Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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WHERE HAVE YOU GONE? before surviving. Unlike his older brother Kerry — who received a football scholarship to Notre Dame as a quarterback in 1974 — he wasn't a premier athlete. He went out for a sport for the first time during his senior year at Dos Pueblos. "I figured that was it," Moriarty said. "I wasn't going to play ball anymore." Upon his 1977 graduation, Moriarty's goal was to become a contractor, and he began working in construction and framing houses. He also found solace at the local YMCA, where he worked off his internal rage, including the divorce of his parents that fractured his home life. He became so devoted to weight training that by the end of 1977 he had grown to 6-1, nearly 200 pounds and placed third in the Mr. Teenage Califor- nia competition. When Kerry returned to Santa Bar- thing just started clicking," Moriarty said. His father figure in Los Angeles, gram that finished No. 8 in the junior college ranks. "I went out for fullback and every- Scott Brady, a movie and television ac- tor, was a close friend of Notre Dame athletics director Ed "Moose" Krause, and informed him of the ultimate sleeper prospect. "This was when a lot of kids were recruited from JCs, especially USC," Moriarty said. "My dream was to go to USC, but they wanted to make me a linebacker." After returning from a recruiting trip bara from Notre Dame in 1978, he was astounded while witnessing his late blooming little brother's frame and movement during a pickup basketball game at the University of California Santa Barbara. "He told me, 'Wow, you're an athlete! You should go out for football,'" the younger Moriarty recalled. "He called up the City College football coach, who looked at me and said I'd make a great guard at 6-1, 240. "I said, 'No, I want to play fullback.'" at Santa Barbara City College, and in 1979 he played football for the first time in three years, starring for a pro- At age 20, Moriarty enrolled in 1978 AN AMAZING JOURNEY to Hawaii, Moriarty was stunned to discover Notre Dame assistant foot- ball coach Bill Meyers paying him a visit. The word had trickled in from Krause about the junior college pros- pect whose brother attended Notre Dame. After watching about a handful of Moriarty's plays on tape, Meyers took Moriarty aside and told him, "We don't take junior college transfers — and we want you." "I said 'Holy Christmas,'" recalled Moriarty, who was offered a scholar- ship in early February 1980 by Notre Dame head coach Dan Devine, leading him to cancel a scheduled official visit to Washington a week later. "I knew that I was a good enough athlete to play right away, like a lot of kids think, but I didn't know the plays," Moriarty said. "I was naïve." He carved his initial niche as a 240-pound special teams demon in 1980 — "I was mad at the world. I was an angry kid. I was a nut" — but his