here was a time not so long ago when new legends were possible at Notre Dame.

From 1964 through the 1974 season, Ara Parseghian was the Fighting Irish coach, completing its Football Trinity with Rockne and Leahy.

I spent the early '70s, and therefore the formative years of my sportswriting career, covering sports, including football, for the South Bend Tribune. And it was not difficult to see, even without the perspective time now provides, that a new legend was being added to Notre Dame's litany.

Like its truest believers, Notre Dame has always been most in love with Notre Dame, particularly the image of Notre Dame. In pursuit of maintaining that image since Frank Leahy's departure in the early '50s, the school has achieved an uneven history at best in the hiring of its most visible symbol, its football coach.

Since the Era of Ara, the Notre Dame football program has had Devine, a better name than concept; Faust, a better concept than name; Holtz, a big name that ultimately wore out its welcome; and Davie, which has Devine appearances with potentially Faustian consequences.

School administrators, against the better judgment of its athletic leadership, preferred hiring Dan Devine to Ara Parseghian in 1964. The late, great athletic director, Moose Krause, won out that time, and the Era of Ara ultimately enhanced Notre Dame's legendary status.

Eleven years later, the administration finally had its way and rescued Devine from the rapidly deteriorating scrap heap of his tenure with the NFL Packers in Green Bay -- where another legendary Catholic figure, Vince Lombardi, looms large even today. Even though Devine, like Parseghian, produced a national championship, he failed to crack the Notre Dame Trinity and win the hearts of the faithful.

Gerry Faust, ever clutching his Rosary beads, perfectly fit the image that Hollywood created and Notre Dame so carefully nurtured in the film, "Knute Rockne, All American." Unfortunately, Faust wasn't a very good college football coach.

Lou Holtz was a very good football coach, and probably no less a man than Leahy. But a very good man, Parseghian, came in between them, raising the standard of just what a Notre Dame football coach should be. Ara Parseghian didn't just fit the image: He helped create it.

As Lloyd Bentsen once said to Dan Quayle, I knew Ara Parseghian, and Lou Holtz was no Ara Parseghian.

And now there is Bob Davie, who may be another Gerry Faust, but without the Rosary beads. With his Hollywood good looks, Davie appears typecast for the part. To date, however, his record has not been the stuff that new legends are made of at Notre Dame.

An NCAA scandal left over from Holtz's days, when Davie was an assistant, hangs over the Golden Dome with the threat of severe sanctions that will make pursuit of the legend even more elusive for Davie and the Irish.

Still, remarkable things seem to happen in the newly expanded, 80,000-seat Notre Dame Stadium that almost looks more tradition-laden than the 59,000-seat core it now surrounds. You can still see the freshly sandblasted bricks of the old exterior, surrounded by the fresh bricks of the new edifice that somehow looks like it's been there forever.

Last month, as I returned to the campus for the first time in several years, Southern Cal came to South Bend for its 32nd visit at a time when both programs are mere shadows of themselves. National attention on that college football Saturday was focused elsewhere, but in South Bend, the game, as always, was the center of the only universe that mattered.

In a season during which it has struggled, Notre Dame rallied from a 24-3 deficit with a remarkable second-half comeback for a 25-24 victory. There were a couple of lucky bounces, stuff that could have happened to any team, particularly a fumble the Irish recovered in the end zone with 2:40 to play to complete the rally.

But there also was the inexplicable: a 20-degree drop in temperature and the pouring rain throughout the second half that seemed to cool off and wash out the California boys, and a change in the wind that left the Trojans with what must have felt like the very breath of God in their face instead of at their backs, where it belonged, in the fourth quarter.

"It's funny how that game starts out sunny and it's pretty warm and SC's making plays, and by the end of the game, it's rainy and cold and the wind's coming with us in the fourth quarter," admitted Davie.

"It was remarkable," USC coach Paul Hackett said. "Someone elbowed me and said, 'Now they've changed the wind, too.' This is what happens when you play at Notre Dame Stadium."

There's a story I remember from my days covering Parseghian and Notre Dame football. It was the coach's first year, and during a home game, it started to snow. When the student section started chanting, "Ara stop the snow! Ara stop the snow!" he turned to his assistant coach, Tom Pagna, and asked, "Can I?"

The next year, at another home game, it started to snow again and the students started chanting once again: "Ara stop the snow! Ara stop the snow!" This time, Parseghian turned to Pagna and asked, "Should I?"

Notre Dame loves itself for those stories.

It loves itself for its beautiful stadium, which somehow manages to look both new and old at the same time, like a good story that becomes legend.

The student body never chanted for Bob Davie to change the weather or the wind against USC. Maybe the faithful just assumed he could. And would.

These days, I have to wonder if the creation of legends at Notre Dame is simply on automatic pilot, resulting in pale recreations of the past rather than the stuff new legends are made of.

But the only way Notre Dame will ever wake up the echoes and shake down the thunder again will be to build anew on its image, not merely copy it over and over again.