At Notre Dame, the first 'America's Team,' they wake the echoes on a run to another national title

ATLANTA (AP) — Between Touchdown Jesus, “Win One for the Gipper," Rudy, and, yes, even the forward pass, there are those who believe football wouldn’t quite be football without Notre Dame.

With the Fighting Irish waking up the echoes and playing for a title again after a generation-long retreat from the limelight, now might be the perfect time to admit it — maybe they were right.

Ever since 1913, when an end named Knute Rockne helped a small Catholic school based in South Bend, Indiana, pull off a stunner by beating Army, Notre Dame has stood as one of the main shapers of college football.

“They were really the first ‘America’s Team,’” says Jack Nolan, the longtime radio personality for the Fighting Irish. “They were the first team that played on both coasts. I’ve told folks, and even told a couple of recruits, that Notre Dame is Broadway.”

Rockne didn’t invent the forward pass in that win against Army, but by catching throws in stride — up to then, receivers ran to a spot, stood there and waited — he introduced the pass as a dynamic, game-changing play that now needs no explanation.

Rockne went on to coach at Notre Dame, which featured a backfield famously nicknamed the Four Horsemen. Harry Stuhldreher, Don Miller, Jim Crowley and Elmer Layden were immortalized by Grantland Rice in what is widely recognized as the best lead sentence in the history of sports writing: “Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again.”

And it was Rockne who, after the tragic death of running back George Gipp, (maybe) uttered the words “Win one for the Gipper” to motivate his team. That line became more famous when an actor-turned-politician named Ronald Reagan recited it the 1940 movie, “Knute Rockne, All American,” then used it as a campaign slogan that helped propel him to the presidency in 1980.

When Rockne himself died tragically in a plane crash in 1931, it cemented a legend that already had taken on mythical proportions.

Politics. Sports. Religion. The history of Notre Dame football covers all that. Especially religion.

Legend has it that the Big Ten’s rejection of Notre Dame in 1926 — resulting in an outsider status the Irish later embraced — was steeped in anti-Catholic sentiment held by Michigan’s athletic director, Fielding Yost.

Time marched on.

By 1964, with football firmly established as another sort of religion on campus, the school president, the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, wanted to make a grand statement about Notre Dame’s singular standing in American education. He instructed architects to think big with the construction of a new campus library.

That’s how the “Word of Life” mural came into being. It’s a 134-foot-tall painting of Jesus with his arms upraised to bless a group of teachers and doctors below him.

That you could see the painting of Jesus from anywhere in the south end of the nearby football stadium is how the mural became known as “Touchdown Jesus” — as iconic a college football landmark as there is.

“Sometimes in practice, I’ll kind of look up and see that,” receiver Jordan Faison said. “And it reminds me of how far I’ve come, and how far some of my teammates have come on this journey, and that the place where we’re doing this is Notre Dame.”

Ever since the Big Ten turned down Notre Dame, the Fighting Irish have mostly gone it alone. Their status as an independent has always been unusual and, now, makes them virtually one of a kind in a sport dominated by megaconferences with 16 and 18 teams.

Exhibit A is media. Of all Notre Dame's media deals over the decades, the most famous is the one it cut with NBC that started in 1991 and still exists today. It places financial heft behind a program that doesn't benefit from multimillion-dollar media rights payouts from any conference.

The independent status also allows Notre Dame flexibility with its own schedule, giving it the ability to play games coast to coast — unheard of in the 1920s and ‘30s, and not as common until the last decade or so ushered in the era of conferences that stretch across three time zones.

In a nod to the realities of the times, Notre Dame does, however, play basketball and other sports in the Atlantic Coast Conference, and has a deal to play four football games a year against opponents from the ACC.

Notre Dame's independence also gave it a decades-long head start on the now-common art of recruiting across the country instead of just regionally.

“I think there’s long been a feeling of not wanting to just be a Midwest institution,” said John Heisler, a longtime sports information director at the school who has written 10 books on the Fighting Irish.

Any list of the 10 most important figures in Notre Dame football history would have to include Lou Holtz.

The irrepressible coach is now 88 and still needling the opposition. His digs at the Buckeyes before last year’s game — questioning their physicality and throwing shade on coach Ryan Day — are taking on new meaning now that the teams are meeting for the title.

Just last week, Holtz was back on social media predicting a Notre Dame win on Monday night.

“Remember, we’re Notre Dame and they ain’t,” said Holtz, who plans on being in Atlanta for the title game.

Holtz, who spent a career putting chips on his players' shoulders and making every opponent sound like a world beater, and whose bromides — “When all is said and done, more is said than done” — were so darn true they bordered on corny, is the living embodiment of the reason there isn’t much neutral ground about Notre Dame.

You either love ‘em or you hate ‘em.

Maybe worse than loving or hating the Fighting Irish would be if people just didn’t care.

That is the precarious place Notre Dame had been flirting with since Holtz led the Irish to their last national title in 1988, then left after the 1996 season.

Some say the days of “Catholics vs. Convicts,” the 1988 pseudo culture war between Miami and Notre Dame that is the subject of its own book and documentary, simply couldn’t happen anymore in this more professional-looking era.

And maybe neither could the ripped-from-the-headlines underdog tale that led to the 1993 movie “Rudy,” about the undersized Notre Dame walk-on who finally gets his chance to play, then gets carried off the field on his teammates' shoulders.

Regardless, since Holtz left and college football turned into a battle of once-regional programs taking their acts national, Notre Dame has bordered on becoming “just another program.”

With coach Marcus Freeman in charge, this year marked the first time since 1994 the Fighting Irish got a “W” in a major bowl game. This season’s run, which included a victory over Indiana in college football’s first-ever postseason game on campus, is sparking a frenzy of nostalgia and reigniting all those ancient feelings about the Irish.

“The further Notre Dame pushes into the playoffs, the more crowded our parking lot gets,” said Wren Martin, marketing manager for Notre Dame’s on-campus bookstore.

This season is reminding us once again that, even as winning comes and goes, Notre Dame finds new spins on a story old as time.

The year was 1964, and the Fighting Irish, after struggling for about a decade in the wake of coach Frank Leahy’s departure, were coming back to life under the direction of an eager outsider — a Protestant of Armenian descent named Ara Parseghian — who had toppled Notre Dame four straight years while he was coaching Northwestern.

Some believe the “Era of Ara” truly kicked off the day the Irish beat Stanford 28-6 to improve to 5-0.

The great sports scribe Dan Jenkins was in town that week writing for Sports Illustrated. He kicked off his tale by noting that the school had recently regilded its iconic golden dome to keep it glowing.

Then, Jenkins wrote: “The dome on the main building seemed to be giving off beams of inspiration as it did in the days of Frank Leahy and Knute Rockne. Notre Dame is winning again.”

It was true back then. It's true again today.

AP freelance writer Curt Rallo in South Bend, Indiana, contributed to this report.

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FILE - Notre Dame's Joe Montana tries to brush off Reggie Wilkes of Georgia Tech during his six-yard gain in first quarter of an NCAA college football game, Nov. 7, 1977 game at South Bend, Ind. (AP Photo/File)

FILE - In this Nov. 21, 2011, file photo, the hallway between the locker room and the field at Notre Dame stadium shows the sign "Play like a Champion Today" in South Bend, Ind. (AP Photo/Joe Raymond, File)

FILE - In this 1924, file photo, Notre Dame's infamous backfield, "The Four Horsemen," from left, Don Miller, Elmer Layden, Jim Crowley and Harry Stuhldreherare pose on the practice field in South Bend, Ind. (AP Photo/File)

FILE - Notre Dame's head coach Lou Holtz and the Fighting Irish walk onto the field of the Los Angeles Coliseum to warm up for an NCAA college football game against Southern California Saturday, Nov. 30, 1996 in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian, File)

FILE - Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne, left, and team captain Clem Crowe watch the team practice in 1925. (AP Photo/File)

FILE - The Virgin Mary atop the "Golden Dome" on the Administration Building is seen through nearly bare trees before an NCAA college football game between Notre Dame and Pittsburgh, Saturday, Oct. 28, 2023, in South Bend, Ind. (AP Photo/Michael Caterina, File)

FILE - A Notre Dame flag waves in the wind in front of the The Word of Life Mural, aka "Touchdown Jesus," on the Hesburgh Library before an NCAA college football game between Notre Dame and Northern Illinois, Saturday Sept. 7, 2024, in South Bend, Ind. (AP Photo/Michael Caterina, File)

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Milos Uzan scored 16 points, LJ Cryer added 15 and No. 1 seed Houston was able to rest up for the rest of the NCAA Tournament while romping past No. 16 seed SIU Edwardsville 78-40 on Thursday in the first round of the Midwest Region.

Ja'Vier Francis added 13 points and eight rebounds for Houston (31-4), which now gets a tough second-round matchup with No. 8 seed Gonzaga on Saturday. The Bulldogs blitzed ninth-seeded Georgia, 89-68, in their tournament opener.

“I thought our defense and our rebounding, two of the things we really emphasize, was good today,” Houston coach Kelvin Sampson said. “Shot selection was really good to start the game — knocked some shots down, got off to a good start.”

The Cougars finished well, too. The final margin was the biggest of the game.

Ray'Sean Taylor had 10 points for SIUE (22-12), which was just 2 of 24 from the 3-point arc in its first NCAA appearance.

“It's definitely a gut-punch because I feel like we had more to give for sure,” said Taylor, breaking down in tears. "When I look back at it, I'm not going to be mad about the game. I don't like to lose, but I'm never going to hold my head down ever. I never let anyone see me with my head down. They played better than us today.

“Good luck to them. They have a team to win it all.”

It’s never a good formula for springing an NCAA upset to let what is arguably the best defensive team in the country also shoot better than 60% from the field and only turn it over twice during the first 20 minutes of a game.

That’s exactly what SIUE did against Houston.

The Cougars probably knew they were in for a tough afternoon against a bigger, more athletic bunch of Cougars in the first few minutes, when Houston scored on nine straight offensive possessions. At the other end, SIUE struggled just to get shots off — at one point, guard Brian Taylor II was trapped so quickly that he genuinely looked perplexed.

The whole affair may have been summed up by the last 3 seconds of the first half: SIUE forward Myles Thompson was trapped near midcourt, turned the ball over, and Cryer promptly drilled a 3 from the wing to give Houston a 52-24 lead.

Sampson's bunch kept extending the lead all the way to the finish.

“They were physical, made some shots early when we had a couple breakdowns, and then they hit some really hard shots as well,” SIUE coach Brian Barone said. “We weren't able to dig out of that hole.”

SIU Edwardsville may have had more fans — or at least louder ones — than Houston for its NCAA tourney debut. They cheered all the way to the finish, too, when Barone took his starters out of the game.

Houston was no doubt pleased to see J'Wan Roberts moving around fine on the ankle he sprained in the Big 12 Tournament. He was able to spend much of the second half resting with the rest of the Cougars' starters on the bench.

Houston advanced to the second round for the seventh consecutive NCAA Tournament.

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SIU Edwardsville forward Kyle Thomas, right, dives for a loose ball against Houston forward Joseph Tugler, left, during the first half in the first round of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Thursday, March 20, 2025, in Wichita, Kan. (AP Photo/Travis Heying)

SIU Edwardsville guard Declan Dillon (5) tried to get possession of the ball against Houston during the first half in the first round of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Thursday, March 20, 2025, in Wichita, Kan. (AP Photo/Travis Heying)