Right Man In The Right Place

All of which affects him the same way his routinely stellar performance last week did. He had 182 yards passing and 44 rushing in less than three quarters of play in Notre Dame's 49-3 victory over Northwestern, and some witnesses swear that after the game they detected a faint glow of satisfaction in Clements' eye. Others claim that they actually saw a shrug trying to work itself up into a grin. Or was it a suppressed yawn?

One can never be certain with Clements. He has the same range of emotions and expressions as Rockne—the bronze bust version, that is. And there is no missing the rare occasions when he chooses to say more than "yeah"; everyone around him instinctively leans in at a 45-degree angle in order to hear his ultra-soft utterances.

Close friends like Allocco say, "Tommy is so cool that sometimes he seems cold to people who don't really know him." Yet when pressed for a few examples of the red-hot side of Clements' nature, Guard Gerry DiNardo, his former roommate, thinks long and hard and then says, "Well, I saw him kind of pace the floor once. "Center Mark Brenneman believes that after three seasons the players now know when Clements has worked himself up to a fever pitch in a tight game. "Tommy will come into the huddle," says Brenneman, "and he'll say, 'Let's go.' "

Still, it is worth hiring a lip reader to tune in on Clements when and if he can be goaded into talking. His delivery is like his passing—quick, direct, on the mark.

"I'm not outgoing because it's not me," he says. "It's not my type of personality and I don't believe in forcing things. Besides, there's no such thing as emotion." One of his boyhood heroes, he says, was Walt Frazier (Clements was all-state in basketball as well as football in high school) mainly because "he never changes his expression."

As for "the Heisman thing," as he calls it, Clements says flatly, "I don't want it. I wouldn't feel comfortable about winning it. There are other players who are better than I am that no one ever hears about. I just happen to be playing on a great team and anything but a national championship is irrelevant. I don't like all the publicity. I don't care to be singled out. I'd rather go unnoticed."

The humble routine is as old as the flying wedge but with Clements, perhaps because of his deadly earnest gaze or the fact that his most scandalous pastimes are an addiction to TV's Jeopardy and a few racy hands of Hearts or Crazy Eights, one gets the feeling that he really believes what he says about "just wanting to be part of the team." The Fighting Irish certainly do. This season for the first time in 28 years the Notre Dame players elected their quarterback as their offensive captain.

His impassive nature aside, Thomas Albert Clements may in fact be the foremost of a whole new breed of junior executive quarterbacks. It has lately become fashionable for college athletes to play down the rah-rah and talk about "execution" and "in-depth preparation," the way ad men talk about cost per thousand. But Clements is something special if only because of his icy proficiency and the fact that he is playing for a university that has long led the league in the school spirit, legend and laryngitis divisions.

But times change, even in South Bend. It was not too long ago, for example, that an ND student, faced with a hefty increase in tuition, was put on probation for suggesting that the Golden Dome be replaced by a golden cash register. By contrast, the latest issue of The Scholastic, the campus magazine, offers a sassy multiple choice quiz in which the Golden Dome "A) is International Hdq. for the Ultra Ban 5000 Assoc, B) looks best in the rearview mirror, C) is the Catholic Watergate, D) is Hdq. for the 13th Crusade."

There are a few obvious indications of how this new irreverence is expressed on the football field. Last Saturday for example, while the Northwestern players were engaging in the usual jumping, shouting pregame histrionics, the Irish limbered up as casually as a bunch of beachcombers. Though Clements & Co. may be guilty of trying to emulate the pros a bit too much, one thing seems certain: the old gung-ho days when Frank Leahy's lads charged down the field screaming like banshees on every opening kickoff are long gone, at least until their present spiritual leader, Tom Clements, hangs up his low profile.