Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM OCT. 4, 2025 51 In 1935, Stuhldreher's Wildcats and Dorais' Titans played an unusual back- to-back series a week apart. Detroit won in Detroit, 19-15, then Villanova pre- vailed in Philadelphia, 13-7. The Wildcats lost to Penn State but finished the season defeating crosstown rival Temple. * * * For the most part, Irish coach Knute Rockne avoided scheduling Catholic op- ponents — he would rather see them suc- ceed in their own region, especially when they were coached by one of his former players. Only five of his 122 games as head coach came against Catholic rivals. In 1921, the Irish traveled to Milwaukee and defeated Marquette, 21-7. A home- and-home series with the St. Louis Bil- likens produced shutout victories of 26-0 in 1922 at home and 13-0 in St. Louis to conclude the 1923 season and set up the run to the 1924 national championship. As a favor to his great friend and teammate Dorais, Rockne agreed to a game in Detroit against the Titans in 1927, with Notre Dame prevailing, 20-0, before a packed house of 28,000 at the Titans' stadium. The Irish opened the 1928 season at home with a 12-6 win over Loyola of New Orleans. Three of Rockne's players from the national championship team of 1924 were head coaches at Catholic colleges in the fall of 1925 — Stuhldreher at Villa- nova, Layden at Iowa's Columbia College (today's Loras University) and captain Adam Walsh at Santa Clara University. Walsh entered a very competitive col- lege football landscape in the San Fran- cisco Bay area, where former Notre Dame center Edward "Slip" Madigan had taken over as the head coach at tiny St. Mary's College in 1921. The Gaels had closed out the 1920 season with a 127-0 loss to Cali- fornia. Madigan immediately recruited 60 men and built a consistent winner. By 1924, he had a team that finished 9-1, losing only to Cal and defeating Southern Cal, 14-10, and Santa Clara, 28-7. As for the Four Horsemen, two of them ended up becoming the commissioners of rival pro leagues in the 1940s. Layden left Notre Dame in 1940 after seven years as head coach to become the first full-time commissioner of the National Football League, a position he held until 1946. In 1944, Crowley was named com- missioner of the rival All-America Foot- ball Conference and guided it through two years of its brief existence. ✦ www.RockneSociety.org Congratulations! Knute Rockne Spirit of Sports Awards Winners Bryant Young ND All-American, Pro Hall Of Famer Coach Digger Phelps Hoops Coaching Legend Hannah Storm Groundbreaking Sportscaster Coach Jeff Jackson National Hockey Leader Tricia Sloma Long-Serving WNDU Anchor Dr. Bill Hurd ND Athlete, Doctor, Musician The Family Of 'Seven Mule' Noble Kizer Jim Lefebvre is an award-winning Notre Dame author and leads the Knute Rockne Memorial Society. He can be reached at: jim@ndfootballhistory.com Harry Stuhldreher's Villanova teams went 65-25-9 during his tenure as head coach, from 1925-35. PHOTO COURTESY KNUTE ROCKNE MEMORIAL SOCIETY