Sport: Those Irish

Notre Dame’s fancy football team, on a 24-game undefeated streak, worked out last week in the ballroom of the Lord Baltimore Hotel. With doors locked, visitors excluded, and street shoes on their feet, halfbacks feinted & faked under the crystal chandeliers. Coach Frank Leahy was giving his new U-formation (with two quarterbacks squatting just behind the center) a final tune-up. Leahy, the perfectionist, wanted to be sure.

Next day, on the green turf of Baltimore’s Babe Ruth Stadium, Notre Dame’s old reliable T-formation worked so well against Navy that the U-formation was never used. In fact, Leahy’s big problem was to keep down the score. In the fourth quarter, he pulled out his first-stringers, forbade further use of the forward pass, and limited his second-stringers to a few elemental plays. Final score: 41-7.

By being too good, 40-year-old Frank Leahy was coaching his unbeatable Irish right out of their schedule. First Illinois, then Army crossed Notre Dame off its list; Northwestern will next year. Stanford’s coach, Marchy Schwartz, an alumnus of Notre Dame’s great 1929-30 backfield, reportedly has vowed never to play Notre Dame again so long as Leahy is there. Perhaps the best reason Southern California still plays Leahy’s superteam is economic: Notre Dame’s magic name fills Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

Things hadn’t been that way in the great Knute Rockne’s day. Rockne, like Leahy, had walloped the daylights out of the opposition. But somehow he also made them like it, or at least bear it. When once asked who he thought was the greatest football coach, Rockne winked and said: “Modesty forbids . . but I’ll tell you who the two greatest coaches are and one of them is . . .” To win consistently and get away with it nowadays requires the talent of a diplomat as well as that of a coach. Leahy has one but not the other.

Getting beaten by a Leahy-coached team, rival coaches say, is as unpleasant as going through a meatgrinder. His great weakness as a coach lies in his aloofness. He is a superb organizer, a wonderful tactician, has a talent for inspiring great spirit in his players, who respect him but don’t love him.

Purdue is one of the four Big Nine schools that still play Notre Dame. This season, for its opening game against the Irish, the Boilermakers worked up enough steam to press all the pants in South Bend. After playing inspired football all afternoon, Purdue was beaten by one heartbreaking point, 28-27—and hasn’t been the same since. Said California’s Coach Lynn Waldorf, late of Northwestern: “They not only beat you, but ruin your team [physically and mentally] for the next weekend.”