Notre Dame vs. Georgia Tech

Frank Leahy was an intriguing man and brilliant coach. In eleven seasons at N.D., he won four national titles, and coached six undefeated teams. While he won 86.4% of his games as a head coach (second all-time behind only his mentor, Knute Rockne), by the time the 1953 season commenced at N.D., Leahy’s run at the school was about to come to an end. The sequence of events that led to his departure started during an October afternoon in South Bend when the Irish were playing traditional foe, Georgia Tech.

From the start of his time at Notre Dame in 1941 through the end of the 1949 season, Leahy had reasserted N.D.’s claim as the preeminent program in the country. Before joining the Navy during World War II, Leahy led the Irish to the national title in 1943, the program’s first since 1930. After he returned from the military in 1946, Leahy’s teams did not lose for the remainder of the decade. From 1946 through the end of the 1949 season, the Irish went an amazing 36-0-2, and won three national titles, finishing #2 in 1948. Overall, he won four national titles in his first eight seasons as head coach. Going into the 1950s, the road to continued unprecedented domination of college football seemed set.

Things did not happen that way, however. Several factors combined in the 1950 season to derail Leahy’s juggernaut, including university-imposed scholarship reductions, injuries, and the changing composition of Leahy’s players. By 1950, gone were the World War II veterans that comprised Leahy’s greatest teams. In 1950, the Irish stumbled to a 4-4-1 record. For Leahy, whose Irish squads had racked up a 60-3-5 (.919) record between 1941 and 1949, the losing took a devastating toll. He took each loss as a personal failure, as if he himself were letting down the school, alumni, fans, and even the Almighty Himself.

After back-to-back 7-2-1 seasons in 1951 and 1952, decent seasons by anyone’s reckoning except Leahy’s, the Irish looked to get back on track in 1953. After a season-opening win against #6 Oklahoma (Oklahoma’s last loss before their record-setting 47-game winning streak), the Irish looked ahead to a showdown against Georgia Tech at Notre Dame in their fourth game of the season.

In those days, Georgia Tech was a formidable power. Since 1950 they had gone undefeated in 31 straight games, going 29-0-2 along the way. Coach Bobby Dodd’s Jackets were a powerful team, outscoring their opposition 325-59 on their way to a 12-0 record in 1952. In several polls, they had been named national champions in both the 1951 and 1952 seasons.

Heading into the game, Notre Dame was ranked #1 with a 3-0 record, while Georgia Tech was ranked #4 with a record of 4-0-1. The game was hard-fought throughout the first half, as the defenses did a good job of keeping the opposition out of the endzone. Notre Dame’s team that year featured a formidable offense that broke the 30-point plateau five times in their ten-game schedule, but Tech’s defense did a good job of containing QB Ralph Guglielmi and RB Johnny Lattner, that season’s Heisman Trophy winner. Near the end of the first half, however, the Irish finally managed to score the game’s first touchdown. They went to the locker room with a tenuous 7-0 lead. Then, one of the most bizarre episodes in the annals of Notre Dame football occurred.

Many of Leahy’s friends had long been concerned about the coach’s anxiety during games and what it might do to his health. At halftime of the George Tech game, those fears were finally realized. The 46-year-old Leahy collapsed in the locker room, downed by a pancreatic attack. Fearing the worst, the team chaplain administered the Last Rites to the coach on the floor of the locker room in Notre Dame Stadium. Meanwhile, the players were confused by this turn of events. Many were sons of former Notre Dame players from the Rockne Era and, having heard so many stories of how Rock would pull fast ones on his players as a way to motivate them, several players thought that Leahy was faking it. Only when the coach was carted away in an ambulance did the gravity of the situation set in.

Many of the players returned to the field with tears in their eyes, and were motivated by the concern about their coach’s health. What had been a close game for the first two quarters turned into a relatively easy victory for Notre Dame, as the Irish racked up a 27-14 win. The Jackets’ 31-game unbeaten streak had come to an end, and the Irish were in the driver’s seat for a fifth national title in the Leahy Era.

In the wake of the Georgia Tech victory, Leahy would recover, and lead the Irish to a 9-0-1 finish that year. The controversial nature of that one tie led pollsters to choose 10-1-0 Maryland as that season’s national champion, leaving the undefeated Irish at #2. Still, Leahy had registered a sixth undefeated season in 11 years at Notre Dame. After the 1953 season came to a close, however, the Leahy Era ended. A new university president, Fr. Theodore Hesburgh, had grand visions for building Notre Dame into a great national university, and felt that Leahy’s titanic presence undermined that mission. Using Leahy’s health as a cover story, the administration of Notre Dame let their four-time national champion coach go, replacing him with the 25-year-old coach of the freshman team, Terry Brennan. With the legendary Leahy gone, the Notre Dame program faded into obscurity, from which it would not emerge for ten years….

For a series with two schools that are separated by some 600 miles, Notre Dame and Georgia Tech share an interesting and colorful gridiron history. Since the first series game in Atlanta in 1922, Notre Dame and Georgia Tech have played 33 times, making the Jackets one of the ten most frequent opponents on Notre Dame schedules through the years. Overall, the Irish hold a 27-5-1 advantage over the Yellow Jackets in the all-time series. Notre Dame is 15-2-0 in series games played at Notre Dame.

Given the strong tradition that both teams bring to this game, it is not surprising that they have played a number of memorable games. For movie aficionados, the 1975 game featured a 24-3 Irish victory, including a game-ending sack by Daniel "Rudy" Ruettiger, later immortalized in the 1993 film Rudy. In 1978, QB Joe Montana and the visiting Irish dodged empty liquor bottles and other projectiles thrown by rowdy Tech fans for long enough to notch a 38-21 victory. Late in the 1980 season, a Tech squad that would finish the season 1-9-1 tied the #1 Irish, 3-3, at Georgia Tech, derailing Notre Dame's hopes for a national title that year. More recently, Notre Dame defeated Tech in 1997 in the Notre Dame Stadium Rededication Game, 17-13. The following season, the Jackets defeated the green jersey-clad Irish, 35-28, in the Gator Bowl following the 1998 season. Last season, Brady Quinn and the #2 Irish traveled to Georgia Tech for the 2006 season opener. After fighting through a tough first half in front of a hostile crowd, the Irish managed to pull out a 14-10 victory in Atlanta.

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Other notes:

-The Irish have won 17 of their last 21 season openers, dating back to the start of the Holtz Era in 1986. The only four years during that period in which they failed to start the season with a win were: 1986, when the Irish lost to Michigan at home, 24-23; 1995, when they lost to Northwestern at home, 17-15; 2001, when they lost at Nebraska, 27-10; and 2004, when they lost at Brigham Young, 20-17.

-This is the first time the Irish are starting a season at home since 2003, when they opened at home with Washington State. The Irish won that game, 29-26, in overtime.

-The Irish are 8-2-1 in the last eleven series games against Georgia Tech, dating back to 1974.

-Georgia Tech has not won at Notre Dame since notching a 28-13 victory in 1959. Their only other win at Notre Dame came in 1942.

-The Irish have opened three other seasons with games against the Yellow Jackets: 1974; the 1997 Rededication Game at Notre Dame Stadium; and last season in Atlanta. Notre Dame won all three games.

-Notre Dame has an all-time record of 99-14-5 (.860) in season opening games.

-The last time the Irish started a season unranked was 2005. That team started the season 4-2 on the way to a final record of 9-3.

-The last time the Irish had a first-time starter at QB in their season opener was 2000, when Arnaz Battle started in an Irish win over Texas A&M at N.D.

-Charlie Weis’s record at home is 10-3 (.769), while his September record is 7-2 (.778). Overall, he is 19-6 (.760) through his first two seasons.

- Bob Davie (1997-2001) was 16-9 (.640) through two years, while Ty Willingham (2002-04) was 15-10 (.600) during the same timeframe.

-Charlie Weis already has 19 wins as head coach at Notre Dame. Ty Willingham had 21 wins in his entire three-year career at the school.

-These schools have no future games scheduled at this time.

-In the ongoing competition between Michigan and Notre Dame for college football's all-time best winning percentage, here is where things stand going into the 2007 season:

Michigan finished 11-2 last year, moving their record to 860-282-36 for an all-time winning percentage of .7453. This week, #5 Michigan opens at home against Division I-AA powerhouse Appalachian State.

Notre Dame finished 10-3 last year, moving their record to 821-269-42 for an all-time winning percentage of .7438. This week, unranked Notre Dame opens at home against unranked Georgia Tech.

Michigan's lead over Notre Dame stands at 15/10,000ths of a point, the equivalent of a two-game lead for the Wolverines.

The 119th season of Notre Dame football kicks off on Saturday afternoon at 3:30 EDT on NBC.

Go Irish! Beat Jackets!
Big Mike

copyright Michael D. McAllister 2007