Holtz Shook Down Thunder for Irish, Like Rockne, Leahy

Once upon a time, the rascals Gus Dorais and Knute Rockne invented ways to make a nickel. They put a hinge on bars across a dormitory window and charged admission to buddies sneaking in late. They also ran a “radiator concession,” meaning Rockne carried a wrench and would remove your dorm-room radiator unless you coughed up 50 cents. On hearing about the Dorais/Rockne enterprises, the faculty at their little Midwestern college ordered the miscreants to stop. Just stick to football.

Dorais, a quarterback at this college for Catholic boys, threw passes to Rockne, the school’s swiftest end. Together they changed college football from flying wedges to post patterns. In the doing, they transformed their little school into a national power. What they did was reach into the sky above the University of Notre Dame. They shook down the thunder. They did it in 1913. Because the U.S. Military Academy needed an opponent for November’s first Saturday--Yale had backed out--Cadet football manager Hal Loomis looked through the Spalding Football Guide.

He told coach Charles Daly about some school named Notre Dame from somewhere in Indiana that had gone undefeated the year before. It had beaten other anonymities by silly scores such as 39-0, 69-0, 74-7 and 116-7 (over St. Viator). So Army paid Notre Dame $1,000 to bring its 14 players and four coaches to West Point.

Kitchen ladies in Notre Dame’s refectory prepared sandwiches and fruit to be carried on the two-day train trip that marked Notre Dame’s initiation into big-time college football. “The morning we left South Bend,” Rockne said, “every student and professor was out of bed long before breakfast and marched downtown accompanying the team to the railroad station. It was the first time I’d ever seen anything like this mass hysteria generated on the Notre Dame campus over a football game, and it made every one of the players so excited they wanted to march on to West Point.

“It was marvelous. The fellows sang all the college songs, cheered and applauded each individual player, the coaches. Even the townspeople joined in the tribute as we left the depot.”

In the first quarter at West Point, Rockne faked a limp as if injured. “The Army halfback covering me almost yawned in my face,” he said. Perfect. As Rockne sped past the casual defender, Dorais threw a pass 40 yards downfield. Touchdown. “At that moment,” Rockne said, “the moment I caught the ball, life for me was complete. And we proceeded to make it more complete.”

That day’s score: unknown Notre Dame 35, the great Army 13. That moment created the future. Undefeated seasons and Heisman trophies. Lujack and Lattner, Hornung and Montana. National championships and subway alumni. Rockne and Leahy, Ara and Holtz. Touchdown Jesus. Five years after that moment, Rockne became Notre Dame’s coach. In 13 years, he went 105-12-5 with five undefeated teams.

Until he died in an airplane crash in 1931, he built more than a football machine. A Notre Dame historian would write, “Rockne teams were the lifeline of hope for an immigrant Catholic population that was buoyed in spirit when this upstart, unheard-of school could win against the best in the land. If Rock’s team could succeed, then so could they carve out a life in their newly adopted home.”

One of Rockne’s players, Frank Leahy, coached Notre Dame to five undefeated seasons and four national championships in 14 years. Then Leahy resigned in 1953, afraid that if he stayed he might die in a locker room. He had collapsed at halftime of a game that year, so desperately ill with pancreatitis that he was given last rites by the school president, Father Edmund Joyce.

“Everything got harder the longer I was the head coach, not easier,” Ara Parseghian would say 40 years after Leahy’s collapse. Parseghian came to Notre Dame in 1964, hired because his Northwestern University teams had beaten Notre Dame four consecutive times. In 11 seasons at Notre Dame, Parseghian’s teams won 95 games and two national championships. Finally, as Leahy walked away, so did Parseghian.

“The pressure becomes more intense when you win than when you lose,” Parseghian said. “My goal was to be perfect, and if you win a national championship and have a perfect season, you can’t improve on that, but you can sure as hell go down.”

Parseghian also said, “When Lou Holtz was hired, I tried to tell him this would happen to him, but he didn’t understand me. He will, he will.”

Now Holtz has won 100 games and a national championship at Notre Dame. Like Parseghian, he worked 11 seasons, following a failed coach. And, like Parseghian, he too walked away. Lou Holtz has said he grew up in West Virginia listening to Notre Dame football. Those radio broadcasts were created by Rockne, who wanted a national network, the precursor of Notre Dame’s TV deal today.

Such was Holtz’s ambition that his contracts at other places contained clauses allowing him to leave for Notre Dame. And now he has left Notre Dame and has left in a way that separates him from Leahy and Parseghian. Those men never coached again; Holtz likely will coach in the pros.

So why would a man who wants to coach leave the job of his dreams? Maybe he exasperated his new bosses. Holtz is a famous pain. Even in the celebratory moments after his last game at South Bend, a 62-0 victory, Boo Hoo Lou whined about the TV network deal. He said it created “a backlash” that inspired teams to play superbly against Notre Dame and might have “cost us” a national championship or two. Maybe he told his bosses that if they didn’t like the way he worked, it might be time to get a new man. And maybe they agreed.

In any case, Lou Holtz did a good thing for Notre Dame. He did what Rockne did, and Leahy, and Parseghian. He shook down the thunder from the sky.