This month's edition of Out of Bounds features the story of Notre Dame's first visit to Happy Valley in 1913.

The victory over Army was easily the high point of that undefeated 1913 season. The following week's game against Penn State was very nearly a disaster.

No sooner did the travel-weary team return from New York than it boarded a Thursday train for Northern Pennsylvania and a meeting with the Nittnay Lions. To stay within his shoestring budget, Harper wired State's coach and arranged for Notre Dame to stay in a campus dorm the night before the game. The coach was only too happy to oblige. After reading of of the thrashing that Notre Dame gave Army he was sure his team was overmatched. Now, he would have the enemy in his camp. He set about concocting the old equalizer.

That Friday night Notre Dame's entire nineteen-man traveling squad found itself lodged in a cramped, drafty dormitory room. They were served an evening meal that detonated in their stomachs like a depth charge. "We got physicked," recalls a reserve tackle, implying that their fish contained a Mickey Finn. No one on the team got much sleep; they were too busy feeling ill.

The next day Notre Dame took the field looking as if they'd spent a winter at Valley Forge. To compound their miseries, the game was played in a chilling drizzle. The attack that had been so crisp against Army faltered badly as the pale, dispirited Ramblers could not get untracked. The game was an artistic flop. "We ran for a lot of yardage that day," says the reserve, "most of it back and forth to the bathroom." Only Dorais' consistent punting kept the South Benders out of a hole, and allowed them to escape with a 14-7 victory.

Until its loss to Notre Dame, Penn State had never been beaten on its home field, an undefeated skein that stretched back nineteen years. Wonder why?