Notre Dame football: Who is the greatest coach in program history?

Notre Dame football: Who is the greatest coach in program history?

Knute Rockne

• 1918-1930 (13 seasons), 105-12-5, 3 National Championships

Have you heard of this Knute Rockne guy? Norwegian born, he played at Notre Dame before becoming a coach. In 1918, he replaced his head coach, Jesse Harper as the head coach at Notre Dame.

During that time, he established himself as one of the greatest coaches ever, regardless of the sport. Rockne coached at Notre Dame from 1918 to 1930, winning three national championships during that time. During that time he had a .881 winning percentage, the highest of any college coach ever. He had five unbeaten seasons, and in 1924 he took Notre Dame to the Rose Bowl, where they beat Stanford.

That was Notre Dame’s last bowl game until 1970.

It’s incredibly important to understand that Rockne had a flair for theater. He understood the importance of emotion and capitalizing on it. He understood that if you tell a great story, if you tell a myth, you can motivate players and teach a lesson at the same time.

His use of George Gipp’s death is the perfect example of this. I don’t know who needs to hear this, but Gipp never said, “Win just one for the Gipper.” Rockne said that he said that. He understood that Gipp was an All-American whose death resonated with people. He used the emotion from that to motivate his team when he needed to most.

Rockne is also the reason why Notre Dame is what it is today in the popular consciousness. He invited the media to come and see practices. He became friends with people like Grantland Rice. So, Rice turned around and helped Rockne build the myth of Notre Dame. Rice is the one, after all, who wrote an article on the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame.

Rockne was trying to tell the story of Notre Dame, and he did so through the media. They became the team for Catholics around the country, for immigrants, and they were media darlings. Considering the Big 10 had no interest in letting Notre Dame join, the Irish had to play a national schedule, with games against Army in New York.

They started playing USC in Los Angeles. And, yes, that conversation between wives is a myth too. All of this contributed to Notre Dame becoming a national brand, instead of a small local one.

None of that would have mattered if Rockne couldn’t back up his success on the field. He, of course, did. In his thirteen seasons, only two of them had more than two losses in them. Rockne was considered an early innovator of the forward pass too.

A former end on Jesse Harper’s 1913 team, this probably shouldn’t be surprising. Still, for the time, teams weren’t ready to open up their offenses just yet. This helped make the Irish stand out. Though, don’t confuse what Rockne was doing with a modern day spread or air raid. Rockne was running what is referred to as the T-formation.

In essence, the T-formation has five down linemen, two tight ends, and a four man backfield. The quarterback lines up over center, fullback directly behind the quarterback, and two running backs to either side of the fullback. This made a ‘T’ shape. Variations, like the wing-T, can be made from there.

This allowed for lead blockers, counters, and multiple option plays. Rockne came up with a variation on this, call the Notre Dame Box. This saw a shift from the T-Formation to one where the quarterback lines up over guard, running back behind center where a modern quarterback would line up in shotgun, running back between tackle and end, and then the fullback deep behind that second halfback.

Some say this variation goes back to Amos Alonzo Stagg, who taught it to Jesse Harper, and so on. However, Rockne popularized it and taught it to Curly Lambeau. This formation allowed for easier motion plays, passing plays, and made all three backs logical runners.

Rockne didn’t ignore defense, either. At Notre Dame, he ran a 7-2-2 defense. That means it was an odd man front, with seven defensive linemen. There were two linebackers, and two defensive backs.

This is completely obsolete now, as most defenses run a nickel variation as their base defense. That means 4-2-5 or 3-3-5. This is due to the prevalence of of athletic players on the outside today. A spread offense needs to be matched by a spread defense. At the time, though, the game was played within three yards of the line of scrimmage, and seven down linemen allowed Notre Dame to plug gaps and have those two linebackers make the play in the hole.

Knute Rockne’s career was cut short when he died in 1931, due to a plane crash. This became a key part of his legacy, and likely prevented him from winning hundreds of more games and multiple other national championships. It also helped to build the myth around Rockne, though, as there was never a decline in his performance. He never grew old. The game never passed him by, as it does so many other great coaches.

In 1951, Knute Rockne was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. There, his bio reads, “To answer the debate as to who was college football’s greatest coach, the argument must always begin with Notre Dame’s Knute Rockne…Will Rogers paid this tribute: ‘Notre Dame was Knute Rockne’s address, but every gridiron in America was his home.'”