Surrender At Notre Dame

No one can say for certain what reasoning the Notre Dame athletic board followed in determining to fire Terry Brennan. So secret were the deliberations that Athletic Director Krause did not learn of Brennan's dismissal until Terry did. But what is certain is that the pressure for championship teams became so strong, both among the alumni and a faction of the faculty, that the administration was worried into doing something about it.

The problem actually could have been solved by an announcement that Notre Dame would immediately increase its recruiting and the number of football scholarships and lower the academic requirements for players. But such a candid solution would have been bad for public relations and might have destroyed the university's academic status so carefully raised by Father Hesburgh.

Another solution, more politic but dangerously ephemeral, would have been simply to fire Brennan and hire a high-powered coach, without changing the athletic scholarships, recruiting policy or academic standards. For a while the wolves would have been appeased, only to return in full pursuit in a year or so when the new coach failed to produce a championship team—a feat considered impossible with the material Notre Dame has been receiving for the past several years.

As it turned out, Notre Dame did indeed fire Brennan and hire Joe Kuharich of the Washington Redskins. No mention was publicly made about scholarships and recruiting and standards, but football observers thought it entirely unlikely that Kuharich would have left a five-year contract in Washington without assurances that he would have adequate scholarships and enough "academic risk" players to produce the kind of team that the more relentless Notre Dame alumni demand. Kuharich ticked off the players he wants: "Those dedicated to football—those with a deep-rooted love for the game—those who want to sacrifice and suffer for it."

But in trying to placate the Old Boys of Notre Dame probably no one in the university's administration anticipated the resentment that Brennan's firing would set off. All across the nation editors, sports columnists, football coaches and even Brennan's players condemned the Notre Dame action. Louisiana State's young Paul Dietzel, the 1958 Coach of the Year, said evenly: "Anyone taking that job now should have his head examined. Firing Brennan will have the effect of setting back football 20 years at Notre Dame."

But setting it back 20 years—or 40 years—is precisely what the Old Boys seem to want. It is something unlikely to come about. What has come about, however, is a rebuff to the progress Father Hesburgh has made in balancing educational excellence with football prowess at Notre Dame. The real tragedy at South Bend goes beyond the unhappy denouement of the Notre Dame career of Terence Brennan, halfback and coach. The real tragedy is the reluctant surrender of the forces that worked for a sane athletic policy. In this respect, the most biting comment on Brennan's dismissal came, not from the platoons of sports editors and football coaches, but from a Catholic weekly newspaper. Wrote the Indiana Catholic and Record, official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis: "The firing of Terry Brennan is a setback for the priests and laymen who are trying to remake the public image of Notre Dame from a football factory to a first-class university.... They are the ones who really lost."