SPORTS

Sullivan: Hornung's Heisman still paying dividends

Tim Sullivan

@TimSullivan714

Paul Hornung's Heisman Trophy decorates a restaurant in Garrison, N.Y. Encased in glass, surrounded by scores of other museum-quality sports artifacts, the stiff-armed statue awarded to Notre Dame's Golden Boy in 1956 is a tribute to versatility, to the power of publicity and, more recently, to generosity.

After Hornung sold the trophy, purportedly for $250,000, he plowed the proceeds into an endowed scholarship fund that has so far benefitted 20 Notre Dame students from Greater Louisville. Thursday, in the 79^th year of an eventful life, Hornung said, "The greatest letters I've ever received are from those kids."

Louisville's foremost football star was seated near the window of his memorabilia-filled office on Main Street, with a view of the Ohio River and the vantage point of a man who has evolved from playboy to philanthropist without losing his flair for fun.

Saturday, Hornung will lead a two-bus convoy to South Bend for the University of Louisville's first game at Notre Dame. The $300 package includes transportation and a game ticket, coffee, doughnuts and beer.

"If you want to drink whiskey," Hornung warned, "you bring your own bottle."

Fifty-eight years since he won the trophy emblematic of college football's finest player, Paul Hornung is still a go-to guy for good times and glad memories. That his summery spirit was once drawn to a snow-belt school before it admitted women remains a source of wonder, as startling in retrospect as was Jim McMahon's enrolling at Brigham Young.

"I didn't want to go there," Hornung reiterated Thursday. "I wanted to go to Kentucky. I wanted to go with Bear Bryant. It was pretty tough to say no to him. He was as good a man as you'll ever meet, so friendly and congenial. He always said, 'If you had gone to Kentucky, I would have never left.' "

The printable part of Hornung's reply is as follows: "Bear, don't tell the press that."

Hornung ultimately heeded his mother's wishes, studied business at Notre Dame, and made a point of making the honor roll in the fall of his senior year. That distinction enabled him more latitude in cutting classes in the spring, and more opportunities to parlay his Heisman into profitable speaking engagements.

"I must have spoken to every high school in Pennsylvania, it seemed like," Hornung said. "I was there almost there every weekend for two or three appearances and did that for about 30 weeks in a row."

Then as now, Notre Dame had a national constituency and a prominent place in the hearts of American Catholics. Ticket demand was such that Hornung recalls scalping four sideline passes for $1,500, a transaction that would be worth more than $13,000 in today's dollars.

Starring for the Fighting Irish raised Hornung's profile to a point that now seems almost preposterous. That he was able to win the Heisman for a team that finished 2-8 speaks to his varied skills as a running quarterback, defensive back and kicker, to the advance buildup a brilliant junior year had provided and to the school's preternaturally sophisticated PR machine.

No other Heisman winner has won the trophy on a losing team. Few of them have been as determined to give back.

In November, 2007, Hornung subsidized a bus trip from New York to South Bend for New York firemen and their families in honor of their service and sacrifice following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"They got to go see the Navy-Notre Dame game," Hornung recalled. "We sat in the end zone, all 70 of us. I said at that time, 'This is the best thing I've ever done as far as Notre Dame is concerned and as far as Paul Hornung is concerned.' "

Hornung said he has not visited his alma mater since that trip, but he was eager to return once Louisville appeared on Notre Dame's schedule. Pending the consent of game officials, Hornung is expected to perform Saturday's pre-game coin flip with an oversized coin honoring Notre Dame's seven Heisman winners.

The coin will be his to keep. Or to sell.

Tim Sullivan can be reached at (502) 582-4650, by email at tsullivan@courier-journal.com, and on Twitter @TimSullivan714