To see Notre Dame football players smile and to hear them laugh, ask them why they call their coach, Tyrone Willingham, the Prophet.
"He uses a lot of quotes and things like that," running back Julius Jones said. "He'll quote philosophers." Cornerback Vontez Duff once said that the nickname came from Willingham's intense gaze and that there were "so many words in that stare."
Jason Beckstrom, another cornerback, said Willingham might be a prophet because "he predicts wins." And linebacker Courtney Watson said: "It's more of a joke about how seriously he takes things. I'm sure he wouldn't take it as a negative, but I wouldn't call him the Prophet to his face."
The experts are predicting a Notre Dame defeat on Saturday when Willingham's Fighting Irish (1-0) play Lloyd Carr's Michigan Wolverines (2-0) in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in an early-season test of two traditionally powerful teams with annual aspirations for a national championship. This season, Notre Dame is ranked 15th in the Associated Press poll and Michigan is fifth.
College football is a sport that sometimes makes its successful coaches larger than life, even slightly built coaches like the camera friendly Willingham, who is about 5-foot-7 and slender. When asked whether he thought Willingham had the star quality that certain coaches seem to exude, place-kicker Nicholas Setta replied, "When you're around him, you feel like you're around someone that's great."
Even though he measures his words carefully and guards his public displays of emotion, Willingham seems comfortable in one of the most intensely observed jobs in sports. Another reason for scrutiny is that he is one of only four African-American head coaches among the 117 Division I-A football teams. But Willingham won his first eight games last season and led the Irish to a 10-3 record after they finished 5-6 under Bob Davie in 2001.
Although Willingham and those around him try to play down the racial aspects surrounding his accomplishments, it is impossible to overlook the significance. "With coach, the success he's having, it's going to open a lot of doors," Notre Dame quarterback Carlyle Holiday said.
Willingham's serious face, with its neatly trimmed mustache and slightly graying and close-cropped hair, has already been seen in many places this season. It is on the cover of a new book, Return to Glory (Little, Brown & Co), written by Alan Grant, who played for Stanford in the late 1980s, when Willingham was an assistant.
Willingham's face can be seen and his deep voice can be heard on the ESPN program "The Season," a 10-part series that made its debut Tuesday. Willingham has allowed camera crews to videotape the team's daily routines that are usually off-limits to fans and news media.
Willingham has been seen in the company of people even more influential than himself. Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser, was a spectator and postgame visitor at several Notre Dame games last season. She and Willingham got to know each other when they were at Stanford, where Willingham was the head football coach and Rice was the provost.
"I'm very fortunate to call Condoleezza a friend," Willingham said. They talk occasionally on the telephone, but Willingham said the subject is more his job than hers. "We don't talk politics," he said. Rice did not respond to a request for comment for this story. In an interview with National Public Radio last year, she said: "Ty Willingham is one of my dear friends. He's a great man."
Willingham grew up in Jacksonville, North Carolina. His mother was a schoolteacher and his father owned residential properties that he rented and maintained. When asked which football coaches he admired most, Willingham said, "My best two coaches have been my two parents."
Willingham did not have a college football scholarship, but he made the Michigan State team as a volunteer and played briefly as a quarterback in the 1970s before beginning his coaching career. What would he be if he were not a football coach?
"A football coach," he said with a chuckle. "No, but that's a very serious answer to your question. Because, sometimes in life, you feel like, `This is exactly what you were meant to do.'"
He uses humor in a deadpan way, sometimes to disarm those around him. Bob Morton, an offensive lineman, said that at the beginning of a team meeting Willingham might "just say a little joke and nobody will quite understand it's a joke and he'll be like: `It's OK, guys. You can laugh.' And that really kind of sends everybody off the deep end."
Kevin White, the athletic director who hired Willingham, said: "I see a guy who is careful and thoughtful. He prides himself on being unflappable."
Willingham, 49, grew up in the South during the height of the civil rights movement. When schools were desegregated, Willingham said the one at which his mother taught burned down. "The actual cause of it, no one is really sure, OK?" Willingham said. "But those in the community believe that it was potentially bombed. It was in segregated times."
His musical tastes also reflect his age and times, but Willingham spoke in particular of one artist who inspired him. "It was James Brown and the times that you grew up," Willingham said. "James Brown spoke to some of the issues that were critical to young people growing up at that time and he also did it with rhythm, so that you were able to enjoy the rhythm of it and also understand there was a message there."
When asked about his growing star status, Willingham said, "No, that's not an issue." But what about the automatic attention that comes to those who inherit the role of Knute Rockne? "Rockne was a star," Willingham said. "Rockne not only carved out a place for Notre Dame, but he carved out a place for college football, OK? And that's not my mission."
At the moment, his mission is to beat Michigan and to dissuade those who try to discover more about him than what he presents. "I honestly don't think I'm very hard to read at all," Willingham said. "I'm very straightforward. What is a problem is that most people want to see more than what is there."
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