He stares with his arms folded, never showing any emotion. Each week he leads his resurgent team out on the field with a brisk run. He is the best thing to happen to college football in the last 50 years and he knows it. What makes him the best is that he understands his job isn’t finished until Jan. 4, the day after the national championship is determined in the Fiesta Bowl …
The last time Notre Dame met Florida State in the regular season and it meant something, it was 1993 and the Sermon was but a wee lad wearing Notre Dame pajamas and holding an autographed index card from ND quarterback Kevin McDougal. The Seminoles were No. 1 in the country and the Irish were No. 2. We smiled smugly when Notre Dame went ahead 31-17 with 1:39 to play, behind running back Lee Becton’s stellar afternoon. Then we gasped with horror as FSU quarterback Charlie Ward led a furious comeback drive only to be thwarted on the Irish 14-yard-line when time ran out: Notre Dame 31, Florida State 24. We breathed a sigh of relief and thanked God that Lake Dawson had been born. The following week, the Irish lost to Boston College and wound up finishing No. 2 in the country behind Florida State …
That’s the closest Notre Dame has come to a national championship in the last nine years. Now the Irish are 7-0 and No. 3 in the Bowl Championship Series standings, with only two difficult games left in a brutal schedule. The reason they are even close to this position is their stoic head coach, Tyrone Willingham. Willingham has succeeded when no one thought he would, making the country’s most historic football team respectable again and sparking a national debate about the lack of African-American head coaches football coaches in Division I. If there was anyone in the world who could solve the D.C. sniper case, it would be Tyrone Willingham.
Most importantly, however, Willingham has made the Sermon and thousands like us happy Notre Dame fans again. We survived the Ron Powlus debacle, the Bob Davie years and the short-lived tenure of George O’Leary. It’s a good thing we were still in swaddling clothes during the Gerry Faust years. This weekend, we’ll be sitting wearing our “Return to Glory” T-shirt, with a letter in our hand asking quarterback Carlyle Holiday for an autograph on an index card and watching the Irish beating up on the Seminoles. Fortunately, the ghost of Lake Dawson will be on our side.
