Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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IRISH ECHOES JIM LEFEBVRE 50 OCT. 10, 2026 BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED T he day of Oct. 29, 1910, was a long afternoon for the Notre Dame football team. A gru- eling match with Michigan Agri- cultural College at East Lansing ended in a stinging 17-0 defeat. " Fa r m e rs Mo p Fi e l d Wi t h Longman's Men," read the head- line in The Detroit Free Press. The subhead also noted: "Hoo- sier Player is Banished for Slug- ging Official and Opponent." "Like a steam roller ironing out hot asphalt, the tillers of the soil went over, around and through Notre Dame, giving the Hoosier boys a beating that was awful in its completeness. There was never any doubt about the rela- tive merits of the teams," the pa- per reported. For Notre Dame head coach Frank "Shorty" Longman, it was the only loss in his two seasons as head coach — he went 11-0-2 otherwise. But this was a tough one. "Fighting was almost entirely in Notre Dame's terri- tory, Longman's outfit failing to get as close to M.A.C.'s goal as the 30-yard line at any time during the debate." It was a rough game, "with Notre Dame the worst offender. The trend of events so got on [Walter] Clinnen's nerves finally that he took a wallop at one of the M.A.C. players and then landed a haymaker to the umpire." Clinnen, a halfback from Chicago, was "pruned from the lineup and M.A.C. awarded half the distance to the ene- my's goal line." Notre Dame would recover two weeks later, whipping Rose Polytechnic at Terre Haute, Ind., by a 41-3 count. That win started a 27-game unbeaten streak over parts of five seasons under three head coaches — Longman, John L. Marks and Jesse Harper. The Irish won 24 games in the stretch and tied three, a 5-5 deadlock at Marquette to end the 1910 campaign (touchdowns being worth five points through 1911), then had scoreless ties at Pittsburgh and Marquette in 1911. The Irish had only two narrow vic- tories during the streak — a 6-3 win at Wabash in 1911 and a 3-0 triumph at Pittsburgh in 1912. These were the teams in which Gus Dorais was making a name for himself as a nifty, sharp- minded, diminutive quarterback, and Knute Rockne was becoming a nearly unbeatable defensive force at left end. Notre Dame posted 12 shutouts among its 24 victories in the streak. The most one-sided win came on Oct. 5, 1912, a season-opening 116-7 thrashing of St. Viator College from Bourbonnais, Ill. The 1912 and 1913 seasons ended with perfect records of 7-0-0. Overall, the dominance was stagger- ing. Notre Dame scored 1,131 points in the 27 games, an average of 41.9 an out- ing, while allowing just 85, or 3.15 points per contest. The average score in 1912 was Notre Dame 55.6, opponents 3.9. On Oct. 10, 1914, with Rockne now se rv i n g a s a ss i s ta n t coa c h u n d e r Harper, Notre Dame hammered Rose Poly 103-0, taking a 2-0 record into its most ambitious trip in history, to New Haven, Conn., to meet mighty Yale. Rockne would later famously observe that "all football comes from Yale." It was a reference to the impact of Walter Camp, who was a halfback and captain at Yale. Camp also guided the program in its formative years, becoming the school's first formal head coach in 1888, and was one of the game's greatest innovators, often credited with creating the modern game. Be- yond that, Camp coached future college football figures such as Amos Alonzo Stagg, University of Chicago coach from 1892-1932, and Dr. Henry Williams, Minne- sota coach from 1900-21. It was a huge coup for Harper to get a game with the team that consistently ranked among the very best in the sport, with 26 titles later credited to Yale for seasons from 1872 to 1909. Harper, Rockne and a squad of 23 players departed South Bend on the morning of Friday, Oct. 16. One report noted, "Never be- fore in the history of the school was a team given a more rousing sendoff. Ev- ery student of the university was at the train and before it pulled out, yells were given for every player." In New Haven, Conn., heavy rains made a quagmire of the field. Harper directed an indoor practice in the Yale gymnasium, while Rockne was dis- patched to New York City to purchase mud cleats for the players. The game was played on Yale Field, while nearby the finishing touches were being made to the newly constructed Yale Bowl, the most magnificent of football structures, with clear sight lines for more than 60,000 spectators. It would open weeks later for the annual clash with Harvard. With 12,000 fans looking on, Yale unveiled its "secret weapon" early in the contest. It was an offense patterned on the Canadian rugby system, under which two, three or all four backfield men might touch the ball on a given play. "When the man carrying the ball is about to be tackled, he will toss the pigskin to a running mate who is not in immediate danger of an opponent." The system of lateral passing opened The Trip East That Changed Notre Dame Football Irish head coach Jesse Harper (left) and his assistant Knute Rockne (right) were inspired to develop the very successful shift offense after suffering a 28-0 loss at college powerhouse Yale in 1914. PHOTO COURTESY NOTRE DAME SPORTS INFORMATION