My two cents worth of sausage ....

I think Fr. Hesburgh was worried about the tail wagging the dog, and the perception that the tail was wagging the dog.

One of Leahy's former players told me that when Eisenhower came to campus, he sought a meeting with Leahy, but not Fr. Hesburgh, the president of the University.

Maintaining the "proper" balance, a subjective target indeed, could be much more of an art than a science, and I'm more than willing to view some of Fr. Hesburgh's more unfortunate football hires as misses rather than deliberate attempts to de-emphasize.

Malloy, on the other hand, seemed truly ashamed of Notre Dame's football tradition. I'll be convinced until the day that I die that Malloy believed that an aggressive, ethical pursuit of football excellence made him a pariah among the crowd of elitist university presidents to which he aspired.

At his inaugural presser as prez, Hesburgh was given a football...

and asked to imitate a center snapping the ball. He responded: "Would you ask the prez of Yale to do that?"

The man was about 35 at the time. He obviously decided that he was going to break the mold for ND prez's, and he did so across the board (mistakenly w/ FB). I suspect that, given his lack of knowledge about the subject, he honestly thought that the program was strong enough that hiring a coach w/ no head coaching experience beyond HS would work.

The odd thing about Brennan is his 3d year, which remains the worst in school history by a wide margin. His record his first 2 years was slightly better than Parseghian's. His 4th year, w/ the big win at Norman, was decent, and the 5th year might've been tolerable under other circumstances. The 3d year is what doomed him.

The thing to truly fault Ted/Ned for occurred your sr year. Given their experience w/ Brennan, I'm not sure what made them think that someone who had NO coaching experience of ANY kind on the collegiate level could handle the job. Hesburgh was contemplating retirement about that time--I seriously doubt that the BOT considered any HS principals as his replacement.

Hesbuirgh was pres for at least 5 years longer than he wanted because

no one was prepared to replace him, and the BOT knew it. Then they put Monk and a couple of other guys in a position to prepare for the job and Monk was selected. One other point concerning Brennan. His 2-8 season in 1956 was only slightly worse than the 2-7 season that preceded the arrival of Ara. That one might have equaled Brennan's if not for the cancellation of the Iowa game on Nov 23, 1963 as a result of the Kennedy assassination.

The margins of defeat in '56 were a lot worse than they were in '60...

or '63, both of which were 2-win seasons. I don't have the scores in front of me at present, but there were 2 losses by 40 or more and another loss or 2 by 30 or more. It was kind of like 2003, only w/ a much worse W/L record.

Aptly dissected

Hesburgh certainly took us through periods of de-emphasis but only to maintain a balance he saw to be necessary. I have little doubt that if NDN existed decades ago may of us would have been very unhappy with Fr. Ted.

Make no mistake, unlike his successor, he understood better than anyone football's place and the three pillars. He even spoke of them clearly in "God, Country, Notre Dame". More importantly he was not embarrassed by it in the least. Furthermore, Hesburgh was incapable of disgracing himself by doing something such as openly talking down Notre Dame under Fr. Malloy to other university leaders.

My favorite Hesburgh quote regarding football: "Texas has oil; Notre Dame has football; Neither should apologize."

as Hesburgh said (paraphrased from Sperber)

It wasn't that football needed to be deemphasized, but that it was over-emphasized at that point, and other aspects of the university needed to be brought up to par.