100 Years of Notre Dame Football

In 1887, a small college in South Bend, Ind., played its first football game against the powerful University of Michigan and lost, giving little indication that it would become the nation's dominant gridiron school over the next 100 years. That century is chronicled in detail by the author of The Billy Martin Story and The Tom Seaver Story and makes for exciting reading for any football fan. Emphasized are Knute Rockne, who as a player teamed with Gud Dorais in 1913 to show the East Coast the power of the passing game and went on to become one of the most successful coaches of all time; the legendary Frank Leahy, of the late 1940s and early '50s; and Ara Parseghian, the great coach of the '60s and '70s. There are also tales of such outstanding players as George Gipp, Paul Hornung, Bill Shakespeare (whose weakest subject, incidentally, was English), Joe Theisman and Joe Montana. This book is literally a history of all top-level collegiate football for the century. Photos not seen by PW. (September 21)