In the early years of college football, coaches as we understand them today were not the norm. It was generally expected that the players themselves should handle the duties now associated with coaches—everything from running practices and devising game plans to managing the logistics of the schedule itself. Under this approach, team captains or former players were unpaid volunteers and served as the leaders of the squad. The idea of a paid, professional coach was thought to be against the spirit of amateurism, which favored the love of the game and dedication to the team above the almighty dollar. Well into the early twentieth century, the rules of college football discouraged the practices of coaching that are common in the modern era, even to the point of not allowing active coaching from the sidelines and prohibiting sending in substitute players with instructions. The players, not coaches or managers, were seen as the rightful owners of the game.
Notre Dame’s earliest coaches generally fit the profile of the nonprofessional volunteer. In the very first years of the program, the team captains fulfilled the role of coach. Notre Dame hired James Morrison of Ann Arbor as its first official “coach,” but only for a two-week stint in October 1894 to get the team into shape. The players were then supposed to execute the plan without Morrison’s direct supervision. Upon his departure from campus, the Notre Dame student news magazine Scholastic noted, “Never in the history of athletics at Notre Dame has an eleven been better trained. It rests now with the captain and his men to continue practice on the lines mapped out by the coach.”
Between 1894 and the hiring of Jesse Harper in December 1912, Notre Dame had twelve different coaches. Current players still acted as coaches in some seasons, and former players from Notre Dame or other schools took on the role in other seasons. Once the professional coaching roles were established at Notre Dame, captains and seasoned players sometimes assumed responsibilities that are now the roles of today’s assistant coaches. For example, during the First World War, newly named head coach Knute Rockne, successor to Jesse Harper, was stationed at the Fort Sheridan student Army training camp in the late summer of 1918. In his stead, Rockne gave directions to captain Leonard “Pete” Bahan on how to run practices until he could return to campus.
Over time, as the game took on greater significance both as a mainstay of collegiate life and as a source of significant income, schools became less willing to leave the football programs in the hands of players and unpaid volunteers. College football expanded into a system of complex programs and conferences with increasingly more administrative needs, such as setting schedules, arranging travel, and maintaining facilities. All of these responsibilities were in addition to the traditional coaching duties of recruiting, running practices, supervising training and conditioning, and developing game strategy. The growth in game attendance and the corresponding revenue caught the attention of college administrators. Winning football games, though always the desired outcome, garnered new importance. As the game evolved over the early years of the twentieth century, professional coaches became a key part of the game, not only as leaders of football teams but also as administrators of the entire athletic programs.
Notre Dame made the transition to a modern coach with the hiring of Jesse Harper in December 1912. Harper had attended the University of Chicago and played football under the legendary Amos Alonzo Stagg, one of the most influential figures in the early history of college football. After graduating from Chicago in 1906, Harper went on to coach two seasons at Alma College and four at Wabash College. After the 1912 football season, Notre Dame hired Harper into the official roles of director of athletics and coach of all varsity sports. Harper quickly went to work improving the football team’s strength of schedule. Four of Notre Dame’s seven opponents in the fall of 1913 had never faced the gold and blue on the gridiron: the University of South Dakota, Army, Penn State University, and the University of Texas. Harper had fulfilled his role as administrator for the season, just as he would later fulfill his role as coach when Notre Dame proved victorious over all seven of its opponents.
Over the decades, fans have gotten to know the Notre Dame coaches through the media of the day. For many years that meant the popular press—newspapers, magazines, and other publications. Knute Rockne’s rise to fame coincided with the rise of popular culture and the advent of radio in America in the 1920s. Although Jesse Harper was Notre Dame’s first coach in the modern sense, Rockne was the first Notre Dame coach to become a national figure, leveraging publicity for himself and Notre Dame with the help of an outside sports agent. He wrote books and newspaper and magazine articles; he endorsed products; and he consulted with Hollywood on motion pictures. His tragic death at the age of forty-three in an airplane accident sealed his place in the lore of Notre Dame athletics and in the history of college football. Coaches since Rockne have achieved varying degrees of fame, but all have been in the national media spotlight, making the head coaching job at Notre Dame one of the most scrutinized in all of college football.
(excerpted from chapter 1)
