Mass Production

The players, dressed in suits and flanked by their coach, donning a blue beret and dark wool coat, exit Mass at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart at 12:15 on game day and make their ritual walk through campus toward the stadium.

Hundreds of fans line the sidewalk to get a glimpse of their heroes, groups forming and reforming in sweeping lines ahead of the pack.

It is an autumn Saturday, cold and bright; the leaves have turned and so has the tide.

“They’re just football players,” a teenage girl says as her green-clad father yanks her by the arm so as to stay ahead of the procession.

Not just players, dear.

When the breaks are with the boys, as they have been this year, the Notre Dame campus swells with joy.

At the school’s famous Grotto, men, women and children stand in line to light candles, shuffling politely forward as if waiting for someone to take their ticket.

“I don’t necessarily pray for an Irish win,” said Bill Frazier, who has traveled from Cincinnati. “I think that’s selfish. I don’t think God would respond to something like that.”

Frazier, clad in a “Return to Glory” T-shirt pulled over a sweatshirt, sat on a park bench and watched the multitudes pass by.

“Isn’t this great?” he said. “You know, if you were here last year, it wasn’t that crowded.”

Last year, what was that, other than a faded, far-away, unpleasant memory?

Notre Dame travels west this week with a 10-1 record and renewed national standing. The No. 7 Irish play No. 6 USC (9-2) at the Coliseum on Saturday in a game that, at long last, can dare to match the yellow-stained newspaper-clip history of this storied rivalry.

Not since 1988’s pairing of No. 1 Notre Dame vs. No. 2 USC at the Coliseum has the game meant this much.

The most remarkable part is how fast Notre Dame has completed renovations after last year’s 5-6 finish and how lucky they were -- yes, lucky -- in turning fiasco into fortune with the hiring of Coach Tyrone Willingham.

Only 11 months have passed since Notre Dame fired Bob Davie, hired George O’Leary and accepted his resignation days later after it was learned he falsified his resume. It was only last December that the coaching search took almost comical turns as Athletic Director Kevin White scoured the country in a private jet in search of someone -- anyone! -- willing to coach college football’s most prestigious team.

There have been far more highs than lows for the football program with 11 national championships, but last December was the pits.

“It really was,” former Notre Dame and NFL great Paul Hornung said. “Thank God we made the perfect choice afterward. We got a do-over. If you don’t succeed, try again.”

The key was doubling back and landing Willingham, finishing up his seventh season at Stanford. He was on the early post-Davie short list but ultimately was passed over for O’Leary.

There were several factions, if not fissures, en route to resolution.

There was a Jon Gruden-for-coach camp, led by Hornung, and a Tom Clements push by Joe Montana and friends.

Allen Pinkett, a former running back who is now a radio analyst for Notre Dame football, wanted Willingham from the start.

White, his hand almost forced, ultimately turned to Willingham, who would have been a perfectly fine choice in the first place. As it played out, Notre Dame was seen in many quarters as backpedaling into the socially conscious hiring of the school’s first black head coach in any sport.

“It probably looked like this huge social statement that they signed this black coach,” Pinkett said. “But what Notre Dame did was sign the best coach.”

The proof is in the product.

Taking last year’s 5-6 bunch, the taciturn Willingham turned Notre Dame around, making his stoic face the new face of Irish football.

Willingham would not talk your ear off, the way Lou Holtz would, but has proven, in a Gary Cooper sort of way, that less can be more.

For reporters, Willingham has made note-taking a breeze. He is a human pause button. He ended the traditional Sunday morning news conference and the school generally has made his players less available. Willingham speaks in cryptic, measured tones, never revealing too much.

During last week’s regular news conference in advance of the Rutgers game, Willingham provided the following answers to questions.

“No, no, there’s no blame. No blame.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Won’t say.”

“Yeah.”

“It is the best system we have.”

“Earlier in the year, yes.”

You’ve heard of the Navajo wind talkers?

Irish receiver Omar Jenkins says players call this “Tyrone Code.”

“He may say three words to you all [the media] and I may know there’s a whole other paragraph to that,” Jenkins joked.

Whatever Willingham has done has worked, and Irish fans are back on the bandwagon.

“You can sense the difference,” former Notre Dame coach Gerry Faust said of the mood. “It’s good that you have down years, because it makes you realize what the good years really mean.”

Hornung, who says then-Oakland Raider coach Gruden would have been the choice had the timing been better, has been won over completely by Willingham, perhaps to the point of hyperbole.

“You know, I was in Green Bay when [Vince] Lombardi arrived,” Hornung said, “and there are similar circumstances when you look at it.”

Most Notre Dame fans, however, compare Willingham’s arrival to the first days of Ara Parseghian, who inherited a 2-7 squad in 1963 from Hugh Devore and finished 9-1 in 1964, the only blip a 20-17 defeat at

Irish fans only hope Willingham measures up to Parseghian, who went 95-17-4 and won two national titles in 11 seasons.

It has been Willingham’s clockwork attention to detail that has been most impressive, and his chain-of-command calm demeanor in times of stress. The Irish hardly have been dominant this season, ranking 109 out of 117 schools in total offense before last Saturday’s 42-0 rout of Rutgers.

Yet, with the exception of a 14-7 home loss to Boston College on Nov. 2, the Irish have been uncanny and opportunistic.

They won their first two games, against Maryland and Purdue, without scoring a touchdown on offense. They beat Michigan by two points, with Shane Walton batting away the potential tying two-point conversion with 2:53 left.

Notre Dame’s 21-17 win over Michigan State was borderline miraculous, with backup quarterback Pat Dillingham and Arnaz Battle hooking up on the game-winning, 60-yard pass-and-catch with 1:15 left.

“I personally feel the key to the season was the Michigan State game,” Faust said. “After they came back that way, they really believed they were a destiny team.”

The next week, Notre Dame trailed Stanford, 7-3, late in the third quarter before scoring four touchdowns in a span of 6:54.

The Irish gave up 402 yards against Pittsburgh but gutted out an ugly, error-plagued 14-6 win. Their defense was “The Magnificent 11” against Air Force, holding the nation’s leading ground attack to 104 yards in a 21-14 win.

“I’ve never seen better defense at Notre Dame in all my years that I’ve followed ND,” Faust said. “It’s outstanding. It’s ferocious. It’s God’s will, maybe, but it’s the way they’re hitting too.”

Of course, there’s no telling how this would have played out under a Notre Dame coach named O’Leary, no way of knowing what he would have done with the same players against the same schedule.

Pinkett doesn’t think Irish players were suited to O’Leary’s style.

“It’s hard to say whether O’Leary would have been a step up from Bob Davie,” Pinkett said.

Ah, Bob Davie, the forgotten man.

But where does he fit into all this?

He took his firing with class and has moved on to become an excellent analyst for ESPN.

Here is his breakdown on his former team:

“It’s kind of obvious what it is,” Davie said. “If you look at it from the standpoint [of] an analyst, Ty Willingham is probably the coach of the year. I think everyone would be chasing him.”

Part of Davie, though, wonders what he might have done had he been allowed to coach this year’s team. He was criticized on many fronts in his five years in South Bend, yet the key players on this year’s 10-1 team were recruited and coached by him.

“We were a 9-2 team the year before [9-3 actually after the 2001 Fiesta Bowl loss to Oregon State], a good defensive team last year and a really good special teams football team last year,” Davie said. “They’ve kind of continued to win with the plan we kind of put in place, playing great defense and special teams.

“I’m proud of the job I did. I’m proud of the foundation I left, but in no way would I minimize what Tyrone has done coming in and getting them over the hump.”

It’s not easy to explain how Willingham took the same players and won the close games Davie always seemed to lose.

One explanation is that players often take on the characteristics of their coach, and Willingham’s demeanor clearly has rubbed off on the Irish in tense moments.

Willingham has been able to connect with his players in a way Davie could not.

Pinkett recalls almost having to bite his tongue last year during radio broadcasts of Irish games.

“I could see the talent down there,” Pinkett said. “On a 5-6 team, we put eight players on NFL rosters. I knew it was there; fortunately we have Coach Willingham now.”

Willingham was an outsider, but quickly engrossed himself in all things Irish.

Not long after he arrived, he held informal chat sessions in dormitories. Hornung swears Willingham has met every student on campus.

Willingham knew becoming Irish coach was more than knowing the Xs and O’s.

“I probably say I’m still learning, and probably will be continuing the learning process for some time,” Willingham said last week, “because I think there’s a great deal to this university that is not superficial. So therefore, you’ve got to dig a lot deeper to find out all of the meanings, all of the traditions and how everything fits together.”

Funny how it all worked out, and how fast.

Notre Dame went from O’Leary to Whoa, Nellie.

From the play on the field to the way the midday sun hits the Golden Dome on crisp fall afternoons, this season has been almost picture perfect.

“To tell you the truth,” Pinkett said, “as a fan and a former player, they’re really fulfilling our expectations. This is really what we expected, even last year.”

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Polls Apart

Notre Dame hasn’t finished in the top 10 in the AP poll since 1993, when it finished second. A look at its final record and rank since then:

*--* Year Rec Rnk Bowl LOU HOLTZ 1994 6-5-1 UR Lost to Colorado in Fiesta Bowl, 41-24 1995 9-3 11 Lost to Florida State in Orange Bowl, 31-26 1996 8-3 19 No bowl appearance BOB DAVIE 1997 7-6 UR Lost to LSU in Independence Bowl, 27-9 1998 9-3 22 Lost to Georgia Tech in Gator Bowl, 35-28 1999 5-7 UR No bowl appearance 2000 9-3 15 Lost to Oregon State in Fiesta Bowl, 41-9 2001 5-6 UR No bowl appearance UR-Unranked

*--*