Ara Raoul Parseghian is a former American football player and coach who guided the University of Notre Dame to national championships in 1966 and 1973. He is noted for bringing Notre Dame's football program from years of futility back into a national contender in 1964 and is widely regarded alongside Knute Rockne and Frank Leahy as a part of the "Holy Trinity" of Notre Dame head coaches. Parseghian grew up in Akron, Ohio and played football starting in his junior year of high school. He enrolled at the University of Akron, but soon quit to join the U.S. Navy for two years during World War II. After the war, he finished his college career at Miami University in Ohio, and went on to play halfback for the Cleveland Browns of the All-America Football Conference in 1948 and 1949. Cleveland won the league championship both of those years. His playing career cut short by a hip injury, Parseghian left the Browns and took a job as an assistant coach at Miami. When head coach Woody Hayes left in 1951 to coach at Ohio State University, Parseghian took over his job. He stayed in that position until 1956, when he was hired as head coach at Northwestern University in Illinois. [More at Wikipedia]

May 21st, 1923 in Akron  /  Died:   Aug 2nd, 2017 - aged 94