70. The “Four Horsemen of Notre Dame” triumph over Army, October 18, 1924, Yankee Stadium

One fateful fall afternoon, George Strickler stepped into the fray and wiped clean the slate of sports journalism, unleashing rivers of purple prose that flowed on black ink across this great nation, lifting along with them a university, a genre of journalism, and indeed an entire sport.

        That’s an approximation of how Grantland Rice, the New York Herald-Tribune’s master of breathless extravagance, might have started this book’s recounting of the 1924 Notre Dame–Army game at the Polo Grounds. It’s both more poetic and less descriptive than the simpler but more accurate modern style that has forsaken him.

        George Strickler helped produce one of the biggest scores in college football history without playing a single down. With a stray pop culture reference, a goofy photo op, and a large assist from legendarily hyperbolic sportswriter Grantland Rice, Strickler begat the iconic “Four Horsemen of Notre Dame.” In one great rush, this accident of history forever enhanced the stature of the school, its backfield, sportswriting, and all of college football.

        Either approach certainly tackles a long-standing myth—that it was Rice alone who remade the sports landscape with his account of the game that famously began, “Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again.º.º.º.” Without Strickler, that image might not have found its way into print, and history might not have granted this game its status as symbol of an era.

        Notre Dame and Army had made headlines beginning with their first game at West Point in 1913 when the Ramblers upset undefeated Army 35–13. The forward pass had been legal for less than a decade, the ball’s circumference had been reduced the previous year to make passing easier, and this Notre Dame squad—led by quarterback Gus Dorias and an end by the name of Knute Rockne—was the first to feature a real aerial attack. Rockne became coach in 1918 and transformed Notre Dame into football’s great powerhouse; his team became so popular that games with no admission charge at West Point gave way to the big game in the big city, where in 1923 the rivals debuted at Ebbets Field and had to turn 15,000 people away. College football was coming of age. And thanks to the unlikely combo of Strickler and Rice, October 18, 1924, at the Polo Grounds would be its coming-out party.

        Although New York was only an hour south of West Point, it felt like a hometown crowd for Notre Dame thanks to thousands of what would become known as “the Subway Alumni.” They’d come to see the backfield of Harry Stuhldreher, Jim Crowley, Don Miller, and Elmer Layden, and in the second quarter this group gave the fans their money’s worth while giving birth to their own legend. Crowley slithered for 15 yards on a reverse. Layden ate up 6 or 7 more through left tackle. Miller pushed through for almost another 10, Stuhldreher connected with Crowley for 12 yards, and Crowley rushed for 5 more. Then Miller rampaged around the right side for 20 yards. Crowley drove within yards of the goal line, and Layden scored the touchdown. Soon after, the offense again slammed its way to the Army 10 before an intercepted pass ended the drive. Though only up 6–0 at halftime, Notre Dame dominated the second quarter, racking up eight first downs while yielding none.

        It was at halftime that the game headed for the history books. Strickler, a lowly student press assistant for Notre Dame, commented to several sportswriters that Notre Dame’s backfield reminded him of a Rudolph Valentino movie, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, which he and the players had watched a few days earlier back in South Bend. He was just making conversation, that’s all. Except that Rice, the fabulist par excellence whose presence had already lent the game an air of importance, overheard the comment and soon translated the observation into a memorable piece of American sports mythology.

        The third quarter was all Notre Dame. After Layden intercepted a pass, the backfield plowed 22 yards in three plays; Crowley then ditched two would-be tacklers, stiff-armed another, and raced 21 yards into the corner of the end zone. 13–0. Notre Dame nearly scored twice more, stopped once by an Army interception and once by Army’s tough four-down stand on their own 9. (Army’s lone score came near the end when punts and penalties started the Cadets inside Notre Dame’s 20-yard line.)

        The 13–7 win was hardly overwhelming for a team that had lost only once each in 1922 and 1923 and was en route to a 10–0 season capped by a trouncing of undefeated Stanford in the Rose Bowl. The World credited Notre Dame for having a “soundly coached team,” and the Times, though praising the “speed, power and precision” of Rockne’s “football machine”—especially the “poetry of motion” in the backfield—also had kind words for “Army’s brave stand and gallant counterattack.” It seemed like just another W in a long string of impressive Ws, not an all-time classic.

        But Rice was someone who once said, “When a sportswriter stops making heroes out of athletes, it’s time to get out of the business.” Inspired by Strickler’s halftime snippet, he showed, in his signature style, why he would be in the business for decades to come.

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.º.º.º.

    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.

        There are several problems beyond the florid style, whichinspired a generation of imitators (and some stats that Rice got wrong). As Red Smith later pointed out, only someone lying on the field would have seen the players outlined against the sky. Moreover, for all their skills, this foursome, topping out at 162 pounds, were hardly physically imposing; Army was not swept away (they kept it closer than any other 1924 foe); and if this team was a cyclone that couldn’t be snared, then why had it lost in ’22 and ’23 to Nebraska, the one top team with a significant size advantage on the Four Horsemen?

        Also, how and why does one “surround” a cyclone?

        The article ran on the Herald-Tribune’s front page and was syndicated in 100 newspapers, but the story still could easily have died the death of so many daily reports. Rice largely ditched the Horsemen concept after the first paragraph, playing up his cyclone imagery and throwing around references to tigers, antelopes, tanks, and motorcycles as well. (He’d still be recycling his “South Bend cyclone” phrase five years later to describe the 1929 Notre Dame offense.) Later in the week he moved on completely, not even bothering to preview Notre Dame’s next game.

        The savvy Strickler, however, called his dad back in South Bend and had him rent four horses from a corral next to his saloon. Upon the team’s return home, Strickler posed the four athletes on the steeds, clutching footballs and looking a bit uncomfortable. He sent the photo to wire services and newspapers around the country, and they rode the ploy for all it was worth. By the following weekend, every columnist was referring to the newfound celebrities as “the Four Horsemen,” and Rice, the 1920s Roaring Hypester, was touting them further as a way of praising his own acumen.

        Notre Dame would play better games and have better backfields, but this confluence of events made these men and this game symbols of the Golden Age. It was an era when sportswriters polished history to a gleam and swung for the fences to create larger-than-life sports legends. And in this postwar boom, the Jazz Age public was ready to think big.

        Sport was moving front and center in America—this game was the first one broadcast to radio, airing on two New York stations, WJZ and WEAF, and their affiliates. By the following year, newspaper coverage was double that of 1915. Although much of this new interest stemmed from genuine public demand, sportswriters like Rice certainly stirred the pot. From 1921 to 1930, attendance at college football games doubled and receipts tripled while universities devoted financial resources to the sport, building huge new stadiums. A skeptical minority complained about the business of sports usurping academics and sportsmanship, but cheering fans drowned out those voices.

        As countless publications echoed Strickler’s photo echoing Rice’s article echoing the original game itself, the reality faded—the four players, Notre Dame, college football, and the sportswriter and his “Gee Whiz” approach to sportswriting all got caught up in the cyclone of glory.