CHAPTER 16

Notre Dame

EMOTIONALLY, I FELT LOW WHEN I left for South Bend. That changed once I arrived on campus in late May when I met with Coach Holtz shortly after spring practice.

Coach had landed the Notre Dame job prior to the 1986 season, after serving stints around the NFL and college football scene. The Fighting Irish were struggling when he took over the program, but that would change under his watch.

While Coach Holtz carried a ribbon-thin frame, wore glasses, and had a personality that most found interesting and funny, he insisted on discipline, and he was a taskmaster. Prior to his first season, he stressed the importance of team. Hoping to drive that concept home, he had the names removed from the backs of the players’ jerseys.

After posting a 5–6 season his first year in South Bend, Coach Holtz’s Irish improved dramatically, posting a 12–0 record during the 1988 season before defeating West Virginia in the Fiesta Bowl to become National Champions.

When I sat down with Coach Holtz, he told me, “Look Joe, if you help us this year, I’ll help you get a job next year.”

That eased my mind.

After I left Coach Holtz, I went into Gary Darnell’s office. We talked about an hour, then he said, “Let’s get out of here.” Next thing you know, I was at Knollwood Country Club. I’m like, Man this is cool. I walked to the driving range and found Ara Parseghian hitting balls. I introduced myself to the famed former Notre Dame coach and thought about the letter I’d received from Notre Dame back in 1979 that wished me luck but told me I couldn’t go to school there. That became my opening sentence on booster speaking engagements. “I wasn’t smart enough to go to Notre Dame, but I’m smart enough to coach here.”

I knew I needed to be at Notre Dame. My instincts just told me it would be the right place for me.

Among the items I’d packed to take with me to South Bend were a bunch of wooden-shafted clubs that Dad had given me. White Fang rested among that collection of clubs and made the trip. I put those clubs on a shelf, never unwrapped them, and never thought about them. In hindsight, it’s amazing I did not get rid of them, because you certainly couldn’t play with those clubs anymore.

While working as a volunteer at Notre Dame, I collected approximately $200 a week via unemployment. Meanwhile, I buried myself in my work. I think I received more respect for being a volunteer coach than I did for being a graduate assistant in my previous role!

Meanwhile, my relationship with Mary Gayle grew serious, even though she remained in Baton Rouge. Her mom passed away before I left for South Bend, so that spring she continued working and taking care of the family business.

My first season at Notre Dame started well for the team. We compiled an 8–1 record with wins over USC, Pitt, Michigan State, and Stanford. Our only loss heading into a game against No. 13 Tennessee came against Michigan in the second week. We felt pretty good hosting the Volunteers in South Bend on November 9, 1991. A lot of people were touting us as potential National Champions.

Unfortunately, our season began to unravel at that point.

After taking a 31–14 halftime lead, we had the worst collapse in the second half that I had ever experienced.

Our All-American punter/kicker, Craig Hentrich, sprained his right knee when Tennessee blocked his field goal attempt with fourteen seconds remaining in the second quarter. That block turned into an eighty-five-yard touchdown return and left the kicking duties up to a sophomore walk-on, Rob Leonard, which proved to be a critical development regarding the game’s outcome.

Tennessee took their first and only lead of the game with just over four minutes to play. They correctly anticipated a blitz and scored on a twenty-six-yard screen pass, putting them up, 35–34.

Still, we had a chance to win, starting a drive at our 25 with 3 minutes and 57 seconds left on the clock. The offense came through, driving the ball to the Tennessee nine-yard line. With four seconds remaining, Leonard tried his first career college field goal.

The kick left his foot and deflected off the backside of one of Tennessee’s charging defenders, causing the ball to miss wide right. We lost, 35–34.

After the game, Coach Holtz expressed disappointment by saying, “I’ve been in this game a long time. That was as difficult a loss as I’ve been associated with, ever. Ever.”

Our troubles continued the next week, when we traveled to Happy Valley and lost to Penn State, 35–13.

We finished the season in Hawaii. Once again, our defense killed us, and the Rainbow Warriors hung 42 points on us. Fortunately, we came away 48–42 winners. Wins are rarely disappointing, but that one didn’t exactly put a bounce in our step.

That left us at 9–3 on the season, prompting a lot of people to grumble when we accepted a bid to play the University of Florida in the Sugar Bowl. We knew there would be some changes going into the bowl game, as Gary Darnell had been offered a coaching position on John Mackovic’s staff at the University of Texas. Coach Holtz had an unwritten rule: if you got a coaching job elsewhere, you left the staff immediately. Conducting business that way made for fewer distractions for both programs. Thus, Gary left Notre Dame prior to the bowl game, prompting Coach Holtz to move me to coach the inside linebackers against the explosive Gators offense, masterminded by Steve Spurrier.

Quarterback Shane Matthews led the No. 3 Gators’ potent offense. He’d earned Southeastern Conference Player of the Year honors, and the Gators had posted a 10–1 record in Spurrier’s second season as the head coach at his alma mater.

I’d been on the LSU sidelines the year before, when we lost, 34–8, to the Gators, so I’d seen firsthand what type of potent attack “The Ole Ball Coach” had put together in Gainesville.

It was for the level of competition and a number of other reasons that I looked forward to that Sugar Bowl. Being in New Orleans would put me back around many of the friends I’d left seven months earlier. My parents attended the game, which gave Dad a chance to spend time with his two youngest brothers, Bill and David, who lived and worked in New Orleans. Plus, it afforded me the opportunity to spend time with Mary Gayle, who could be a part of the Bowl festivities and spend more time with my parents and some of the coaches’ wives.

Dad realized I was getting serious with Mary Gayle. I could tell that he really liked being around her. The giveaway came in how he started to tease me and jab at me about her like only he could. He definitely approved.

Once we arrived in New Orleans, Coach Holtz went out to dinner, where a waiter told him that the Sugar Bowl between the Fighting Irish and the Gators had come to be known as “The Cheerios Bowl.” He explained that “The difference between Cheerios and Notre Dame is that Cheerios belong in a bowl.”

Coach Holtz didn’t care for the comment even though the waiter had just delivered motivational gold. The motivator in Coach Holtz used the waiter’s slight accordingly.

As if we needed further motivation, we wore our white jerseys with green lettering that the players really liked.

Florida moved the ball up and down the field all night. Matthews threw for 511 yards, but when they got into the red zone, we would show four down linemen, but we would drop two and rush two. That threw their timing off and clogged the passing lanes on the shortened field. Seven times they were in the red zone, yet they only scored two touchdowns.

We trailed, 16–7, at the half. That’s when Coach Holtz challenged the offensive line—who outweighed the Gators by thirty-five pounds a man—to take care of business. He felt as though they could lead the way to a victory, and they proved him correct. We committed to running the ball and keeping the defense off the field. Meanwhile, Jerome Bettis put on display what a force he could be. “The Bus” had incredible athleticism, particularly for someone who weighed 250 pounds. He’s easily the best running back I’d ever been around, and none of my defensive guys ever wanted to tackle him during practices. The Gators didn’t look too thrilled to try and bring him down either as he scored on touchdown runs of three and forty-nine yards to stake us to a 32–22 lead.

Florida responded with a thirty-six-yard scoring strike from Matthews to Harrison Houston with 2:28 left to make it 32–28. But we put the game out of reach on the following possession, when Bettis ran one in from thirty-nine yards out, making the final score 39–28.

Ultimately, our offense finished with just 279 total yards—paltry compared to the Gators’ totals, and 141 of those yards came in the fourth quarter. Bettis finished the game with 150 yards rushing and in turn led us to victory.

During the press conference following the game, Coach Holtz enjoyed the last laugh, not with just the win, but his rebuttal to the waiter, when he responded with his own question: “Do you know the difference between a golf pro and Lou Holtz?” Answer: “Lou Holtz doesn’t give tips!”

Coach Holtz could certainly be funny, but when it came to business, he was sincere. As he told me in the locker room after the game, “Don’t you talk to anybody. You’re not going anywhere. You’ve got a job here. Don’t talk to anybody.”

I didn’t, so I became a paid member of Coach Holtz’s staff, coaching the outside linebackers and special teams.

Once we capped the ’91 season with that great Sugar Bowl win over the Gators, I had more time to focus on my personal life.

The opportunity to spend a couple weeks in Louisiana with Mary Gayle encouraged me to think about making our relationship a permanent one. We began talking about the future and what that would look like for us. The next thing I knew, April had rolled around, and we had begun to plan a summer wedding in Baton Rouge and build a new house in Granger, Indiana—yet I still had not formally proposed to her!

In fact, as the house began to rise out of the ground, and wedding plans were being made, Mary Gayle reminded me of that fact one night while we talked on the phone. She had begun to feel uneasy about our situation. All these plans were going on, and she had no ring and no formal proposal. I am sure her friends were wondering what kind of guy planned a wedding and built a house without a ring and asking for her hand in marriage. I diverted the subject that night and told her not to worry. You see, I had a plan, but it couldn’t be executed until June.

Back in February, when I made a weekend visit to Baton Rouge, we had gone shopping, and Mary Gayle had expressed that she really liked a ring at Barker’s Antique Jewelry. I played it cool and said let’s keep looking. Little did she know I had the owner send the ring to me. I knew I’d be speaking at a coaches’ clinic in Los Angeles in June, and I wanted her to join me in California, so I could formally ask her to marry me while out there. Nothing like the last minute!

Dad’s influence of music and theater had been so ingrained in me that even my proposal had his fingerprints all over it. After my clinic, I had hotel reservations to stay at the Ritz Carlton in Marina Del Rey, which Artie Gigantino, the defensive coordinator at USC, helped me arrange. I rented a limousine with a dozen roses and champagne to take us to the site where many Academy Awards had taken place, the Music Center of Los Angeles County. I’d thought of everything—a play, dinner, and a drive on Malibu Beach. What more could you ask for? My favorite play and soundtrack, Phantom of the Opera, played at the music center that weekend. But like many plans that are made, you sometimes have to call an audible. Turned out the limousine went to the wrong Ritz. The hotel told us to use their limo and I would just meet the other limo at the theater at the end of the play. Eventually, we made it to the play with little time to spare.

Just before intermission, there is a point where the boyfriend, Raoul, is singing a song to Christine titled “All I Ask of You.” I had heard and sung this song hundreds of times, many of them with Dad. I even sang it at the wedding of Todd Caplin, my best man, several years prior. Raoul sings to Christine, asking her to share one lifetime. He will lead her away from her loneliness and will never leave her side. Wherever she travels, he will always be with her, and above all, he wants her to just “love him!”

That served as my cue to take Mary Gayle’s hand. I slipped the ring on her finger and asked, “Will you?”

Thank God through her tears she smiled and said yes.

Shortly after getting the desired response, I left her before the intermission concluded so I could find out where our limo driver had parked. When I returned, I couldn’t find her, and the bell to alert everyone to get back to their seats had begun to ring. Still, no Mary Gayle.

Finally, a little Spanish-speaking woman walked up to me and asked in broken English, “You looking for pretty blonde lady?”

I told her yes.

She escorted me to a closet door. My future bride sat in a broom closet with several teary-eyed women doting over her and helping her put scotch tape around the ring to make it tighter. The ring was to big and had not been correctly sized yet.

After the show, we found our limo driver with the dozen roses and champagne on ice. I don’t think I could have planned any better on how it all came together. Yes, sometimes audibles do score touchdowns!

After a sixteen-month courtship, Mary Gayle and I were married.

Funny thing about the wedding planning is that it wasn’t just as simple as abiding by our two schedules. As it turned out, during my first season at Notre Dame, I had become good friends with Coach Holtz’s son, Skip, and our lives would be forever intertwined. We played a lot of golf together, worked out together, and one thing we both enjoyed was our late afternoon or evening spins around the Notre Dame campus on our rollerblades. Even our dating lives were in tandem. We both had been dating girls who lived hundreds of miles away, and, ultimately, we had to plan our weddings around each other’s.

After spring recruiting and summer camps, the coaching staff only got three weeks of vacation in July. Thus, I took the first week for our wedding, July 3, and Skip took the second week, July 11. We were groomsmen for each other, so that led to a lot of planning. The third week would be our honeymoon time. Mary Gayle and I were off to Barbados, and Skip and Jennifer were off to the Cayman Islands, until one day in April, Skip walked into my office and asked me, “Do you mind if we go to Barbados with you all?” His trip had been canceled, so I said, “Sure, but we have to agree that we won’t see each other for at least three of the days. You know what I mean?” (Wink-wink) I’ll always remember that summer for being a magical time in my life. Sharing that time with lifelong friends only enhanced the experience.

Everything in my life seemed to be clicking into place, on the personal front as well as the professional one.

The 1992 season proved to be a success even though we fell short of our ultimate goal to win a National Championship. We survived the Michigan game in South Bend the second week of the season, and our only loss that year came to Stanford, 33–16, in the first week of October.

It was certainly a plus that that 1992 team had so many seniors and future NFL players, like Rick Mirer, Jerome Bettis, Demetrius Dubose, Tom Carter, Craig Hentrich, Irv Smith, and Devon McDonald. Ultimately, we played Texas A&M in the 1993 Cotton Bowl and beat them handily, 28–3, to finish strong and earn a No. 4 ranking in the UPI and AP polls at the end of the year.

I sent Dad a card in November to thank him for all he had done to help me find my way:

Dear Dad,

I have been going through a lot of soul-searching the past few months. Looking back at my past, how I have attained the present and where I will be in the future. God has watched over me but mostly, my father has watched over me. He kept the firm hand on me when I needed it and he gave me more rope when he thought I could use it. I know I could not be where I am today without your help and support, and it is only right that my business cards say “Joe Wessel” because part of you is up here with me. Every time I walk out on the field, part of Joe Sr. is walking out there with Joe Jr. I hope I have made you proud and I hope you strut your feathers a little bit because there are very few fathers that can say, “My boy coaches at Notre Dame.” … I love you Dad, and in all the business and running around I do, if I haven’t told you that, thanks and remember that you are appreciated more than one can say!

All my love, Tiger