That afternoon in the Cotton Bowl the prayers of the Irish faithful went unanswered. The Notre Dame offense went doodlebug, curling into a ball and doing nothing. The A&M defense kept Tim Brown in check. He would not score the rest of the game. And before you knew it, the tally was 35 to 10 Aggies, and the Irish were dazed and downtrodden. Halfway through the fourth quarter, the Aggies lined up for the kickoff following their final touchdown. This was back in the days of Sherrill’s Twelfth Man, which meant the entire kickoff team was a bunch of walk-on kamikazes who flew around the field trying to concuss the receiving team. On this last kickoff of the day, two of these knuckleheads tackled Tim Brown and one grabbed his towel while the other held him down. This drove Brown and Pat Malone crazy.

“Look at this, they’re mugging the poor kid. Bunch of goddamn yahoos.”

Tim Brown got up from the pile and with a seven-yard head of steam speared the towel thief in the back. Of course the refs saw that and ejected the Heisman winner.

“Such bullshit. They were scalping him! This was premeditated. What a disgrace.”

“Calm down, Dad,” Dan pleaded.

Pat realized he was sweating, shaking, and raving. He tried to push deeper into his chair, sitting on his fists, and smiled sheepishly at his son.

“Sorry, Danny boy, but did you see that? They literally robbed the kid.”

“I know, Dad. It’s not fair, but that’s football.”

Thrones. Level Seven.

You went to a Catholic prep school, preferably Jesuit.

Long before recruiters were publishing their big boards in the Sporting News, Pat Malone was scouring the Catholic prep school system for the Next Great One. Extra points if you came through the Jebbies. There was some hindsight regret and obsession behind this—if Pat had gone to Fordham Prep like Vincent Scully the Blessed (levels one, four, and five), he would have been running American Airlines from a floor-through on Park Avenue—but it was mostly ingrained Irish reverence for Jesuit institutions.

Did it matter that Fidel Castro went to a Jesuit high school? It did to Pat Malone. Did you know the Cuban Missile Crisis could have been prevented if the scouts had just brought Fidel up for a serious tryout? That’s why he was anti-American—because the Washington Senators passed on him.

Classic example of the Next Great One: Chris Mullin, who came out of Power Memorial and Xaverian.

Cherubim. Level Eight.

You are not Catholic, but you are so good Pat Malone wishes you were.

This is just a catch-all for outstanding, first-ballot Captain America types: Bill Bradley, Sandy Koufax, Joe Frazier, Secretariat, Y. A. Tittle.

Seraphim. Level Nine.

They slayed the dragon.