Ara: The Life and Legacy of a Notre Dame Legend―The Authorized Biography of Coach Ara Parseghian - Hardcover

Hubbard, Mark O.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0268208514 ISBN 13: 9780268208516

Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press, 2024

Synopsis

Ara: The Life and Legacy of a Notre Dame Legend captures the personality, courage, and character of a great man who faced adversity on and off the field.

Through his unprecedented access to Ara Parseghian’s personal files, author Mark O. Hubbard explores the coach’s innovative philosophy, organization, strategy, tactics, and motivational techniques with details to satisfy even the most knowledgeable football aficionado.

Hubbard chronicles Ara’s childhood and Catholic upbringing, his success as a football player, and the development of his coaching credentials at Miami of Ohio and Northwestern before delving into his sensational career at the University of Notre Dame.

From the moment Ara arrived on campus, the student body and the players were electrified, and Ara’s first season concluded with a dramatic reversal of the Fighting Irish’s fortunes as they competed for the national title. The Hall of Famer remains one of the most successful football coaches in Notre Dame history, amassing a career record of 95-17-4 and leading the Fighting Irish to undisputed national championships in 1966 and 1973.

After retiring from coaching, Ara became a successful businessman and television commentator, but his finest hours were spent in humanitarian causes, raising millions of dollars for medical research after members of his family were stricken with multiple sclerosis and Niemann-Pick Type C.

Peppered with historical context and humor, this lively biography of a Notre Dame legend will delight all sports fans, providing a chance to revisit college football’s golden age.

About this title

About the Authors

Mark O. Hubbard is the author of Undisputed: Notre Dame, National Champions 1966 and the co-author of Forgotten Four: Notre Dame’s Greatest Backfield and the 1953 Undefeated Season.

Rocky Bleier is a former Notre Dame Fighting Irish running back and four time Super Bowl champion.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

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.”

(excerpted from chapter 10)

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0268208514
• ISBN 13: 9780268208516
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 384