Walsh Goes Back to the Campus : Football: Doing Notre Dame games on television may have started the coach toward Stanford.

When NBC signed a contract to broadcast Notre Dame football, it may well have begun the process that sent Bill Walsh back to Stanford.

Walsh, 60, became the Cardinal’s coach Thursday and said it was while working for NBC on Notre Dame telecasts that the atmosphere surrounding college football grew on him.

“The young guys we met at each one of these schools, interviewing them . .we met some magnificent young people,” Walsh said in a news conference at Stanford. “That in itself reminded me that I might be of more value somewhere other than just remarking on 10 different ways on how to fumble a football on television.”

Still, during the past week Walsh almost went back to work with the 49ers as a consultant.

Instead, he replaces Dennis Green, who coached the Cardinal to an 8-4 record that included an 18-17 loss to Georgia Tech in the Aloha Bowl. Green left to become coach of the Minnesota Vikings.

Walsh’s return to the Palo Alto campus--he lives only 10 minutes away--was a surprise to many, but not to 49er owner Eddie DeBartolo.

“I had a gut feeling that he was going to come back (to Stanford),” said DeBartolo, who attended the news conference along with Raider running back and former 49er Roger Craig. “Every time I would talk to Bill he would say how much he likes to be around kids. He always talked about his days at Stanford.”

Still, “it was very difficult,” Walsh said. “I love the 49ers. I love those men. I care very much for the players, Jerry Rice and Joe Montana, every one of them, but there is a time and a place for those things.

Walsh often has said recruiting was the most distasteful part of college football, but he began calling recruits before talking with the media. He said he would tackle every aspect of the job as the Cardinal’s head football coach, even overseeing recruiting.

But he made no promises of greatness.

“The best you are going to get out of is, hopefully, an adequate replacement for Denny Green,” Walsh said. “Don’t expect better. You’re not going to get it. Denny has done a marvelous job bringing this program from mediocrity to national prominence. . . . You’ve got a replacement for Denny Green who is going to do everything he can to sustain the program and hopefully . . . we can take it another level higher.”

Walsh coached Stanford to a 17-7 record in two seasons that included two bowl victories. He was 102-63-1 record with the 49ers, winning six NFC Western Division titles and Super Bowls in 1982, ’85 and ‘89, after which he spent three seasons with NBC, working with Dick Enberg on the network’s No.1 NFL announcing team in addition to doing the Notre Dame games this past season.

“I’m still a little flabbergasted that we have a guy of his stature,” Stanford Athletic Director Ted Leland said. “We have a five-year contract, but we hope that Bill will have so much fun here that he will finish his career at Stanford.”

That contract reportedly calls for a salary of $350,000 per year--far less than Walsh could have made with the 49ers or at NBC.

Walsh also began putting together a staff, introducing Terry Shea, formerly the head coach at San Jose State, as his assistant coach and offensive coordinator.