While the current Notre Dame football team is living in the cellar, there’s no questioning the amazing history of the Fighting Irish. This weekend’s game at UCLA has prompted a refresher course in ND legend/lore, as it represents Notre Dame’s first game in the Rose Bowl since their legendary game against the Stanford Indians in 1925, a game which earned the first National Championship for Notre Dame.
The names alone from the 1925 game are a trip down memory lane for most college football fans – the Four Horsemen, Elmer Layden, Ernie Nevers, Knute Rockne, Pop Warner, and many more – but the legendary stories from the game are part of what would entrench the legend of Notre Dame throughout the country.
A few highlights:
Irish Legends
Notre Dame had never before traveled to the West Coast to play football; Rockne had never seen Stanford play. … Alumni – most of them former players – had followed Stanford during the year, charting their plays and sending the diagrams to South Bend. The coach deciphered the X’s and O’s so well that he anticipated perfectly each time Pop Warner’s boys would try a certain sideline pass. He positioned Layden accordingly, and the fullback spent the afternoon plucking footballs away from frustrated receivers. He ran two of the interceptions for TD’s of sixty-five and seventy yards….Rockne was also concerned with getting his squad to Pasadena in peak physical condition. Forewarned by colleagues that a non-stop chug to the coast would weaken the team irreparably, the coach charted a route through New Orleans, Houston, El Paso, and Tucson. Theoretically, this would ease the strain on the players and allow them to get acclimated to warm weather. Practically, the roundabout route meant that practices could be conducted away from prying eyes; and the shifting scenery kept the team from jading during the layoff from competition.
There was also a problem with water. The water in towns along the way surely contained rebellious bacteria. Rockne wanted his backfield doing the Notre Dame shift, not the Green Apple Two-Step. So he packed a baggage car on the train with good old Notre Dame water. Whether it was touring the French Quarter or practicing on a high school field in Houston, the Notre Dame entourage was shadowed dutifully by a student manager in a taxicab jammed full of water jugs.
Pat at Blue-Gray Sky calls the game “the trip that made Notre Dame football.”
The fateful October matchup against Army and accompanying Grantland Rice article earlier in the season is routinely noted as the start of Notre Dame football as national phenomenon. However, the levels of national awareness and rabid fandom never would have reached the levels they have if not for the successful cross-country trip coupled with a wild national championship win that marked the last time the Notre Dame football team played in Pasadena’s Rose Bowl. It truly was one of the most noteworthy games in the history of Notre Dame football.
And BGS contributor tjnd88 has the silent movie footage from the 1925 Notre Dame – Stanford Rose Bowl game.
If you love college football, check out these great resources for this week’s history lesson:
Pat’s post at The Blue-Gray Sky
Original AP article at Classic Ground
LA Times writer Chris Dufresne’s piece on the history of the game
Source: feeds.feedburner.com
