The Legendary Four

The Football Facts
*The Four Horsemen of Notre Dame comprised a winning group of football players at the University of Notre Dame under coach Knute Rockne.
*They were the legendary backfield of Notre Dame's 1924 football team.
*None of the four stood taller than six feet and none of the four weighed more than 162 pounds, the Four Horsemen might comprise the greatest backfield ever.
*The players that made up this group were Harry Stuhldreher, Don Miller, Jim Crowley, and Elmer Layden.
*The Four Horseman had run rampant through Irish opponents' defenses since coach Knute Rockne devised the lineup in 1922 during their sophomore season.
*Notre Dame won 37 of its 41 games during the amazing four-year run of the "Four Horsemen", losing just three times and tieing once.
*The quartets' secured their fame with Notre Dame's 13-7 victory over Army in 1924.
*After that momentous win, the Irish recorded a 27-10 win over Stanford in the 1925 Rose Bowl
*Notre Dame finished the year a perfect 10-0 and was named by Sportswriters college football's national champion.

The Making of Football Legends
*It wasn't until late in that championship season that the foursome of Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden was first called the "Four Horsemen".
*While watching Notre Dame defeat Army on October 18, 1924, popular sportswriter Grantland Rice recalled the Biblical devastation of the "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" in the opening sentence of his newspaper column for the New York Herald Tribune (See post on The Article) helping the foursome achieve football immortality.
*In 1924, a dramatic nickname coined by a poetic sportswriter and the quick-thinking actions of a clever student George Strickler (Coach Rockne’s publicity aide and later Sports Editor of the Chicago Tribune) helped transform the quartet in college football history, the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame.
*After the team arrived back in South Bend, Strickler had the four players dressed in their uniforms, on the backs of four horses from a livery stable in town and took the now infamous picture.

"At the time, I didn't realize the impact it would have," Jim Crowley said later. "But the thing just kind of mushroomed. After the splurge in the press, the sports fans of the nation got interested in us along with other sportswriters. Our record helped, too. If we'd lost a couple, I don't think we would have been remembered."