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Wintheiser came to Rimini’s office in Decio.
    â€œNot many former players on the faculty, are there?”
    Rimini might have said something unforgivable, his loyalties pulled between memories of those long-ago afternoons when he had been buffeted and knocked about by larger men and the ethereal ivory tower of academe to which one was admitted on the basis of brain, not brawn.
    â€œNot many Renaissance men,” Rimini replied.
    Wintheiser was looking at Rimini’s framed degrees, prominently displayed on what little wall space the office had.
    â€œMy degree is from the University of Chicago,” Wintheiser said.
    â€œDidn’t you graduate from here?”
    â€œI meant my doctorate.”
    Doctorate? Chicago? “What was your field?”
    â€œAncient languages. Hittite, mainly.”
    â€œHittite! What do you do with that?”
    â€œNot much. I helped my director put together his Hittite dictionary.”
    â€œAnd then?”
    â€œI’m a commentator on ESPN. I’m surprised you didn’t know that.”
    Rimini felt as if he had flunked a test. ESPN! It was a channel Rimini loathed, all those chattering panels, old jocks breaking one another up, pontificating about coming games, at last above the fray where no umpire would throw a flag if they made mistakes. “Of course,” he said weakly, and then wished he hadn’t.
    â€œMy main income is from commercials.”
    â€œSo you’re back for the game,” Rimini said, trying to regain his sense of ease with this giant of a man. Hittite, ESPN, commercials—what was the world coming to?
    â€œWhat do you make of all the agitation about the team?” Wintheiser asked.
    The team. Our team. Rimini had put his guest in his reading chair, legs crossed, huge shoes on display, and himself at his desk. The whistles of yesteryear, the crack and thump of padded body hitting padded body, seemed to echo in the office.
    â€œAdversity is a tough school.”
    Wintheiser liked that. “Absolutely. Those kids are playing their hearts out, and what thanks do they get? Self-appointed experts. Know-it-alls. It’s like ESPN. You ever watch Kornheiser?”
    It was a rhetorical question.
    â€œSo what are we going to do about it?” This was not a rhetorical question.
    â€œI suspect you have some ideas.”
    Wintheiser had ideas. He knew about Lipschutz’s demand that football be dropped. He knew about Iggie Willis’s Web site.
    â€œDon’t forget the Weeping Willows.”
    â€œWho are they?”
    â€œConcerned alumni.” Rimini said it with a sneer. “They’re shocked—shocked—at the new Notre Dame. First it was the Vagina Monologues. ”
    â€œWhat a bunch of garbage.”
    Wintheiser seemed to mean the play. Rimini let it go. “Then it was the percentage of Catholics on the faculty.”
    â€œIs that a problem?”
    â€œThey seem to think so.”
    â€œI can’t believe what has happened to the Catholic Church,” Wintheiser said through clinched teeth. “Libertine priests, annulments…” He seemed to have run out of breath.
    â€œNow they want to know how many Catholics are on the football team. And how many Irish.”
    â€œYou’re kidding.”
    â€œI wish I were. How many Catholics were on the team when you played?”
    â€œWe always went to Mass together on Saturday mornings. In the chapel at Moreau Seminary.”
    Rimini had forgotten that practice, which had apparently gone the way of many others that had once characterized football at Notre Dame.
    â€œLou came. The whole coaching staff.”
    â€œI wonder if there are any Catholics on the team now?”
    â€œThere are no atheists in foxholes.”
    They observed a moment of silence.
    â€œSo what exactly are your ideas, George?” Or should he have said Dr. Wintheiser?
    â€œThe best defense is a good offense.”
    Rimini nodded. Even