Catholics versus Criminals

     Last night ESPN aired the aforementioned in its 30 for 30 series. The focus was on the 1980's football rivalry between the University of Miami Hurricanes and the University of Notre Dame Fighting Irish, with the emphasis on how the T shirt with the slogan which captured many people's imagination and flashed so much anger came about.

     Patrick Creadon, a Notre Dame alumnus who was a student during the heyday of the games between the two bitter foes, told the story from a decidedly Notre Dame perspective. He chronicled the story of how hostile the games were, stemming from the Miami successes under Coach Jimmy Johnson, which included a National Championship in 1987. To Creadon, the genesis of such hatred came from the 1985 game in Miami's Orange Bowl Stadium.

     Gerry Faust had campaigned long and hard to become the Coach of Notre Dame. An Ohio high school coach with a legion of great teams on that level, he could not win enough games to satisfy the rabid Notre Dame fans who expected championships every season.

     Faust decided to resign--not be fired--before the contest versus Miami. The team had quit on him, but there was still pride on the line.

     Johnson, a star at Arkansas as an undergrad where he became close with teammate Jerry Jones who owns the Dallas Cowboys, had worked his way up the coaching ranks as a valued assistant at his alma mater, then the University of Pittsburgh prior to becoming the head coach at Oklahoma State University. Compiling wins at Oklahoma State with a no nonsense brand of football, he was handed the reigns of the Miami program.

     Miami had established a counter culture approach to football, as Howard Schnellenberger, Johnson's predecessor as head coach, had recruited inner city kids from South Florida with an attitude. Some of those kids went on to commit crimes. That, to the pious alums of the white, preppy elite of Notre Dame, was heinous. Johnson continued the recruiting theme that Schnellenberger had utilized to reap tremendous success on the field.

     And he taught his team to never stop putting the hammer to the floor. Which is why he stomped on Notre Dame and Faust in his last futile game. Which enraged a whole lot of Irish players and partisans.

     One subplot to this was that Creadon had 2 friends who were diehard Irish fans and Notre Dame students,, Joe Frederick and childhood chum Pat Walsh. They also interacted with some of the key players for Notre Dame, including the quarterback, Tony Rice, who was a Proposition 48 qualifier and had to bring his grades up during his freshman year before he became eligible to play. Thus the message that everyone knew everyone, including the Yale transfer Pat Eilers--that's right--a transfer from one America's top schools who actually walked on to Coach Lou Holtz's squad and who was instrumental in the notorious 1988 game.

     Then there was this whole Johnson-Holtz scenario. Johnson had been a top assistant at Arkansas under his mentor, Frank Broyles. When Broyles stepped down, it was all but assumed that Johnson was going to be the next head coach. Surprisingly, Holtz was brought into Fayetteville to assume control; Johnson wanted no part of that and he left for Pitt. While civil at the surface, the two men clearly did not like each other.

     Thus, when Johnson was running over teams at full steam, Holtz was rebuilding Notre Dame. He was starting off recruiting young men he wanted to have the pedigree necessary to win. As such, when he recruited Rice, he got into trouble with then Chancellor Theodore Hester and was reprimanded for promising a scholarship to someone who had not even taken the SAT. Hester magnanimously still honored the scholarship.

     Such was the prelude to the 1988 contest at South Bend. Miami was peeved that it was only ranked 8th at the start of the season after winning the national title. And they took it out on their opponents. Notre Dame played a rugged schedule and started to win games they had been previously losing. Both moved up in the polls as the fall progressed until they were ranked number 1 and 4 when they collided on a warm October day.

     Creadon's friend Walsh had built a small, illicit underground empire selling Notre Dame tshirts which the bookstore and in effect the school wanted no part of. This violated the school's rule of no business enterprises on campus as well as trademark and copyright infringement laws. He and Frederick came up with the logo of Catholics vs Criminals and the shirts sold like a wildfire grows. So much so that $36,000 was made by his friend on game day sales. However, Pat Walsh had been forewarned that continued tshirt selling would have significant consequences. So, notwithstanding that dire forecast and having invested some money that he needed to recoup, he nonetheless went ahead, even selling the shirts on campus near the stadium.  This cost Pat Walsh his childhood quest, to walk on as a member of Digger Phelps' Notre Dame basketball squad, which he had just made as a senior. As the documentary so succinctly captured, Phelps questioned why selling tshirts was worth more than  a place on the basketball team?

     The rivalry was so intense among the players that the tshirts only ramped up the rabid nature of the Irish faithful. From the clips of interviews of former players, the distaste for the rival was bitter and hostile. Before the kickoff, there was a rumble between the teams. The game was hard-fought and with many mood swings based on scoring. Steve Walsh, the Miami quarterback, spoke of the emotionality of the event. He also suffered a cut on the chin chasing after a Notre Dame player who had intercepted his pass and was trying to score. Holtz so fired up his team that he said he wanted a piece of Jimmy Johnson after the game ( to which he revealed that he would have gotten his ass kicked). In terms of Catholics versus Criminals, Steve Walsh reminded us that there may have been as many Catholics on his team as there were at Notre Dame.

     It all came down to a tale of conversions. First, Notre Dame going for and making a 2 point conversion using that little-used Yale transfer Eilers who Holtz was impressed with from his initial encounter at practice as well as his moxie in telling a doubtful Holtz that he did not transfer from Yale not to play football. Then Miami running back Cleveland Gary  seemingly broke the plane of the goal line only to have been ruled to have fumbled before crossing the line, thereby denying the Hurricanes the chance to win the game.

     Notre Dame exacted revenge for its seniors and absolution in defeating Miami. Miami still cries foul on the conversion. The bitterness of the rivalry, so exemplified in the alleged divergence between the two schools in their football teams philosophies, led to the halting of the series for a long period of time.

     So what do we come away with from this 30 for 30 episode? That the world that these two teams and their fans dwelled in in 1988 was screwed up as captured by Creadon. The emotionality that QB Walsh had noted was perverse in its universal application involving both schools. Football was beyond normalcy. Or was football the real normalcy among the Notre Dame fans and led to its sanctification as well as its banality? That so much was invested on all fronts that a rivalry needed to be discontinued so as to regain sanity? That the insanity provoked radicalness and racial stereotyping? An absence of morality cloaked in feigned elitist fidelity?And one boy was so caught up in his own world that he lost out on the thing he cherished most?

     So who were the Catholics and who were the Criminals? I think that they existed on both sides and to the detriment of all. And the fact is, it is not surprising in this day, that the tshirt still resonates among Notre Dame fans while it is vilified by those int was intended for--Miami players of the past and present. Because, in the end, both sides were and still are wrong about the game and its overtones.