Following the Madison Regatta, the next big sporting event for me was the U.S. Men's Clay Court Championships at a country club in Indianapolis.

Again, I was thrown into the deep end of a sport I knew very little about.

One of the biggest stars in men's tennis was Arthur Ashe, a black man in a white man's game. I decided to try to reach Ashe for my pre-tournament story.

The public relations people at the country club helped me reach Ashe's agent, who agreed to get him on the phone with me. He was as pleasant and helpful as he could be and I got a solid story out of the interview.

On the first day of the tournament, I tried to learn everything about the sport as quickly as I could. I was amazed at the speed of the serves, wondering how anybody could return a ball rocketing toward you at nearly 130 mph. But, somehow, they did - and often with great flair.

Reporters were not allowed in the clubhouse so, at the lunch break that first day, I bought a hot dog and was sitting and eating in the shade when I heard someone hollering.

"Mike Harris, are you out here?"

I stood up and walked toward the shouting until I recognized Arthur Ashe. I introduced myself and we shook hands.

"Listen, I just wanted to thank you for that fine story,'' he said. "It made me look good and it made the sport look good. I wanted you to know I appreciate it."

We shook hands again and he walked away. It was one of the best moments of my career.

As you might expect, I silently rooted for Ashe to win the tournament. But Cliff Richey wound up beating Stan Smith in the final. Ashe did combine with Clark Graebner to beat Ilie Nastase and Ion Tiriac in doubles and I found that tennis was a game I really enjoyed watching.

The rest of that summer was very quiet on the sports front. There were no more events to cover, so I spent many hours in the office. It gave me a lot of time to think about how I wanted to cover Indiana sports.

I read through years of daily reports to see how things had been done in the past and I came up with some ideas for reinventing the sports coverage once things heated up in the fall.

My sports responsibilities in Indiana included covering Indiana and Purdue football. We sent a staffer to every home game of both schools. If both played at home the same day, I covered one game and sent someone from the office - usually veteran reporter Steve Herman - to the other. I got to pick the best game for myself.

Besides writing game stories and notes columns for Sunday's newspapers, we were also responsible for follow-ups for the Monday morning and afternoon newspapers. Since most people who were interested had already read the game stories, we had to come up with fresh quotes and feature ideas for those follow-ups.

In reading those stories from previous years, I could tell that was not always an easy task. The follow-up stories rarely broke new ground or had anything of value for the reader.

I came up with the idea of calling the IU and Purdue coaches on Sunday, after they had seen the game film, for fresh perspective. Now all I had to do was sell the coaches on the idea.

I called Johnny Pont, the coach at IU since 1965, introduced myself and broached my idea. He was hesitant. Finally, he said, "If you can get Bob DeMoss (the new Purdue coach) to do it, I'll do it. Let me know."

DeMoss, who was just taking over the reins from a very successful coach, Jack Mollenkopf, was amazingly receptive to the idea.

"This is a new job. Let's do some new things,'' He said.

We agreed to his taking my call at 11 a.m. on Sundays after home games.

When I talked with Coach Pont, he was surprised to hear the reaction of Coach DeMoss, but agreed to a call at noon on the Sundays of home football weekends.

Then, I had another idea.

During my time in Chicago, I often heard the very busy sports guys lamenting the fact that they had to cover Notre Dame, even though it was in Indiana. Of course, South Bend was a lot closer to Chicago in miles than to Indianapolis, but the Fighting Irish were a legendary football program that I wanted to cover.

I asked my bureau chief, Tom Dygard, how he felt about the idea of us taking back Notre Dame football coverage from Chicago. He surprised me by saying, "It should rightfully be ours anyway."

When I called Jerry Liska, the Midwest Sports Editor in Chicago, with the idea, he jumped at it.

"Notre Dame is all yours," he said happily. "I hope you enjoy it. They're good people."

I then called Ara Parseghian, the coach at Notre Dame since 1964. He was pleasant but leery, saying, "My Sundays are pretty full. I usually get up very early, watch the film for the first time, eat breakfast with my family - the only time I get to see them on football weekends - and then go to the office for the rest of the day."

"How about right after breakfast?" I asked, hopefully. "I only need about 10 minutes."

There was a long pause, a big sigh and, finally, he blurted out, "Okay, we'll do it." He then gave me his home number and said, "Call at exactly 8:30 or I'll be gone."

Getting Notre Dame for the Indiana bureau complicated our scheduling, although there were very few weeks when all of the Big Three played at home. And South Bend was a 2 1/2-hour drive on what was then a very dangerous, mostly two-lane U.S. 31.

Still, I was very excited to have brought Notre Dame back into the Indiana fold.

The first football Saturday that fall, I was in Bloomington, Ind., for Colorado's 16-9 victory over the Hoosiers, the first of nine losses for IU that season. Steve Herman covered Purdue's 15-0 loss to Texas Christian in West Lafayette. It was the start of a 4-6 season for the Boilermakers.

Meanwhile, Notre Dame was in Evanston, IL, clobbering Northwestern 35-14, the beginning of a 10-1 season.

Checking out those season records, you might understand better why I wanted to cover Notre Dame football.

The calls to Coach Pont and Coach DeMoss went well that Sunday. The follow-up stories had fresh quotes and perspective and I felt really good about it.

The next week I made my first trip to South Bend. I had been there before, but not long enough to see anything but the football stadium. This time, I drove up on Friday and toured the Notre Dame campus, gazing with some awe at the famed Golden Dome atop the main campus building and at the 135-foot-tall mural on the Hesburgh Library, nicknamed Touchdown Jesus because it overlooks the north end of the football field and depicts Jesus with his arms raised.

Then I stopped into the office of Roger Valdiserri, the school's sports information director. Roger greeted me like an old friend, though it was our first face-to-face meeting. He took me on a quick tour, introducing me to several people in the athletic department, including Athletic Director Ed "Moose" Krause, who welcomed me and gave me his direct line.

Finally, Roger took me into Coach Parseghian's office and introduced me.

"I don't know what you got me into with those calls, but my wife isn't very happy about it," he said with a grin.

I assured the coach that I would keep the calls short and told him how well it had gone the week before with Coach Pont and Coach DeMoss.

The game was a rout. Notre Dame clubbed over-matched Purdue 48-0.

I had covered a game in South Bend during my stint in Rockford, but this felt different. I felt a sense of history sitting in Notre Dame Stadium, along with the usual sellout crowd of 49,075. More than that, though, the way I had been received by the people at Notre Dame gave me a feeling of kinship. Even the lopsided game couldn't take away from the feeling.

I got plenty of post game quotes from both coaches and a few players and wondered what else I could possibly ask Coach Parseghian on Sunday morning. I thought about that a lot on the drive home Saturday night.

Bright and early on Sunday, I went into the office to prepare for the call and to write the follow-up story. Indiana had been on the road that weekend, so all I had to write was about Purdue-Notre Dame.

I was a little nervous as I dialed Coach Parseghian's number at precisely 8:29 a.m.

A woman answered and I said, "Hi, this is Mike Harris from AP calling for Coach Parseghian."

She said, "He's expecting your call, but he's finishing his eggs. Give him a minute. This is his wife, Katie. Where are you calling from?"

As the minutes ticked away, Mrs. Parseghian quizzed me on my personal life and my job. Finally, she said, "Okay. Here's Ara. Talk to you again soon."

Ara got on the phone and, not only answered my questions, but brought up a few things on his own. It was a very successful call that lasted considerably longer than 10 minutes.

That became our ritual: talking for five minutes or so with Katie and then being passed on to Ara. And, even though I never met her in person, this lovely lady became a friend, and the coach and I developed a nice bond.

I was sitting in the office on a December day in 1974 when I got a phone call from Roger Valdiserri. He said coach wanted to talk to me. It was the first time he had ever called me.

Ara got on and said, "Mike, I'm going to announce my retirement as coach of the Notre Dame football team in one hour. I'm totally exhausted and it's time for me to step down. I wanted to give you the story first. Nobody else will have it until an hour from now."

I thanked him profusely, offered my congratulations and best wishes to him and Katie, hung up and began writing.

The editors in New York Sports thought it was some kind of practical joke when the story popped up on their monitors. They called me for confirmation and we beat the opposition onto the wire by more than an hour - an eternity in wire service time.

Coach Pont was replaced by Lee Corso in 1973 and Coach DeMoss was replaced by Alex Agase that same year. Both Corso and Agase agreed with little hesitation to continue the Sunday calls.

Coach Parseghian was replaced by Dan Devine, who blew me off every time I tried to get him to set up a Sunday call. But it never became an issue, since I was on my way to a new posting by the time the 1975 college football season began.

I occasionally covered important basketball games at Notre Dame as well, including one of the highlights of my career on Jan, 19, 1974.

UCLA came to Notre Dame with a record 88-game winning string and went home with its first loss since January 23, 1971 on the same court. The game went down to the final seconds when Dwight Clay hit the winning jump shot from the corner for a 71-70 Notre Dame victory.

The students rushed the court and overran our court-side press table. I grabbed my phone and notebook, ducked under the table and dictated my story to Indianapolis. The UPI writer wasn't quick enough. His notes and phone instrument were grabbed up and he was about 10 minutes late with his story.

I won the competitive play in newspapers that carried both AP and UPI by a score of 24-0. That led to a letter of commendation from the sports editor in New York and eventually to my promotion to the sports job in Cleveland.

Here I am talking with UCLA Coach Johnny Wooden the day before the game with Notre Dame

And, immediately after I left Indiana, the new state sports editor gave Notre Dame sports coverage back to Chicago, saying he didn't have time for it.