INTERCOLLEGIATE FOOTBALL RESEARCHERS ASSOCIATION ™ The College Football Historian ™ Reliving college football’s unique and interesting history—today!! ISSN: 2326-3628 [October 2013… Vol. 6, No. 68] circa: Jan. 2008 Tex Noël, Editor (
[email protected]) Website: http://www.secsportsfan.com/college-football-association.html Disclaimer: Not associated with the NCAA, NAIA, NJCAA or their colleges and universities. All content is protected by copyright© by the author. FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/theifra 100 Years Ago Today, Notre Dame’s First Trip to West Point Made Football History By Jim Lefebvre [www.CoachForANation.com] On the afternoon of November 1, 1913, a pair of football teams representing all- male institutions of higher learning met on the Cullum Hall field at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York. On that day, it is said, football changed forever. For 18 students from the University of Notre Dame, a small Catholic college in northern Indiana, the trip began two days earlier, when they boarded a day coach in downtown South Bend, headed East on the longest football trek ever attempted at a school that began playing the game 25 years earlier. The captain of the Notre Dame squad, 25-year-old Knute Kenneth Rockne, reflected on his journey of the previous two decades. As a five-year-old, he was a new immigrant from Norway, learning English at the spanking new Brentano Elementary School in an area recently annexed to Chicago. Now, he stood at the very heart of American pride – ready to take on the accomplished young men to represent an entire nation on the playing field.