Saints and Sinners – Frank McNally on the Holy Joes and hell-raisers of Notre Dame

The sports teams of Notre Dame university traditionally have God on their side. Or if they don’t, it’s not for want of asking.

A dominant feature of their Indiana campus is a 41-metre-high mural depicting Christianity throughout the ages. Officially it’s called The Word of Life. Popularly, it’s “Touchdown Jesus”, after the central figure, who gazes benignly on the football stadium opposite.

Pre-game traditions include the team attending Mass. Players and supporters also visit a scaled-down replica of Lourdes Grotto to light candles.

The quality of the college’s sports facilities and training programmes, however, do not suggest a reliance on miracles. Nestled among libraries and student halls, the football stadium alone is the size of Croke Park.

The chimes they are a-changing – Frank McNally on the joys of listening to church bells at night

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Jumping off the page – Lara Marlowe at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair

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Egg on face – Alison Healy on the Warwick Egg Incident

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Murder Most Confusing – Frank McNally on Flann O’Brien’s murder weapon, Henry Marsh’s finger, and a relocated Joycean plaque

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Outside it is a statue of Knute Rockne (1888–1931), former playing star and greatest coach, whose many innovations are said to have included (in 1913) what is now the sport’s keynote move: the forward pass received on the run.

On the other hand, and getting back to religion, Notre Dame is also credited with coining the term “Hail Mary”. That’s a long pass thrown more in hope than expectation, at the stage of a game when it’s too late for anything sensible.

The phrase was first used publicly by members of a famous quartet known collectively as the “Four Horsemen of Notre Dame”.

That nickname was the idea a New York sportswriter in 1924. But the quartet happily embraced the biblical branding opportunity it presented, later posing for pictures on actual horses in between unleashing plague and pestilence on oppositions.

In the interests of balance, it must be noted that for all its Holy Joe reputation (even the lakes on campus are named for saints, Joseph and Mary respectively), Notre Dame has produced its share of hell-raisers too.

Even the sainted George Gipp (1895–1920), whose premature death and supposed valediction (“Win just one for the Gipper”) spawned a venerable locker room exhortation, immortalised on film by Ronald Reagan, had a tarnished halo.

Finding study a chore, he was expelled from college in junior year before football talent earned him a reprieve. And his brilliance as a sportsman was rivalled only by his inveterate gambling, also usually successful.

Rather than live in student residences, he spent his college years in hotels, financed by card games, dice, and three-pocket billiards, at all of which he was adept. Back before it was illegal, he bet on his own football games too, routinely, although he always backed Notre Dame to win, making his motives almost pure.

Then, I’m proud to report, there was Johnny “Blood” McNally (1903–1985), a man who became the subject of so many colourful stories that even his Wikipedia entry feels the need to distinguish between mere oral tradition and stuff that has been verified.

He was no relation to the diarist, blood or otherwise, although also a journalist for a while until he found more respectable employment. And he never actually played for Notre Dame because, as a young man in a hurry, he quit college early to turn professional.

But to leave open the option of return, he took the precaution of going pro under a pseudonym. Hence his nickname. He and a friend with similar plans were passing a cinema when they saw a billboard for the 1922 Rudolf Valentino movie, Blood and Sand. McNally temporarily adopted the surname “Blood”; his friend became “Sand”.

Verified tales about McNally’s long career as player and coach include him climbing onto the roof of a moving train once and running along carriages to escape a fight; jumping the narrow gap from a six-storey building to the hotel next door; having to be rescued from the stern flagpole of an ocean-liner, mid-Pacific, while performing chin-ups; and perching on a series of hotel ledges while singing Galway Bay.

Inverting the usual coach-player relationship, his teams often had to worry about his safety rather than vice versa. He also once caught a missed team train by driving ahead of it and parking across the line. But he survived that and other several sacking offences because he was so well liked.

He was a survivor in general. His winning bets included, in old age, a $1,000 dollar wager with a friend on which of them would live longest. Both wrote the bequest into their wills, but McNally collected.

In a more recent era, and interestingly for a Christian college, Notre Dame had a football coach named Faust: Gerry Faust, who held the job for several years from 1980.

He was a devout Catholic, however, and far from selling his soul for success, had a winning record that never rose above mediocre. Headline writers can’t have had many chances to drag the Devil into team coverage, although they had some consolation when his poor record led to an “Oust Faust” campaign by fans. He eventually resigned of his own will, soul and dignity intact.