Notre Dame at Army
October 18, 1924

The events of October 18, 1924, in New York City brought together a confluence of major American institutions….and made history.

The United States Military Academy and its “long gray line” of marching Cadets. A rising force of American Catholicism—the University of Notre Dame. And one of the most well-known and deeply respected journalists of his time, New York Herald-Tribune columnist Grantland Rice.

A capacity crowd packed the Polo Grounds for this much anticipated match of football powers. The Army roster include many Cadets who had been star players at colleges across the country before arriving at West Point. Men like captain Ed Garbisch, who had been a standout at Washington & Jefferson, where he had gone up against Notre Dame in 1917, a 3-0 Irish victory.

Up in the wooden press box, newspapermen were marveling at the precision and skill shown by Notre Dame in the second quarter. Knute Rockne’s men mounted several long marches, one of which ended with Elmer Layden’s 1-yard TD run for a 6-0 lead.

One group of sportswriters included some of the biggest names in the business. Rice was considered the dean of newspaper sports writers, and his mere presence was enough to grant significance to any event. His syndicated newspaper accounts were circulated six days a week to more than 100 newspapers nationwide with an estimated audience of 10 million readers.

It was said by Rice’s peers that he was a “disciplined craftsman who turned out a prodigious amount of work.” In addition to writing for the Herald Tribune in ‘24, Rice was dazzling readers—and collecting royalties—by writing Sportlight, his syndicated columns, as well as authoring numerous books and writing for several magazines. Behind Rice’s booming Southern voice and six-foot frame there was a depth of feeling and warmth that was often noticed by others.

He was known as someone who listened as well as he talked—a person to whom others naturally gravitated. Such was the case this October Saturday at the Polo Grounds. With Rice in the press box at half time were: Damon Runyan, who had gained fame covering baseball and boxing for William Randolph Hearst’s New York American and was called by Hearst “the best reporter in the world;” Gene Fowler, serving as backup to Runyan; Jack Kofoed of the New York Post; Paul Gallico of the Daily News; and Davis Walsh, lead football writer for the United Press.

Into this conclave strolled young George Strickler, Rockne’s publicist and South Bend Tribune correspondent. Part of his assignment from Rockne was to keep an ear open for scuttlebutt and analysis from the “big guys” in the newspaper business. The conversation revolved around the exceptional work of the Notre Dame backfield in thwarting Army at every turn.

“Yeah, just like the Four Horsemen,” Strickler piped up, recalling the Rudolph Valentino film that had been shown on the Notre Dame campus three nights earlier. No reaction was noted from among the professional scribes. The confab eventually broke up as folks settled into place for the second half. The pitched battle saw each team parry into the other’s territory, with the Irish again reeling off several threatening drives. A 20-yard scoring run by Jim Crowley spelled the difference in a thrilling 13-7 Irish victory.

Grantland Rice, in the evening twilight and gathering chill, sat at his typewriter in the Polo Grounds press box and pondered his opening. National readers of his Sportlight column were used to Rice’s poems, odes and flowery speech. He regularly made an effort to liven the mundane with a clever turn of the phrase. He was well-read in classical literature, having majored in Greek and Latin at Vanderbilt.

Something about Strickler’s halftime comment and the imagery of horses stuck in Rice’s mind when he reflected on the Notre Dame backfield. He recalled the 1923 game at Ebbets Field, which he took in from field level. At one point, he recalled, the charge of the players on an out-of-bounds play brought to mind the possibility of being trampled by a runaway team of horses. It all clicked. His fingers hit the typewriter keys:

“Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as Famine, Pestilence, Destruction and Death. These are only aliases. Their real names are Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden. They formed the crest of the South Bend cyclone before which another fighting Army football team was swept over the precipice at the Polo Grounds yesterday afternoon as 55,000 spectators peered down on the bewildering panorama spread on the green plain below.

“A cyclone can’t be snared. It may be surrounded, but somewhere it breaks through to keep on going. When the cyclone starts from South Bend, where the candle lights still gleam through the Indiana sycamores, those in the way must take to storm cellars at top speed. Yesterday the cyclone struck again, as Notre Dame beat the Army, 13 to 7, with a set of backfield stars that ripped and crashed through a strong Army defense with more speed and power than the warring cadets could meet.”

From there, Rice described “the driving power of one of the greatest backfields that ever churned up the turf of any gridiron in any football age.” He noted the following on the second quarter scoring drives: “the unwavering power of the Western attack that hammered relentlessly and remorselessly without easing up for a second’s breath.”

Rice paid particular homage to the speed of the Irish attack, the precision with which it worked, and the consistently effective blocking it used to advance the ball on the ground. “Always in front of these offensive drives could be found the whirling form of Stuhldreher, taking the first man out of the play as cleanly as if he had used a hand grenade at close range,” Rice wrote.

“This Notre Dame interference was a marvelous thing to look upon.” He also had high praise for ND’s defensive play. “When a back such as Harry Wilson finds few chances to get started you can figure upon the defensive strength that is barricading the road. Wilson is one of the hardest backs in the game to suppress, but he found few chances yesterday to show his broken field ability. You can’t run through a broken field until you get there.”

He concluded by stating that “we doubt that any team in the country could have beaten Rockne’s array yesterday afternoon, East or West. It was a great football team brilliantly directed, a team of speed, power and team play. The Army has no cause for gloom over its showing. It played first class football against more speed than it could match.

“Those who have tackled a cyclone can understand.”

After returning to South Bend, Strickler arranged to borrow four work horses from a coal and ice company downtown and brought them to Cartier Field. There, in a quick photo shoot, photographer Harry Elmore created one of the most lasting images in sports iconography.

In the ensuing weeks, the image made its way onto sports pages across the nation, while the Irish mowed down a challenging schedule including Princeton, Georgia Tech, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Northwestern and Carnegie Tech.

The Four Horsemen would not be stopped.

Excerpted from Loyal Sons: The Story of The Four Horsemen and Notre Dame Football’s 1924 Champions. Order an inscribed, autographed copy of the Special Centennial Commemorative Edition HERE.