AKRON — Marlene Agruso was small-talking at a party in the mid-`60s when she first encountered the man, certainly not an impressive man. And a football coach, at that.
Not the kind of man who could satisfy her exquisite tastes, not a catch like the Cincinnati businessman she was dating.
And there was all that religion: He wasn`t overt about it or anything, but mass every day?
``This just can`t be for real,`` she thought. ``Can it?``
Marlene Agruso hung around to find out. Hung around long enough to become Marlene Faust for 25 years. And counting.
And she has been able to count on Gerry Faust being Gerry Faust for that quarter of a century. ``I just marvel at the guy,`` says Marlene. ``The guy has never once said anything negative about anybody.``
Gerry Faust has had many opportunities to be negative, particularly when he took that dreamy, unthinkable coaching step from Cincinnati`s Moeller High to Notre Dame, a.k.a. College Football USA.
He refused to be negative when people were scrutinizing his every move from the outset; when he produced the first losing season at Notre Dame in 17 years; when everybody was singing that I-told-you-so song; when he saw ``Oust Faust`` bumper stickers in South Bend, Ind.; when he had no recourse but to leave after five seasons and a 30-26-1 record.
``My dad is a rare man,`` 24-year-old Julie Faust says.
The man now sits in a modest football office at Akron University in Akron, rubber capital of the world.
And, yes, it does seem humorous in a Monty Python sort of way that the man whose football team plays in the Rubber Bowl has met every living president. And, yes, it does seem incongruous that this worldly man coaches a program that was Division 1-AA and now is a battered fledgling in 1-A, doing his traditional Irish jig on a pair of bum legs when the Zips knock off a Kent State or a Northern Arizona.
Yet, partly because he stood atop the college football world at one time, he can drop names like he`s plucking love petals from a daisy, not haughtily but steadily:
Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter. Lou (why, Holtz, of course). Former President and Mrs. Reagan. Woody Hayes. The Bushes, George and Barbara. The Rev. Robert Schuller.
Clearly, Faust has gone from the prince of I-A to the pauper; well, from the Irish to the Zips. From looking down on traditions like Tennessee to looking up at a UT program as if it were a Redwood, which is the view Faust and his Zips will bring to Knoxville`s Neyland Stadium on Saturday.
It`s been a long haul to get to Neyland for Faust and Co. When he was introduced as Akron`s new coach Dec. 18, 1985, he was met immediately by a cauldron of community emotions.
Jim Dennison was a local favorite and had built Akron into a respected Division I-AA program in his 13 seasons, the last of which produced the school`s first playoff appearance.
But Faust was part of a university power play to make Akron the first school to go from I-AA to I-A in football, and Dennison was forced out, first becoming an associate athletic director and later getting the job as athletic director.
Faust said he told his suitors he didn`t want to come to Akron unless Dennison wanted out on his own; he was assured that was the case, so he signed a five-year contract with a $70,000 base salary.
``Somebody wasn`t telling the truth,`` Faust says now.
Dennison didn`t want out, and much of the community didn`t want Faust in. ``It`s getting better,`` Faust says. ``It has taken a lot of time to heal.``
Faust has used the opportunity to heal some wounds from his Notre Dame era. The discipline of his players that some say was absent in South Bend is back, and Faust says he has matured.
``I`ve learned from my mistakes, I hope,`` he says. ``I think I`ve learned a lot over the past eight or nine years, and I feel right now that hopefully I`m a much better coach.``
Faust sees himself as a man who has flourished, not suffered. He doesn`t want sympathy for the trials he endured at Notre Dame. He would never have such waste. The man is happy.
``You could have all the success in the world, but if you don`t have the real values in life, the things that are really important in life, then all that other stuff is not worth anything,`` he says.
And so goes one part of the Gerry Faust sermon on life. But calling it a sermon around Faust would be almost blasphemous. He is as religious as they come, but he shudders at the thought of being looked at like a corner preacher.
``I`m not religious-I didn`t say anything to anybody. I don`t wear it on my sleeve, I hope,`` he says worriedly. ``Because I don`t want to (be like that).``
What he is like, however, is religious beyond belief, particularly for a man who spends his Saturdays stomping up and down a sideline hollering at officials, players and whomever sits in his path.
``It`s amazing to see a man be so strong in his faith. I don`t even know a priest that devout,`` says Faust`s 21-year-old son, Steve, who is a senior at Notre Dame.
