Tales from the Notre Dame Fighting Irish Locker Room

Book excerpt: Former ESPN basketball commentator Digger Phelps is regarded as one of the most charismatic and opinionated analysts in the profession. And he was the same personality during his twenty years as the head coach at the University of Notre Dame. In this book, first published in 2004, Phelps teams up with Tim Bourret and recalls the most successful period in Notre Dame basketball history. In his twenty seasons, seventeen of Phelps’s teams advanced to postseason play, including fourteen NCAA Tournament teams. In the book, Phelps recalls his initial expression of interest in Notre Dame through a 1965 letter he wrote to football coach Ara Parseghian. It recounts the scenes of his seven wins over number one-ranked teams, including the landmark game in 1974 when the Irish ended UCLA’s eighty-eight-game winning streak. Two chapters concentrate on the coach’s former Notre Dame players, concluding with the selection of his All-Digger teams. He also recalls the twenty Hall of Fame coaches he competed against, including Bobby Knight, Al McGuire, Ray Meyer, and John Wooden. Tales from the Notre Dame Fighting Irish Locker Room also contains a chapter entitled “Domers,” which documents Phelps’s relationships with Notre Dame coaches, administrators, and student-athletes, including Father Theodore Hesburgh, the man who made Notre Dame what it is today. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Sports Publishing imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in sports—books about baseball, pro football, college football, pro and college basketball, hockey, or soccer, we have a book about your sport or your team. Whether you are a New York Yankees fan or hail from Red Sox nation; whether you are a die-hard Green Bay Packers or Dallas Cowboys fan; whether you root for the Kentucky Wildcats, Louisville Cardinals, UCLA Bruins, or Kansas Jayhawks; whether you route for the Boston Bruins, Toronto Maple Leafs, Montreal Canadiens, or Los Angeles Kings; we have a book for you. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to publishing books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked by other publishers and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.