The land of the echoes

Sporting News, The, August 22, 1994 by Terry Frei

The Notre Dame reality should be impressive enough: This is as close to the noble collegiate model as a national power can be in 1994. Part of the reason is that Notre Dame can afford to be that way and still win, which again can especially rankle some of the resentful.

"We're not perfect," Riehle says. "We're dealing with human beings here."

A few of the players have gotten into trouble. But keep in mind that you don't read about it when the lead in the student production of "My Fair Lady" fouls up. (That applies at any school, by the way.)

At Notre Dame, Holtz frequently has gotten carried away in his coaching demeanor, but there isn't a college coach in the business -- no matter how beloved -- who causes everyone to be laudatory and loyal after leaving the program. Coaches make friends for life; they also inevitably make enemies. It's unavoidable.

With its very selective admissions policy, Notre Dame has been known to reject valedictorians, but it accepts football players who are not threats to be academic All-Americans. But even major public schools allow "special admittance" for a limited number of athletes who don't otherwise pass muster at the admissions office. Notre Dame still rejects, or doesn't even bother to approach, football players who easily gain entrance elsewhere. Notre Dame recruits good players it can get into school, and sometimes does it with the basic underlying knowledge familiar to every school: A roster full of future Nobel Prize winners couldn't beat anybody in I-A.

The Irish standards have been tightened again after some internal dissension following the admittance of Tony Rice, a Proposition 48 student who eventually quarterbacked the Irish to a national championship. In a way, that was too bad: Rice is a decent young man who didn't deserve to be labeled some kind of academic freak.

Clearly, some Notre Dame players were caught up in the steriod craze of the 1980s -- and despite one of the most rigorous testing programs in the country, the Irish sent mixed messages by hiring strength coaches in the 1980s from the steroid-plagued Nebraska weight room.

You'll notice we haven't brought up athletes' graduation rates. Here's why: They're overrated. By no means is this an indictment of Notre Dame, which routinely has one of the highest graduation rates for football players in the country. Getting players degrees, at Notre Dame or anywhere else, isn't always a sign of academic commitment, but can be the product of nursing some students through the system -- regardless of whether they deserve it.

Is Notre Dame perfect?

Of course not.

Never has been, despite the myths.

Never will be, despite the recruiting advantage of the mystique.

But above all, Notre Dame claims to be different. And that's undeniable.

Front and over center

Over the summer, Notre Dame's sports information office still got calls from concerned fans of the Fighting Irish.

Is it true, they wanted to know, that Ron Powlus is hurt again? Did he hurt himself falling down a flight of stairs? Lifting weights? Carrying groceries to the car? Playing pickup basketball?