COLUMBUS - Bryan Flannery could have listened to his high school football coach when he told him he wasn't good enough to fulfill his dream of playing for the University of Notre Dame.

Instead, he won a Notre Dame scholarship and, by his sophomore year, was a starter.

He could have listened to Notre Dame Coach Lou Holtz when he told him he wasn't big enough to play defense.

But Mr. Flannery won a starting spot on the team's punishing defensive line. The next season, he helped the team win the 1988 national championship over West Virginia University.

“I didn't think we could win with him, but we won because of him, not in spite of him.'' said Mr. Holtz, now coach of the University of South Carolina Gamecocks.

Now Mr. Flannery, 34, a Lakewood Democrat, is sacrificing a secure seat in the Ohio House of Representatives to challenge Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, an entrenched, well-financed Republican from Cincinnati.

“This old adage of running to lose, that's not even on my radar,'' said Mr. Flannery. “If the public doesn't want me, they're not going to elect me. And I'm okay with that. I'm not a career politician.''

But he insists he's in this race to win.

“He's very driven, very goal-oriented,'' said his wife, former TV anchorwoman Renee Newbauer. “He doesn't let anyone tell him what he should do. He's very confident in himself, which is something I look at with great respect.''

When Mr. Flannery graduated from Notre Dame in 1990 with a degree in sociology, he turned to his coach for advice about his future.

“I wouldn't have ruled out a pro career, but being honest, he just didn't have a pro athleticism,'' Mr. Holtz said. “He was very productive. He was really an overachiever in every sense of the word. When that (championship) season ended, he had played as well as anybody on that football team. How he did it, I don't know. He might have had a gun.''

Mr. Holtz used his connections to help the recent graduate get an unpaid internship in the U.S. Senate.

As the fourth generation of Flannerys active in politics, he launched, at the age of 23, his first political campaign for mayor of Lakewood. He lost, but followed up two years later with a victory for city council.

In 1995, he married Renee, a WVU graduate who “hated Notre Dame,'' according to Mr. Flannery. They have a 1-year-old daughter, Taylor, and own Flannery Gulf, a convenience store/gas station in Lakewood. They both sell insurance.

He was elected state representative in 1998, a job once held by the man he said he most admires, his father James. He's fond of opening speeches with stories of his football days or words of wisdom like, “The measure of a good lobbyist is to give a hamburger and get a cow back.''

“He's a good, all-around athlete, energetic both physically and mentally,'' said state Rep. Chris Redfern (D., Cattawba Island), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.

First Published September 28, 2002, 5:15 p.m.