The news of Coley O’Brien’s passing landed softly and then stayed, the way certain losses do. He was 76, and the timing felt achingly poetic. Just days after, Notre Dame would open another season, this time in Miami. The program he once steadied with a calm hand and a fearless heart will set out again, without him. It’s easy to overlook a quiet hero, but anyone who knows the 1966 team knows there’s a banner in South Bend that hangs in part because O’Brien refused to blink.

His path to Notre Dame read like a chapter that almost didn’t get written. A kid from McLean, Virginia, living with diabetes and lacking your good old quarterback frame. He crossed paths with Ara Parseghian at a D.C. banquet and earned himself a late scholarship on little more than character and conviction. He

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