Reviving The Fighting Irish: Vol. II: Part VI

Reviving the Fighting Irish:

The real significance of the words "Fighting Irish" at Notre Dame

Knute Rockne saw the New York media market as crucial to the growth of Notre Dame football, and he made it a personal priority to build relationships with the Notre Dame alumni network and Catholic press connections within the city.  

New York City, 1927
Babe Ruth appears alongside Rockne in a Notre Dame jersey
during one of the many publicity stunts orchestrated by the coach

Games between Notre Dame and Army in New York attracted the most popular sports writers of the time, including Grantland Rice, a legendary journalist known for his flamboyant writing style in the sports columns of the New York Herald Tribune.  His account of Notre Dame’s victory over Army on October 18, 1924 instantly launched a legend due to its opening stanza which read, “Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again.  In dramatic lore they are known as famine, pestilence, destruction and death.  These are only aliases.  Their real names are Stuldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden."  

"The Four Horsemen"
quarterback Harry Stuhldreher, left halfback Jim Crowley,
right halfback Don Miller, fullback Elmer Layden 

Rice's words set off a firestorm of hyperbole, and “in the coming days and weeks, the notion of Notre Dame having not only a ‘wonder team’ but a backfield of biblical proportions would sweep across the country.” (Lim Lefebvre, Loyal Sons).  George Strickler, a student press agent at Notre Dame, organized a publicity photo to be taken of the famous backfield riding horses.  The photo added even further to the media feeding frenzy, and before long members of the national sports media could not get enough of Notre Dame.  It was now only a matter of time until the “Fighting Irish” nickname used by Rockne to motivate his teams would become fixed to the nationwide image of Notre Dame football.

The term “Fighting Irish,” now used consistently by the media to describe the character of Rockne’s teams, stood as far removed from the insulting racial and religions epithets such as “horrible Hibernians” and “Papists” that had been used by the media in the past.  Such a reversal showed just how far public perception of the university had come, and the respect it had gained through success on the gridiron.  Even so, members of the Notre Dame administration continued to resist the nickname as they pressured New York sports writer and former graduate Francis Wallace to promote a moniker of which they could approve.  After many failed attempts to popularize the nickname “Blue Comets,” he claimed that “like most synthetic traditions” it would not catch on (Francis Wallace, The Notre Dame Story).  He subsequently returned to the name “Fighting Irish,” which became the standard term used by the media.  Now with the vast majority of their students and the most prominent news sources in the country using the phrase, the administration found themselves unable to stop the building momentum of the term “Fighting Irish."

Reviving the Fighting Irish:

Vol. II: Part V

Vol. II: Part IV
Vol. II: Part III

Vol. II: Part II

Vol. II: Part I

Part III

Part II

Part I

Intro

(Vol. II: Part VII to come Thursday, August 16)