He was annoyed with me one recruiting weekend for

(inadvertently) being too slick.

Before that he had been really happy with the way I had devised for setting up the Stadium locker room on recruiting weekends to get across ND's storied history to the recruits. Rather than have it look barren other than a few recruit jerseys in one corner with helmets, I found and hung the jerseys of my own all-time ND team in the empty lockers, together with some players that were recently in Super Bowls, etc. In the recruits' lockers, I added a full uniform with our signs that said "[Recruits Name] Your Number is [X], Before You Leave Notre Dame, Make It One That Will Be Remembered." (We had these in the teams' ACC practice locker room lockers for those guys that did not have a jersey number that was previously worn by an All-American(s). The current players had signs that listed the past AAs that had worn their jersey number, to remind them to try live up to it. For instance, Tim Brown's listed Alan Page, Ken MacAfee, etc. No pressure). Linked is an article re TB's jersey number choice.

I remember one recruit asked if he could try on the uniform and I said sure. He came back out of the game day training room over there to show his mom and they were both beaming. The new set up evidently got the recruits' attention as Vinny went out of his way to track me down before the first weekend was even over to thank me. (I thought my fellow managers were screwing with me when they said Vinny had stopped by the manager's office was looking for me.) The weekend must have been going well, as he too was beaming when we finally met up.

Grey Champion sweatshirts for Rockne, The Gipper, The Four Horsemen, Leahy, non-authentic and some authentic jerseys (when I could find them in the recesses of the Varsity issue room) jerseys for Bertelli, Lujack, Hart, Lattner, Hornung, Huarte, George Connor, Dave Casper, Daryle Lamonica, Nick Buoniconti, Alan Page, Rocky Bleier, Joe Theismann, Tom Clements, Thom Gatewood, Joe Montana, Ross Browner, Luther Bradley, Ken MacAfee, Bob Golic, Vagas Ferguson, Bob Crable, and then more recent Super Bowl guys like Mark Bavaro, Dave Duerson, Tom Thayer, Eric Dorsey. There were several others but I forget and certainly numerous other greats that deserved to be included. When the assistant coaches came over to see the display (word got out), they kiddingly pressured me to add Joe Yonto but he wasn't having it. I distinctly remember Coach Stew walking down the line of lockers saying the names out loud and repeatedly being surprised to learn that player X played for ND. Joe Yonto and George Kelly watched and smiled as none of it was a surprise to them.

Anyway, after that, Vinny encouraged me to talk to the players and their families when they came to the Stadium locker room as part of their tour, rather than just sit there and hit the play button on the Victory March when they walked in. That went well for a while, until he and I were talking to one recruit and I mentioned we were playing at Hawaii during what would be his senior year, if he chose ND. Vinny quickly and emphatically corrected me to say that would be the year after his senior year. I then said, "well, if you play a fifth year...." Vinny got annoyed and cleaned that up too and it occurred to me that it was because we did not have such a policy (even though we were about to have about 7 guys back as fifth years for 1987, including 4 of our 5 starting O-Linemen). After that Vinny wasn't as eager to have me open my mouth. Oops.

So just an example of him being the straight shooter, and I never saw him be anything but. I liked the guy although he was more aloof than some of the other assistants. We were lucky to have him.

(P.S. You know ND has a great history when one can forget about The Four Horsemen and Johnny Lattner and need to go back and edit them in)

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