Notre Dame football: Who is the greatest coach in program history?
Notre Dame football: Who is the greatest coach in program history?
Jesse Harper
- 1913-1927 (5 seasons), 34-5-1
Jesse Harper is one of the most underappreciated coaches, not just in Notre Dame football history, but in college football history. Harper came to South Bend in 1913 and it was his third and final stop as a head coach. Before then, he had been with Alma and Wabash. Harper would coach Notre Dame football for five seasons, or through the 1917 season.
During that time, he had a 34-5-1 record, an undefeated season, and three one-loss seasons.
When Harper coached, college football was in its Wild West days. This was before the AP began declaring a National Champion, and while there were a few recognized selectors at the time, most years had at least two national champions. In 1915, there were four recognized national champions.
This is largely because the country was too big, there were too many games, and technology wasn’t good enough to actually know who was best. Teams also rarely played the same amount of games as one another. In other words, don’t blame Harper for not winning a National Championship while at Notre Dame. It was society’s fault.
This was also an incredible time of innovation for college football. Remember, in the 19th century, football was more like rugby than the game it is today. The onside kick wouldn’t begin until 1932 when Vanderbilt kicked the ball forward on an offensive play and someone who started behind the kicker recovered it for them.
Yeah, it was an offensive play at the time. In 1904, 18 people died from football. There were hundreds of severe injuries. With that, came calls (largely from Southern religious groups) for the game to be outlawed. Then-President Teddy Roosevelt had to step in and force safety changes on the game to save it. That included creating the forward pass in 1906 to spread players out.
For the most part, teams still didn’t use the forward pass. It was a new skill that a lot of coaches didn’t fully understand. It was also seen as a risky tactic that you should only use when you’re desperate. That’s a sentiment that would last for decades, with Texas’ Darrell Royal saying, “Three things can happen when you throw the football and two of them are bad, so run the damn ball.”
That ignores that when you run the ball you can fumble or be tackled for a loss, but whatever.
In 1913, Harper had a problem. Notre Dame football had to West Point to play a dominant Army team. They needed to do something different to give themselves a shot to beat Army. The answer to that question was leaning on the forward pass. Heavily using the forward pass had never happened before. In particular, Harper made one key innovation to the forward pass in this game. Previously, players ran to a spot, stopped, then had the ball thrown to them.
There, however, was no rule against catching the ball in stride. It simply wasn’t done. So, Notre Dame threw the ball in stride to a young end named Knute Rockne. It worked, and the Irish won 35-13 in the middle of an unbeaten season. That season, Auburn, Chicago, and Harvard split the National Championship.
Jesse Harper was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1971. His overall record was 57-17-7. Harper also coached basketball and baseball at Notre Dame. He served as athletic director in two different stints, including following Rockne’s death.