Author: Leprechaun Express - Steve Welsh

Go Irish! Beat Orange!

With scheduling upheavals spawned by the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, Notre Dame plays multiple games in December, not one of which is in California, Florida or Hawai’i.

Yet Notre Dame’s December 5th game with the Syracuse is not the latest on the calendar that they have played a home game.

It does look as if the December 5th contest with the Orangement in 2020 is tied for the latest in the year that the Irish have hosted a football game in Notre Dame Stadium, which first opened for play in 1930, and also featured a December 5th game with SMU in 1953.

Yet back in the misty early days of Irish Lore (when they reportedly were not even called the Fighting Irish yet) Notre Dame once played a home game on December 6th, four decades before The House that Rockne Built was standing.

(Indeed, Rockne himself was still an infant about to become a toddler, in Norway, 9 months old, presumably still living in Voss.)

Both the 1953 game and the 1888 game had staggering historic significance.

Notre Dame Stadium’s other December 5th game was at the very end of their 1953 season, at a time when Notre Dame sat out bowl games. (Bowl games often were arguably like post-season exhibition games, far fewer in number and not necessarily even impacting the national championship, even taking place after the final major polls.)

When Notre Dame beat SMU 40-14 on Dec. 5, 1953, it had historic significance on multiple levels.  It was the last game in Frank Leahy’s coaching career.  The victory also was the last game in Johnny Lattner’s Heisman season.  It capped off a 9-0-1 nonconsensus national championship year.  And it capped off a huge turnaround, from a .500 season just three years earlier.

A half-century later, Lattner would recall the turnaround, when speaking at a Notre Dame pep rally in his golden years.  Talking about how Notre Dame could take heart and also stage turnarounds in the present era, he recalled how, when he was a freshman, the team sat at .500, then won a national title just a few years later in Lattner’s senior year.

(Note that, in that era, freshman were not allowed to play, so Lattner, himself, would not have been available during that .500 campaign.  Yet, on another note, recall how that .500 season was inflicted in the midst of Leahy and Notre Dame having one of the greatest dynasties in all of sports.)

By winning percentage, Hall of Fame Coach Leahy is the second-winningest coach in college football history, after his own Hall of Fame Coach, Rockne.  For coaches staying at Notre Dame for at least three years, Leahy is the third-winningest coach in Notre Dame history, for Notre Dame tenure, after Rockne in first place, and Rockne’s own Hall of Fame Coach Jesse Harper, in second place. (Harper, of course, introduced passing offense to the game of football, and probably should have be awarded at least one national championship by today’s standards.)

Yet, like multiple Notre Dame Hall of Fame Coaches, Leahy had a downturn later his tenure, from which, like the others, Leahy bounced back.

So it was Leahy who won a December 5th game in Notre Dame Stadium.

When Notre Dame played a home game a day later on the calendar, on December 6th, it was without a head coach, in 1888, the second calendar year in which Notre Dame ever played football.

That game was also historic, because Notre Dame won their first ever football victory on December 6, 1888, defeating Harvard Prep of Chicago 20-0.

That was Notre Dame’s fourth football game of all time.  To add perspective, the football team captain reportedly also was on the crew team.

In the fall of 1887, Notre Dame had played one game against Michigan.  In the spring of 1888, Notre Dame played two games against Michigan on back-to-back days in April.  Notre Dame would not play again that year until December 6th.  Yet in that December in Irish Lore (pre-Irish Lore?) the Golden Domers began what became a long tradition of winning for the most storied program in football history.

(For the record, Notre Dame and Syracuse themselves once played a game on December 6th, in the early 2000’s, but that was indoors, in another part of the country.  Now, in terms of regular season games generally, at any location, even the ACC title game on December 19th will not be the “latest” on the calendar that Notre Dame will have played a regular season game.  In the “strange but true” category, or perhaps more aptly, the category of Things Historic, Notre Dame once played a regular season game on New Year’s Day; they played it in Chicago (heck of a place to a college game in January); Notre Dame played that New Year’s Day game years before the Rose Bowl ever even existed; and Notre Dame played it without a head coach, going upon against an opponent who, for their part, had a legendary head coach.  Yet that will be the subject of another article.)

[featured photos are file photos from other occasions; Notre Dame campus photo is from January 2020, when the author was on campus for a family wedding]