by John Walters

Starting Five

Oops

1. NBA Twilight Zone

What was in the NBA water last night? The Cavs, Spurs and Clippers, who entered the night with three of the league’s four best records, each lost to a team that entered the evening with a sub-.500 mark. The Clips lost to Brooklyn by five in OT, the Spurs fell at home to Orlando (no, really) and the Cavs lost by 17 at Milwaukee.

At least we were treated to the signature play of J.R. Smith‘s career, as while he was supposed to be guarding Tony Snell, he recognized Jason Terry (whom he once elbowed flagrantly in a playoff game) seated on the Bucks bench, was probably shocked to learn he was still in the league, and then went over to greet him (so they’ve made up). Ball gets inbounded to J.R.’s open man, who dunks uncontested. How can you not laugh, even if you’re LeBron?

2. “Working on Building/Working on Building/STARS HOLLOW!”

Christian Borle and Sutton Foster. They were actually married outside Miss Patty’s stage.

Olay, sure, Taylor Doose teases Stars Hollow: The Musical early in Episode 3 of the Gilmore Girls revival, but did you really think they were gonna go for it for TEN MINUTES? And then the Palladinos go ahead and hire Christian Borle (currently playing Shakespeare as a rock star in Something Rotten on Broadway) and Sutton Foster to play the leads (“She was Kinky Boots!”). And what about your director, Nat?

Nat: Minimalist director

Anyway, it’s nowhere on YouTube, so you’ll just have to go to Netflix and see it for yourself. Note: Borle and Foster used to be married and were HUGE Gilmore Girls fans. They’d watch it together. They were married about eight years but remained friends after. Then Foster got the lead in Bunheads, a show that the Paladins produce, so she was a natural for the role of Violet here. She actually suggested Borle, a two-time Tony Award winner, to play Carl. And now you know the rest of the story.”

3. Ore-Gone

The Ducks never allowed fewer than 26 points in a game this year, even surrendering 28 at home to UC-Davis

The Ducks fired coach Mark Helfrich after four seasons. In his first two years in Eugene, the Coos Bay native went 24-4 and led Oregon to the national championship game. In the last two years the Ducks were 9-4 and 4-8 and this season were particularly awful on defense, finishing 125th nationally (out of 128 teams) in Scoring Defense, surrendering 41.4 points per game.

Coos Bay native and secular saint Steve Prefontaine would not be pleased

Still, isn’t it anathema at Oregon to fire someone from Coos Bay? Steve Prefontaine is from Coos Bay. Where would Phil Knight and Nike be without Pre (I mean, sure, he’d still be a monster success, but Pre is sort of Knight’s Moses), and where would Oregon be without Knight? I get it: the talent level had declined and Oregon couldn’t stop anyone.

So who’s next in Eugene? Memo to Chip Kelly, currently coaching the San Francisco  1-9’ers (UPDATED: 1-10’ers; I just wanted you to see the joke): Get back. Get back. Get back to where you once belonged.

4. Blue Bloods

Lonzo is a Ball-er. Bruins will be 8-0 when they visit No. 1 Kentucky on Saturday

You checked out the early men’s hoops rankings? Of the eight schools that have won at least three national championships, seven are ranked int the top 14. Kentucky (8) is No. 1, North Carolina (5) is No. 3, Kansas (3) is No. 4, Duke (5) is No. 5, UCLA (11) is No. 11, Indiana (5) is No. 14 and Louisville (3) is No. 14.

The only slacker among the eight schools with three or more cut-down-nets is UConn. The Huskies are struggling at 2-4.

The only school in the Top 5 without three national titles is No. 2 Villanova, which is both the defending national champ and the only school from a non-Power 5 conference to cut down the nets (twice, in fact: 2016 and 1985) since 1985 (UPDATE: I forgot UNLV, 1990; apologies to the Runnin’ Rebels and my old friend Paul Gutierrez).

Oh, and I’d be remiss not to mention that the school that has ended the longest winning streak in men’s college hoops history, Notre Dame, is 7-0 after taking Iowa down by 14 last night (and its women’s team is No. 1 with a date against UConn, winners of 79 in a row, a week from tonight).

I guess the lesson here is that in sports, as in America, it’s a lot more of an oligarchy than people would like to believe.

5.  “We’re Going To Dine at Jean Georges—and Mexico’s Going To Pay For It!”

Can’t we just have a taco bowl and stay in?

That’s president-elect Donald Trump and potential Secretary of State Mitt Romney dining in New York City last night. They went to Jean Georges, a three-star Michelin Guid joint located above Columbus Circle. Official reports have the three men (they were joined by Reince Priebus as the designated “Why-don’t-we-change-the-subject?” guy) ordering  “a young garlic soup with thyme and sautéed frog legs, and diver scallops with caramelized cauliflower and caper-raisin emulsion as appetizers.

“Priebus and Trump ordered a prime sirloin with citrus glazed carrots for their main course and Romney ordered lamb chops with a mushroom bolognese sauce. All three of the men had a chocolate cake for dessert.

Remember when conservative pundits killed Obama for ordering mustard with his cheeseburger (Laura Ingraham: “Do these men not have anything better to do?”)? Where are they this morning?

For once, I’m with Mike Pence. Spend about one-tenth the money and enjoy an appetizer sampler and then the burger at TGI Friday’s next time, guys.

Music 101 

So Quiet In Here

What the Beach Boys are to summer, Van Morrison is to autumn. He just fits this time of year. As you look outside at 4:50 p.m. and see darkness, your best bet is some mulled wine (I had some this weekend. Who knew!?! So good!) and Van the Man. This is from his 1990 album Enlightenment, which is highly under appreciated.

Remote Patrol

Doubleheader

No. 15 Purdue at No. 14 Louisville

No. 3 North Carolina at No. 13 Indiana

ESPN 7 p.m.

Honestly can’t name a single player on any of these squads. Does Grayson Allen play for one of these schools? No? Okay. Well, I guess this is roll call. Maybe I’ll know a name or two after tonight (Who am I kidding? I’m going to re-watch Gilmore Girls; you do what you like).

by John Walters

Starting Five

Fire On The Mountain

There’s a 500-acre wildfire blazing in eastern Tennessee, near the North Carolina border, in the Great Smoky Mountains. Dollywood is under some threat. It doesn’t help that the southeast is experiencing its worst drought in a more than a decade.

Officials suspect arson, in case you were wondering if we had a candidate for our new daily item, “What The Hell Is Wrong With People?”

2. What The Hell Is Wrong With People?

Okay, so there’s more than one nominee today. An 18 year-old freshman at Ohio State drove his vehicle into a crowd, got out, and then began stabbing people. A Somali immigrant who posted on Facebook that he was “sick and tired” of seeing fellow Muslims “killed and tortured,” the student stabbed 11 people, none fatally, before a campus cop shot him dead.

I have no idea nor do I care, as the cable and network news stations like to report, “if this was terror.” It’s a meaningless construct. Also, I have no idea how this will affect the right-to-knife movement.

3. Twitter: A Weapon of Mass Distraction

This was Donald’s most recent tweet this morning…

Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag – if they do, there must be consequences – perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 29, 2016

I don’t doubt he believes this. I also don’t doubt that he fails to understand the First Amendment. I think a better, fictitious American president, Andrew Shepherd, explained why Donald is wrong on this one (1:35). This was Aaron Sorkin’s first attack, 20 years ago, on Trump, even though at the time he had no idea which vile politician Bob Rumson actually was going to represent (turned out it was Cheney and Trump).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCliHGQy8-w

More importantly, from what is the Wizard of Trump Tower trying to distract us? From yet another divisive cabinet selection? And when that tweet inspires an uptick of flag burners, Trump will call them “losers” and create an even more divisive country. Well done.

4. Pahranagat Falls

Spring Mountain, after losing last year’s state championship game to Pahranagat

It happened more than a week ago, but the longest win streak in high school football history came to an end in Las Vegas, Nevada. Pahranagat Valley High School, which plays eight-man football, lost to its rival, Spring Mountain, 68-46, in the I-A state championship game. Spring Mountain only led 40-38 entering the final quarter, then broke away for the win.

What makes this rivalry so interesting, as I wrote about last year, is how different both schools are. Pahranagat is a closely knit, isolated Mormon town going back generations. The kids start playing football together in second grade and they run the same system all the way up through high school.

Spring Mountain is equally isolated, but for a different reason: it’s a juvenile detention facility located in the mountains northwest of Las Vegas. Most of the players are only there for one school year and many of them come from broken homes.

Pahranagat is exclusively white. Spring Mountain is almost entirely minorities.

Side note: One week earlier Division III Mount Union’s 112-game regular season win streak was also snapped, by John Carroll University. Mount Union has made it to the D-3 quarterfinals, though, and it faces Alfred (a school, not a butler) this Saturday.

5. No Ordinary Joe (etc).

This, by the way, is the only home uniform the Browns should ever wear

Two prodigious NFL streaks to make note of before we get any further into this week:

1. Cleveland Browns tackle Joe Thomas, a first round pick in 2007, recently played his 10,000th consecutive snap. The former Wisconsin Badger has never missed a snap in his career. What makes this Gehrig-ian feat somewhat tragic is that in nearly 10 seasons, Thomas has never taken a single snap in a playoff game. The Browns, currently 0-12, are 47-109 in his career. Their only winning season came in his rookie year, when they finished 10-6 but missed out on the playoffs due to a tiebreaker (the 10-6 Titans got the last spot). Thomas has lined up with 18 different Browns starting quarterbacks behind him.
   

   Tucker, a former undrafted free agent, played at the University of Texas

2. Kicker Justin “Updog” Tucker of the Baltimore Ravens hit four field goals on Sunday, including three from beyond 50 yards in the first half (the first NFL player to ever do that). Tucker has now connected on 34 consecutive field goals (the league record is 44, by Adam Vinatieri) and has yet to miss a PAT or field goal this season. In the strike shortened 1982 season, Washington Redskins kicker Mark Moseley became the only NFL special teams player to be named league MVP. Moseley made 21 of 22 field goals, at the time a league record for successful percentage.

Music 101

When Will I Be Loved

In 1975 Linda Ronstadt covered this Everly Brothers song, originally released in 1960, and turned it into a No. 2 hit. The only thing keeping it from reaching No. 1 was The Captain & Tenille’s monster hit “Love Will Keep Us Together” (it didn’t). This tune belongs on any compilation hit of 1970s signature tunes or at least on the soundtrack of a Paul Thomas Anderson film.

Remote Patrol

Gilmore Girls

NetFlix

Spoiler alerts aplenty, as I have finished this four-part series: Considering the names of the four episodes, why didn’t Carole King get up and bang out, “Winter, spring, summer or fall/All you got to do is call….” (she wrote it; James Taylor only covered it)? The letter that Emily referred to in that therapy session that was purportedly received on her birthday…they never came back to that. Was that a reference to an old episode that I forgot? How did Rory buzz in and out of London as if she were simply heading to New London, and where was she getting the money to live that entire year (she never had a paying job)? How great were Emily, Paris, Kirk and Michel throughout, and when did Bootsy get so many lines? Why did they give Luke a toupee? Was Mitchell Huntzberger right all along (“You don’t got it”)? You think Jess has been lifting? If you never again see the Life and Death Brigade, do you agree that it will be too soon? Also, finally, I counted the pop culture references: at least 250 in the four episodes.

by John Walters

Starting Five

Castro is dead at 90

1. Castro Es Muerto

Stepping all over Florence Henderson’s moment in the sun, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro died on Saturday. He was 90. The former guerrilla leader took power on January 8, 1959 (just days after Michael and Fredo Corleone had fled on a plane to Miami) and ruled the island of 11 million with an iron fist as it languished economically via communist policies.

2. Grey Cup Runneth Over

Calgary and Ottawa went into overtime at the 104th Grey Cup, but the Redblacks prevailed when 41 year-old quarterback Henry Burris (Temple grad) hit Ernest Jackson (Buffalo grad) on a post route for an 18-yard TD. Jackson bobbled it three times before securing the ball just as he crossed the goal line. For Ottawa, who finished the regular season 8-9-1 (Calgary was a league best 15-2), it was their first championship since 1976.

Burris completed 35 of 46 passes for 461 yards in the 39-3 win, even though he injured his knee in warmups and it was uncertain if he’d play. The trainer gave him a shot in the locker room just before kickoff to numb the pain. “They gave me some happy pills,” said Burris, a 17-year CFL veteran.

One big difference between the Grey Cup, which had 33,000-plus fans, and the Super Bowl. At game’s end they name a Top Canadian (Ottawa tight end Brad Sinopoli).

3. Raiders of The Lost Art (of Winning)*

Mack (rhymes with “tackle for loss”) had his first career pick-six on Sunday against Cam Newton

*The judges are cool with “Del Rio Grande”

With Sunday’s 35-32 defeat of the Carolina Panthers, the Silver & Black are 9-2. They’ve clinched their first winning record since 2002 (the year they lost in the Super Bowl to the Bucs) and became the second team this season (besides the Falcons) to defeat both Super Bowl teams from last February.

For years the Oakland Raiders bragged about “Commitment to Excellence” and that no other franchise had as good an all-time won-loss record. And that was true. But now they’re not even Top 10. It’s been a humbling 15 years, but with emerging stars such as QB Derek Carr and LB Khalil Mack, the team that wears the same uniform and plays in the same stadium as it did in its Seventies glory years looks as if it’s headed for a renaissance.

4. Wee Hour Tweeps

USC’s Adoree Jackson owned the Irish with a punt return, screen pass and kickoff return, all of which went for TDs and were longer than 50 yards

Donald Trump, who became famous for 3:30 a.m. tweets, has company: embattled Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly. After the Irish lost 45-27 at USC to end their sour season at 4-8, Yahoo! writer Pat Forde filed a story reporting that Kelly’s representatives were looking into other options. This after Kelly had definitively declared in the post-game presser that he’d return next season.

Statement from @NDFootball coach Brian Kelly… pic.twitter.com/NuPHmNlTyr

— Michael Bertsch (@NDsidBertschy) November 27, 2016

I

If you’re keeping score at home, both Kelly and Trump tweet around 3:30 a.m. Kelly just finished a week in which all of Notre Dame’s 2012 and 2013 wins (21 in all) were vacated, while Trump is now slightly concerned about a bigger win being vacated.

5. “Bitterly Disappointed”

Friday’s and Saturday’s rivalry games were mostly anti-climactic, or just blowouts, save for one: Michigan at Ohio State, which went into overtime. With the Wolverines up 27-24 in the second overtime, the Buckeyes’ Curtis Samuel escaped a 10-yard loss (that would have put the ball on the 30 on 4th down, putting Urban Meyer in a pickle: try a 47-yard FG with a shaky kicker or go for it on 4th-and-15?) with some nifty reversal of field running to set up a 4th-and-1. On that play QB J.T. Barrett, barely, and I mean BARELY, pushed the ball to the 15-yard line for a first down (he landed at the 16). Like by the length of the pleat of a khaki.

On the next play Samuel ran around left tackle, the Wolverines over pursued, and he went in untouched for the win, the victory, and a highly likely playoff berth (with the added benefit of Ohio State NOT having to play this Saturday in Indianapolis).

It was a lot closer than that, Jim.

The scantest of distances, inches really, and in overtime, separated a probable Michigan berth in the playoff from one for Ohio State. Jim Harbaugh complained in the post-game presser, repeatedly, that he was “bitterly disappointed” in the officiating (UM was flagged seven times; Ohio State, two) but that fourth down was too close to blame on the refs. Besides, Michigan returns to Ann Arbor cognizant that it went 1-2 in games outside the state of Michigan, its lone win being at Rutgers.

p.s. This was the most watched television game of the season, with nearly 13 million viewers, and it kicked off at noon.

Meanwhile, as Penn State waxed Michigan State 38-12, some fun angst is set up. The Nittany Lions, if they beat Wisconsin in the B1G, would be conference champs and own the head-to-head versus Ohio State. Those two factors purportedly matter to the SelCom. But unless U-Dub or Clemson lose, Penn State, with two losses to Ohio State’s one, will almost certainly be on the outside looking in. Then again, playing in the Rose Bowl is a decent consolation prize.

Reserves

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdOJrHxjU0o

Music 101

Bad Company

Like the band Talk Talk, whose hit single and debut album were also named “Talk Talk,” mid-Seventies British rockers Bad Company put a song on their eponymous debut album that was also eponymous. That’s Paul Rodgers, who also had a decent solo career in the early Eighties, with the searing vocals. Bad Company was managed by Led Zeppelin’s legendary manager, Peter Grant. The song never charted in the USA, though it is a staple of FM radio stations and can be found on juke boxes of reputable domestic dive bars. Also, if you pay close attention, the song uses the same progression as Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock.”

Remote Patrol

Gilmore Girls 

NetFlix

Rory and Lorelai have just been told Luke’s only serves decaf

Emily Gilmore dropping a Llewyn Davis reference. Hep Alien covering Joe Jackson’s “I’m The Man.” Kirk dressed as Eraserhead. Luke giving out bogus WiFi passwords.  A town meeting in which it is pointed out that two episodes does not constitute an arc. It’s too good! I’m only two episodes through the four reunion episodes, but the Palladinos are showing no rust. If you were ever a fan, you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how seamless this reunion is nine years after they shipped Rory off on a bus to cover the 2008 election.

by John Walters

Wessonality

“A Lovely Lady”

A fond goodbye to Florence Henderson, a.k.a. Carol Brady, who passed away at the age of 82. In the 1970s Henderson was the ideal mom. Remember, Bobby, the only steps in this house are the ones that lead up to your room.

Born in Dale, Indiana, on Valentine’s Day, 1934, Henderson was one of 10 children. There aren’t enough boxes on my TV screen….

By the way, the show made its debut in 1969, so both Mike and Carol had to be 30s-ish widowers. Unacceptable for either to be divorced. And Carol married an architect who designed a home with just two bedrooms (and one bathroom) for six kids. Smart.

Meanwhile, I never was able to figure out how the exterior of the home fit the inner floor plan. Whose one window was that on the second floor? And why was it to our left when it felt as if the hallway went to the right? Mike Brady, what kind of evil wizard were you?

2. Giving LSU His O-Face

Orgeron, 55, has infused the Tigers with enthusiasm.

It was interesting to hear ESPN’s Dave Flemming and Jesse Palmer openly discuss the next LSU head coach last night as interim coach Ed Orgeron led the Tigers to a 54-39 defeat of Texas A&M in College Station. There was a time this season when the Aggies were 6-0 and the Bayou Bengals were 3-2 in that time span.

All Orgeron, a Louisiana native, has done in Baton Rouge is lead the Tigers to a 5-2 record since the late September dismissal of Les Miles. In the two losses, both at home, LSU took No. 1 Alabama to the 4th quarter deadlocked at 0-0 before succumbing 10-0, and then came as close to pay dirt without scoring at the end of the game in a 16-10 loss to Florida. Those are your two SEC Championship Game teams.

Guice, a sophomore, will ease the sting of Leonard Fournette’s exodus

Orgeron was 6-2 at USC as a midseason replacement for Lane Kiffin a few years back and is now 5-2 as LSU’s interim coach. And yet no one wants to let him marry their daughters, even though the daughters appear to love him. Odd.

By the way, Derrius Guice rushed for 285 yards and 4 TDs today.

3. U.S. Steel (X) Was A Steal

U.S. Steel, ticker symbol X, was one of those companies such as General Electric (GE) or International Business Machines (IBM) whose stock your dad owned. But you could have done very well in 2016 by investing like your dad.

In September of 2014 X was as high as $46 per share but by late last January, the company that J.P. Morgan (the industrialist, not the panelist on The Gong Show) co-founded was down to $6.15 per share.

Today? $33 per share. That’s about a 450% rise in 10 months. While CNBC spends day after day obsessing over Twitter and NetFlix and Tesla, here’s a company that’s more than 100 years old that everyone knows that could have made you serious money this year.

The company is based in Pittsburgh, and maybe as an investor you needed to think like a Pirate: “X marks the spot.”

4. China Woes

Some nasty death tolls in China, the world’s most populous country, the past week

Three days ago nasty fog contributed to a 56-car pileup in northeast China that left 17 motorists dead (I’ve been a passenger in a vehicle in the countryside in Beijing and I’m still surprised we all survived).

And earlier this week 74 construction workers at a power plant in southern China died when a platform collapsed.

China still has nearly 1.4 billion people, or four times as many as the USA, in a land mass that is smaller than the  USA (when you include Alaska, which we do because hey, why not?)

5. Is Aretha Franklin Still Singing?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaC-tm3c1OI

The Queen of Soul performed the national anthem before the Vikings-Lions game in Detroit yesterday, and seems to have been inspired by the ghost of Ray Charles (who was known for taking “America, The Beautiful” out for long walks).  The 74 year-old siren clocked in at 4:35 and at that length, even if you aren’t Colin Kaepernick, you may have felt the need to take a knee.

Simply brilliant. Props to the producer who had this inspiration and to the higher-up who let him or her run with it.

Reserves

Just wondering, in New Zealand do they celebrate All Blacks Friday?

Music 101

The Life of Riley

After producing iconic New Wave bands such as Echo & The Bunnymen,  Liverpudlian Ian Boudrie created his own pet project, The Lightning Seeds (taken from a misheard Prince lyric). This song, named in honor of Boudrie’s young son, was released in 1992 and was a minor hit in the U.K.

Remote Patrol

No. 19 Boise State at Air Force Academy

CBS Sports Net 3:30 p.m.

Brett “Let ‘er” Rypien (thanks, Boomer)

Why watch? Because the Broncos are looking to put the finishing touches on their 7th one-loss season of the past 15 years. Amazing. And that’s not including a pair of undefeated seasons. It’s yet another year in which the Broncos narrowly missed an undefeated season due to one unfortunate hiccup. And you can LC at the same time (Fox) to watch the Apple Cup , which features one team they beat earlier this year (Wazzu) and another that has their former coach, Chris Petersen (U-Dub).

by John Walters

Happy Thanksgiving!

I wanted to take a few minutes to address a few words written by a friend of mine yesterday, words that in total I won’t reproduce here. Suffice it to say that if you know what I’m talking about, I’m mostly referring to the lead paragraph.

As an alumnus, what mostly caught my eyes were the words “high-minded sanctuary” and “perception….is all there is.” The Notre Dame I attended, and I doubt it has changed all that much, was replete with decent, funny, hard-working kids who took school but not themselves very seriously. In fact, there was no better way to be ostracized in Dillon Hall than to be full of yourself. Self-deprecation equaled survival.

One story: my roommate, a 6’5″ swimmer who probably could have played tight end on the football team if he’d truly wanted to (as a back up), was an outstanding athlete and brilliant in school (he since has acquired a PhD in mechanical engineering). But, during a sophomore SYR (hall dance) he got wildly drunk and threw a bucket-ful of punch at me (I’m sure I deserved it). He was stopped by an R.A. The R.A. asked him his name and room number. My genius roomie gave a false name (“Pete Smith”) but then provided the correct room number.

A half hour later came a knock on our door from the rector and my roomie, real name Jeff, got into a spot of trouble. The point is that for the next two-plus years we referred to him either as “Pete Smith” or “Sh*thead” and he just grinned and took it.

When the upcoming ESPN “Catholics vs. Convicts” doc arrives, you’re going to learn a lot more about another guy from my dorm, Pat Walsh. Pat was a good enough athlete to make the basketball team as a walk-on, but he was also mischievous and entrepeneurial enough to mass produce a line of T-shirts, cobble together enough friends to help him sell them, and pocket about $35,000 (in 1988) in one week.

At the end of that glorious October Saturday, Pat knocked on the door of our wonderful rector, Fr. Joseph Carey (the same guy who’d read Jeff the riot act), and asked if he could stash the money there overnight. “Cares,” as we all called him (a nickname he earned), reluctantly agreed, putting himself in tremendous jeopardy by doing so. But that’s why we loved the guy.

And while all of this was going on, quarterback Tony Rice, who would make the cover of SI three times in a four-month span that season (has anyone other than maybe Michael Jordan had that many SI covers in so short a period?), was living in our dorm amongst us fellow students and just being as funny and approachable and down to earth as any human possibly could be. One of my closest friends to this day was Tony’s R.A. and hey, you wouldn’t go to Tony for help on your Physics lab, but you were always welcome to hang out with him and just shoot the sh*t (he was like a much less crazy Tracy Jordan from “30 Rock”).

A Pat Walsh original: It was always meant as a joke, something that much of the outside world never got.

Last March I attended the funeral of the father of a Chicago born-and-bred Notre Dame classmate of mine. His name was John Boler. Now, Mr. Boler did not attend Notre Dame (he graduated from John Carroll, so maybe I’m really as a Notre Dame alum taking credit here that belongs to a John Carroll alum) but he made sure that his children did. And in the last 40 or so years of his life he was as supportive of Notre Dame as anyone you’ll ever meet, mostly because he loved what the university stood for.

You can look it up, but John Boler donated $20 million to Rush University Medical Center (the largest private contribution in the hospital’s history) to help build a new tower. The hospital had saved Mr. Boler’s life twice and his wife’s once and so John Boler asked what he could do to help. And the hospital, which was in the midst of a $300 million fund-raising campaign, requested $20 million. I’ll let John’s son, my good friend Matt, take it from here:

“My dad told the leadership it was a family decision since it was so big and we all went to meet with them together.  At the meeting, my dad told Dr. Larry Goodman, the CEO, that he wanted to help and handed him an envelope.  In front of everyone, Larry opened the envelope and inside were two lottery tickets.  My dad said with any luck they would win and it would pay for the whole thing.

Larry and the leadership looked at each other uncomfortably and laughed awkwardly, clearly unsure about what was happening.

My dad then told them that of course we would make the gift.  Once my dad did that, it was a few weeks before another family made a matching $20 million gift.  They were off and running.  To a man, everyone at Rush will tell you the tower could not have been built if my dad had not made the initial gift.”

The Boler family has probably donated as much (if not more) to Notre Dame and much of it anonymously (yes, I just went Ted Danson on “Curb…”, but I’m outing him; he didn’t out himself). John Boler, by the way, grew up without a father and literally slept in a closet. He was entirely a self-made man. When his son, my friend Matt, celebrated his 50th birthday this summer, a massive affair, he hired a band based on the fact that the band would be giving all the profits from the gig to military veterans. That’s pretty in line with the people I’ve come to know from Notre Dame.

Anyone who works in or covers college football knows Tim Bourret, a good friend of mine and the associate athletic director at Clemson. Tim is a Notre Dame alum who has all the traits of Domers that I love: he’s smart but not arrogant; decent but not pious; helpful and kind but not saccharine; honest and trustworthy and quick to laugh. Tim’s just a good egg. He’s the ideal Notre Dame person and he’s the typical Notre Dame person, too (Note: I’m probably the biggest asshole that Notre Dame has produced, at least in terms of people you may have heard of).

Notre Dame isn’t perfect nor has it ever claimed to be. But it does strive to be good and true to its ideals, inside and outside the football program. Players start out inside the dorms and live amongst their fellow students and many continue to do so all four years (one notable exception was Jimmy Clausen, whom Charlie provided special dispensation for, which is a reason Clausen never quite got Notre Dame…even though he’s seemingly now figured out a way to make that association work for him at NBC).

There is obviously a tension, one that also exists at places such as Stanford and Northwestern, when your student body all finished in the Top 3% of their high school classes academically (probably higher now) and your football team is populated with students who finished in the top 1% of the nation on the gridiron. The average Notre Dame student is as ill-equipped to score a touchdown versus Virginia Tech as one of its football players is to get an “A” in general chemistry.

And so, of course, most do not take general chemistry, but most do the work and most give an honest effort. I don’t know for sure. I’m certain that institutionally, from the adults who run the place, that there is no institutional corruption taking place. There is tremendous pressure to succeed at Notre Dame (and many other schools, yes) and young people succumb to taking short cuts. What I have seen is that when they do, and when Notre Dame finds out about it, they punish them and then welcome them back after they have sat out a semester. From Julius Jones to Everett Golson, both of whom sat out an entire year and then returned (and there are others), this is the case.

Almost always, these players (as well as students who are not athletes) return. They want to be at Notre Dame.

I was a varsity athlete at Notre Dame. I rowed crew. We had 5 a.m. practices. One late winter morning I hit the alarm at 4:4o a.m, as usual, and opened my door in Room 335 in Dillon. Staring back at me was an avalanche of laundry bags (at the time the guys had our laundry done for us, a late vestige of overt sexism). A few friends, paying me back for a prank I had pulled, had spent part of the wee hours going down to the basement and then toting giant sacks of laundry back to the third floor so as to create a mountain, stretching floor to above my door, of laundry sacks. They’d then taken a photo of themselves leaning proudly against their mountain. Somehow I eventually dug myself out. And then I began thinking about payback. That’s how we made it through winter, in that interminable span between the end of autumn and the start of Bookstore Basketball.

Every year John Heisler, the associate athletic director at Notre Dame, puts together a book called “Strong of Heart.” Each edition has profiles of Notre Dame alums or former employees who had some connection to the athletic department. And every year I do one or two profiles of them and am humbled not so much by the accomplishments of the people, but by the strength of their character.

Thom Gatewood. This was back when Notre Dame did not lose to Northwestern. No. 27 is Rick Telander, who would go on to write some of the best Notre Dame-related stories in Sports Illustrated that the mag ever ran.

This fall I did a profile of Thom Gatewood, the first true African-American superstar at Notre Dame (after Alan Page, but Tom played offense). Tom held the Notre Dame career receptions record for Notre Dame from 1971 until 2006, but he never bragged about it. When Tom was going to be a senior at Notre Dame, he asked a white student in his dorm who was not an athlete to be his roommate. This was in 1971. Not typical. The two men are still close friends to this day.

When Thom was dating his future wife, Susan, he never told her that he had played football. Or that he had played at Notre Dame. Or that he had been an All-American. She had to drag it out of him after a month or so of dating, basically playing 20 Questions with him. Thom, whose dad was a construction worker and mom a homemaker, was a black kid from a tough neighborhood in Baltimore who spent all eight semesters at Notre Dame on the Dean’s List. He was recruited by every major school in the country (O.J. was his host at USC and Bo Schembechler promised him “I’ll change my offense for you”) but he chose Notre Dame because, as he says, “Ara Parseghian didn’t promise me anything.”

These days, still in fantastic shape, Thom gives tennis lessons to the children in the community where he lives, many of them the kids of Asian or Turkish immigrants. None of them know that he was once Joe Theismann’s favorite target, or that he appeared on TV with Bob Hope as an All-American, or that he was recently voted into the College Football Hall of Fame. That’s not Thom’s style.

Anyway, this has been quite the rambling and somewhat incoherent essay (apologies to my Freshman Comp & Lit prof). Suffice it to say that as long as Notre Dame exists and attempts to play big-time football, there will be a certain amount of tension in trying to both uphold the school’s academic and ethical values and, you know, not sucking. Not losing to Duke and Navy in the same season. But those of us who went there, just about every last person, know this: If Notre Dame is even the least bit a great institution, that is because at its core it is a good place. Of this I am certain.