Talk:Four Horsemen (football)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	Four Horsemen (football) is part of WikiProject College football, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to college football on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
Stub	This article has been rated as stub-Class on the quality scale. (If you rated the article please give a short summary at comments to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses.)
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the importance scale.

Contents 1 Dash 2 Linemen 3 Revisions written October 2, 2006 4 Merged

[edit] Dash

It's absurd to think that someone in the 1930's was capable of running a 10 second 100 meter dash, much less a 100 yard dash. I'm deleting that part. User:169.229.125.167 05:42, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

• Maybe not, given that Notre Dame's own site makes that claim. And here's where the fun starts: the recent poster lifted the entire article from the Notre Dame page. Therefore, I will revert it to whatever it was before. [1] Wahkeenah 06:09, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

• Not totally absurd: The world records for the 100 metres were all 10 point something in the 1930s[2], and that was an era before professional atheletes. Plus 100 yards is 25 feet shorter than 100 metres - I don't have too much trouble believing that a fast college athelete could run 10 point something over 100 yards in the 1930s (but not with pads on!). Legis 07:52, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Linemen

The Horsemen's counterparts on the line were known as "The Seven Mules". 1) Does anyone have the reference to this? 2)With that, does it deserve mention in the article? Rlquall 02:55, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes - see the end of the current article, the Mules are covered.Arctictern 21:31, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Revisions written October 2, 2006

The previous arcticle was mainly a description of the University of Nebraska's games against the four horsemen. I moved that to the bottom of the page and added a substantial history of the actual group. This history was adapted from the Notre Dame Football Year Book of 1999. I addded items of my own knowledge to it. My father was Jim (James) Crowley, left halfback of the group.

Pat Crowley

• I used to hear that sometimes Rockne would put in substitute linemen but keep the horsemen out there, just to instill a little humility. Have you ever heard that? Wahkeenah 22:46, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

• Yes. He would often start a number of second string linemen and backs for the first 5 minutes or so. They were called his "shock troops". Then he would put in the first team, a little fresher than the opponents. Arctictern 20:39, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merged

Hee's the old article perhaps some info can be used to better the current article, looks redundant though. Quadzilla99 05:37, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

The Four Horsemen was a term first used by Grantland Rice to describe the backfield of Notre Dame's football team in 1924. The four players were quarterback Harry Stuhldreher, left halfback Jim Crowley, right halfback Don Miller and fullback Elmer Layden. All but Layden were All-Americans, and all four are members of the College Football Hall of Fame, being inducted in 1958, 1966, 1970 and 1951, respectively. Stuhldreher, Crowley, Miller and Layden led Notre Dame to a 10-0 season in 1924 and the team's first national championship.

The term first appeared in the New York Herald-Tribune on 19 October 1924. Rice's story about the previous day's win by Notre Dame over Army began:

"Outlined against a blue, gray October sky the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as famine, pestilence, destruction and death. These are only aliases. Their real names are: Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden. They formed the crest of the South Bend cyclone before which another fighting Army team was swept over the precipice at the Polo Grounds this afternoon as 55,000 spectators peered down upon the bewildering panorama spread out upon the green plain below."

Upon returning to South Bend, the four took publicicty photographs in their uniforms, riding borrowed horses. The pictures were sent out over the wire services, and the name stuck.

Stuhldreher went on to a brief professional football career before taking a coaching position at Villanova in 1925. In 1936 he became head coach at the University of Wisconsin, and retired from football in 1947. Crowley also played briefly professionally, before coaching at Georgia (1926), Michigan State (1929) and Fordham (1933), where he coached Vince Lombardi. Miller coached at Georgia Tech and Ohio State, before entering practice as a lawyer. Layden, who also lettered in basketball at Notre Dame and was elected president of his senior class, practiced law before coaching at Columbia College in Dubuque and Duquesne. In 1933 he was hired as Atheltic Director and head football coach at Notre Dame.