"He was the total bailout for Notre Dame considering all that occurred. Notre Dame got the greater bargain here," says ABC announcer Keith Jackson on ESPN Classic's SportsCentury series.

	Willingham was the first African-American head coach in any sport at Notre Dame.

Some position themselves atop tall towers, from where, like emperors, they can look down on their football fiefdoms. And some prefer to position themselves, arms folded, half a field away, removed and aloof. But the coaching style and philosophy of Tyrone Willingham is to immerse himself in the action.

And so his practices tend to find him in the midst of the fray, fiercely, personally involved, demonstrating the correct pass route by running it himself, motivating by working the trenches. He believes it bonds players and coach.

Willingham's approach stems from his days as an undersized high school athlete who made up for lack of height and weight with speed and agility and an abiding persistence. He sold himself to 100 colleges, convinced one to let him walk on, and became a six-letter winner.

Because of his untiring determination, hard work and quiet confidence, Willingham was hired to lead Notre Dame, the collegiate football team most storied in legend and lore. He was asked to shake down the thunder, restore the glory, as Rockne and Leahy and Parseghian did before him.

As a child, Willingham's parents taught him to aim high and never let anything stand in the way of his goals. From their example, Willingham has already proven that he can excel in a field that is predominately white. He was one of only three African-American head coaches out of the 117 Division 1-A football teams going into 2005.

After spending 18 years as an assistant, in college and the NFL, he became Stanford's head coach for the 1995 season. Despite having three losing years in his seven seasons, he guided the Cardinal to a 44-36-1 record and four bowl games, including its first Rose Bowl appearance in 28 years. Then, on Dec. 31, 2001 -- one day after his 48th birthday -- he became the first African-American head coach in any sport at Notre Dame.

	Willingham was 21-15 in three seasons at Notre Dame.

Born on Dec. 30, 1953 in Kinston, N.C., Willingham grew up in Jacksonville, N.C., during a time of racial tension. When Willingham was five months old, the Supreme Court decided Brown vs. Board of Education, leading to the desegregation of schools in the South. Willingham attended Jacksonville High School soon after it was integrated.

His parents, Lillian and Nathaniel, raised Tyrone and his three younger siblings in the segregated South during the early 1960s. Due to their progressive natures, they turned the basement of their home into a recreational center for African-American kids in the neighborhood before they donated land for the city to build a center that welcomed blacks.

Willingham excelled at a variety of sports, including football, basketball, baseball and table tennis, as he displayed a competitive nature that stemmed from his days challenging his neighborhood buddies. At Jacksonville High, he was the starting quarterback as a senior.

Although he was only 5-foot-7 and 139 pounds, Willingham was determined to play Division 1-A football. He sent out more than 100 letters to colleges asking them for the opportunity.

Only Michigan State and Toledo responded; Willingham chose the Spartans and made the team as a walk-on. Although he was the smallest player on the Spartans, he was given the opportunity to start four games at quarterback as a freshman in 1973, and he responded by helping Michigan State win three of them. He completed 10-of-19 passes for 124 yards and a touchdown. His reward was a scholarship the next year.

After his freshman season, Willingham did not complete another pass the rest of his career, being unsuccessful in eight tries. As a junior, he was moved to receiver, and also returned punts and kickoffs. He led the team with 23 kickoff returns for an average of 19.7 yards in 1975.

Besides playing football, Willingham also walked on to the baseball team as an outfielder and hit .266 for his career. As a sophomore, he received a team sportsmanship award. As a senior, he was a co-captain and selected second-team All-Big Ten.

Willingham earned three letters in both baseball and football. In his senior year, he was named the football team's most inspirational player and was awarded the Big Ten Conference Medal of Honor for scholar-athletes.

After graduating with a degree in physical education and a minor in health education, he stayed at Michigan State for the 1977 season, on the sidelines as a graduate assistant.

From 1978 to 1988, Willingham traveled the country as an assistant coach in the collegiate ranks. First came a two-year stint as secondary coach at Central Michigan before he returned to East Lansing in 1980 as the secondary and special teams coach. In 1983, he moved back to his native state, taking the same position with North Carolina State. He stayed for three seasons before spending three years (1986-88) at Rice as its receivers and special teams coach.

In 1986, while working as a coaching intern with the San Francisco 49ers, Willingham's career took a significant turn when he met Dennis Green, an assistant 49ers coach. Green was so impressed with Willingham's coaching style that after he was named Stanford's head coach in 1989, he made Willingham his running backs coach. Willingham helped Green turn Stanford from a 3-8 team in 1989 to an 8-4 club in 1991.

In 1992, Willingham followed Green to the NFL. When Green was hired as head coach of the Minnesota Vikings, Willingham went with him as running backs coach and stayed for three seasons.

Meanwhile, back at Stanford, Bill Walsh had succeeded Green as head coach. However, he stepped down after a 3-7-1 season in 1994. Believing that Willingham's propensity for discipline was what the Cardinal needed to return to the Rose Bowl, athletic director Ted Leland hired him.

Willingham's coaching style clicked from the start as he led Stanford to a 7-4-1 record and was voted the Pac-10's Coach of the Year in 1995. (He would also win the award in 1999.) After Stanford went 7-5 in 1996, including a 38-0 rout of Michigan State in the Sun Bowl, he became only the third coach in Stanford history to guide the team to bowl games in his first two seasons as coach.

Then came two losing seasons -- 5-6 and 3-8 -- before Stanford bounced back in 1999 to win its first conference title outright since 1971. It went 7-1 in the Pac-10 and on Jan. 1, 2000, appeared in the Rose Bowl for the first time since the 1972 game. The Cardinal lost, 17-9, to Wisconsin to finish 8-4.

After going 5-6 in 2000, his 2001 team produced the best record of his seven seasons as Cardinal head coach by going 9-3. This was only the second time in 50 years a Stanford team won nine regular-season games.

While Willingham was winning games, Bob Davie was losing them at Notre Dame in 2001. When the Irish finished 5-6, he was fired as head coach. The school replaced him with Georgia Tech's George O'Leary. But after inaccuracies were found in his resume, O'Leary resigned. Looking for a coach with impeccable credentials, Notre Dame turned to Willingham.

"Stanford was a tremendous place," Willingham said. "You have oceans and mountains and a wonderful mild climate. On top of that you had a great university. But I love football. And Notre Dame is a part of the American sports culture. It occupies a special place on that mantle."

And Willingham owned a special place in Notre Dame's fans hearts after he opened his career in South Bend with eight consecutive victories - the most by a first-year Irish coach since Ara Parseghian started with nine straight wins in 1964 - and finished the season with a 10-3 record. The Sporting News named Willingham Sportsman of the Year and ranked him 39th in the Power 100 annual listing of most powerful people in sports. He was the only coach on the list.

But Willingham's honeymoon at Notre Dame ended the next season when the team fell to 5-7. And then in 2004, despite upsets of Michigan and Tennessee, the Irish finished the regular season a mediocre 6-5. With Willingham unable to shake down the thunder and restore the glory, Notre Dame fired him even though he had three years left on his contract.

Willingham wasn't unemployed long. Two weeks later he was back in the Pac-10, hired as head coach of Washington.