Forward Progress

Some day, perhaps, the time will come when it is no longer a social milestone that a major college football program has hired a worthy coach who also happens to be black.

That time, however, is not yet here. So when Tyrone Willingham, who is African American, leads the Notre Dame football team in its opener tonight against Maryland in the Kickoff Classic at the Meadowlands in New Jersey, it is a measure of the progress that has been achieved--but also a sign of how far there is to go.

Willingham is the first black coach in Notre Dame history. Not only the first black football coach. The first black coach in any sport.

Notre Dame is arguably the nation’s premier college football program, so the hiring of a black man as coach stands as a landmark. Pat Haden, the Los Angeles lawyer, Rhodes scholar and former USC and L.A. Ram quarterback who serves as an analyst for NBC’s Notre Dame telecasts, said, “You hope something like this makes the walls come tumbling down.”

Only four of 117 head coaches in Division I college football are African American. The three others are Bobby Williams at Michigan State, Fitz Hill at San Jose State and Tony Samuel at New Mexico.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” said Floyd Keith, executive director of the Black Coaches Assn.

Willingham was not Notre Dame’s first choice. Several widely known coaches, Jon Gruden and Steve Mariucci among them, were secretly sounded out before the university hired Georgia Tech’s George O’Leary, then dismissed him only days later after learning of discrepancies in O’Leary’s academic record. Only then, late last year, did Notre Dame turn to Willingham, who at Stanford in recent seasons had twice been named Pac-10 coach of the year, in 1995 and 1999. What’s more, Stanford had defeated Notre Dame three times in the last five years.

Disciplined, methodical, Willingham, raised in North Carolina and at 48 old enough to remember segregation, has since said many times over that it is not important that he was not Notre Dame’s first choice. What matters, he says, is the opportunity.

“You never let your ego stop you from making what is a good and wise decision,” he has said repeatedly since being hired.

His presence in South Bend holds remarkable meaning for anyone aware of the history of race relations in Indiana. In a dramatic turn of events for a state in which one in three native-born white men once belonged to the Ku Klux Klan, the four highest-profile positions in Indiana sports are now held by African Americans.

The others: Tony Dungy, coach of the Indianapolis Colts; Mike Davis, basketball coach at Indiana University, and Isiah Thomas, coach of the Indiana Pacers.

Some might call that merely serendipitous. Others say it’s proof of real progress.

“I think it is profound,” Dungy said. “When I was growing up [in Michigan], there’s no way we would even have thought to dream of there being the head coach of a professional football team, and the head coach of a college basketball team, and a pro team, and the coach of a college football team--all of them being African American. For even one of those positions to be held by an African American would have been too much to think of. But four?

“I’m proud of that, proud to be in the company of those other three guys.”

Keith said, “It tells you how far we can come, doesn’t it? Anything can change.”

That it could happen in Indiana, however, is truly such evidence.

“Indiana has struggled,” said Jim Madison, a history professor at the IU campus in Bloomington. “But I’m not sure Indiana has struggled more than America has struggled. In this, as in many ways, Indiana is America.”

Madison, author of a book about a notorious 1930 lynching of two black men in Marion, Ind., said, “You have to understand how bad it was in the old days. You also have to understand how not good, how not perfect, it is today.”

In the mid-1920s, Madison said, about 30% of native-born white men in the state belonged to the Klan.

Indiana, he said, has historically had “a larger percentage” than other states of such white natives, and thus Indiana has “had perhaps a larger capacity to be fearful of others--ignorant of others, and therefore fearful of them.”

Even as recently as a generation ago, growing up black in Indiana meant learning early about a racial divide. Anita DeFrantz, who went on to win a bronze medal in rowing at the 1976 Olympics, served on the International Olympic Committee and now is president of the Amateur Athletic Foundation in Los Angeles, grew up in Indianapolis. She said one of her earliest memories--she was, she said, maybe 4--is of a sign posted to a tree in a small town out in the country.

The sign warned blacks, using a racial epithet, “Don’t be here after dark,” DeFrantz recalled.

The Klan’s presence can still be felt in Indiana. The day after Willingham was hired, the South Bend Tribune featured stories on the new Notre Dame coach as well as on the activities of a Klan faction in Osceola, a few miles from the Notre Dame campus.

Railton Loy, who heads that Klan faction, said this week that he could not believe Notre Dame had hired Willingham. That Davis, Dungy and Thomas are also head coaches of their teams shows, “They’re going to hell in a handbasket,” he said.

He added of Davis, who took IU to last season’s NCAA championship game, “He did a good job for them. But who’s to say Knight,” meaning former IU coach Bobby Knight, “wouldn’t have done just as well?”

For his part, Willingham said life in South Bend since he arrived in January has seemed normal. He also said he pays no attention to those who would pass judgment on him because he is who he is.

“I mean, I grew up with cross burnings in our [North Carolina] neighborhood, major [Klan] rallies in the neighborhood,” he said. “That is nothing new. And you don’t even think about it. You don’t even let that thought process enter your consciousness. Because you refuse to be intimidated by anything if you’re going to be good at whatever you do.”

Willingham, speaking Wednesday after Notre Dame’s last on-campus practice before today’s game, said he is not, however, unmindful of the history here--all the history, not just the fabled Irish lore.

“I think we’re blessed, the four of us, to have this opportunity,” he said. “But I also think the four of us are very confident about our role--not just for budding African Americans but also for other young men. Because I think we take life very seriously and want to do something very positive that impacts everyone.”

He said he intends not only to develop top-notch football players but young men with a respect for ethics and values.

One day last spring, after practice, defensive lineman Jason Sapp found a cellular phone on campus. He spent several hours tracking down the owner and returned the phone the next day. Sapp sought no credit, no reward and was surprised when the owner sent Willingham a note of praise describing Sapp’s effort and initiative.

“I wanted to exemplify to [the owner] what our team stood for,” Sapp, a junior from Bridgeport, Conn., says now. “I wanted her to know what I was a part of. It’s just a good deed that a lot of my teammates would have done as well.”

It was only a small thing, Sapp said. But, echoing Willingham, he said, “Small things win championships.”

Willingham made it plain he hopes to attract more like-minded young men to South Bend.

“The thing is ... this has not been a university that has been open to diversity. OK?” he said. “But there are African Americans and every other racial group that you can name that have values. That believe in God. That believe respect for self and others is important. I hope we do have that ability to track that kind of individual here.”

He added, with a smile, that on the football field such young men had to bring “great talent.”

Plainly put, the Irish need more talent.

Last year’s team finished 5-6. While trying to master Willingham’s pass-oriented offense, Notre Dame’s players will be tested by five currently ranked teams and nine that played in bowl games last season.

The Irish lack depth, former starting quarterback Matt LoVecchio transferred to Indiana, and Julius Jones, the team’s leading rusher the last two seasons, was ruled academically ineligible.

Navy and Rutgers appear eminently beatable, Haden said. But “all the other games are tossups.”

Notre Dame has not finished a season ranked in the top 10 since 1993. It hasn’t won a national championship since 1988.

Willingham, however, is confident Notre Dame will win again. Asked about it, he said, “Why not?”

If the Irish do win, and win soon, that surely will open doors faster for other qualified black coaches.

“It should send a message to all athletic directors, and all coaches who desire to be coaching at a predominantly white institution that if this can be done at Notre Dame, it can be done anywhere,” Keith said.

But if the Irish post a few more 5-6 seasons, will Willingham enjoy a healthy measure of good will? If so, for how long? Will what he looks like work for or against him in ways subtle or overt? No one knows.

Willingham said he fully understands the import of “waking up the echoes,” as it is often put by Irish boosters, the powerful symbolism of restoring Notre Dame to what used to be its exalted standing in the national rankings--for the university, for him, for those who aspire to be like him.

Digger Phelps, the former Notre Dame basketball coach and current ESPN analyst who has lived in South Bend for 30 years, put it this way:

“I’ve said to people that that guy on the cross up there,” referring to the mosaic of Jesus hovering from the campus library over the north end of the football stadium, “could go down and go into that stadium, lose a game and 80,000 people would boo him. You can quote me on that.

“It’s got nothing to do with black, white, green or yellow. It has to do with winning.”