Campus Life

Here are some excerpts from campus publications about the 1942 season, Notre Dame's first using the newly installed T formation.

Called Staff Meetings at 5: 15 a.m.

He called his coaching staff together at 5:15 every morning to study diagrams and movies. The quarterbacks, Bertelli and his young understudy, Johnny Lujack, spent long hours in Leahy's office poring over chalkmarks on a blackboard. Leahy worked 14 hours, then 18 hours a day. His health began to fail. He got severe pains in the back of his head and neck. He was suffering from spinal arthritis, caused, more than anything else, by tension and overwork.

The Irish opened against Wisconsin, a team which they should have beaten easily, but four first-stringers were injured and the game ended in a 7-all tie. The T is a formation which requires split-second ball handling, speed, and confidence which Leahy's green, over- anxious kids completely lacked. The following week, against a stronger Georgia Tech team, the Irish were beaten 13 to 6. Now the wolves really were howling for a reversion to the old Notre Dame shift.

Leahy never saw the first successful results of the year he had spent trying to master the T. He was ordered to the hospital by the heads of the school, backed up by his wife and his first lieutenant, Ed McKeever. On a bed in the Mayo Clinic, not far from where he had once shared a room with Rockne, he heard a radio announcer describe the clicking of the T as his team ran down Stanford,  27-0.

Something He Enjoys More Than Winning

Even more than a win, Leahy enjoys watching a perfectly-executed play. This was demonstrated in the last game of the 1943 season, in which Great Lakes scored on a long pass-play in the final 35 seconds to defeat Notre Dame 19-14 and end the dreams of an unbeaten season.

Leahy entered the dressing room after the game and told his dejected players : "You can feel proud of the way you played. You happened to be beaten by one of the most splendidly executed plays I have ever seen. I have no criticism to make of you for this game." Notre Dame, despite the loss, gained the national championship that season.