I remember when Parseghian took over ND and revived the program. His image was tarnished somewhat by the 1966 Mich. St game (game of the century) where he didn't go for a win in the last minutes and settled for a tie.
You wonder what Parseghian thought when Nebraska coach Tom Osborne went for the win instead of the tie
in the 1984 Orange Bowl by calling for a two-point conversion that was foiled when Miami tipped Turner Gill's
pass away in the end zone and the Cornhuskers lost both the game and the national championship.
The calls for Osborne's head in Nebraska (I was there, serving in the Air Force at Offutt Air Force Base at the
time) didn't let up for months. When someone on base finally asked me what I thought---and he even said, "Forget
my rank" (he was a lieutenant colonel and we were in uniform) and just be honest, I laid it out cold: "The guy
tried to
win the game and these jerks want to crucify him? I'd recommend beating them senseless but
you can't beat people into the condition they're already in." I learned later that light colonel went around
repeating my comment and getting big laughs out of it while saying I had a huge point.
Between that and stories I heard such as the Oklahoma University president (I forget his name) who once
told
Playboy (for their football preview) that goddammit he wanted a university his football team could
be proud of, or the Texas high school (I forget which now) whose football coach finally required police
protection because he couldn't shake a losing season after several consecutive winning ones, I got turned
off school football forever, and I was already getting sick of the NFL as it was.
RIP Mr. Parseghian. I still remember the 1973 Sugar Bowl triumph and the way Notre Dame made it stick
after Bob Thomas planted a 19-yard field goal to put the Irish up by a point with four minutes left in the
game.
