One for the Irish

No football team ever left West Point with such a send-off and such a premonition of doom. Two M-8 armored cars escorted the squad to the station, where guns boomed out an eleven-gun salute. The brave men of Army were going out to face mighty Notre Dame for the last time.

All week long, newsmen pounded out sentimental obits on the end of U.S. football's Big Game. Why had Army chosen to drop Notre Dame from its schedule? The consensus: Army, reduced to peacetime status, just didn't have the arms & the men to conquer Notre Dame.

It was no secret, either, that the two coaches--Army's Red Blaik and Notre Dame's Frank Leahy--weren't exactly cronies. When asked about it, Leahy said: "I have no animosity toward Blaik ... I don't know the man. . . ." A couple of cold, windy days later they posed for a wintry-faced picture (see cut).

Notre Dame-Army hadn't always been a rivalry that packed Yankee Stadium with violent partisans who had gone to neither school, and paid up to $100 a seat to act as if they were charter alumni. When it first visited West Point in 1913, Notre Dame was an unsung little Indiana college. In those days spectators got in free, Notre Dame got $1,000 guarantee for the trip and cleared $83 profit. In this game the late, great Knute Rockne (an end) and Gus Dorais (a quarterback) put on a great passing show. Until three years ago, Notre Dame had a top-heavy edge of 22 victories to five losses. Then, while Leahy was off to war, Army's super-dupers, led by the great Davis & Blanchard, humbled the proud Irish two years in a row, 59-0, 48-0. But, until last week, a Blaik-coached Army eleven had never scored on a Leahy-coached Notre Dame team.

The experts ignored Leahy's coachly gloom ("We are not equipped.'We do not have the weapons"), made the Irish an 18-point favorite. They were mainly impressed by Notre Dame's trigger-armed Quarterback Johnny Lujack. But no sooner had the game begun in jampacked Notre Dame stadium than Leahy uncovered another weapon: a Fighting Irish player who was actually Irish. It took Halfback Terry Brennan exactly 21 seconds to take the opening kick-off and scamper 97 yards for a touchdown. That took the spark out of Army, although they fought hard and had carefully memorized Coach Blaik's elaborate plans for stopping Johnny Lujack's passes. To make things tougher, Notre Dame uncorked a ground attack it wasn't supposed to have. Final score: Notre Dame 27, Army 7.

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