Blue & Gold Illustrated: 2020 Notre Dame Football Preview
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1264448
BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED 2020 FOOTBALL PREVIEW ✦ 5 UNDER THE DOME Pete Vaughn, who was coaching Wabash College in Craw- fordsville, Ind., and arranged for a game Nov. 2. Rockne's crew easily romped to a 67-7 win to move to 2-0. • On Nov. 9, the lone Notre Dame home game that year was played versus Great Lakes, comprised of former col- legians that included George "Papa Bear" Halas, the founder of the Chicago Bears. It was the first meeting between a Lam- beau and Halas team. The game ended in a 7-7 tie — and two days later on Nov. 11, World War I in Europe officially ended. • Next up on Nov. 16 was a trip to East Lansing, Mich., to face Michigan Agricultural College — the job Rockne almost took earlier in the year. Under new head coach George Gauthier, the Aggies (before they became Spar- tans) posted a 13-7 victory. • State rival Purdue did not give in to the Big Ten's desire to blackball Notre Dame, and the Oct. 19 game that had been canceled was rescheduled Nov. 23 at West Lafayette, Ind. Notre Dame romped to a 26-6 conquest. • Rockne's debut season ended, appropriately enough, on Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 28, when the Nebraska contest was finally played. Notre Dame did not yield a single first down to the Cornhuskers on the muddy field, but was unable to put any points on the board itself in the scoreless deadlock. The final record of 3-1-2 is unheralded in the history books, but the "rest of the story," including a 9-0 finish the following year (1919) that would win the school its first rec- ognition as a national champion, would remain everlasting. In the ravages of a World War and an international flu epidemic, the Notre Dame football program had still found a "Rock" upon which to continue to build a foundation. ✦ OTHER SETBACKS In addition to 1918, there have been at least three other life-altering events that prompted action of either canceling college football games or delaying them, if not tem- porarily eliminating a season. • During World War II the Notre Dame-USC series was not played from 1942-45 while travel restrictions were enforced. The 1942 Rose Bowl was shifted from Pasadena, Calif., to Duke's campus in Durham, N.C. (Oregon State defeated Duke 20-16) because of fears about more attacks on the West Coast by the Japanese after doing so at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. More than 60 schools did not field football in 1942, and by 1943 among the schools that did not play were Tennessee, Auburn, Florida and Kentucky, plus Michigan State in the North. Thus, many war-time teams in the States were created with college or semi-pro players called to train for service overseas. In 1944, the final Associated Press top 20 included: Army (No. 1), Randolph Field (No. 3), Navy (No. 4), Bainbridge (No. 5), Iowa Pre-Flight (No. 6), 4th AAF (No. 10), Norman P-F (No. 13), El Toro Marines (No. 16), Great Lakes (No. 17), Fort Pierce (No. 18), St Mary's P-F (No. 19) and Second Air Force (No. 20). For the record, Notre Dame finished No. 9 that year, with a youth-laden roster that al- lowed freshmen to play, per the NCAA, because of roster shortages. • The assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963 led to Notre Dame canceling its football game the next day at Iowa. It was never rescheduled, and the Fighting Irish finished their season 2-7 under interim coach Hugh Devore following a Thanksgiving Day loss to Syracuse (14-7) Nov. 28 in Yankee Stadium. • On Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States resulted in the cancel- lation of college and NFL games for the following weekend. In many cases they would be rescheduled later. For Notre Dame it meant moving the Sept. 15 game at Purdue to Dec. 1 as the regular-season finale. Although the Irish ended up winning 24-18 to finish 5-6, the following morning fifth-year head coach Bob Davie was fired. — Lou Somogyi