Four Horsemen of Notre Dame

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Logo of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish , the University of Notre Dame football team

Four Horsemen of Notre Dame (German Vier Reiter von Notre Dame ) was the common nickname of the four American football players Harry Stuhldreher , Jim Crowley , Don Miller and Elmer Layden . They formed in the first half of the 1920s the backcourt formation of the football team of the University of Notre Dame , which during this time under coach Knute Rockne to the dominant teams in the United States in the College Football mattered. The report by journalist Grantland Rice , published in the New York Herald Tribune in October 1924, about a game of Notre Dame Fighting Irish , through which he coined the term Four Horsemen based on the four apocalyptic riders , is considered a "sports story that changed America". The memory of these four players who ended their careers after a perfect season in 1924 and winning the Rose Bowl in 1925 and are one of the most famous formations in the history of college football is part of the sports traditions of the University of Notre Dame to this day. All four players were voted All-American and, like their coach, inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame .

history

Sports reporter Grantland Rice, who coined the nickname Four Horsemen

The four players who came to be known as the Four Horsemen were quarterback Harry Stuhldreher and the three running backs Jim Crowley (left halfback), Don Miller (right halfback) and Elmer Layden (fullback). Essential for their meeting and their subsequent success in Notre Dame were the charisma , the extensive relationships and the motivational skills of Knute Rockne , who was the university's football coach at the time. When recruiting players, he was seen as a successful persuader with a "sixth sense" for talent and potential as well as the team's "chief psychologist, trainer and cheerleader" with the ability to motivate the team with rousing speeches before the start of the game and during halftime. With the help of his contacts, he often supported his players, many of whom saw him as a surrogate father, in their job search after completing their studies. In addition to the influence of Rockne, personal circumstances also played a role in the decision of the four players for Notre Dame. Layden's father was an enthusiastic supporter of the team, his high school coach acted as a scout for Rockne and as a basketball and baseball coach in Notre Dame. At Miller, football games in Notre Dame were a family tradition after three older brothers had been on the team.

Stuhldreher, Crowley, Miller and Layden were active for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish from 1922 to 1925 and lost only two of 30 games with the team during this time, with 6:14 (1922) and 7:14 (1923) both against the University of Nebraska crew . In 1922, the team won eight games in one draw and one defeat, a year later they achieved a record of nine wins in one lost game. In 1924, the team won all ten games of the season, including with a clear 34: 6 against the Nebraska Cornhuskers , and then in January 1925 the Rose Bowl with 27:10 against the Stanford University team . For this season's balance sheet, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish , starting in 1926 with the selection process known as the Dickinson System by economics professor Frank G. Dickinson, were retrospectively used by football statisticians and various organizations such as the College Football Researchers Association , the Helms Athletic Foundation and the National Championship Foundation almost unanimously chosen as national champion of the year 1924. Only the sports historian Parke H. Davis, who instead favored the team from the University of Pennsylvania , deviated from this assessment.

At that time, the players of a team played in all areas, as the offense and defense were not yet separated due to limited substitutions . In addition, a player who had left the field of play could not return to the game during the current half. For both reasons, the demands on the versatility and physical abilities of the players were higher than at present, whereby individual players became more important. The four players got their nickname from the sports reporter Grantland Rice . This began a report on a game that the Fighting Irish had won on October 18, 1924 13: 7 against the Black Knights of the United States Military Academy , with the following sentences that dramatically refer to the Apocalyptic Horsemen of the Bible as well as the Uniform colors of the Northern and Southern states during the American Civil War referred to :

“Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore their names are Death, Destruction, Pestilence, and Famine. But those are aliases. Their real names are: Stuhldreher, Crowley, Miller and Layden. They formed the crest of the South Bend cyclone before which another fighting Army team was swept over the precipice at the Polo Grounds this afternoon as 55,000 spectators peered down upon the bewildering panorama spread out upon the green plain below. [...] ”

“Against a blue-gray October sky the four riders rode. In dramatic lore, their names are death, destruction, disease, and famine. But these are pseudonyms. Their real names are: Stuhldreher, Crowley, Miller and Layden. They formed the top of the South Bend cyclone, which once again swept a fighting Army team over the abyss of the Polo Grounds, while 55,000 spectators that afternoon looked down on the impressive spectacle that spread out on the lawn in front of them . [...] "

- Grantland Rice: “The Four Horsemen” - New York Herald Tribune , cover of October 19, 1924 issue

By this game, the third in the 1924 season for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish , both teams had not lost any of their games of the current season. Miller gave Notre Dame the lead with a touchdown in the second quarter, which Crowley extended with another touchdown in the third quarter before the Black Knights shortened to the final score after a weak punt by the Fighting Irish . Grantland Rice's match report, which was reprinted in around 100 newspapers in the country, is considered to be the most famous and influential press article in American sports history . He made a major contribution to the establishment of individual players as "sports heroes", which began in the 1920s, and fundamentally changed the character of sports journalism, the status of college football and the leisure culture in the United States .

The student George Strickler, who was responsible for the team's public relations , also arranged a photo after the team's return to South Bend , which he sent to various press agencies in the country, so that it was printed widely across the country in the following days. It showed the four players in playing attire and each with a football under their arms on horses, and it became one of the most famous recordings in the history of college football. The Four Horsemen's success culminated a few weeks later when they won the Rose Bowl and laid the foundation for the notre Dame football team's outstanding nationwide popularity as America's team to this day . The two-week train journey to the game from South Bend to Pasadena was a triumph for the team through the United States. Since participation in the Rose Bowl resulted in about four weeks of lecture loss for the players, the university management of Notre Dame prohibited further participation in bowl games in the postseason until the Cotton Bowl in 1970.

Personalities

The College Football Hall of Fame in South Bend, Indiana , into which Knute Rockne and all four of the Four Horsemen 's players were inducted

Knute Rockne (1888-1931), the trainer of the Four Horsemen , immigrated to the United States with his parents from Norway at the age of five . He studied chemistry from 1910 at the University of Notre Dame, where he also worked as a laboratory assistant to Julius Arthur Nieuwland and was a member of the football team. After completing his studies in 1914 with a degree in pharmacy , he initially stayed at the university as a lecturer in chemistry, as a trainer for the athletics team and as an assistant coach for the football team. In 1918 he took over the post of head coach of the football team, which won almost 90 percent of all games and six national championships during his tenure by 1930. Rockne, who is considered one of the most successful coaches in college football history because of this record, was killed in a plane crash in 1931 at the age of 43 . He was posthumously inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1951.

Harry Stuhldreher (1901-1965), who came from Ohio and was descended from German immigrants , was an excellent runner and pass thrower in his role as quarterback , and was also one of the team's best punt returners . He was elected to the All-American three times and had six appearances for the short-term professional team of the Brooklyn Horsemen after his college days . He then served as the head coach of the Villanova University team for eleven years and then as head coach and sports director at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for 13 years . After his time as a trainer, he worked as a businessman. He has written two books about his football experience, one on Knute Rockne. In 1958 he was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame, seven years later he received the Amos Alonzo Stagg Award, named after Amos Alonzo Stagg , from the American Football Coaches Association (AFCA) .

Jim Crowley (1902-1986), who was born in Chicago and grew up in Wisconsin , played three professional games for the Green Bay Packers and the Providence Steam Roller after the end of his college career in 1925 . He then became an assistant coach at the University of Georgia and later head coach at Michigan State College and Fordham University , where he built one of the best defense teams of the time, including the later successful coach Vince Lombardi . During the Second World War he joined the United States Navy , after the end of the war he was commissioner of the short-lived professional league All-America Football Conference (AAFC) and coach of the AAFC team Chicago Rockets . He later worked for an insurance company and as a sports director for a local television station. He was elected to the All-American team in 1924 and inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1966.

Like Harry Stuhldreher, Don Miller (1902–1979) came from Ohio. He graduated from Notre Dame with a degree in law and after the end of his career initially took up positions as assistant coach at the Georgia Institute of Technology and at Ohio State University . He then worked as a lawyer in a law firm in Cleveland . In 1941 he was appointed District Attorney for Northern Ohio by then President Franklin D. Roosevelt . He was on the All-American team twice, and in 1970 he was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.

Elmer Layden (1903–1973) was from Iowa and became a lawyer like Don Miller. He was the punter of the team at the time and was considered their best defensive player, in 1923 and 1924 he was voted All American. After he had completed a professional game for the teams of the Brooklyn Horsemen and the Rock Island Independents , he acted as a trainer at Loras College in Dubuque , at Duquesne University and from 1934 to 1940 at his alma mater in Notre Dame, whose team he became in 1938 led to a shared national championship title. From 1941 to 1946 he was commissioner of the National Football League (NFL). He then worked successfully as a businessman. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1951.

Grantland Rice (1880-1954) worked in the course of his life for various newspapers and was considered an enthusiastic sports reporter, whose articles were characterized by a descriptive and sometimes poetic style of language. Similar to the report on the Four Horsemen , he heroized athletes as “ demigods ” in other articles and compared games with “ancient battles” or natural events. He achieved national recognition from 1930 and was considered the "Dean of American sports journalists". The athletes who made his articles famous include the Four Horsemen , boxer Jack Dempsey , baseball player Babe Ruth , golfer Bobby Jones , tennis player Bill Tilden and track and field athlete Mildred Didrikson Zaharias . In 1946 he was awarded the Amos Alonzo Stagg Award by the AFCA .

George Strickler (1904–1976) initially worked for the International News Service and as a sports reporter for the Atlanta Georgian newspaper. He then worked from 1940 to 1947 for the NFL and then until 1950 for the Green Bay Packers in each case in public relations. He later moved to the Chicago Tribune , where he served as senior sports editor. In 1969 he received the Dick McCann Memorial Award from the journalists' association Pro Football Writers Association for longstanding and outstanding service in the field of professional football.

Appreciation and memory

Sculpture for Knute Rockne in his hometown Voss

A major reason for the sporting success of the Four Horsemen was that, due to their speed and coordination, they were able to master the so-called Notre Dame Shift almost perfectly. It was a tactical move favored by Knute Rockne and forbidden shortly after his death by a rule change, in which the opposing defense should be confused by coordinated change of position of the back area players immediately before the ball is handed over to the quarterback. Another tactic developed by Rockne, known as Shock troops , and used in every game in the 1924 season, was an important part of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish style of play at the time . The team started in the first minutes of a game with a substitute formation instead of the Four Horsemen , which gave them a physical advantage over an already exhausted opposing team in the later course of the game.

The name Four Horsemen is considered the most famous nickname in college football history. The memory of the four players is part of the sports traditions of the University of Notre Dame to this day. This is not only due to their athletic performance - both Rockne and Rice, for example, rated the back formation of the Notre Dame team of 1930 as better. The fact that the Four Horsemen are among the legends of college football is due, in addition to their success on the field, to the mystifying effect of the article by Grantland Rice and the photo by George Strickler. In memory of Grantland Rice, the American football reporters association Football Writers Association of America (FWAA) has awarded the Grantland Rice National Championship Trophy since 1954 to the football team which the FWAA believes has won the national championship. In addition , a four-year scholarship in sports journalism bears his name at his alma mater, Vanderbilt University in Nashville .

After Knute Rockne, among other things, the car brand Rockne sold between 1931 and 1933 by the South Bend-based company Studebaker was named. In 1940, the film "Knute Rockne, All American" was made about his life with Pat O'Brien in the lead role. In addition, identical bronze sculptures by Rockne exist near the Notre Dame football stadium and in his Norwegian hometown of Voss . The United States Postal Service issued a stamp in 1988 in honor of Knute Rockne and ten years later as part of a series ("Celebrate the Century") in memory of the 1920s, a stamp with the 1924 photo of the Four Horsemen . A statue is dedicated to the four players Harry Stuhldreher, Jim Crowley, Don Miller and Elmer Layden in the sports complex of the University of Notre Dame , which is based on the motif of the photo and the introductory words “Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again […] ”from Grantland Rice's report as a quote. The Internet editorial team of the American sports broadcaster ESPN placed the legend of the Four Horsemen in 2007 on the 50th place on a list of the 100 most iconic moments in the history of college football.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Four Horsemen of Notre Dame. In: Edward J. Rielly: Football: An Encyclopedia of Popular Culture. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln 2009, ISBN 978-0-8032-9012-9 , pp. 126-128.
  2. ↑ a b c d e Ray Robinson: Rockne of Notre Dame: The Making of a Football Legend. Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York 2002, ISBN 0-19-515792-3 , pp. 117-128.
  3. ↑ a b c What's the Deal with Notre Dame? In: Steward Almond: Bowls, Polls & Tattered Souls. Tackling the Chaos and Controversy that Reigns over College Football. John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken 2008, ISBN 978-0-470-37355-2 , pp. 111-134 (especially pp. 116/117).
  4. ^ A b c d Michael R. Steele: The Fighting Irish Football Encyclopedia. Sports Publishing LLC, Champaign 2002, ISBN 1-58261-286-2 , pp. 49-56 (1922: pp. 49-51; 1923: pp. 51-53; 1924: pp. 53-56).
  5. ^ Michael R. Steele: The Fighting Irish Football Encyclopedia. Sports Publishing LLC, Champaign 2001, ISBN 1-58261-291-9 , pp. 54/55.
  6. ^ A b David M. Nelson: The Anatomy of a Game: Football, the Rules, and the Men Who Made the Game. University of Delaware Press, Newark 1994, ISBN 0-87413-455-2 , p. 470 (see information on rule changes in 1922 and 1941).
  7. ↑ a b c d The Four Horsemen - Grantland Rice versus Reality. In: Murray A. Sperber: Shake Down The Thunder: The Creation of Notre Dame Football. Indiana University Press, Bloomington 2002, ISBN 0-253-21568-4 , pp. 173-182.
  8. ^ A b William David Sloan, Lisa Mullikin Parcell: American Journalism: History, Principles, Practices. McFarland, Jefferson 2002, ISBN 0-7864-1371-9 , p. 198.
  9. ↑ Sport, Heroic Athletes, and Popular Culture. In: Gerald R. Gems, Linda J. Borish, Gertrud Pfister: Sports in American History: From Colonization to Globalization. Human Kinetics, Champaign 2008, ISBN 978-0-7360-5621-2 , p. 228.
  10. ↑ Allen Barra: The Sports Story That Changed America. In: The New York Times . Edition of October 17, 1999, p. 42.
  11. ↑ Chris Dufresne: When They Were Riding High. In: Los Angeles Times . Edition of October 2, 2007.
  12. ↑ Rockne, Knute Kenneth (1888-1931). In: Edward J. Rielly: Football: An Encyclopedia of Popular Culture. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln 2009, ISBN 978-0-8032-9012-9 , pp. 312-313.
  13. ↑ Rockne, Knute. In: Michael R. Steele: The Fighting Irish Football Encyclopedia. Sports Publishing LLC, Champaign 2002, ISBN 1-58261-286-2 , p. 419.
  14. ↑ Turning chair, Harry. In: Michael R. Steele: The Fighting Irish Football Encyclopedia. Sports Publishing LLC, Champaign 2002, ISBN 1-58261-286-2 , pp. 427/428.
  15. ↑ Crowley, Jim. In: Michael R. Steele: The Fighting Irish Football Encyclopedia. Sports Publishing LLC, Champaign 2002, ISBN 1-58261-286-2 , p. 367.
  16. ↑ Miller, Don. In: Michael R. Steele: The Fighting Irish Football Encyclopedia. Sports Publishing LLC, Champaign 2002, ISBN 1-58261-286-2 , p. 408.
  17. ↑ Layden, Elmer. In: Michael R. Steele: The Fighting Irish Football Encyclopedia. Sports Publishing LLC, Champaign 2002, ISBN 1-58261-286-2 , p. 399.
  18. ^ Rice, Grantland (1880-1954). In: Edward J. Rielly: Football: An Encyclopedia of Popular Culture. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln 2009, ISBN 978-0-8032-9012-9 , pp. 303-304.
  19. ↑ Strickler, George Arnold, sports writer. In: Who is Who in America. With World Notables. Volume 7 (1977-1981). Marguis Who's Who, Chicago 1981, ISBN 0-8379-0210-X , p. 553.
  20. ^ Michael R. Steele: The Fighting Irish Football Encyclopedia. Sports Publishing LLC, Champaign 2002, ISBN 1-58261-286-2 , p. 51.
  21. ^ Michael R. Steele: The Fighting Irish Football Encyclopedia. Sports Publishing LLC, Champaign 2002, ISBN 1-58261-286-2 , p. 447.
  22. ↑ 1924-25. Karen Croake Heisler: Fighting Irish: Legends, Lists, and Lore. Sports Publishing LLC, Champaign 2006, ISBN 1-58261-752-X , pp. 68/69.
  23. Jump up ↑ Ray Robinson: Rockne of Notre Dame: The Making of a Football Legend. Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York 2002, ISBN 0-19-515792-3 , p. 147.
  24. ^ FWAA Awards: Grantland Rice National Championship Trophy (accessed January 25, 2010).
  25. ↑ The Fred Russell – Grantland Rice Sportswriting Scholarship at Vanderbilt University  ( page no longer available , search web archives ) ( PDF file , approx. 56KB; accessed January 25, 2010).@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / admissions.vanderbilt.edu
  26. ↑ Knute Rockne, All American in the Internet Movie Database (English) .
  27. ↑ Rockne sculpture unveiled . In: Notre Dame Magazine . Winter 2005/2006 edition (accessed January 25, 2010).
  28. ↑ US Postal Service Unveils Four Horsemen Stamp . Notre Dame Athletic Department press release dated May 19, 1998 (accessed January 25, 2010).
  29. ↑ Ivan Maisel: Iconic moments for college football's time capsule Published on EPSN.com on July 25, 2007 (accessed February 13, 2010).

literature

  • The Four Horsemen - Grantland Rice versus Reality. In: Murray A. Sperber: Shake Down The Thunder: The Creation of Notre Dame Football. Indiana University Press, Bloomington 2002, ISBN 0-253-21568-4 , pp. 173-182.
  • The Ride of the Four Horsemen. In: Ray Robinson: Rockne of Notre Dame: The Making of a Football Legend. Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York 2002, ISBN 0-19-515792-3 , pp. 117-128.
  • Jim Lefebvre: Loyal Sons: The Story of the Four Horsemen and Notre Dame Football's 1924 Champions. Great Day Press, Minneapolis 2008, ISBN 978-0-9818841-0-3 .
  • Four Horsemen of Notre Dame. In: Edward J. Rielly: Football: An Encyclopedia of Popular Culture. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln 2009, ISBN 978-0-8032-9012-9 , pp. 126-128
  • Jörg Schlueter: Edition American Football 5: Myth Notre Dame. How the Fighting Irish took over the football world. Huddle Verlags GmbH, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3981139051

Web links

This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on February 14, 2010 .