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The Wildcats never wound up higher than third in the Big Ten, but there were plenty of moments to savor: a 21-0 victory over Ohio State that ended the Buckeyes' 14-game unbeaten streak, the 45-13 crushing of Bud Wilkinson's Oklahoma team on nationwide TV-and the four straight victories over Notre Dame that, more than anything else, convinced the Irish that Parseghian was the man to put a new coat of gold on the dome.
In the Spotlight. Parseghian's move to South Bend last January was more like a homecoming than an arrival. He was introduced between halves of a basketball game, and the students gave him a ten-minute standing ovation. In mid-February, 3,000 turned out in two feet of snow for a mammoth pep rally. If it was spirit they wanted, spirit he gave them. At spring training he whipped out a letter written by a former Notre Dame player who had been seriously injured in an auto accident. Rockne couldn't have done it better. Voice quavering, Parseghian read the letter to the spellbound team: "Being a Notre Dame football player automatically puts you in the national spotlight, more so than players from any other school. Don't let those fans down. Be honest with yourself. Give that second and third effort. Bring Notre Dame football back where it belongs."
The spirit might be willing, but it takes a powerful amount of flesh to make a football winner—and the most optimistic experts did not figure Notre Dame for much this year. The school hadn't had a winning season in five years; 22 out of 38 lettermen had graduated from last year's squad that lost seven of its nine games. Parseghian rebuilt the team as though he were running a fire sale.
Out went Notre Dame's old uniforms and pads ("too heavy," he said), replaced by new lightweight gold pants, plain blue jerseys, and helmets whose color was keyed exactly to the Golden Dome itself. Out went the old split T formation, with its quarterback keepers, replaced by the pro-style slot T and the dazzling stacked I—in which three backs line up in a straight line behind the center, then shift suddenly to one side or the other. Out, too, went the old system of calling signals in the huddle. "In the pressure of the game," explains Parseghian, "you don't have time to listen to somebody yell '32' and ponder which hole is the three hole and which back is the two back. We just describe our plays in the most accurate way possible—like 'power sweep right,' or 'belly sweep left.' And we haven't had a badly busted play all season."
In spring training Parseghian wandered around the field like an Arab horse trader. He spent hundreds of hours studying last year's game films, analyzing each man's potential. Finally one day he sauntered up to John Huarte, a quiet Californian who had played just 50 minutes of football in two years, and said: "John, you're my quarterback for the season. I don't care if you throw six interceptions in the first game. You're my quarterback. You're gonna live with me ten weeks this fall." Parseghian's next visit was with Jack Snow, the 6-ft. 2-in., 215-lb. end whom he had singled out as Huarte's No. 1 passing target. Between them, Huarte and Snow have already broken practically all of Notre Dame's season passing records.