So I’m right in the middle of reading Gerry Faust’s 1997 book “The Golden Dream,” detailing his tumultuous time as head coach at Notre Dame and the University of Akron, and it’s turning out to be quite the nostalgic experience for me — as well as a lesson in human nature.
I was a sports writer at Akron’s campus newspaper, “The Buchtelite,” in the fall of 1988, writing weekly player features in what was Faust’s third season coaching the Zips. I also wrote the occasional column — one of which stands out in my memory to this day. Not because it reminded anyone of Hemingway, Twain or Poe, but because it illustrated the class and dignity with which Faust always carried himself — and, more importantly, extended to others.
Some background:
Faust was brought in as head coach of the Zips in 1986, replacing the popular and successful Jim Dennison, who had a Division II national runner-up finish in 1976 on his Akron resume. But the thinking of the Akron brass at the time was that the football program needed a “name coach” to lead the program from Division I-AA to Division I-A in 1987, the first college football program ever to make that precarious jump, so Dennison was fired as head coach after the 1985 season — a season that saw the Zips advance to the I-AA playoffs.
The move shocked and angered many in the Akron community and didn’t exactly do Faust any favors, either. After a legendary career coaching Cincinnati Moeller High School to state and mythical national championships, Faust had stumbled his way to a 30-26-1 record in five seasons at Notre Dame. The last thing he needed was to step into a minefield at Akron, yet that’s exactly what happened because of the way the administration handled Dennison’s dismissal.
Things only got worse for Faust when, in his second season of 1987 — Akron’s first in Division I-A — the Zips finished with a 4-7 record, which included a 27-23 loss to Kent State in the Wagon Wheel game at the Rubber Bowl.
So 1988 was a huge season for Faust and the Zips, and they went all in, bringing in a mercurial quarterback from the junior college ranks named Mike Johnson to kickstart the offense and turn the corner as a I-A independent (Akron’s first season in the Mid-American Conference wasn’t until 1992). Johnson had played two years at Arizona State and one year at Mesa Community College before coming to Akron. (Mike is now the co-offensive coordinator at Syracuse, where he coaches former Ohio State quarterback Kyle McCord, and served as UCLA’s interim head coach in 2011.)
The game that was supposed to propel Akron to the proverbial next level in that highly anticipated 1988 season was a Sept. 10 date against the Golden Flashes at Dix Stadium.
Which brings us to my column.
I went to that game not as an official representative of The Buchtelite, but as an Akron student sitting in the east stands of Dix Stadium watching in horror and disgust as the Flashes dismantled the Zips to the tune of 32-12. From where I sat, it looked more like 52-12. Akron appeared unmotivated, unprepared and unwilling to put up much in the way of resistance on that beautiful late-summer day in Kent. As I sat there watching the carnage unfold in front of me — complete with silly penalties, bone-headed mistakes and highly questionable play-calling — I knew, on the job or not, this required a column in an edition of The Buchtelite the following week.
Our sports editor at The Buchtelite also served as the football team’s beat writer and was actually covering the game. So, assuming he was just writing a straight game story, I asked if he minded if I wrote a column detailing the Zips’ ineptitude that day against the Golden Flashes.
He gave it the OK, and off I went — to vent as much as write. The Zips had looked so bad in that game, I hardly knew where to start. It was a Keystone Kops routine from start to finish, the kind of game where you actually start to think, “Has anyone on Akron’s team ever played a down of football before?” A week earlier, in the season opener at Northern Illinois, Akron had played the Huskies tough in a 7-6 loss. Kent State, meanwhile, was coming off a 34-3 pounding of Youngstown State in its opener. So, based on that, I figured the Wagon Wheel game would be a toss-up.
But somewhere between DeKalb, Illinois and Kent, Ohio, the Zips had forgotten how to play football. I mean, they couldn’t do much of anything right against the Flashes that day, and as soon as I sat down to write the column, the words poured out of me. The Zips had looked like a confused, completely unprepared team against Kent State, and I made sure to convey that in my column. I didn’t feel like it was a cheap, unfair hatchet job, just brutal honesty. Tough love, if you will.
I submitted my column and set about preparing for another week of classes. And it seemed like just another normal week until I walked into The Buchtelite office one day and was notified that I had received a piece of mail. “Oh?” I asked. “Who’s it from?” It wasn’t like we got a lot of mail, so I was a little surprised. The person looked at the envelope and said nonchalantly, “Coach Faust.” Then handed me the envelope.
Coach Faust? I could literally feel my blood starting to run cold. I had put the Kent State debacle squarely on him and the Akron coaching staff, and now I was holding in my hands his response — probably, I figured, every bit as blunt as my column had been.
I opened the envelope. As a communications major cutting his teeth in journalism, I had to learn that this came with the territory. I publicly called out a coach for his team’s lousy performance in the biggest game of the year, and he was coming for his pound of flesh.
I pulled the hand-written note out of the envelope, unfolded it and braced myself for the tirade that I was sure was on that white piece of paper. It started out something like, “I read your column in The Buchtelite … ”
Welp, here it comes, I thought. This is gonna be bad.
And then the words: “I thought it was fair and factual.” After some more nice words, he signed it: “God Bless, Gerry Faust.”
I still have that note. Not just because it was from Gerry Faust and he said nice things to me, but because it serves as a stark illustration of what Abraham Lincoln termed “the better angels of our nature.” Gerry Faust had a choice when he sat down to pen that note. As someone who had coached the most powerful high school football program in America, Cincinnati Moeller, and the most storied college football program in America, Notre Dame, he could have taken serious offense to some 20-year-old punk college kid calling him out in the newspaper. It could have brought out the worst in him, and it probably would have brought out the worst in a lot of coaches.
But Gerry didn’t see it as a personal attack, nor as an assault on his football knowledge. Because I intended it to be neither. It was a column on one college football team’s performance in one game. Nothing more, nothing less. Gerry saw it for what it was: A deep dive into what went wrong for Akron at Kent State on Sept. 10, 1988. And he saw it as a sportswriter simply doing his job and being honest with readers.
In the years since, I have often thought about that note every time I am criticized for something, whether it’s related to journalism or not. As human beings, our first instinct is to defend ourselves against criticism. Protect the castle, so to speak. But Gerry Faust showed a young college kid that a defensive posture prohibits improvement – and that maybe, just maybe, criticism of your performance has merit.
My column was coming from the right place, and Gerry sensed that. And as I make my way through his book, I know firsthand that, like his note to me in 1988, his words are sincere, that the book isn’t a propaganda piece designed to make excuses for his difficult time at Notre Dame or his 43-53-3 record in his nine years at Akron. It’s an honest account of his time at both schools and the hurdles he faced — and mistakes he made — coaching their football programs.
In fact, it’s essentially a self-critique of his performance as coach of the Fighting Irish and Zips – a fair and factual account, if you will. And I’m not a bit surprised by the approach he took to the book. It’s completely consistent with what I already knew from that little note he jotted off to me all those years ago: That it’s important to hold yourself accountable.
That it’s important to not accept mediocrity.
And it’s important to demonstrate the better angels of our nature.
Interestingly, Akron and Kent State both finished with 5-6 records in 1988. Two one-point losses kept the Zips from posting a winning record (you can pretty much toss out their 42-0 loss at Auburn in the middle of the season).
The Flashes, in their first season under head coach Dick Crum, lost six of their next seven games following the Akron contest before closing the campaign with two straight victories. Their record was deceiving, however, because they lost three games by a touchdown or they could have been 8-3.
I would be remiss if I didn’t note the recent passing of former Kent State running back and assistant coach Dan Dorazio, who died Aug. 13 at age 72.
Dorazio was a standout at Stow High School who, following his college playing days, began a long and illustrious coaching career as a graduate assistant on the Golden Flashes’ staff under head coach Don James. In his first season on the job, Dorazio, assigned to the offensive line, coached on Kent State’s 1972 Mid-American Conference championship team.
It was a sign of things to come for Dorazio, who ended up serving as offensive line coach on four Grey Cup championship teams in the Canadian Football League: the Calgary Stampeders in 1998 and 2001, and the BC Lions in 2006 and 2011.
Dorazio’s collegiate coaching career spanned 26 years. He coached at Kent State from 1972-74, which included the 1973 team’s 9-2 record that still stands as the program’s best percentage-wise, then had stops at Hawaii, San Jose State, Washington (where he was reunited with James, by then the Huskies’ head coach), Northern Iowa, Georgia Tech, Washington again (this time coaching under James for 5 seasons), Holy Cross, Maryland and Boston University.
Of note, Dorazio was Washington’s offensive line coach in the 1984 season when the No. 4-ranked Huskies of the Pac-10 upset No. 2 Oklahoma of the Big 8 in the Orange Bowl, 28-17, in a contest that many in the college football world viewed as the actual national championship game. By the time the Orange Bowl was played on Jan. 1, 1985, No. 1 Brigham Young had already been awarded the national title by virtue of its 13-0 record and 24-17 win over Michigan almost two weeks earlier in the Holiday Bowl. However, since the Cougars’ opponents as a group had a losing record, the conventional wisdom in the college football world was that their success was largely the product of a weak schedule and that James’ battle-tested Huskies were the real national champion in 1984.
All’s well that ended well, though, and Dorazio’s debut season coaching in the CFL, 1998, resulted in a Grey Cup championship with the Stampeders.
Dorazio died of pancreatic cancer in Abbotsford, British Columbia.
Tom Hardesty is a Portager sports columnist. He was formerly assistant sports editor at the Record-Courier and author of the book Glimpses of Heaven.