UHND.com - Notre Dame Football, Basketball, & Recruiting

To be clear, the N.C.A.A. was wrong in that instance, too. She was a jock sniff who paid $50 to attend the Quarterback Club luncheon every year. Once the University got wind of the extravagant gifts that she was giving her boy toy on the team and his friends (with money she stole from an auto shop she worked at), they took a look and found her name on the list and opted to self report to maintain transparency. The freaking investigating Enforcement Staff reviewed the entire thing and concluded that was technically a secondary violation and nothing more.

Naturally, the Ivory Tower (formal infractions committee) -- who rarely gets a chance to flex their muscle -- opted to classify it was a major violation and slapped us with 2 years' probation and the loss of 2 scholarships. It was absurd.

Malloy -- who always hated that our football program was such a front-facing piece of the University's image -- decided to clamp down hard. Admissions standards were tightened (significantly), and the football program was held way back on the resources necessary to compete. He also made sure that we ended up with Tyrone Willingham instead of Jon Gruden.

The Holtz tenure proved that we could let guys in with lesser academic backgrounds and provide the structure necessary for them to play ball and graduate with meaningful degrees. Malloy refused to take chances on that anymore.