'Mr. Parseghian is a little bit
Napoleonic, but he sure knows what you
have to do to win. "-A Notre Dame player.
Ara Parseghian's first informal contact with the Notre Dame student
body was made at a basketball game. He showed up as a spectator and was
cheered for 10 minutes. Later there was an arranged rally at Sorin
Hall, the senior dorm. This was February, and 2,500 students stood in
the snow and heard the words they wanted to hear. "We will win football
games," said the new coach. The rally started in an uproar and
proceeded directly to bedlam, where it remained for quite a while. Such
a hysterical welcome was understandable, considering the pathetic state
of Notre Dame football in the late 1950s and early 1960s. After having
winning records in 63 of their first 67 seasons, the Fighting Irish
went through a serio-comic era of six nonwinning years in eight. But
Parseghian, an intense, vibrant man who had uplifted the football
program at Northwestern, was heralded as the one who would deliver
Notre Dame from the oppression of recent seasons. Notre Damers, reared
on success, hoped to see it again in the era of Ara, and passions were
aroused in every corner of the gorgeous campus in the winter, spring,
and fall of 1964.
By the time Notre Dame rattled off nine straight victories and came
within seconds of beating Southern Cal on the last day of the season,
the Notre Dame populace was sure that the Fighting Irish were back
where they belonged. Parseghian, as expected, was giving them something
they had not had in years-excitement and triumph.
Parseghian's achievement in his first year was all the more stunning
because he accomplished a 9-1 season with practically the same material
that had won but two games the year before. Parseghian's shrewd
psychological sense and motivational genius had something to do with
it. His indefatigable drive was another important element. But perhaps
the most significant ingredient for Notre Dame's winning recipe that
season was what Parseghian called "personnel alignment." He explained,
"You've got to put the right man in the right job."
This preoccupied his time during 1964 when he shifted to Notre Dame
after eight years at Northwestern. Parseghian made a split end out of
Jack Snow, a player who had previously been used as a defensive end and
sometime halfback. Coupled with quarterback John Huarte, this gave
Notre Dame a devastating passing combination. Parseghian took a
halfback of mammoth size, 240-pound Paul Costa, and turned him into a
defensive end. This resulted in one of the strongest defensive lines in
the country . He took fullback Pete Duranko and first made him a guard,
then a linebacker, to shore up the backfield defense. He took the
fastest halfback on the team and made a safety man out of him and made
defensive halfbacks out of two of his quarterbacks. At one point during
the season, Parseghian used one of his players as backup man at two
positions-quarterback and split end.
Once satisfied with the alignment of players, Parseghian put them
through torturous drills. Established on a command post on top of an
old construction scaffold of metal tubing, Parseghian was a mercilous
tyrant of all he surveyed. The players sweated under his watchful eye
and wilted under his sharp tongue. Parseghian even scheduled a mile run
by all players for 4 p.m. Sundays "to give them a sweat, loosen up
their muscles before the Monday afternoon practice." The father of one
of the players remarked with admiration: "None of the boys go astray on
Saturday night; they're too tired. Parseghian gets them back to the
campus and makes sure they're tired on sunday night, too."
Parseghian's stern regimen was accepted-and even appreciated-by most of
the football players. "We were waiting for something like this to
happen," said fullback Joe Farrell. "You want the discipline. You want
the hard work. As seniors, we were ready for him. We were tired of
losing."
There were isolated cases of rebellion against the new order. When
confronted by these, Parseghian at once established his supreme
authority. On one occasion when one of Notre Dame's best players
revolted against the Parseghian system, he was "fired" by the new
coach. "You've had your chance," Parseghian told him. "As of this
moment, you're off the squad."
Parseghian not only worked on their bodies, but their minds. He
established a high emotional climate at Notre Dame. "This can be a
successful team only if it is a proud team," he told his players. And
all signs pointed to it, literally. At the entrance to the Notre Dame
locker room was a huge sign in red letters that said, "Pride." On the
wall of the locker room was a chart of the points scored by Notre
Dame's opponents since 1946. Circled in red was the 1946 total of 24
with a note next to it: "Can you match this?"
Parseghian's ability to play on emotions was reminiscent of Knute
Rockne-and in fact, Parseghian probably came closer to the old Master
in that respect than any other Notre Dame coach. Parseghian possessed
eloquence beyond description but did not always have to speak to
communicate with his players. As a friend explained, " Ara is one of
those guys who can communicate through their very pores." His electric
presence made locker rooms sizzle with emotion when he did speak,
though. "Parseghian ranks, indisputably, as one of the most galvanic
locker-room personalities since Rockne," a writer pointed out. Before
one game against Purdue, Ara sent the team roaring out on the field
with a bit of psychological inspiration truly worthy of Rockne.
He turned to halfback Nick Eddy and said so the whole team could hear:
"Do you remember what you were doing at this time in 1951?" Before Eddy
could answer, Parseghian said :
"You were seven years old and dreaming of the day when you could play
football at Notre Dame. You were seven years old- and that was the last
time that Notre Dame lost to Purdue in Notre Dame Stadium." The
Fighting Irish that afternoon crushed Purdue 34-15 in Notre Dame
Stadium.
During his career he was not above using an old psychological play that
was similar to the purest corn from the Rockne recipe book. When
Parseghian was head coach of Miami of Ohio, back in 1954, he was
preparing his team to play Indiana, a formidable antagonist from the
Big Ten. Miami's formal work-out took place on Indiana's field the
Friday afternoon before the game, and Parseghian brought along a set of
practice uniforms that looked like hand-me-downs from Rockne's era.
Wearing these old, torn uniforms, the Miami team went through the
workout under the haughty stares of Indiana players, looking like a
bunch of ragamuffins. The next day Miami turned up in gorgeous game
uniforms and-suddenly spruced up and full of purpose-upset
overconfident Indiana 6-0.. As he gained more experience, Parseghian
became more subtle and more sophisticated in his psychological
approach. "There are great ranges to explore here," he said later at
Notre Dame. "Ranges above and beyond what we realize. Emotional
peaks-the ability to do things you just wouldn't realize you could do."
Along with the intangible influence of the psyche, Parseghian made some
very visual influences on the field at Notre Dame. He revised the
offense to such an extent that it was not recognizable from one year to
the next. By 1964 Parseghian had installed a formation modeled on the
professionals with a wide-open passing game. He simplified the
play-calling system to make it less confusing for the players. "In the
pressure of a game," he said, "you don't have time to listen to
somebody yell '32' and ponder which hole is the 'three-hole' and which
back is the 'two-back.' We just describe our plays in the most accurate
way possible-like 'power sweep right."' The unconventional Parseghian
opened football practice to everyone in the school, not just those
players on football scholarships, and got a tremendous response.
The campus vibrated with interest, and the players tingled with
excitement. Remembers Snow: "Parseghian would give us a chance to show
what we could do. He'd be in there with us, doing exercises, snapping
the ball from center, showing us how to block and run. He told us we
were good, made us believe in ourselves, gave us confidence." The
coaching staff caught the Parseghian fever, too. He had brought in
three of his aides from Northwestern and blended them harmoniously with
the Notre Dame assistants already on hand.
"First thing," recalls offensive backfield coach Tom Pagna, "was to get
the staff to believe in each other; then the squad to believe in the
staff; and to believe in themselves. They developed a camaraderie. The
offense cheered the defense and the reverse. You could see the feeling
develop, feel the change. It began with maybe we can win, and it became
we are going to win."
There was no doubt that Parseghian had serious intentions of remaking
Notre Dame into a champion, ignoring that old adage, "Coaches don't
build houses," the optimistic Parseghian did just that before his squad
played a single game. It was obvious that he meant to stick around a
long time at South Bend.
Parseghian was in a hurry for success. He announced immediately upon
his entrance to Notre Dame that he was seeking a national championship.
He was denied it his first year by virtue of that loss to Southern Cal,
but eventually he succeeded in winning two national titles for the
Irish -in 1966 and 1973.
In a flash, Parseghian raised the Irish back to the national prominence
enjoyed in the golden eras of Knute Rockne and Frank Leahy. His teams
finished in the Top Ten nine of his 11 years at Notre Dame and wound up
in the Top Twenty the other two. Parseghian's Notre Dame record of
95-17-4 exceeded the victories of Leahy and approached the stature of
Rockne.
Parseghian's very makeup seemed streamlined for time-saving measures:
black hair cropped close to his head so he could comb it with his
fingers, a clip-on tie, loafers without laces, trousers with elastic
waistbands. Time was his enemy, he insisted, and he beat it in a race
hands down.
"You think in terms of objective and goal, and what you're trying to
beat is time," he would say. "There is just so much of it. Every minute
wasted is a minute lost forever. .."
For this philosophy, Parseghian suffered in a personal purgatory. His
working tempo was superhuman, and his sleeping hours were wildly
irregular. Sometimes after games, it would take him 32 hours before he
could relax enough to sleep. Finally, a doctor persuaded him to take
some tranquilizers at one point. But even those could not fight his
self-destructive body chemistry ."It's not easy. I mean I'll take one,
and it'll put me to sleep for a couple, three hours, then I get up and
take another. But I find I get five, oh, 5 1/2 hours of sleep. I get up
early anyway. Five-thirty is my time that I get up during the season.
Some games I may sleep late, 'til 6: 30 if we've had success and it's
easier sleeping."
The buildup to games created a unique torture in his system. "Before a
game, his tension builds up almost to a point of suffering," explained
his wife, Kathleen. "He has to choke back the tears. "
It was pure irony that a man of such makeup would accept the ferocious
pressures of the Notre Dame job. Parseghian insisted that it was not
masochism that led him to South Bend. "I have this tendency to leave
good things (Northwestern) and go on to other things that are
attractive-that are attractive, I guess, because they are so tough," he
explained. "The basic thing was that I said to myself, 'If I don't have
the courage to take this job, then am I worthy of the one that I have?
I mean, if I don't have the tenacity, the guts, the willingness to
accept this responsiblity, under the so-called trying situation that
exists, then am I really worthy of the job that I have?"
Notre Dame represented a symbol of success to Parseghian, and he
hustled to land the coaching job. Notre Dame officials were impressed
by his work at Northwestern, and more particularly impressed with the
fact that he had beaten Notre Dame four straight times. Including his
time at Miami, Parseghian had established a 74-41-2 record when he
applied for the Notre Dame position.
Parseghian had some unsettling moments before he finally swore
allegiance to the Notre Dame colors. While negotiations were going on
for Parseghian's services, newspapers broke the story that he was
already sewed up for the Fighting Irish family, but this was not the
total truth. A press conference was called for what everyone assumed
would be the announcement of his hiring, but Parseghian walked out of
it and returned to Northwestern. There had been a disagreement with
Father Edmund Joyce, chairman of the faculty board in control of
athletics. Parseghian later laughed it off with some of his
Armenian-bred humor: "Father Joyce wanted a shamrock on the new
helmets, and I wanted a camel crossing the desert."
The real reason of the disagreement was never disclosed, but whatever
it was, it was eventually resolved. Parseghian returned in a few days
and signed a contract with Notre Dame. Moose Krause, the personable
Notre Dame athletic director, introduced Parseghian to the alumni with
a quip. "He should be with us a long time; after all, he signed twice."
It seemed pure destiny that Ara Raoul Parseghian had fulfilled the
blind prophecy of a high school yearbook. "He will become football
coach at Notre Dame," said the editor of the yearbook at South Akron
High. The writer had no fact on which to base his judgment, only
admiration for Parseghian's sheer intensity. Parseghian just looked
like someone who was going places-fast. "I have to keep moving,"
Parseghian once said, and that just about summed up his life's work.
Perhaps if Parseghian's parents had known the tempo his life would
take, they very likely would not have called him Ara. He was named
after a ninth century B.C. Armenian king who strangled in his sleep
while dreaming he was being chased by a roasted goat.. During his years
as a football coach, sleep was the least necessary of Parseghian's
habits. An insomniac, he rarely got more than three hours at a stretch.
Parseghian was born on May 21, 1923, in Akron, Ohio, the second of
three children to a French mother and an Armenian father. His mother
apparently yearned for a girl, for she kept Ara in pinafores and long
black curls for a painfully long time. He got out of the feminine
attire finally when a sister was born two years later. Ara and his
older brother, Gerard, were at first steered away from rugged boys'
games and pushed toward the arts. Neither liked it very much. "My
father wanted my brother-my poor brother-to be a violinist," says Ara
with a grimace. Actually, the family would probably have settled for
almost anything but football. Parseghian's parents regarded it as a
game for ruffians, but Ara's natural inclinations eventually proved too
strong for even parental rule. Parseghian tried out secretly for the
South Akron High School team and finally convinced his reluctant paren
ts to relax their militant stand against the game he loved so much.
They did, and this decision ultimately led him to higher levels of
football competence. After a short time at Akron University and a hitch
in the navy, where he played under coaching master Paul Brown at Great
Lakes, Parseghian entered Miami University at Oxford, Ohio. Here,
Parseghian was honored as an all-Ohio halfback and received All-
American mention in 1947, when Miami played in the Sun Bowl. After his
graduation in June, 1949, Parseghian turned his back on an offer from
the National Football League and joined Brown when his Cleveland team
was tearing up the old All-America Conference. But a hip injury brought
an end to his pro career after just one year.
Married and out of work, Parseghian went looking for employment. "There
was only one thing that Ara didn't want to do," says his brother
Gerard, "and that was coach. He thought coaches had to be nuts to put
up with the stuff they did." Parseghian's wife, Katie, a college
sweetheart, confirms this thinking. "I don't think Ara really ever
thought about going into coaching in those days. I don't think he
really wanted all that pressure. It was just something that evolved."
The evolution took place when Parseghian was offered the job as
freshman coach at Miami under Woody Hayes. "I guess they liked the kind
ofwork Ara did the previous spring when he was a student assistant
there," says his wife. Parseghian accepted Hayes' offer-and everything
happened at once. The freshman team went undefeated, and coaching "got
into his blood," says his wife. Then Hayes left to coach Ohio State,
and Parseghian suddenly found himself as the boss of the Miami team at
the tender age of 27, the youngest head coach in the school's history.
Ara stayed at Miami from 1951 through 1955 and compiled a fancy 39-6-1
record. Then he joined Northwestern at a desperate time in the school's
football history. The Wildcats had won only one Big Ten game in three
years. Teams were dropping off the schedule because of dwindling
crowds, and players were dropping off the team because of dwindling
interest. The school newspaper went so far as to suggest that the
Wildcats drop out of the prestigious Big Ten Conference, but Parseghian
's arrival changed this type of negative thinking. Parseghian could
barely find enough players for a full-scale scrimmage at one point and
suffered through an unbelievable injury jinx, but he still managed to
match Northwestern's best record in 20 years. Parseghian's Northwestern
teams, despite a general lack of depth through his eight years there,
managed to rise to the top of the national polls at a couple of
junctures and twice ran up winning streaks of six games. The Wildcats
became giant-killers under their intense, fiery leader and drew
national attention for several upsets, including a big one over Ohio
State in 1958.
Along with the victories over Notre Dame, this stunning triumph was
among Parseghian's sweetest memories at Northwestern. The Wildcats had
lost all nine games the year before, and Ohio State was the Big Ten and
Rose Bowl champions. "They hadn't lost in 15 games," Parseghian
recalls. The memory of past humiliation spurred Northwestern on. Ohio
State had routed Parseghian's team 47-6 the year before, and Ara felt
that "Hayes had rubbed our noses in the dirt. I think the score was
around 40-6 or 47-6, and he was playing his first ball club-his top
kids!-against us for 55 or 58 minutes. In the last two or three
minutes, he put in three or four ball clubs, one to go in and run one
play, another to go in and run the next play. Then the next day you
read where he was very tolerant with us and that he'd played 50-some
boys. That irritated me - I'll be honest with you. I was very happy to
beat him."
Northwestern's 21-0 victory over a far superior Ohio State team gave
the Buckeyes their only defeat of the season and went down as one of
the biggest upsets in Big Ten history. "We just put a man on every
man's nose, guards and tackles, and let 'em hit," Parseghian says. "No
tricks! No gimmicks! Just a superhuman effort! It was unbelievable!"
But Parseghian was well aware that Northwestern would not be beating
Ohio State and teams of that caliber regularly. The Wildcats might rise
up on occasion but would always slip backwards because of a lack of
talent. This basic problem could not be cured by time. Thus Parseghian
moved on to new fields at Notre Dame. The transition was not easy at
first, he admits.
"There were natural transition problems that you would find at any
university. Things like: understanding university policy; finding out
who your helpers are; working in a new staff and assigning staff
members certain recruiting territories. The job was further complicated
by the fact that Notre Dame is a national institution. I knew that
Notre Dame recruited on a national basis, but it was a great
revelation, seeing it. It is a staggering experience to go through one
week's mail."
Parseghian wasted little time getting the players he wanted-and just as
quickly told them what he wanted out of them. "My first impression, he
was very frank and forward," recalls safetyman Tom Schoen, a member of
the first class recruited by Parseghian. "Extremely frank and forward!
He outlined what he planned for X-number of years and what would be
expected of us in return for the privilege of attending the
university."
It was believed that Parseghian hoped to have a national champion in
four years, but he was ahead of his timetable. He won it in three-and
almost won it in one! The 1964 season was at once the most exhilarating
and most depressing year for Notre Dame's new coach. After winning the
first nine games of the year, Notre Dame had a 17-0 lead over Southern
Cal at half time and the national championship all but won. But the
Trojans made a remarkable comeback in the second half and pulled out a
20-17 victory in the last 93 seconds to end Parseghian's first year on
a torturous note. It was easily one of the most bitter moments of his
coaching career, but Parseghian gave humor that old college try ."I
prefer to think of our record as 9 3/4 to 1 not 9 and 1, " he quipped.
By 1965 quarterback John Huarte and end Jack Snow had graduated, and
the loss of one of the nation's best passing combinations slowed down
the Parseghian express a bit. Opposing teams, knowing full well that
Notre Dame only had a running game, stacked the line of scrimmage with
eight, nine, and sometimes even 10 players. "On third and nine, we were
in jail," said Parseghian. Still, against these odds, Parseghian's team
had a 7-2-1 record, losing its two games by a mere total of 13 points.
Parseghian perhaps cherished this season as much as any.
"It was a year I was really proud of because we won seven, lost two and
tied one with a team that really didn't have a passing combination, so
we had to play our guts out on defense," Parseghian recalls. "Our next
to last game, we lost to Michigan State, 12-7, here at the stadium.
Michigan State was undefeated and stayed that way (if you don't count
the Rose Bowl loss). So that wasn't so bad. The final week we went down
to Miami under very similar conditions to the Southern Cal trip of
1964. Hot, humid, a drastic change of climate from the cold midwest. We
played to a tie. Everyone was up in arms because we didn't throw the
ball more. We knew we couldn't throw. Because of our personnel, we had
to play possession-type game."
Finally, Parseghian had his national championship in 1966, although it
was a bit tainted in some eyes. Notre Dame won nine games that year.
But a 10-10 tie with Michigan State diminished the accomplishments of
the season, and there was some opinion that the Fighting Irish did not
deserve to be all alone at the top. In some quarters there were votes
for co-champions. And some even went so far as to proclaim Michigan
State the national champion by virtue of Parseghian's unpopular
decision to play for a tie instead of a victory. In the last 75
seconds, Notre Dame had the ball on its 30 yard line but ran
ball-control plays to eat up the clock instead of trying to score. This
procedure, ordered by Parseghian, was greeted by boos from the stands
and barbs from the press. Rushed from all sides by critics, Parseghian
backpedaled and explained his reasoning. "If we had gotten field
position, we would have gone for it. Back in our territory , I wasn't
going to make it easy for them. For an interception would have given
them a field goal shot."
It was a good thing for Notre Dame that a game still remained on its
schedule. The Fighting Irish proved their excellence with a 51-0
drubbing of Southern Cal, and this sealed their position atop the wire
service polls.
It was years before Parseghian could erase the bitter memory of 1964
and lose his reputation as the coach who played for a tie in the
national championship game. For all his success at Notre Dame, he was
sometimes branded as a man who could not win the big ones. He had lost
two of three bowl games and somehow failed to complete a season without
a loss or a tie through 1972. In 1973, however, Ara once and for all
established himself as king of the college coaching hill. The Fighting
Irish won all their games that year, including a 24-23 decision over
Alabama in the Sugar Bowl that decided the national championship. Not
only did Notre Dame complete a perfect season, but the Irish did it
with a dramatic flair at the end, using a daring pass play deep in
their territory to cement the game. The gamble, which easily could have
turned in Alabama's favor had the pass been intercepted, was seen as a
kind of vindication of Parseghian's distressing caution against
Michigan State in 1966. The victory over Alabama was described by Notre
Dame athletic director Moose Krause as "the most important game since
Ara has been here."
One year later, with almost as much importance attached to their
rematch in the Orange Bowl, Notre Dame beat Alabama again in a game
that was staged with special dramatic effects. Notre Dame, slipping in
the polls after a humiliation by Southern Cal, showed amazing
resiliency by rising up to beat the Crimson Tide 13-11 and thus deny
Bear Bryant's boys a national championship. This was Parseghian's last
game, for he had announced his retirement after 11 years due to the
exquisite pressures of the Notre Dame job. It was fitting that
Parseghian went out on top, for he had started there. And it was
fitting that he had given happiness to Notre Dame's followers, for he
had given happiness to its players.
"He was a fantastic individual," says Terry Hanratty, one of the fine
quarterbacks produced by Parseghian. "Playing for him was a real joy,
both on and off the field."
Jack Snow found him communicative, a quality not discovered in any
great quantity among the nation's top coaches. "He had a staff that
could communicate exceptionally well with the athletes. That's probably
the most important thing to have."
"The thing that impressed me most about Parseghian was that he didn't
hide behind excuses," says Huarte. "In his first year, he could have
made excuses for the Southern Cal loss. The way it turned out, there
were about seven things that happened in the last quarter, and a lot of
them were judgment situations. It would have been very easy for him to
question the officiating, but he took the entire blame himself. That's
what I remember more about Ara than anything else-his style and class."
Jim Seymour, an end of the late 1960s, calls Parseghian "not only one
of the finest coaches I've ever been associated with, but one of the
finest gentlemen. He does not forget you after you leave. I know a lot
of ballplayers that have left other schools and had an empty feeling.
But Ara kept in constant touch with his former ballplayers. If there
was something he could help you with, he was more than willing to do
it. This is what made him so unique. He's such a warm person after you
get to know him; sometimes he puts on a cold front, but if you know the
man, you know that he's happy for you when you're successful. Even when
the chips are down, he'll go to bat for you. He's just a real beautiful
person. Guys really looked up to him."
Tom Gatewood, a star receiver of the 1970s, thought of Parseghian as
"the most complete college football coach in the country ...speaking
not only of his ability as a coach, but also his ability to deal with
people. Our team wasn't regional in our schedule or our makeup, meaning
it came from all walks of life and religion and from all parts of the
country. Ara dealt with all kinds of people, and all kinds of problems
came up while he was there. ..and his door was always open. There was
never any standoffishness on his part. The greatest thing he gave me
was the incentive to work hard, and he gave me the opportunity through
an athletic grant-in-aid to achieve my athletic potential. I was a good
student when I went there, but I was a better student when I left, and
I was a better person as a result of him. You came into his office-and
it was almost mandatory to come in and talk to him at least once a
month. He'd always have a log sheet of not only my per-game catches and
yardage, but he also had my academic records for the month. He was
always abreast of your progress in the classrooms. He didn't want you
to play for him if you weren't doing well in school. ..."
Parseghian always felt that the "father complex" was very important in
molding young players. But, actually, he became more than a second
father to his players. He became a brother and a tackling dummy as
well. Instead of sitting comfortably in an ivory tower, Parseghian came
down into the trenches with his troops, not only rubbing elbows, but
banging heads. He led calisthenics, ran pass patterns, and occasionally
got racked up by his great defensive backs. "I can't coach from a
tower," Parseghian once explained his seemingly masochistic impulses.
"I must be in the huddle. I must be on the line. I must be in the
action. I must be - I must feel a part of it."
And that, perhaps more than anything else, explained his extravagant
success.
