Editor’s Note: The following is excerpted from the award-winning biography Coach For A Nation: The Life and Times of Knute Rockne. As Notre Dame prepared to head to New York City to play Army at the Polo Grounds, football fans across the country grew eager with anticipation for the intersectional battle of the year. Under Read Full Post
100 Years Ago The Rockne Coaching Career Began
October 5, 2014 by
On Saturday, Oct. 3, 1914, the Notre Dame football team opened its season with a home game against Alma College of Michigan, the school where second-year ND head coach Jesse Harper had begun his coaching career eight years earlier. Assisting Harper on the Notre Dame sideline that day was 26-year-old Knute Rockne, making his coaching Read Full Post
At 99, The ND Beat Goes On
October 2, 2014 by
Art Huber is just six months shy of his 100th birthday. Yet, when he closes his eyes and remembers, he can still clearly see himself as a 7 or 8-year-old, in the early 1920s, playing in the parks and backyards of his hometown, little Fort Atkinson, Iowa, choosing sides for ballgames. “My team was always Read Full Post
A Special Reunion
September 8, 2014 by
Occasionally, we’re asked why Notre Dame doesn’t celebrate Homecoming. The answer, of course, is simple. Every Notre Dame home game is a homecoming, a reunion for ten of thousands of Fighting Irish fans and alums from all over the country. Away games and the Shamrock Series are also opportunities for members of the Notre Dame Read Full Post
On This Day…100 Years Ago Rockne Wed
July 15, 2014 by
100 years ago today, on July 15, 1914, exactly one month after receiving his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Notre Dame, Knute Rockne married Bonnie Skiles in a simple ceremony in the parish rectory of Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Sandusky, Ohio. The witnesses were Charles “Gus” Dorais, the groom’s Read Full Post
On This Day…July 2
July 2, 2014 by
On this day (July 2) in 1891, Charles Emile “Gus” Dorais was born in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. As a child, Gus had a difficult home life, as his father “abandoned the family, and his mother Malvina was taking in laundry, working as midwife, and doing other odd jobs to clothe and feed Gus, older sister Read Full Post
On This Day…July 1
July 1, 2014 by
On this date (July 1) in 1961, former Notre Dame football coach Jesse Harper died in Sika, Kansas, at age 77. Harper, a product of the University of Chicago under Amos Alonzo Stagg, became Notre Dame’s first full-time athletic employee when he was hired as athletic director and head coach of football, basketball, and baseball Read Full Post
On This Day…June 30
June 30, 2014 by
On this day (June 30) in 1973, Elmer Layden, the fullback of Notre Dame’s famed “Four Horsemen” backfield and later head coach of the Fighting Irish, died in Chicago at age 70. He was the second of the Four Horsemen to die, following quarterback Harry Stuhldreher, who died in 1965 at age 63. Layden, a Read Full Post
Sacred Sod—Or A Move Forward?
May 27, 2014 by
Notre Dame traditionalists were struck by the images last week of backhoes removing the sod from Notre Dame Stadium in preparation for the installation of artificial turf. Yes, it is an emotional change in the House That Rockne Built. After all, back in 1930, the sod from legendary Cartier Field—where Rockne, Gus Dorais, George Gipp, Read Full Post
