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TALKING IRISH

THE ORAL HISTORY OF NOTRE DAME FOOTBALL

STEVE DELSOHN

For Mary Kay, Emma, Hannah and Grace

Contents

AUTHOR’S NOTE vii

Part I: The Forties 1

1 Shadow of the Rock: 1940-1941 3

2 Leahy Takes Charge: 1942-1943 11

3 The War-Torn Years: 1944-1945 17

4 The Glory Boys: 1946 24

5 The Dynasty 1947-1949 33

Part II: The Fifties 39

6 Power Struggle: 1950 41

7 Paying the Price: 1951-1952 47

8 The End of the Leahy Era: 1953 53

9 Two Stubborn Irishmen: 1954-1955 68

10 Rock Bottom: 1956 76

11 Notre Dame Under Fire: 1957-1958 83

12 “A Hardheaded Croatian”: 1959 92

Part III: The Sixties 97

13 Once They Were Kings: 1960-1962 99

14 Requiem for the Irish: 1963 107

15 A New Messiah: 1964 113

16 Shake Down the Thunder: 1965-1966 124

17 Terry, Joe, and O.J.: 1967-1968 134

18 Race 139

19 Inside the American Whirlwind: 1969 147

Part IV: The Seventies 155

20 Kent State to Dallas: 1970 157

21 Bowl Game Madness: 1971-1972 165

22 Reaching for the Stars: 1973 174

23 A Legend Departs: 1974 181

24 The New Regime: 1975 191

25 Turmoil and a Title: 1976-1977 202

26 The Wheels Fall Off: 1978-1979 211

Part V: The Eighties 217

27 The Devine Era Ends: 1980 219

28 Faust Fever: 1981 228

29 Life With Gerry: 1982-1983 237

30 Keystone Cops: 1984-1985 248

31 The Little General: 1986 259

32 Waking up the Echoes: 1987-1988 268

33 Defending the Crown: 1989 280

Part VI: The Nineties 289

34 The Turbulence Begins: 1990-1991 291

35 “Kind of a Lightning Rod”: 1992 305

36 The Unforgettable Season: 1993 315

37 The Boston College Hangover: 1994 332

38 Holtz’s Cryptic Exit: 1995-1996 342

39 New Morning in South Bend: 1997 361

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Other Books by Steve Delsohn

Cover

Copyright

About the Publisher

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I GREW UP PLAYING ORGANIZED FOOTBALL IN CHICAGO. I started

in sixth grade and quit when I finished high school. I loved the

game so fiercely, I cried harder than I expected when I left it be￾hind.

And so to be quite frank, it wasn’t Notre Dame that first drew

me to this book. It was my desire to revisit football. Then, once I

decided to write about one team, I made my mind up quickly.

Notre Dame is the very soul of football.

To bring this story to life, I have interviewed 144 players, 13

coaches, and seven administrators. This pool of Notre Damers

spanned six decades—from the 1940s to the 1990s—and included

62 All-Americans, 32 consensus All-Americans, 47 team captains,

five Heisman Trophy winners and five head coaches.

In 1996, I was privileged to attend the 50th reunion of Frank

Leahy’s 1946 national championship team, and the 30th reunion

of Ara Parseghian’s 1966 national champions. These weren’t only

two of Notre Dame’s best teams ever, but two of the greatest in

college football history.

One moonlit night in Palm Springs, I sat on a porch and drank

beer with Johnny Lujack. I talked with Parseghian in South Bend,

Indiana, where the view from his office window took in the

sparkling Golden Dome. About 18 hours after I interviewed Lou

Holtz, my wife gave birth to our daughter Grace. Holtz surprised

me with a phone call later that evening. He wanted to know how

mother and baby were doing.

I started researching this book two years ago. But as blasphem￾ous as it sounds, I had never before set foot on the campus of

Notre Dame. Now I know the scuttlebutt is true. Once you arrive

in the land of gold and blue, leprechauns and Touchdown Jesus,

you will be seduced. No other sports team, college or pro, has

such a rich blend of tradition and mystique.

In 1842, on a wooded plain in northern Indiana, the University

of Notre Dame du lac (Our Lady of the Lake) was founded by a

young French priest named Edward Frederick Sorin. The ambi￾tious Holy Cross brother wrote two years later: “When this school,

Our Lady’s school, grows a bit more, I shall raise her aloft so that

without asking, all men will know why we have succeeded here.

To that lovely Lady, raised high on a dome, a Golden Dome, men

may look and find the answer.”

It was 1882 when the Golden Dome first cast its glint across

the heartland. The university took up football in 1887. The first

team went 0-1, losing 8-0 to a visiting Michigan squad that agreed

to teach Notre Dame the country’s rugged new game.

In 1909, Notre Dame was still referred to as “the Catholics” by

sportswriters when Rev. Michael J. Shea wrote the music and

words to the Notre Dame Victory March. Nearly 90 years later,

its chorus can still brings tears to grown men’s eyes:

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Cheer, cheer for old Notre Dame,

Wake up the echoes cheering her name,

Send a volley cheer on high,

Shake down the thunder from the sky,

What though the odds be great or small,

Old Notre Dame will win over all,

While her loyal sons are marching,

Onward to Victory.

By 1918, when Knute Rockne became head coach, the program

already had a winning tradition. Jesse Harper, Rockne’s prede￾cessor, had gone 34-5-1 over five seasons. But while few non￾Notre Damers remember Harper, Rockne is still the most famous

coach who ever lived.

A balding, broken-nosed genius, Rockne did more than win a

school-record 105 games. He transformed a small and obscure

Catholic university into an American institution.

In 1924, the year Notre Dame won its first national champion￾ship, Rockne’s backfield consisted of quarterback Harry

Stuhldreher, left halfback Jim Crowley, right halfback Don Miller

and fullback Elmer Layden. Though they averaged 158 pounds

per man, they grew immortal when Grantland Rice of the New

York Herald-Tribune sat down to write his story on the Notre

Dame-Army game in New York City.

“Outlined against a blue-gray October sky the Four Horsemen

rode again,” Rice wrote in the most unforgettable newspaper lead

of all time.

“In dramatic lore they are known as famine, pestilence, destruc￾tion and death. These are only aliases. Their real names are

Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden. They formed the crest

of the South Bend cyclone before

THE ORAL HISTORY OF NOTRE DAME FOOTBALL / ix

which another fighting Army team was swept over the precipice

at the Polo Grounds this afternoon…”

Notre Dame had only won this game 13-7, but there was no

turning back. The Irish had become the stuff of myth.

Rockne’s single most fabled player was George Gipp. An extra￾ordinary halfback and a prodigious gambler and drinker, he was

named Notre Dame’s first All-American in 1920. Gipp died two

weeks later, at age 25, from a strep throat infection.

According to Rockne, Gipp made this stirring request from his

deathbed: “I’ve got to go, Rock. It’s all right. I’m not afraid.

Sometime, Rock, when the team is up against it, when things are

wrong and the breaks are beating the boys—tell them to go in

there with all they’ve got and win just one for the Gipper. I don’t

know where I’ll be then, Rock. But I’ll know about it, and I’ll be

happy.”

No one has ascertained if Gipp actually said these words. But

in 1928, Rockne made his storied “Win one for the Gipper” speech

before his outmanned Irish played unbeaten Army at Yankee

Stadium. Notre Dame’s soaring emotions ignited a 12-6 upset.

In 1931, millions of people grieved when they read the sky￾scraping headlines: KNUTE ROCKNE DIES IN PLANE CRASH. Notre

Dame spent its next ten years trying vainly to maintain its mam￾moth tradition. Then, in 1941, a brooding, eccentric Frank Leahy

took over as coach.

Leahy made Notre Dame a powerhouse again, and it is Leahy’s

first decade that kicks off Talking Irish. Why did I begin in 1940?

Talking Irish is an oral history, based on first-person accounts of

Notre Dame football heroes. And if you go all the way back to

1930, a number of those heroes are deceased.

In 1998, Notre Dame still has college football’s most

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hallowed legacy. After 110 seasons, the Fighting Irish have had

only nine losing records. Their 11 national championships, seven

Heisman Trophy winners, 77 consensus All-Americans and .757

winning percentage are all collegiate bests.

But the heritage goes much deeper. Numbers can’t capture the

spirit and the grit. Here is the story of Notre Dame football—told

by the men who lived it.

THE ORAL HISTORY OF NOTRE DAME FOOTBALL / xi

PART I

THE FORTIES