From "Out of
Bounds" - Angelo Bertelli...  Angelo Bertelli "The Springfield Rifle"
Angelo Bertelli was the worst runner and the best passer Frank Leahy ever coached. We offer three enduring images of the "Springfield Rifle," as Bertelli was aptly tagged: First, as the quarterback that helped Leahy introduce the T-formation at Notre Dame. Almost no one born after World War II has seen anything but the T or variations thereof, but when Leahy decided to use it, you would have thought he was sending the boys out there to play in roller skates. "What's wrong with the box shift?!" everyone wanted to know, usually in more colorful language than that. "It was good enough for Rockne!" Yes, but not good enough for modern football, and it is to Leahy's everlasting credit that he broke the Irish out of a box formation that had seen much of its scoring punch legislated out of existence. The Irish went 7-2-1 in 1942, the first year of the T. By1943, Notre Dame had a Bertelli-led T-formation national championship. Leahy was attracted to the inherent deceptiveness of the T, the innumerable plays that could be run off the same formation. He also liked the idea of allowing his quarterback to concentrate on passing and hand-offs, and not running. This was custom-made for Bertelli, whose idea of running consisted of a slow glide that netted a little over a yard per carry. Don't sell Bert short. He had to memorize a radically new offense and make it work against the toughest teams in the country. He was brilliant. For this alone he deserved the Heisman Trophy that was handed to him in 1943. ~ Second, there is the memory of Bertelli on ice. We're not referring to the hockey-playing Bertelli, who was so good that the Boston Bruins wanted to sign him right out of high school. We mean Bertelli dropping back in the pocket, as cool and self- assured as anyone in the stadium. A master at work, he used to look more like a big-time executive answering his mail than a 6'1' quarterback in imminent danger of getting crunched by a couple oversized tackles. Bertelli would set up, look one way then another, flick the ball under his chin like a man shooing a fly, and suddenly let loose with another flat, accurate pass. His lifetime completion average of 52.5 is outstanding, but those who played with him always mention that he was totally unperturbable. A quarterback has no finer quality. ~ Finally, there was Bertelli the mobster. Duke, he was called. Duke Bertelli. Armed and dangerous. There is a little touch of Irish madness that hits any student at Notre Dame when he realizes that South Bend is a long way from home. Bertelli handled the dreaded disease with a good-natured play actor's interest in gangsters. He could be seen stalking around the campus in zoot suit and floppy hat, nervously eyeing his fellow students,and always ready to go for the "gun" in his breast pocket. More often than not, he was shadowed by several similarly dressed and trigger-happy body guards. His interest in uncommon occupations was nothing new. After accompanying his parents on a trip to their native Venice in 1921, young Bertelli protested returning to the States. He wanted to stay in Venice and become a gondolier.
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