If you say the words “four horsemen” to a Notre Dame fan, die-hard college football fan, journalism student or sports historian, there will be instant recognition.
Sportswriter Grantland Rice penned those words about Notre Dame running backs Harry Stuhldreher, Don Miller, Jim Crowley, and Elmer Leyden on this date in 1924.
Rice wrote what might be the best lede in all of sportswriting history — a lede is the opener to an article — and in so doing, he helped Notre Dame, Knute Rockne, and college football in general gain popularity.
Rice put those words to paper for the New York Herald Tribune after Notre Dame upset Army at the old Polo Grounds in New York by a score of 13-7.
Now ESPN’s Ryan McGee has a deep-dive feature on how Rice’s article came about, how it drove the popularity of Notre Dame and college football, and what became of those four men as they lived out their lives.
Here’s the lede in full, courtesy of ESPN and McGee:
“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.”
The whole feature is worth a read for any Notre Dame football obsessive.
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