Here's a story about the 1986 Notre Dame football team that you haven't heard
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SOUTH BEND – It is a Notre Dame football tale rarely told.
If you played Notre Dame football under head coach Lou Holtz, you have a ton of stories. Dozens of them. Hundreds. Some you share with family and friends, others you share with teammates. You tell one about a day or time or game under Holtz, and it leads to three or four more about other days and times and games under Holtz.
There’s one that former Notre Dame linebacker Mike Kovaleski has kept close for over 40 years. It was one that he never told outside his inner circle. People who knew him well knew the story well.
On a cold, blustery, snowy Monday morning inside the Schivarelli Lounge at Notre Dame Stadium, the lifelong Indiana resident shared that story for the first time with a reporter. It was time.
The 61-year-old Kovaleski and his wife, Cindy, were back on campus for the visitation/funeral of Holtz, who died March 4 at age 89. Kovaleski played his first three seasons at Notre Dame for Gerry Faust, the man who recruited him from New Castle, Indiana to head north and play football for the Irish.
Kovaleski played his final season in 1986 under Holtz, who was in his first year of 11 as the Notre Dame coach.
Notre Dame was only days removed from the end of the 1985 regular season and Faust’s last game, the 58-7 loss to Miami at the Orange Bowl over Thanksgiving weekend. Poor weather in the Midwest delayed Notre Dame’s return trip home. The Irish traveling party tried to land at South Bend International Airport — then South Bend Regional Airport — but the snow was too heavy. Kovaleski looked out his window on final approach and saw the landing lights of the runway. He looked again but saw nothing.
Kovaleski’s roommate, tight end Tom Rehder, who stood 6-foot-7 and weighed 300 pounds, reached over and grabbed his hand.
“He’s like, ‘Kovo, man, I know that you’ve got a pipeline to God. You better start praying,’” Kovaleski said Monday. “That was the worst turbulence that I’ve ever experienced. It brought guys to tears.”
Approach aborted, the Irish were rerouted to Chicago, where they landed still under blizzard conditions. A 90-minute bus ride took more than four hours. The football team arrived on campus Monday morning just as the student body was walking to their 9 a.m. classes.
Be back at the football auditorium in the Joyce Center for a 4 p.m. meeting, the team was told. In that meeting, Faust said his good-byes while Holtz, in that memorable first meeting, said hello.
Most of the Irish, like Kovaleski, hadn’t slept in days.
“I’ll never forget it,” he said. “We were complete zombies.”
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That leads to Kovaleski’s story that he has held tight for all those years.
One day later that week, he received a call from Jan Blazi, Holtz’s administrative assistant. Coach would like to see you in his office the next day at 8 a.m., Blazi said. Eight a.m., it will be Kovaleski said. Then the wheels started spinning.
Why would Holtz, whom he had never met, who he didn’t know, want to speak with him so soon? Kovaleski didn’t know Holtz; Holtz didn’t know Kovaleski. What was up?
“I’m a good guy; I’m not in trouble,” Kovaleski said. “I didn’t have anything to worry about.”
Eight in the morning saw Kovaleski step into the head coach’s corner office. Holtz has his back to Kovaleski, who saw and smelled the smoke wafting from the head coach’s pipe. Have a seat, Holtz said. Kovaleski sat. Holtz turned and spoke.
“First thing I want to tell you is I don’t agree with how the university allows its football team to pick its captains,” Kovaleski said Holtz told him. “Every school I’ve ever coached at, I pick the captains. I don’t know anything about you guys (but) I just wanted you know that you’re going to be our captain this year.”
That’s how it came to be that Kovaleski was the lone team captain for the 1986 Notre Dame football season. He was the first player since Rocky Bleier in 1967 to serve in that role.
Kovaleski didn’t know how to process what Holtz had said. He knew many captain-worthy teammates like quarterback Steve Beuerlein and offensive lineman Byron Spruwell and linebacker Tom Galloway. If Holtz had asked Kovaleski’s opinion on who should serve as a team captain, those were his picks.
He never asked.
“I got up to leave and was like, ‘Man, I don’t know what to think about this,’” Kovaleski said. “I got back to my room and called my dad and said, ‘Hey, dad, I think I just got named captain, but I don’t really know for sure.’
“It was weird that I was the only one. I still don’t know how that happened.”
Though he didn’t know how to process what happened, Kovaleski knew how to feel. It was a feeling he couldn’t shake for the entire 1986 season. It was a feeling he still cannot shake, especially when he looked across the lounge Monday and saw Beuerlein.
“I feel guilty a little bit,” he said. “When I see Steve and Byron and Tom, I always tell them, you should have been captains with me.”
Kovaleski never asked Holtz about it. Never flat-out thanked him, either. He just did the job.
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However he became the only captain, the 6-2 Kovaleski was going to be the best he could be for a team that had finished 5-6 the previous year and would again go 5-6. How he’d do it, Kovaleski had no idea. There was no blueprint, no manual on how to be the lone captain of the Notre Dame football team.
He decided to be himself. He started all 11 games. He made plays. He played. He spoke when he needed to speak. He was a good teammate.
“It was natural,” Kovaleski said. “You don’t try to be something you’re not. I knew intuitively that that wouldn’t work and they would see through that.”
Kovaleski’s last game as captain in 1986 was at No. 17 USC. Notre Dame roared back from a 17-point deficit with 12:26 left in the fourth quarter to win 38-37. The Irish finished 5-6 that year and didn’t play in a bowl. It would win the national championship two seasons later, a season made possible, many believe, by beating USC.
“Lou in the locker room after the game was like, this is what we needed,’” Kovaleski said. “This is where we start.”
Early Monday afternoon, Kovaleski said good-bye to the man who believed in him enough to name him team captain. All weekend, whether at the visitation or during a get-together of Holtz’s Heroes or the funeral itself, Kovaleski carried the same number of emotions around campus as there were captains in 1986.
One.
Happiness.
“He lived a great life,” Kovaleski said. “It’s not anything to be sad about. He’s with Christ. He’s in Heaven. How awesome is that?”
Follow South Bend Tribune and NDInsider columnist Tom Noie on X (formerly Twitter): @tnoieNDI. Contact Noie at tnoie@sbtinfo.com
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz made a big decision in his first year
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