Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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Where Have You Gone? Jim Mense, 1953-55 Center/Linebacker Notre Dame “Iron Man” holds an unbreakable standard By Lou Somogyi Some records in athletics can never be broken. It is safe to say that the one set by 1955 Notre Dame center/linebacker Jim Mense will remain eternal. As a senior that season for second-year head coach Terry Brennan’s 8-2 Irish, Mense set a single-season school record with a playing time total of 531:30. In other words, he averaged 53 minutes per game in a 60-minute contest against one of the country’s more challenging schedules, one that saw four opponents finish among the top 18 teams in the Associated Press poll. Furthermore, Mense was in the eye of a football storm at center and linebacker. Listed No. 2 in playing time in one season at Notre Dame is another center/linebacker, College Football Hall of Fame inductee Jerry Groom with 465 minutes during a nine-game season in 1950. Today, playing times are tracked by snap counts instead of minutes and seconds. The days of the double-duty “60-minute men” in football are long over, but Mense had no complaints about his “Iron Man” role in his time. “I was just lucky I guess,” said Mense, who will turn 78 later this fall. “I was a young kid having fun. I didn’t realize it was a record until [former South Bend Tribune sports editor] Joe Doyle wrote the article about five or 10 years later. He sent a copy of what he wrote to our sports editor at the Hamilton (Ohio) Journal in my hometown, and that’s when it was posted in a column.” Mense credited his stamina and toughness at 5-11, 206 pounds in part to his summer job back home as part of a road crew. “What we did was tar and gravel roads,” he recalled. “Some days I would be walking 10 to 12 miles, so that gave me some endurance, I would assume.” Weight room work was taboo back then for football players, so strength and conditioning was done in other resourceful ways. “We were told that lifting would lock your muscles up, it would make you too tight,” Mense recalled. "We did play a lot of handball. Lifting was about two or three years later when people started picking that up.” Many times it is stated that the football players from Mense’s era could not compete in today’s game. When it comes to toughness and endurance, the players from Mense’s era don’t take a backseat to anyone. Centers Of Attention Not recruited by first-year Ohio State head coach Woody Hayes, the Buckeye State native Mense had his sights set on the University of Michigan before taking his visit to Notre Dame in 1951. A local attorney and recruiting birddog in Hamilton, Ohio, was good friends with Irish assistant coach Bob McBride, and he set it up for Mense to take a visit to the campus, where he was offered a scholarship after running through a few drills in the Old Fieldhouse. Head coach and resident icon Frank Leahy, who had already won four national titles, wasn’t even needed to scout him. “I didn’t meet Coach Leahy until I was on the practice field for the first time as a 17-year-old freshman,” Mense said. “We were cannon-fodder. We came there on a Saturday in September, got into our dorms, and then on Monday we came out and they said, ‘This Saturday you’ll scrimmage the varsity in the Stadium.’ “They proceeded to kick our proverbial you know what. That was very enlightening. “But I came from a small school of 260 boys, so I sort of found it hard to believe that I was blessed to come to Notre Dame.” From 1950-54, the Irish were blessed with an extraordinary line of centers: • Groom (1950) was the No. 6 pick in the 1951 NFL Draft. • Art Hunter (1951) was the No. 2 pick in 1954 and played 12 years in the NFL. • Jim Schrader (1952-53) was the No. 20 pick in 1954, after Hunter moved to tackle, and was in the league for 11 years. • Dick Szymanski (1954) was the No. 16 selection in 1955 and embarked on a 14-year career while snapping as a Pro Bowl center to quarterback Johnny Unitas in Baltimore. Mense bided his time behind them, but did start several times as a junior for the 9-1 Irish when Szymanski was injured. The Irish finished No. 3 and No. 2 in Mense’s first two seasons when Leahy was the coach. “He was so precise with all the little things,” Mense said. “He taught us that you don’t hunch your back over because when a back comes through and you’re trying to hand the ball to him, he’s going to hit your head. You have to keep a stiff back.” When the 26-year-old Brennan succeeded Leahy in 1954, the Irish finished No. 4 in Mense’s junior year and then were 8-1 and No. 5 his senior season before losing the finale at USC, when an injury-ravaged Notre Dame team ran out of gas in the fourth quarter and finished No. 9. “We had only about 15 players who did all the playing,” Brennan said years later. “I’m not so sure there weren’t others on our team who had 500 minutes also,” noted Mense, who singled out 1955 captain and tackle Ray Lemek as one of the most extraordinary and courageous leaders he ever saw. “He played his whole senior year on a leg-and-a-half, didn’t go into pros his first year so he could rehab — and then still played nine years on a leg-and-a-half,” Mense said. When Lemek, Mense and Co. graduated, the bottom fell out in 1956 with a 2-8 record, but Mense said changes in university policy made Brennan a sacrificial lamb. “Terry had his hands tied behind his back,” Mense said. Beyond Football Mense was the No. 152 pick (Green Bay) in the 1956 NFL Draft, but unlike his Irish predecessors at center, pro football was not a goal. He played in two college All-Star games before hanging up his cleats for good. “I told them I have no desire to play pro football, and I did not go to camp,” said Mense, who took a position with Avco Manufacturing in Cincinnati, served in the Army at Fort Riley, Kan., for two years and then returned to the Queen City area to work in insurance. “I had a job and I was very content making $100 a week, which was pretty good money in that time,” he said of turning down pro football. The “Iron Man” is still working in an insurance office these days. “My wife doesn’t want me around the house, so I’ve still got to go to work,” Mense said with a laugh. He and his wife, Marlene, his high school sweetheart, have been married 55 years, and their union produced eight children — four boys and four girls. They also have 16 grandchildren — eight boys and eight girls. “We call that ‘Planned Parenthood,’ ” joked Mense, who also works out on a treadmill three or four times a week for a half-hour to an hour. A season-ticket holder to Notre Dame games, Mense was back on campus for a 1956 class reunion at the Purdue game and always keeps tabs on the Irish. “I’ve been happy with them, and sometimes I’ve been disgusted with them,” Mense said before the Purdue game. Either way, he’ll stay with them — just like an “Iron Man.” Behind The Scenes During Jim Mense’s 1952-55 career at Notre Dame, the NFL drafted more than a dozen Irish linemen, including first-round picks Art Hunter and Frank Varrichione. However, Mense said they didn’t come rougher or tougher than tackle Tony Pasquesi (his roommate) and guard Ed Cook. Both were on the third team as seniors, but they were holy terrors in practice. “Those guys were walk-ons, loved Notre Dame and they did a helluva job,” Mense said. “In practice, you didn’t want to hear, ‘Pasquesi and Cook, get in there,’ because when they were on defense, you were in trouble. “When Varrichione had [questionnaires] that asked who was the toughest player he ever played against, he put down Pasquesi and Cook.” Thus, even though Pasquesi was third team, he was taken with the 32nd pick in the 1955 NFL Draft and played several years as a defensive tackle. Cook wasn’t drafted — but played in the NFL 10 years before retiring after the 1967 season. “Those two guys got a raw deal in college, but they made a lot of the linemen on those ’53 and ’54 teams better,” Mense said. “They were just brutal to you in that respect, yet they didn’t get to play.” — Lou Somogyi