December 14, 1930: A football game was played at the Polo Grounds in Upper Manhattan. The home team was not the one cheered by most of the fans. Most of them left stunned at the result.
America was a year into the Great Depression, and Jimmy Walker, the flamboyant, corrupt Mayor of New York City, had a private unemployment relief fund. He contacted his friend, Charles Stoneham, owner of the New York Giants baseball team and its home, the Polo Grounds; and another friend, Tim Mara, owner of the New York Giants football team, which leased the Polo Grounds from Stoneham. He asked if Stoneham would host, and Mara would play, a benefit game for the relief fund. Both agreed.
But who would be the opponent? There was a football team called the Brooklyn Dodgers, and another called the Staten Island Stapletons, but neither had a following that would fill the Polo Grounds' 56,000 seats. Nor did the Giants: Only once all season did they have a home crowd over 25,000, and that was on November 23, when 37,000 saw them beat the Green Bay Packers, 13-6. That would be the Packers' only loss of the season, as they won the Championship by 1 game over the Giants.
The most popular football team among New Yorkers was a college team, 700 miles west: The University of Notre Dame, in South Bend, Indiana. Although there is a school in Washington, D.C. named "The Catholic University of America," the high profile of Notre Dame's football team had made their school America's most familiar Catholic school.
This was due to the success of their head coach, the charismatic Norwegian immigrant Knute Rockne. Coaching players like the ill-fated George Gipp on his National Championship teams of 1919 and 1920, and the four-man backfield known as "The Four Horsemen" on his National Championship team of 1924, Rockne had made himself and his school legend. Catholics in cities like New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago, who couldn't afford to go to college, or even to finish high school, read of Notre Dame's exploits in the newspapers, and became fans, known as "Subway Alumni."
The game in which the great Southern, but nationally-syndicated, sportswriter Grantland Rice had named quarterback Harry Stuhldreher, halfback Don Miller and Jim Crowley, and Elmer Layden "The Four Horsemen," after the Apocalypse figures in the Bible's book of Revelation, had been at the Polo Grounds, a win over the U.S. Military Academy, a.k.a. "Army." The 1928 game in which Rockne had told his players of the dying wish of Gipp, suffering from an infection in those pre-antibiotic days, to "win just one for the Gipper," had also been against Army, at Yankee Stadium.
And Notre Dame had won the National Championship again in 1929 and 1930. In the current season alone, they had gone 10-0, and brought 66,000 fans to Pitt Stadium for their win over the University of Pittsburgh, 75,000 to Franklin Field in Philadelphia for their win over the University of Pennsylvania, 110,000 to Soldier Field in Chicago for their win over Army, and 74,000 to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for their win over the University of Southern California.
So they were the ideal opponent. And it's not as though teams in the NFL's early days hadn't played college teams before. So the Giants asked Rockne if he would bring his "Fighting Irish" east to play the Giants.
He wouldn't do it. Not because he objected to playing professionals -- or because the game would be on a Sunday. (The State of New York had only legalized professional sports on Sundays in 1919.) It was because the game had been set for December 14, only 8 days after their win over USC, and, having needed 3 days to get back to South Bend by train, and needing another day to get to New York by train, Rockne thought his players would be too tired to play.
So a team of "Notre Dame All-Stars" was set up: A few of the current players, who felt they could do it, came east. And the Four Horsemen, none of whom had made the trip to Los Angeles, were reunited.
But Stuhldreher was now the head coach at Villanova University in Philadelphia, Crowley the head coach at Michigan State, Layden the head coach at the University of Pittsburgh, and Miller the backfield coach at Ohio State. None of them had played beyond the 1926 season, and they were now 29 (Stuhldreher), 28 (Miller and Crowley) and 27 (Layden) years old -- not old if they had still been playing all along, but old enough to not be able to fully resume their playing careers if they had wanted.
Nevertheless, the American media had put into the heads of the American football-watching public that college football was superior to professional football, that pro football was a way for boys who hadn't grown up to make money playing the game they loved, on top of, or maybe instead of, getting a "real job." The consensus was that the Giants would be no match for the 24 men who assembled to represent the great Notre Dame.
But the Giants had quarterback Benny Friedman, who has been called the NFL's 1st great passer. They had end Red Badgro. They had tackle Steve Owen, who was also their head coach. All 3 would one day make the Pro Football Hall of Fame. They had backs Dale Burnett and Chris Caple. There were reasons why the Giants nearly won the NFL Championship.
Instead, the Giants sacked Stuhldreher in the end zone for a safety just 2 minutes into the game, and led 2-0. The Giants' big linemen overwhelmed the Notre Dame line, including some of the "Seven Mules" who had blocked for the Four Horsemen. It did no good: The Irish gained only 34 yards -- the entire game. Their passing attack was 0-for-9, with 2 interceptions.
In the New York Daily News, Marshall Hunt wrote of the crowd that came to see Notre Dame and ended up seeing the Giants, "More than 50,000 cheered every futile thrust of Knute Rockne's improvised squadron of former Notre Dame football players against the super line of Tim Mara's team."
In the 2nd quarter, Friedman drove the Giants down the field, and scored on a 4-yard touchdown run. Close to halftime, the Giants' line opened a hole for him, and he ran in from 22 yards. Giants 15, Fighting Irish 0.
Rockne lost the plot, as would be said in English soccer. This was not something he did often. He found Giants team president Harry March, and tore into him for allowing the Giants to embarrass his squad in a purported charity game. He told March to call off the dogs in the second half.
March must have gotten the message to Owen, because he sent in the reserves. And still, in the 3rd quarter, Francis "Hap" Moran threw a touchdown pass to Glenn Campbell (no relation to Glen Campbell the later singer). The Giants won, 22-0.
As sports historian Clayton Trutor wrote for Notre Dame Magazine in 2021:
The 22-0 final score headlined all newspapers in the city, earning the hometown team a grudging respect from writers who had previously discounted the professional game. Nevertheless, they were treated like sparring partners by many of the New York papers, who instead focused their coverage on the plucky performance of a Notre Dame alumni team that had assembled just a few days earlier.
It wasn't the catalyst for the NFL to take over from the pros in the minds of the public, but it was part of a gradual process that began, also with the Giants at the Polo Grounds, when Red Grange and the Chicago Bears beat them in front of 75,000.
Rockne died in a plane crash the next year, and many of the other great old football coaches, some of whom had spoken ill of the professional game -- passed from the scene, either through death or retirement.
In 1933, Jim Crowley became the head coach at Fordham University in The Bronx, and coached a line known as "The Seven Blocks of Granite," including future Packer coach Vince Lombardi. That team played their bigger games at the Polo Grounds, and had a famous 0-0 tie with Pittsburgh there, with both teams going in undefeated.
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December 14, 1930 was a Sunday. There was 1 regular-season game in the NFL that day: The Green Bay Packers, their Championship already assured, played the Portsmouth Spartans to a tie, 6-6 at Universal Stadium (now Spartan Memorial Stadium) in Portsmouth, Ohio.
Baseball was out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. There were 2 games in the NHL. The New York Rangers beat the Detroit Falcons, 3-0 at the old (but then-new) Madison Square Garden. And the Montreal Maroons beat the Chicago Black Hawks, 2-0 at the Chicago Stadium. The Falcons became the Red Wings in 1932, and the Maroons folded in 1938.
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