Excerpt: The forgotten legend of Notre Dame coach Frank Leahy

Editor's note: This communicative is an excerpt from the publication "American Coach: The Triumph and Tragedy of Notre Dame Legend Frank Leahy," by Ivan Maisel, published connected Sept. 16 by Grand Central Publishing.

They came from adjacent and acold to the gleaming caller Athletic & Convocation Center astatine Notre Dame to grant the shot manager they erstwhile called The Master.

The calendar said that Frank Leahy was sixty years aged connected that past nighttime of January 1969. One look astatine Leahy would person labeled the calendar a fabulist. He inactive stood erect, 5 ft eleven, and his waistline hardly had wavered from those postwar days erstwhile helium strode the Fighting Irish sideline, an American personage astatine the highest of his command. But the crevasses successful Leahy's face, the ruddy cheeks, and the thinning grey hairsbreadth indicated the ravages taken by clip and leukemia.

Once helium had radiated a fiery mettle fueled by his hopeless request for success. In galore ways, Leahy personified the American Dream communicative that served arsenic the backbone of nationalist civilization for astir of the twentieth century. He had travel from nothing. He had worked hard, gone to church, utilized shot to spell to college, joined the close girl, climbed the coaching ladder, each astatine a furious pace. He was a caput manager astatine thirty, the Notre Dame caput manager astatine thirty-two, a nationalist champion arsenic a subordinate and a coach.

As a player, helium took information from the doubts of a hometown person who told Leahy that helium would ne'er marque it astatine Notre Dame. As a coach, the much Leahy won, the much unit helium applied to himself to lucifer nationalist demand. Leahy drove his players hard, and successful instrumentality they played truthful fiercely that his Fighting Irish teams lived with accusations of soiled play. They fought hard due to the fact that Leahy demanded it. He tried truthful hard to unrecorded up to the Notre Dame bequest of occurrence that losing devastated him. At the end, winning did, too.

When helium played, his thrust outgo him his health. His assemblage could not withstand what helium enactment it through. Leahy won a occupation arsenic a starting tackle successful the preseason of his inferior year, yet the fig of games helium really started successful his Notre Dame vocation could beryllium counted connected 1 hand. When helium coached, his thrust outgo him his wellness again, which successful crook outgo him his coaching vocation astatine the property of forty-five, outgo him the 1 occupation helium ever truly wanted.

Fifteen years to the time aft Leahy and Notre Dame parted ways, helium wore a reddish blazer, a crisp achromatic shirt, and what successful his aboriginal years had go his trademark bow tie. Leahy agelong agone had fixed up wearing a accepted necktie. So galore times successful a restaurant, a instrumentality had interrupted Leahy's meal. The coach, ever polite, would basal successful greeting and resistance the bottommost of his necktie done his soup.

More than 1,000 guests came to the meal astatine 20 dollars a plate, backmost erstwhile that was a bully information of a regular wage successful South Bend. They came, men and women but mostly men, to grant Leahy and to payment him (those humor transfusions weren't cheap), to punctual him and surely themselves of who helium had been, what helium had meant to them. And they wanted to punctual others, namely the men who for much than a decennary had refused to ballot Leahy into the College Football Hall of Fame.

No manager successful the past forty years had been much singularly identified with his assemblage than Leahy had been with Notre Dame. He loved the campus, loved the statue of Our Lady (English translation of Notre Dame) atop the Golden Dome, loved it from the time helium archetypal laid eyes connected it arsenic an eighteen-year-old freshman successful the wintertime of 1927. Like truthful galore Catholic boys successful tiny towns and large cities crossed America, Leahy, a shy guiltless from the South Dakota prairie, had dreamed of playing for the large Knute Rockne. Unlike astir each of those boys, not lone did Leahy play for Rockne, but erstwhile a genu wounded ended his career, helium became his coach's protégé. Rockne saw not lone the hunger successful Leahy but a keen caput for the game. The manager arranged for his protégé to go an adjunct manager astatine Georgetown. Three months later, Rockne would beryllium gone, perishing successful a level clang connected a Kansas farm.

Leahy spent 1 play astatine Georgetown earlier moving to Michigan State and past to Fordham, wherever helium attracted acclaim for processing the violative beforehand everlastingly known arsenic the Seven Blocks of Granite. One of those blocks, a squat Italian with a speedy temper named Vince Lombardi, became a coach, too.

In the wintertime of 1939, astatine the age...