It’s a Shame, Especially at Notre Dame

The time was Nov. 19, 1966, Spartan Stadium in East Lansing, Mich., and 80,011 were in attendance with 50 million more watching on television. Ara Parseghian was about to make the biggest mistake of his life in coaching.

The situation was this: Parseghian’s Notre Dame team had swept through eight opponents by lopsided scores and was rated No. 1 in all the polls in which its opponent, Michigan State, wasn’t ranked No. 1. Michigan State had rolled through nine opponents and had a lineup that was going to be the Baltimore Colts’ the next year.

The game had been so hard-fought, there were just fewer casualties than the Battle of the Bulge, but the only part of that game anyone remembers was the final two minutes. With the score tied, 10-10, Michigan State punted to Notre Dame, which had a first down on its 40 when Parseghian dumbfounded the football world by hauling his flag down and suing for peace. He quit in his corner. He settled for a tie.

The sports world couldn’t have been more shocked if Dempsey had thrown in the towel, Ruth had tried to bunt with two out or if John Wayne had turned tail and run for the fort. It smacked of putting on women’s clothes and heading for the lifeboats on the Titanic, hiding in the cellar when the Clantons came to town.

I mean, this was Notre Dame! This was the citadel of the religio-emotional pep talks. This was the school of “Win one for the Gipper.”

This was the team of One-Play O’Brien, of the Four Horsemen. This was Knute Rockne’s team. This was Hollywood’s team. What kind of part was this for Pat O’Brien? For Ronald Reagan?

What Ara did that day made perfect football sense. With time running out, his football team banged up and looking into the eyes of Bubba Smith, an Empire State Building in cleats, the best pass-rusher this side of a water buffalo, and George Webster, whose position was defined as monster back, Parseghian decided to fall on the football.

He called dives into the line on three plays, then ended the game on an ignominious quarterback sneak while the Michigan State bench jeered and his own players stared at the ground in embarrassment.

The next week, Ara got his national championship when he came out to California and beat USC, 51-0, which might have been his second-worst mistake. It smacked of going home and kicking the cat after a bad day at the office.

So far as anyone knows, Ara has never copped out to his action that day being the biggest gaffe of his coaching career, maybe anyone’s--but he doesn’t have to. Anyone who thinks he wouldn’t do differently, if given the chance to go back, doesn’t understand Notre Dame football. Notre Dame doesn’t pack it in with the score tied and time on the clock. Notre Dame goes in with flags flying and guns blazing. It’s Fighting Irish, not Fainting Irish.

Ara came into focus as the guy who cried uncle, the coach who blinked. No one remembers that he won the national championship that year. Everyone remembers that he didn’t win the Michigan State game.

“Tie One for the Gipper!” made more than one derisive headline. It made a mockery of the school fight song. A quarterback sneak on your 40 didn’t exactly wake up the echoes cheering her name or shake down the thunder from the sky. “Old Notre Dame will tie over all,” just didn’t make it.

But did football coaches all over the country get the message? Did they take it to heart?

That might not be the way to bet. Recent headlines suggest the tie still looks good to a lot of them. Like reaching the age of 80, it sure beats the alternative.

But, does it? That very season, in the Rose Bowl game, Coach John McKay, with a chance to tie Purdue in the closing seconds, elected to go for the win with a two-point conversion try, not the high-percentage call. It failed.

But more people remember the gallant effort than the outcome of the game. McKay’s team was saluted for going out with its guns firing and its boots on.

You might have noticed in the public prints where indignation is running high over a decision of a coach at Auburn in another bowl game to take the sure tie and pass on the possible win.

Auburn is not Notre Dame, and nobody is ever going to make a movie about Coach Pat Dye, but you have to expect the poet laureates of the press box are going to find it hard to forgive him.

You must understand that there’s nothing more galling to the knights of sporting press than a tie. I mean, how do you write a tie?

Well, of course, you single out the cad responsible and practice your second-guesses anyway. Only once in history do I remember a scrivener glad of a tie. That would be Furman Bisher of Atlanta who once found his angle in a tie between underdog Georgia Tech and Notre Dame, which he saluted with a lead, “Georgia Tech defeated Notre Dame today, 3-3.”

Michigan won a bowl game and the respect of its fans by disdaining a tying field foal and going for the win Saturday, but you might have noticed the Minnesota Vikings, on a roll, trying to put their sword back in the scabbard Sunday against New Orleans when, leading 24-10, with time left at midfield, they elected to run out the clock. Only the fact that New Orleans had 12 men on the field, and they had a free play with no reprisal possible, inspired the Vikings to go for what proved to be the crushing touchdown.

What’s to be done? How do we save the coaches from themselves, from their own excesses of conservatism?

Well, the simple answer would be to rule out the tie in a bowl game or major championship match. But we know from experience this only encourages the sure tie at the expense of the daring win. A coach will never roll the dice in that situation, preferring to take his chances on winning the coin toss for overtime.

The best solution would be to recall one of the standard halftime talks of Knute Rockne, when he stood before his players and demanded: “Do you want to be known as the first Notre Dame team to quit?”

There is no record of anyone ever raising his hand.