Living the dream, despite the bad outcome

By Michael Patrick O’Brien–

One of my favorite Notre Dame memories involves college football, of course, but not gridiron success. Instead, this happy memory involves rather painful failure, and the expected ignoble aftermath that was not so inglorious after all.

In the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s, students at Notre Dame had a reasonable basis to hope for (or expect) a college football national championship sometime during their time at the school. The Fighting Irish won it all in 1964, 1966, 1973 and again in 1977 (and with close calls in 1970 and 1974).

For my junior year (1981-82), Notre Dame hired Gerry Faust as its new head football coach. Faust’s Moeller Catholic High School in Cincinnati was a powerhouse, winning 33 consecutive games and a number of Ohio state titles, and placing hundreds of players in upper division college ball.

It seemed liked the perfect match of man to job. Faust said the position was “the fulfillment of a lifelong dream.” How many of us see our dream come true? Faust even won his first game at Notre Dame, beating LSU in the Fall of 1981 and launching the team and its new coach to a #1 ranking in the polls.

The early success was short-lived. Faust lost 4 of his next 5 games and ended with the first Notre Dame losing football season in almost two decades. The following years were not much better. Faust finished out his 5-year run at ND with an overall record of 30-26-1.

The fan response, perhaps understandably, was very critical. Some of the folks who had enthusiastically welcomed Faust to the Golden Dome carried banners saying: “Send the Holy Roller back to Moeller.” It was a startling example of that old adage—watch out what you ask for, because you might get it. A dream job turned into nightmare.

I am not a fan-letter-writer, but I liked Faust, so I wrote him three times while I was at ND. Despite his rocky tenure, and likely preoccupation with many other things, Faust personally answered each letter.

My first letter requested a small gift to my St. Joseph High School’s annual fundraiser auction, called Spring SPREE in Ogden, Utah. Faust sent the school a golden football helmet and wrote me that Catholic education was “a very special cause.”

My second letter thanked him for the kind gift. He wrote back and thanked me for my thank you letter. He was “happy to lend a helping hand to St. Joseph’s,” a small school which, with no football program and no linebackers to recruit, he logically could have ignored. He also said, “I hope everything goes well for you in life.”

I wrote my last letter to Faust about a year later, in the middle of another bad football season. I told him to keep his chin up. He wrote back, upbeat, and thanked me for the words of encouragement. That was the end of our correspondence.

His obvious graciousness, juxtaposed with his indisputable failure on the field, made (and perhaps still makes) Faust a difficult figure for many ND football fans. A Chicago Tribune column written in November of 1985, during the last ugly days of the coach’s tenure with Notre Dame, displayed the conflicting emotions.

The columnist correctly noted, “Faust has already lost more games than any other Notre Dame coach. History is an indelible critic.” Yet, the same writer in the same column called the decision to hire Faust a “noble failure.” Then there was this rather fascinating sentence in the column: “He was simply a horrible college football coach, not to say he wasn`t a decent, caring human being, which everyone agrees he is.” (see: Feeling Sorry For Faust?).

The Detroit Free Press echoed the sentiments, observing, “For Irish alumni, Faust’s losing was a ball and chain they had to drag around, because there’s no bragging about a clean or honest 6-6 alma mater.” Yet, the paper also noted, “But when he sits down with his family to eat some turkey today, Faust should be thankful he survived with his priorities intact.” (see: Notre Dame Drops Faust — And Everyone’s A Loser ).

What is like to get your dream and then fail at it, in front of the whole world? How do you bounce back from that sort of awful experience? Gerry Faust knows.

In subsequent news interviews, and in his book and film The Golden Dream, Faust explained that faith, family, and friends got him through failing at his dream: “If you have those three things you can get through anything.” Maybe you even find new dreams to dream.

Amazingly, after he resigned, Faust (who now is almost 85 years old) attended 3 or 4 Notre Dame football games each year. Many of his former players adore him. He said he wouldn’t change a thing about his Notre Dame experience, that he loved every minute of it, and he’d do it all over again. (see: Notre Dame Never Left Him).

In fact, twenty-five years after leaving his ND job, he told the Los Angeles Times, “I had only 26 miserable days at Notre Dame; that’s when we lost. Other than that, I was the happiest guy in the world. I loved walking on the campus, loved being there, loved being a part of Notre Dame.”

I got a glimpse of Gerry Faust‘s character in my correspondence with him while I was at Notre Dame too. Three letters are not much for an assessment, but they helped me see him as something more than just a win-loss record. While it may be cliché, it seems true that although he lost in football, he won at life.

I finally “got” my Notre Dame national football championship on January 2, 1989, almost six years after I graduated from the university. My wife-to-be and I went to the Fiesta Bowl in Arizona, got engaged that weekend, and watched ND crown a 12-0 season with a 34-21 win over formerly undefeated West Virginia. It was very exciting.

Gerry Faust did not win it for us. He just may be my favorite Notre Dame football coach ever.

*Mike O’Brien is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. He is writing a book about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah.