Over a memorable eight-season run (1956-1964), Ara Parseghian transformed the Northwestern University football program from a cellar-dweller in the Big Ten Conference to a nationally known power. Before his arrival from Miami of Ohio, he had never been associated with a losing team, as a coach or as a player. At 32, he would face his biggest challenge at Northwestern but would eventually lead the Wildcats to winning seasons in four of his last five years there. The payoff came in 1962, when the Wildcats were ranked number 1 in the nation and a safe bet to play in the Rose Bowl. This biography--the first documenting his stint at Northwestern--recounts Parseghian's struggles and successes as a dynamic young coach in the years before he made history at Notre Dame.

No one had really heard of Chaminade University-a tiny NAIA Catholic school in Honolulu with fewer than eight hundred undergraduates-until its basketball game against the University of Virginia on December 23, 1982. The Chaminade Silverswords defeated the Cavaliers, then the Division I, No. 1-ranked team in the nation, in what the Washington Post later called "the biggest upset in the history of college basketball." Virginia was the most heralded team in the country, led by seven-foot-four-inch, three-time College Basketball Player of the Year Ralph Sampson. They had just been paid $50,000-more than double Chaminade's annual basketball budget-to play an early season tournament in Tokyo and were making a "stopover" game in Hawaii on their way back to the mainland. The Silverswords, led by forward Tony Randolph, came back in the second half and won the game 77-72. Chaminade's incredible victory became known as the "Miracle on Ward Avenue" or simply "The Upset" in Hawaii and was featured in the national news. Never before in the history of college basketball had a school moved so dramatically and irretrievably into the nation's consciousness. The Silverswords' victory was more than just an upset; it was something considered impossible. And the team's wins over major college programs continued in the ensuing years. Today Chaminade is still referred to as "The Giant Killers"-the school that beat Ralph Sampson and Virginia. The Greatest Upset Never Seen relives the 1982-83 season, when Chaminade put small-college basketball and Hawaii on the national sports map.