Gerry Faust, Coach Who Lived a Dream at Notre Dame, Dies at 89

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 ever 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.”