Football at the University of Notre Dame du Lac has never been a matter of mere entertainment. Excellence in football is what made Notre Dame the place Catholic boys from all over the country wanted to go to college. Those with athletic ability dreamed of being named “All-Americans” in football, even though many had parents who weren’t even born in America. Other boys came knowing they were going to a small, all-boys school where day-to-day contact with All-American football players was part of normal campus life, and where every student not in the field would be in the stands, Saturday after Saturday.
Excellence in football eventually led to general academic excellence, but, without the excellence in football, Notre Dame would never have become a place recognized by most Americans of all creeds—and virtually all American Catholics—as an iconic American institution
Early on, some American Protestants regarded Notre Dame and the religion it represented as anti-American. While Notre Dame generally established and maintained cordial relations with the schools it played against, Notre Dame players also encountered verbal abuse and even threats of violence in several locations in the late 19th century and the early 20th century.
But, over time, Notre Dame’s excellence in a quintessentially American sport helped to change attitudes about whether good Catholics could also be good Americans. This is discussed at length in Shake Down the Thunder, Murray Sperber’s outstanding history of Notre Dame football, and more recently by historian Hunter Hampton in a fine article written for TIME on the cultural impact of Notre Dame football.
Even before collegiate football was played in the United States, the Civil War had begun breaking down hostility to Catholicism. The first Catholic many Americans ever saw was the nun, working as a nurse, who brought them back to health after illness or injury in that devastating war.
Catholic valor, like Catholic charity, was also on full display on both sides. When, at the start of the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg, Father William Corby gave general absolution to the kneeling men of the Irish Brigade, many Protestant soldiers in the area were greatly moved. General Hancock of the 116th Pennsylvania, for example, removed his hat and bowed his head from his horseback perch. Another Union officer later wrote that “The service was more than impressive, it was awe-inspiring.” A statue commemorating the event thus stands both at Gettysburg and at Notre Dame, the place Corby left when the cannons began sounding and to which he returned when they fell silent.
An ingrained hostility to Catholicism, rooted in centuries of real historical events, was not going to disappear overnight, however. Fr. Corby, through no act of his own, is also a reminder of the role Notre Dame football played in replacing visceral associations of Catholicism with the Spanish Armada and the Inquisition with more pleasant memories of football. The monument to Corby at Notre Dame is a small statue, literally overshadowed by the library, which is decorated by the massive mural, affectionately known across America as “Touchdown Jesus.”
Recall Milton’s line, “they also serve who only stand and wait.” In Corby’s case, what he seems to be waiting for is the football. Hence the Notre Dame nickname for the statue: “Fair Catch Corby.”
Interestingly, the person most responsible for making America safe for Catholics and vice versa through football was, for most of his life, a Lutheran. Knute Rockne was born in Norway and immigrated with his parents to Chicago at roughly the same time Joseph Piatak and Mary Zoldak were leaving northern Slovakia for Cleveland and Walenty Kowalczyk and Marianna Chrostowska were leaving northeastern Poland for America.
Rockne was a coaching genius, of course, but he was even more brilliant as a marketer. By doing all he could to prevent Notre Dame from ever playing other Catholic schools, and by creating a network of radio stations across America to broadcast Notre Dame football, Rockne ensured that American Catholics would identify with the Fighting Irish and regard Notre Dame football as an important part of their identity as such.
To a great degree, Rockne’s dream came true. American Catholics of all ethnicities wanted to be Irish on Saturdays. To my delight, I recently learned that two of the seven Notre Dame Heisman Trophy winners were Polish-Americans: Johnny Lujack and Leon Hart. Another of the seven, Angelo Bertellli, was an Italian-American. This Ellis Island trio won the Heisman playing for their almost stereotypically Irish coach, the great Frank Leahy. (Leahy’s fourth Heisman Trophy winner, John Lattner, was of Irish descent). Leahy thus won four national championships and coached four Heisman Trophy winners between 1943 and 1953, an unsurpassed burst of coaching excellence.
Leahy’s spectacular success on the football field was definitive proof of how successful Rockne had been in making support for Notre Dame football a constitutive part of being an American Catholic. Leahy’s starting team was the best football team in America, and his practice squad was the second best. Almost every Catholic boy who could play football in those days wanted to play football at Notre Dame, and a great many did, because NCAA rules did not then place any limit on the number of football scholarships a school could award. It is because of Rockne and Leahy, augmented later by Parseghian, Devine, and Holtz, that Notre Dame has the largest fan base in the country, despite the small size of the school. For many of Notre Dame’s fans, baptismal water is thicker than blood and soil, or at least it is the most important part of their blood and soil.
As Hunter Hampton details in his article in TIME, other religious schools have consciously followed Notre Dame’s example and used athletics to make their religious views more acceptable to other Americans. The BYU Cougars and Liberty University Flames were inspired by the example of the Fighting Irish, and ND and BYU have established a cordial rivalry. So cordial, in fact, that South Bend became a favorite football destination for a Mormon friend and his sons, who were met there with only courtesy and hospitality, despite being bedecked in BYU gear. They also greatly enjoyed the sights, sounds, and smells of a football Saturday at what another friend called “the Catholic Disneyland.”
Another Ohioan who was impressed by the pageantry and tradition of a football Saturday in South Bend is the current head coach of the Fighting Irish, Marcus Freeman. Freeman’s black father served in the United Sates Air Force for 27 years, including a stint in South Korea, where he met the woman who would become his wife. Freeman’s Korean mother worked three jobs to supplement the income being brought home by her husband. Both parents are also sincere, practicing Christians.
Marcus Freeman learned the lessons his parents were teaching. He is, in many ways, a deeply impressive figure. He regularly refuses to play the race card, deflects favorable attention away from himself and toward his players, absorbs criticism directed at his players, and emphasizes the importance of faith and family to all. Freeman often prays with the team, and Freeman’s wife and six children are a familiar sight around campus.
When Freeman was being recruited in high school by Notre Dame, the sight that impressed him most was the team Mass at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, after which the team walked to “the house that Rock built” to dress for that day’s game. Brian Kelly, Freeman’s predecessor, ended that tradition, replacing the gameday Mass at the Basilica with a quieter, less visible Mass at a far less impressive venue the night before.
Upon becoming coach, Freeman quickly restored the Mass at the Basilica. Freeman then did something Parseghian never did and something that took Rockne much longer to do: He converted to Catholicism. (Freeman’s wife and children were already Catholic).
In a fascinating discussion with three other black athletes on the Pivot sports podcast, Freeman described his challenge as being, “How do you embrace the tradition and remain relevant”? You do that by unequivocally embracing the tradition. After Freeman’s conversion to Catholicism, no one can doubt the depth and sincerity of that embrace.
Freeman’s players clearly love him. Notre Dame alumni and fans are coming to love him. If the Irish can somehow overcome the far more talented Buckeyes next Monday, the whole country may come to love him, the same way Rockne was loved. As Urban Meyer told Colin Cowherd last week, Notre Dame is “[a]n incredible place. It’s the purity of college football. When Notre Dame is great, it’s great for college football .“
Let’s make college football great again, GO IRISH!!!
[NOTE: This essay is dedicated to MJB, a friend, a fellow reader of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, and a fellow fan of the Fighting Irish. MJB is battling inoperable, Stage 4 brain cancer with grace and courage, in a way that would make Rockne and Leahy proud. Please say a prayer for him when you read this]
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