Ara

Great teachers were at one time great students who themselves had great teachers. Parseghian credited the legendary Paul Brown with many of his successful coaching techniques. The enduring lesson that Ara took away from Brown was, “Never leave a game on the practice field on Thursday or Friday.” The translation is, don’t peak early or too soon in advance of the game. Prepare thoroughly, but don’t burn the team out in the process. Save the optimal mental and physical performance for Saturday afternoon when it counts. The winning edge is to make sure that every player is mentally into the game and believes he is better prepared than his opponent. It is a hallmark of Ara’s teams to a man. They believed that their coach was the smartest and best prepared person on the field. So, they had the edge going in. With that understanding, it made practicing during the week easier to endure and execution on game days more effective.

Well before he arrived in South Bend, Ara had made the transition from being a student of the coaching craft to becoming an innovator and a teacher himself. He had two personality traits working for him, and both had been obvious from his youth: intensity and leadership. From Brown he learned organization and management and added these to his portfolio.

Unlikely Friends

The moment you are named the head football coach at Notre Dame your popularity spikes, but so does your sense of isolation. Ara needed a confidant and a trusted friend to help him negotiate the tricky tides at Notre Dame. An outsider wouldn’t know some of the stress points, like historical salaries, the condition of facilities and equipment, or how many scholarships were in play, who could influence scheduling, disciplinary concerns, and the rules for hiring assistants without the help of an “insider.” Essentially, Joe Doyle, the sports editor at the South Bend Tribune, became that insider for Ara. The trust developed between Ara and Joe from the outset continued throughout Parseghian’s coaching tenure. They made an odd couple to be sure; the head coach and the sportswriter could well have been antagonists. It happens.

But the two met for coffee quite often at Milt’s Grill in downtown South Bend, around 5:30 a.m. before the coaches’ meeting on campus at 7:00. Doyle’s private counsel was invaluable to the new coach, especially when it came to understanding local South Bend customs or the Byzantine traditions of the Catholic Church as practiced on campus. Sometimes Joe simply offered friendly, practical advice. For example, Ara was quite concerned when halfback Nick Eddy wanted to get married during his junior season; Joe thought it might work out just fine, and it did. Joe claimed their friendship was built on one simple rule: “I never told Ara how to coach and he never told me what to write.”

A Providential Arrival

In 1964, Notre Dame was desperate for a coach who could return to the tradition of winning football games, but doing that with a view toward maintaining high standards in the face of more confining rules that were emerging from the NCAA. Ara Parseghian’s self-delivery to Notre Dame was nothing less than providential.

The highly respected sports information director at Notre Dame, Roger Valdiserri, who started in 1966, got to know the coach extremely well as he crafted the team’s public information and simultaneously guarded the Notre Dame “dogma.” He offered me this insightful reflection after sixty years of working closely with Ara, “When you are around Ara you feel like you’re at a disadvantage. You might be driving the same make and model car, but through some strange quirk of fate, you figure his came off the assembly line with a bigger engine.”

Jim Leahy was a player for Ara. His Notre Dame football roots run deep. He was the son of Notre Dame coaching legend Frank Leahy and later the father of two-time Notre Dame Football Captain Ryan Leahy. He left no room for doubt in his own reflection on Ara’s arrival, “My father had tremendous respect for Ara. We all did.”