Ex-Notre Dame football coach gets first career win in his tenth try

While the Notre Dame football team is trying to build a playoff season, one former Irish coach is just trying to make a consistent winner. And he’s already gone on record as saying that he wants the way he creates his team to have some serious echoes of South Bend.

So far, Gerad Parker’s start with the Troy Trojans hasn’t been too good. It got off to a 0-3 season-opening run. However, not everything is going south.

The former Notre Dame football offensive coordinator got his first win of the season. But more than that, it’s his first win as a head coach. And it might surprise more than a few Fighting Irish fans to know this isn’t his first try at leading a program.

When Troy beat Florida A&M 34-12 on Saturday, it was his 10th try at getting a win. In addition to the four games he’s coached as the head man for the Sun Belt squad, he’s also got six games for the Purdue Boilermakers.

Ex-Notre Dame football coach Gerad Parker gets first career win

After three-and-a-half seasons under Darrell Hazell, Purdue hoped to salvage the 2016 season in any way the program could. They fired Hazell and handed the team over to Parker as the interim coach.

He almost certainly knew the job was an audition of sorts. Of course, he probably also knew he needed a better-supporting cast than what he had in West Lafayette. 

As Purdue's head coach, Parker went 0-6. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t get a full-time promotion to head coach once the season was over, and he moved on.

Eight years later, he finally got the shot he had always wanted. And now, the former Notre Dame football head coach has his first career win in 10 tries. Now the goal is to win over an FBS squad. And then rolling on from there.