Gerry Faust, who saw his childhood dream to play quarterback for the University of Notre Dame dashed, only to live out another one by rising from high school football coach in Ohio to leader of the storied Fighting Irish, died on Monday. He was 89.
The university confirmed his death in a statement. It did not cite a cause or say where he died.
Before Faust first strode onto the football field amid a sea of gold Notre Dame helmets in 1981, he was not unheralded. Over nearly two decades, starting in 1962, he guided Archbishop Moeller High School, in the suburbs of Cincinnati, to a jaw-dropping 174-17-2 record.
Even so, he was considered an extreme outlier in taking over a marquee college program without ever having coached beyond the high school level. His hiring became known as the Bold Experiment.
Faust’s five-year tenure with the Irish was checkered, with the team, a perennial powerhouse, tallying an uncharacteristically mediocre 30-26-1 record under him, with just one bowl victory, a 19-18 win over Boston College in the 1983 Liberty Bowl.
But while his run was underwhelming, his underdog tale became the stuff of Notre Dame lore.
“The story is one of the great stories you’ve every heard,” the television host and Notre Dame alumnus Regis Philbin recalled in a 2007 ESPN documentary about Faust. “Guy praying for something all his life, and one day he got it.”
This was not just any university, after all, but a football bastion in South Bend, Ind., where hallowed coaches like Knute Rockne and Ara Parseghian once strode the sidelines, Parseghian in the shadow of a giant “Word of Life” mural portraying Christ holding his arms aloft toward the heavens and that fans came to christen “Touchdown Jesus.”
Faust’s story seemed almost scripted by Hollywood, a precursor of sorts to “Rudy” (1993), a movie, based on a true story, about an undersize walk-on with a never-say-die attitude who wills himself onto the team.
Faust, known for his raspy voice and unbridled optimism, certainly had the right back story. “Ever since I’ve been in the fifth grade, playing C.Y.O. football and riding my bike back and forth to practice, I used to sing the Notre Dame fight song,” he said in a news conference after he was hired, referring to the Catholic Youth Organization.
As a high school quarterback in Dayton, Ohio, hoping Notre Dame would recruit him, he attended a tryout as one of 18 players at his position. “I was about eighth in line,” Faust wrote in “The Golden Dream,” his 1997 memoir. “After I saw the first seven throw the football, I knew I couldn’t play football at Notre Dame. They were too good. My next dream was to be the coach at Notre Dame.”
He went on instead to play quarterback for the University of Dayton.
When Notre Dame hired him decades later, a news media blitz included helicopters carrying reporters following his car. “How had I gotten myself into this mess?” he recalled thinking.
“During the next five years,” he added, “other people would ask me that question.”
Gerard Anthony Faust Jr. was born on May 21, 1935, in Dayton to Gerard Sr. and Alma (Eiben) Faust. His father, who was known as Fuzzy, was a local coaching legend, guiding Chaminade High School’s football team to a record of 132-50-10 over more than two decades.
Faust played quarterback on his father’s team before graduating in 1953. After playing at Dayton and graduating in 1958, he returned to his old high school as an assistant coach.
Two years later, Faust started a football program at Moeller High, a new, all-male, Catholic school. Under his leadership, the Crusaders steamrolled opponents through 1980, notching five state championships in his last six seasons.
Along the way, he still nurtured dreams of coaching glory at Notre Dame, where many of his former players had gone on to play. In 1977, he wrote a letter to Edmund P. Joyce, executive vice president of the university, asking to be considered for the next coaching vacancy. He included newspaper clippings recounting his dominant run at Moeller.
He also got a crucial recommendation from a man considered one of the architects of modern professional football, Paul Brown, who founded the Cleveland Browns and the Cincinnati Bengals and in the 1940s had leaped from the high school ranks to coach Ohio State University.
Opportunity came in 1980, when Dan Devine, who had coached the Fighting Irish to an unofficial national championship in 1977, with the future Pro Football Hall of Famer Joe Montana at quarterback, announced his retirement. The university stunned the college football world by hiring Faust.
On the field, his tenure started in thrilling fashion, as Notre Dame dispatched another marquee program, Louisiana State University, 27-9, in the 1981 opener, earning the Irish the No. 1 spot in the Associated Press rankings.
That turned out to be the high point of Faust’s Notre Dame career. The team finished that season 5-6 and followed it with 6-4-1 and 7-5 campaigns — records that fell short of the lofty standards set by Notre Dame alumni.
In 1984, Sports Illustrated, calling him “embattled,” put Faust on the cover of a November issue accompanied by the cover line “I’m Gonna Make It!” As the article inside recounted, Notre Dame was sitting at 3-4 that season with a brutal schedule ahead when the ABC commentator Keith Jackson reminded Faust, “You have the definite possibility of a 4-7 season.”
“Yeah,” Faust replied, “but also one of 7-4.” (The team in fact went 7-5.)
He never lost his fight, or his faith. Unlike most football coaches, Faust, an observing Roman Catholic, routinely implored players on the sideline to say the Hail Mary during tight moments in games.
Prayers or no, Notre Dame finished at a disappointing 5-6 in 1985, with Faust announcing his resignation before the final game. “It’s best for me to resign now,” he said, “and give the university an opportunity to get another coach before recruiting starts next week.”
Notre Dame was not his last stop. Faust took over at the University of Akron in Ohio in 1987, going 36-51-3 over eight seasons.
His survivors include his wife of 60 years, Marlene; his sons, Gerry and Stephen; his daughter, Julie; his brother, Frederick; and seven grandchildren.
“I only had 26 miserable days at Notre Dame,” he said in an interview with The Los Angeles Times in 2008, “and that’s when we lost.”
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