I'll be very impressed if you know the answer to this one. (The answer is a person discussed in one of your Parade AA threads.)
Who slept in Bubba Smith's dorm room bed the night before the 1966 ND-Michigan State game?
That would be, yes, Bill Barz, on a recruiting trip to MSU, where he fully anticipated he would matriculate. But then Notre Dame came along. Bill spent the entire night worrying about what he would do if Bubba appeared. He went on to start at FB for two years before he got crosswise with Pagna who replaced him with John Cieszkowski before the Southern Cal game. I don't think Bill got on the field for the 1971 Cotton Bowl. He may not have gotten on the field for the Southern Cal game.
Circa mid-60's, the Ivy League must have been a pretty popular destination for high school football recruits, at least a select few at/near the top.
Calvin Hill wound up at Yale right around the same time as the guys we lost in the '66 class to Harvard (a few years before, to be exact). And he wound up having a pretty good career in the NFL, even if he is better known today as Grant Hill's dad.
1964 Parade HS AA team
1st team end- Calvin Hill Riverside County School Bronx NY
Notre Dame lost a couple of recruits to Harvard who had already signed Letters of Intent w ND in the late 70s....the Ivy League did not have to honor LOIs
**1977 ND recruiting class:
Dave Otto DE Seattle Prep Mt Lake Terrance Was
signed ND LOI & announced w the ND class, but flipped to Harvard
Otto was a 2nd team All Ivy DE at Harvard
**1979 ND recruiting class
Scott Murrer NT Cincinnati, Oh St Xavier
signed ND LOI & announced w the ND class, but also flipped to Harvard
Murrer was 1st team All Ivy NT at Harvard
and
despite being a NT in football, ran the sprints for the Harvard track team!
The Harvard Coach who flipped these players away from ND/Dan Devine was Joe Restic Sr.....who's own son (Joe Restic Jr) played for Devine at ND
coach at Notre Dame, replacing Dan Devine. However, I wasn't aware of the story below until now.
BOSTON -- Harvard University football coach Joe Restic is leaving the Ivy League to become head coach at the University of Notre Dame, the Patriot Ledger of Quincy reported Thursday.
The newspaper said it was informed by a source that Restic, named Eastern Coach of the Year in 1974 and New England Coach of the Year in 1974 and 1975, came to terms with the Irish two weeks ago.
Restic, however, told the Ledger, 'I have no comment on anything about Notre Dame. The only thing I'm thinking about now is my game with Dartmouth this week. That's the only thing on my mind. That's all I have to say.'
Notre Dame officials declined comment on the report
fact that Barz wasn't Catholic, was the sportswriter clueless that the then-head coach of ND was a non-Catholic who had been hired away from "Chicago's Big Ten School"? He had no reason not to know about Ara.
I can only guess the writer was mad that ND had grabbed Ara from NU.
Also, note on the 1988 class that both Hentrich and Levens both got Super Bowl rings from the 1996 Packers. Ron Wolf later said that letting Hentrich go in free agency (to the Titans) was one of his biggest mistakes. At the time, Wolf didn't want to pay Hentrich a $1M salary (or something like that).
Also, whatever happened with Hal Van Wyl?
Thanks for the memories!
Small correction-- I think that Alonzo Jefferson went to Cardinal Newman, not Mooney.