Mount Rushmore of Notre Dame Football Coaches

Who is on the Mount Rushmore of Notre Dame football coaches? Find out here.

Its one of the most patriotic times of year as the Fourth of July is just days away. Some of America’s most beloved and best presidents are immortalized in South Dakota on Mount Rushmore. This begs the question who is on the Mount Rushmore of Notre Dame football coaches?

Lou Holtz

Holtz is one of the most beloved coaches in Notre Dame history. Over 11 seasons he won 100 games while only losing 30. His 100 wins rank second among Notre Dame coaches, only trailing only Knute Rockne. Holtz is also the last Notre Dame head coach to lead the Irish to a national title. His Irish teams of the last 1980s and early 1990s were dominate, at one point winning 23 straight games, a school record. Holtz arguably should have won a second national title in 1993, but the voters decided to give it to Bobby Bowden and Florida State. Holtz retired from Notre Dame in 1996. Since then he was the head coach at South Carolina from 1999 to 2004 and has served as an analyst for ESPN.

Ara Parseghian

Parseghian brought Notre Dame back to prominence in the 1960s. After Frank Leahy left the Irish in 1953, Notre Dame kind of fell off the map. In steps Ara, and Notre Dame is back in front of the college football landscape. In 11 seasons Parseghian won 95 games, and two national titles and had a winning percentage of 83%. His 1966 national title team possessed one of the best, if not the best defense in Notre Dame history. The Irish posted six shutouts in just 10 games. In 1973 he led the Irish to their only undefeated and untied season. The Irish capped off their 1973 championship with an upset win over #1 Alabama. He retired just a year later stating that he was physically and emotionally drained from the pressures of being the head coach at Notre Dame. After his retirement served as a color analyst for ABC and CBS. Now he is very involved for his medical research foundation that specializes in research for Niemann-Pick disease Type C, a disease that took three of his grandchildren.

Frank Leahy

Sometimes I feel that Leahy’s accomplishments as Notre Dame’s head coach go a little unnoticed. He doesn’t seem to get as quite the fanfare as Holtz, Parseghian or Rockne, but he might have been the best of the quartet. What Nick Saban is doing at Alabama right now, Leahy was doing in the 1940s. He had six unbeaten seasons, won four national titles and also the longest unbeaten streak in Notre Dame history of 39 games. He never had a losing season. He also coached four of Notre Dame’s seven Heisman winners and helped recruit the fifth. From 1946-50 Leahy consistently had the Irish ranked atop the polls. He basically turned Notre Dame football into a winning machine. Leahy has the second best winning percentage in history, only trailing Rockne. Leahy retired after the 1953 season, a season in which Notre Dame went 9-0-1. He retired for similar reasons as Parseghian. After his retirement Notre Dame went into a downward spiral. Leahy was a hard nosed style of coach and his teams prided themselves on out-toughing the competition.

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Knute Rockne

Rockne not only put Notre Dame football on the map, but football in general. He turned Notre Dame into a national power. It has been said that the two sporting figures that everyone knew of back then were Babe Ruth and Knute Rockne, thats how popular Rockne was. He was the most successful coach in Notre Dame history, winning 881% of games, the best winning among division one coaches. He 105 wins ranks first also ranks first in Notre Dame history. Rockne’s teams also won three national titles. Rockne also coached Notre Dame’s legendary backfield of Harry Stuhldreher, Don Miller, Jim Crowley and Elmer Layden, better known as the “The Four Horsemen”.

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He was also a great innovator of the game as he popularized the forward pass. Rockne died in a plane crash in 1931. If he had not passed so early, he might have won two, three, hell even four more national titles. He had the Notre Dame program humming when he died. In his last two seasons Notre Dame didn’t lost a game, going 19-0. He was loved by not only Irish fans, but everyone around the country. President Herbert Hoover called Rockne’s death a “national loss.”