irish had a lead in the fourth quarter (and another in which the game was tied). "We're not going to reward [just] talent," Kelly said. "I did that last year — it was a mistake. We'll reward those guys that have an attention to detail, that have a great focus and play with grit. We lost a lot of games last year with guys I did not develop in the right way. We're going to develop them in the right way. "If you're not happy where you are right now in terms of maybe how much time you got, it has nothing to do with your talent. Just focus on those traits and that will get you on the field." The mantra all summer centered on good habits, fundamentals over scheme, process over production, responsibility and setting examples to emulate. "Our captain's took over cleaning," Kelly noted. "No longer did janitors come in and clean the locker rooms. They did it themselves. We bought them vacuums, they cleaned the lockers room … they cleaned up after themselves. So that accountability to them was passed on to some other guys within the locker room." A clean slate in 2017 even included clean-up duties. — Lou Somogyi SIDELINE CENTRAL OFFICIAL SIDELINE POLO SHOP ONLINE AT NDCATALOG.COM