Sept. 26, 2001
By Steve Heisler
Ralph Guglielmi’s voice fills with pride as he points to a display case in his den that is filled row by row with athletic trophies. Tennis, swimming, golf and field hockey all are represented, accolades awarded to Lisa, the daughter of the former Notre Dame All-American.
The one sport missing is football – but her dad already has a space reserved for his own plaque in South Bend following his recent election to the College Football Hall of Fame. As he ambles back to perch at a kitchen bar stool in his Potomac, Md. home, he carries with him one of the first acknowledgements of that honor, as word of his upcoming December induction spread among fellow players.
Guglielmi’s voice fills with a different sort of pride, built from Saturday afternoons of glory long past, as he read aloud a congratulatory note he had just received from former Notre Dame guard Jack Lee:
“As I look back, I count it as my good fortune in life to have played four years of football at Notre Dame with you. Your great skills and superb field generalship were inspiring, as much as your personal leadership. These are now great and lasting memories for me.”
Recently retired as general manager of a Washington, DC area Cadillac dealership, the 68-year-old has time to ponder his own memories these days. He took a late summer break from ordering his daughter, a freshman at the University of Richmond, computer software to think back on his own college days.
The Grandview High School (Columbus, Ohio) product sees his Hall of Fame induction as part of a final chapter to a story that began when he first envisioned playing for the Fighting Irish.
“As a high school athlete, you have a lot of dreams and one of my dreams was to play for Notre Dame, be an All-American and win the Heisman” he said.
“So my dream was fulfilled going to Notre Dame and while I was there, naturally, I had a decent career and became an All-American. Didn’t win the Heisman, but came close” – he finished fourth in his senior year in 1954 – “so two out of three wasn’t bad.”
His election as the 39th Notre Damer to make the Hall of Fame, following several years when he was nominated but didn’t make it, was sweet. Guglielmi said he never took his election for granted, despite being told every few years that it was a distinct possibility.
“I got to the point of saying, you know, maybe it’s not going to happen, because in everything there’s a little bit of political stuff necessary and I was told by some of my friends, you really got to work on this a little bit,” he said.
“I said no, I’m not going to do that. If your abilities which you had and the way you played and your accomplishments in college were not enough in the eyes of the selection people to get into the Hall of Fame, well then, I don’t want to be in it because I beat my own drum.”
In the end, he didn’t have to. He said Hall of Fame executive director Bernie Kish told him of his election this past year as he played in a golf tournament run by former coach Ara Parseghian.
That ultimate success made him laugh as he remembered how hard he had to work and his initial struggles as a freshman. Buried on the depth chart under coach Frank Leahy, he grew increasingly frustrated as practice after practice he was unable to show his mettle.
Finally during fall practice in 1951, he requested a meeting with Leahy, the coach who had journeyed to Columbus to recruit him.
“I wasn’t getting any looks,” he said. “I told him, `I was recruited by a lot of schools and they all told me why I shouldn’t come here and it’s becoming more valid in my mind now because I’m not getting any looks. You know, coach, if I can’t get any looks so you can see how I play, then I’m not going to play.'”
Starting quarterback John Mazur took him aside a day later and informed him he would play with the second and fourth squads that Saturday when the team scrimmaged. Guglielmi’s performance that day cracked open the door for him to start the next week against the University of North Carolina and start for the next three years at Notre Dame. He went on to complete 209 passes for 3,117 yards and 18 touchdowns, school records at the time that broke Angelo Bertelli’s mark and is still good enough for 10th on Notre Dame’s career passing list.
And he connects it all to that brilliant Saturday scrimmage.
“It just so happens I had a great Saturday, threw a few touchdown passes, ran the team well, ran well and everything worked out fine,” Guglielmi said.
“That was the whole key.”
His continued stewardship of the Notre Dame offense helped the Irish finish 25-3-1 in his final three seasons and a second-place national ranking in 1953. He remains tied with Rick Mirer for the school record for most consecutive games completing a pass with 34, connecting in each game during his final three seasons.
Many of those passes were caught by halfback Joe Heap, who operated out of a backfield that included John Lattner and Neil Worden. Heap, now retired from Shell Oil in Metairie, La., remembered his teammate’s versatility. Guglielmi also rushed 187 times for 200 yards and 12 touchdowns.
“Ralph was a fairly decent runner when he turned upfield,” Heap said.
“I felt he was very effective running the option play and he made good decisions running the option play. We were pretty successful running that split T.”
When Guglielmi looks back on draining two-a-day practices under the stern Leahy – and in one case three-a-days to prepare for an Oklahoma game – he knows why football at Notre Dame seemed to come so naturally to him. He said the repetition stressed under Leahy helped make adjustments on gamedays seem tame.
“We were one of the very first teams that did a lot of changing plays at the line of scrimmage and I think that was my strength, in knowing our offense and being able to study defenses as we did on film and being prepared to make adjustments at the time on the field,” he said.
“Leahy was a great taskmaster and he’d forgive a lot of physical mistakes but he abhorred athletes who made mental mistakes. I was an intelligent quarterback and I understood the game.”
That intelligence helped Guglielmi when as a junior he passed twice for touchdowns as time expired at the half and the game’s end in a 14-14 tie with Iowa in 1953. It also helped him lead Notre Dame to a 4-0 mark against USC, including a 48-14 triumph the week after that 1953 tie.
“We always thought, we felt every time we walked on the field that nobody was going to beat us,” Guglielmi said.
“We knew every Saturday we came out there, teams we played wanted to beat us more.”
His collegiate success at Notre Dame even extended, unpredictably, to an All-Star game following his senior season matching a team of College All-Stars against the world champion Cleveland Browns.
The college squad beat Cleveland 30-27 with Guglielmi calling every offensive play and being named the game’s most valuable player.
“It was kind of the icing on the cake,” he said.
“You don’t expect much, you get a bunch of college kids together and a strange coaching staff and a defense. You didn’t know if it would work or not and you’re playing the world champions. There again, fate can come together.”
Fate didn’t smile so much on Guglielmi once he reached the pros, playing a total of seven seasons for the Washington Redskins, New York Giants, Philadelphia Eagles and St. Louis Cardinals. Under Washington Redskins coach Joe Kuharich, he helped the team finish 8-4 in his rookie year, but a 30-month absence to fight in the Korean War cut into his NFL career.
Still, he said the lessons he learned under Leahy helped him in pro football as well as when he entered the insurance and automobile sales businesses. A resident for the past 29 years in Potomac with his longtime wife, Linda, Guglielmi credits his Notre Dame education with preparing him for it all.
“I think the basic daily discipline we had at Notre Dame both in the classrooms and on the football field prepared me for most anything,” he said.
“I’m not saying Leahy was the only coach like that, but he was such a disciplinarian and worked us so hard. If you can go through this with this guy, there’s not a problem in life you can’t face, that you can’t withstand.”
As he spoke, Guglielmi shuffled through his own mental scrapbook of memories and a pile of articles spread across his kitchen bar. As he prepares to join other seven other Notre Dame quarterbacks already enshrined in the Hall – names like Harry Stuhldreher, Frank Carideo, John Lujack, Bertelli and Paul Hornung among them – Guglielmi focuses on a statement by Leahy. He called Guglielmi the school’s greatest passer.
To Guglielmi, as he sat in his kitchen and smiled, that nod from his former coach was a sort of confirmation.
That confirmation only will be more complete once he is inducted in December and then enshrined in August 2002 in the Hall of Fame.
“That was the high point at Notre Dame,” he said.
“Looking back, there’s so many great quarterbacks there before me – Lujack, Bertelli, Tripucka – so to put me in the same category would be enough for me.”
Steve Heisler is a free-lance writer who lives in Centreville, Va.