A COLLIER'S MAGAZINE article written by one of the grand old men of football and one of the game's most legendary coaches: Knute Rockne (1888 – 1931). Before there was the NFL, there was only college football and it was football pioneers like Rockne who brought out the excitement of the game, generating such enthusiasm for the sport and creating a fan-base that grew steadily throughout the century. Just as Redskin Coach Joe Gibbs had "The Hogs" in the Eighties, Knute Rockne was famous for a group of players in the Twenties called the "Four Horsemen" (Harry Stuhldreher, Don Miller, Elmer Layden, and Jim Crowley), and that is who the coach wrote about on the attached pages:
"Individually, at first, they were just four compact youths, no better than football's average...Within a season they became famous - the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame...They amazed even their own coach"
Click here to read more articles from the 20s and 30s about football.
Click here to read a 1940 magazine article about women's football.