Former Notre Dame coach Gerry Faust, who was hired directly from the high school ranks in the 1980s, died on Monday, the school confirmed in a statement. He was 89.
Faust was hired as the head coach at Notre Dame after an legendary 18-year run at Archbishop Moeller High School in Cincinnati, Ohio. He won four high school national championships and five Ohio state titles in his final six seasons with the program. He went 70-1 over that period.
When he was hired at Notre Dame to replace championship-winning coach Dan Devine in 1982, it was dubbed “The Bold Experiment.” Unfortunately, his teams struggled to find success, going 30-26-1 in five seasons with zero finishes in the AP Top 25. Notre Dame had not posted a losing season since 1963, but Faust posted two losing seasons before he resigned.
After he left Notre Dame, Faust was hired as head coach at Akron to replace the program’s all-time winningest coach, Jim Dennison. He helped Akron become the first program to ever transition from Division I-AA to Division I-A and posted a 36-49-3 record with the Zips before he was fired in 1994 after going 1-10. Faust remained with the school as a fundraiser.
Despite his bitter ending at Notre Dame, Faust, a lifelong Catholic, never wavered in his support for the program. He often attended games at Notre Dame Stadium in the years following his resignation.
“I only had 26 miserable days at Notre Dame, and that’s when we lost,” Faust told the Los Angeles Times in 2008. “Other than that, I was the happiest guy in the world. If I had the opportunity to do it again and knew the results would be the same, I’d do it again in a minute.”