Embattled Faust Quits After Going 30-25-1 as Notre Dame Coach

A regular at 7:30 Mass each day, Gerry Faust once said that he used to pray that he’d get the opportunity to coach football at Notre Dame.

Faust offered those prayers during his 18 years at Cincinnati’s Moeller High School, where his teams compiled a 174-17-2 record, thrusting Faust into national prominence and eventually providing an answer to his prayers.

Notre Dame selected Faust as its 24th football coach Nov. 24, 1980. The ensuing experience was not what he had envisioned.

Frustrated, criticized and facing probable firing after Notre Dame’s season finale against fourth-ranked Miami Saturday at the Orange Bowl, Faust resigned Tuesday morning, making the announcement at the beginning of a weekly news conference that he conducts by telephone.

“It’s best for me to resign now and give the university an opportunity to get another coach before recruiting starts next week,” Faust said. “It’s best for the university, best for me, best for my family.”

Faust will remain through the Miami game.

A successor will be chosen perhaps as early as next week, Athletic Director Gene Corrigan said.

Corrigan said the next coach will be one with experience and success at the Division I level.

“Obviously we discussed names today,” he said during an evening press conference on campus. “But as I say, we’re going to be working today, tonight, to get this thing settled. The history here is we don’t dilly-dally, and I think this will be the case here.”

He later said: “My best guess, it would be wrapped up by Monday.”

Rumors have put Minnesota’s Lou Holtz at the head of a list of successors that is also believed to include George Welsh of Virginia, Bobby Ross of Maryland, Jack Bicknell of Boston College, Rick Carter of Holy Cross, Howard Schnellenberger of Louisville, Terry Donahue of UCLA and Dick Vermeil, a former college and pro coach who now is a TV analyst.

Donahue, questioned by reporters in the wake of Faust’s resignation, refused to go beyond a prepared statement in which he said: “Any speculation about my leaving UCLA to go to Notre Dame is unfounded. I have never been in touch with anyone from Notre Dame and I am in the process of preparing my team to play in the Rose Bowl against . . . Iowa.”

Holtz, who established his coaching reputation at Arkansas and now has a son attending Notre Dame, said recently that he wouldn’t leave Minnesota for any coaching job other than Notre Dame’s.

The 50-year-old Faust has a 30-25-1 record for his five seasons with the Irish. Losses to Penn State and Louisiana State in the last two weeks made Faust the Notre Dame coach with the most defeats.

That unenviable distinction had previously belonged to Joe Kuharich, who had a 17-23 record from 1959 to 1962.

“Sometimes you don’t know why these things happen,” Faust said, alluding to his record as he announced his resignation. “You leave it to the Almighty. I think there was a purpose for me to be here. I enjoyed it. Even with the results I’d do it over again.”

The Irish are 5-5 this season. Faust’s four previous teams went 5-6, 6-4-1, 7-5 and 7-5. Instead of appearing in a prominent bowl game on New Year’s Day, the Irish played in the 1983 Liberty Bowl and the ’84 Aloha Bowl, primarily on the basis of reputation and drawing power.

Father Theodore M. Hesburgh, Notre Dame’s president, expressed surprise as he accepted Faust’s resignation with the ritualistic expressions of regret, saying that Faust had earned the respect and affection of a “vast segment of the Notre Dame family.”

Blessed, however, with blue-chip talent, it is thought that Faust failed to earn the affection of a vast segment of Notre Dame’s influential alumni, obviously spoiled by the traditions of Knute Rockne, who had a 105-12-5 record, Frank Leahy, 87-11-9, and Ara Parseghian, 95-17-4.

Dan Devine, Faust’s predecessor, won a national championship in 1977 and had a 53-16-1 record in six seasons.

Faust generally dismissed the pressure, laughing at the “Oust Faust” buttons that appeared on the South Bend campus as early as his first season. He was almost always upbeat and enthusiastic, predicting that the Irish were about to turn a corner.

But in an interview with the Washington Post in October, 1984, Faust offered evidence that the critics and the frustrations were eating at him.

“I always knew how good winning felt, but I never really knew how frustrating losing could be,” he said. “I know people expect a lot at Notre Dame, but I do get a little tired of it sometimes. No one’s asking (Michigan Coach) Bo Schembechler what’s wrong, and he’s 3-2 just like us.

“I mean, I know what people at Notre Dame expect. They get frustrated because they care so much. Sometimes it seems like everybody’s got the answers to everything.”

Parseghian suggested in a 1984 interview that Faust was the victim of his own enthusiasm.

“He went out and recruited the best players and talked about what a great team he had,” the former coach said. “The enthusiasm of the alumni and the community was on a high note. You measure results against expectations. When the expectation is not realized, the disappointment is greater.”

Unlike his years at Moeller, Faust’s Notre Dame teams were hounded by inconsistency and repeated mistakes.

Last year, a Chicago Sun-Times survey of Notre Dame players and a former assistant coach in 1984 concluded that Faust treated his players as babies, that he was chaotic on the sideline and prone to behavior changes that made him difficult to relate to, that he went overboard in public and private criticism of his players, and that his lack of college coaching experience was a critical problem.

Faust, however, has not lost confidence. Asked Tuesday if he would accept a recruiting position if Notre Dame offered it, he said:

“I wouldn’t want them to create a position for me. I want to sit back a couple of weeks and think about a new start, maybe as a head coach somewhere. Maybe I’ll have another chance at a major college. I’d look at that. I think I’m ready.”