Handle: The dramatic story of Tyrone Willingham's inaugural season as Notre Dame's first African American coach ever. Description: After Notre Dame's lackluster 2001 football season, Tyrone Willingham was invited to South Bend, Indiana to take over a team that, throughout its 115-year history, has been known as much for its glorified Irish Catholic image as for its. 7495 winning percentage (the highest in college football history). For a school and team as steeped in tradition as this, the hiring of a black Methodist coach was a truly remarkable event. What made it even more interesting was that Willingham was the savior for a Notre Dame athletic department rocked with recent scandals--not least of which was the huge embarrassment of hiring the superficially perfect coach George O'Leary, who turned out to have fabricated his resume. The question on everyone's lips was whether Willingham could not only turn around an underperforming team, but also burnish the program's sullied reputation. Well, Willingham did all that and more, doubling the team's number of wins from the previous season and returning the Fighting Irish to the glory they had known in years past. Even more importantly, he disproved the conventional wisdom that the paucity of black coaches (only three in all of Division 1A football) is due to a lack of available talent. In Return to Glory, Alan Grant, a young black writer who played under Willingham at Stanford, takes readers inside the Irish football program to tell the story of a season that will go down in the record books. Grant shows the behind-the-scenes drama of a team striving to play above all expectations, and the quiet maneuverings of a resourceful coach in hisbiggest challenge to date.

In this work filled with behind-the-scenes drama, Grant tells the dramatic story of Tyrone Willingham's inaugural season as Notre Dame's first African-American coach.

Important Notes:
1. Enormous Market Among Notre Dame Fans: According to a recent ESPN Sports Poll, 5.7 percent of Americans consider themselves Notre Dame fans. These are people who buy books, as shown by the high sales of Under the Tarnished Dome and the continued publication of books on every facet of Notre Dame football history. No fan's library will be complete without Return to Glory.
2. Ultimate Access: Having known Willingham for more than a decade, Alan Grant was allowed unparalleled access to write this book. Willingham allowed him to spend the whole season with the team, from practices to games to watching the game film--so only Grant can tell the real story of the relationships among team members and coaching staff.
3. Insider's Perspective: With his background playing football at a Division 1A school where athletes must keep up academically, Grant understands the pressures on Notre Dame players. And as a black man who has encountered the racial glass ceiling, he can speak well of the odds against which Willingham has succeeded.
4. Media Spotlight on Willingham and Notre Dame: The amount of attention paid to the Fighting Irish in 2002 guarantees that every footbal fan knows Willingham's name. From Sports Illustrated's "Stories of the Year" to an NPR piece by Frank Deford to articles in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and ESPN The Magazine, Willingham and his team turned up everywhere--and all eyes will be on this overachieving coach again for the 2003 season.
5. Record-Breaking Season:
Willingham finished the 2002 season with 10 wins, the most of any first-year coach in Notre Dame's 115-year football history!