Notre Dame Football History: Coaches, Draft Picks, All-Americans, and Everything Else You Need to Know About the Fighting Irish

It’s impossible to explain the history of college football without mentioning Notre Dame. 

Before the spectacle and business of modern college football developed, one of the clearest, most dynastic centers of power was South Bend, Indiana. 

Notre Dame football trailblazed a path through the early history of college football in the early and middle portions of the 20th century, helping to lay the foundation for the amateur and college sports landscape that now dominates American youth and culture. 

Notre Dame football odds are still relevant, even if the days of the Four Horsemen are long gone. But for many Irish fans, it’ll be hard for the wins of the present to ever match the glory days of generations past.

Notre Dame Football Team History

The Notre Dame football program played its first game in 1887. It spent its first 25 years mostly in the shadow of larger regional programs such as Michigan and Penn State.

That all changed in the 1910s. Jesse Harper joined the Irish as head coach in 1913, helping the program claim national headlines with a 35-13 road win at Army. 

The most important element of that team turned out to be star two-way end Knute Rockne. By 1913, Rockne was a senior bound to graduate at the end of the year. But Rockne stayed with the team as a graduate assistant from 1914 to 1917, ultimately succeeding Harper as head coach in 1918.

Rockne’s ascension exploded the national position of Notre Dame football. In the 13 seasons led by Rockne, Notre Dame had a 105-12-5 record. The Irish notched five undefeated seasons and three national championships, transforming themselves into one of the elite institutions of 20th-century college football.

Rockne delivered the first championship in 1924, though the Rose Bowl win and subsequent championship declarations are not quite the most enduring element of the first Irish triumph. This was the season of Notre Dame’s legendary backfield, immortalized by Grandland Rice as the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame in what is arguably the most famous single sports article of all time:

“Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as famine, pestilence, destruction and death. These are only aliases. Their real names are: Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden. They formed the crest of the South Bend cyclone before which another fighting Army team was swept over the precipice at the Polo Grounds this afternoon as 55,000 spectators peered down upon the bewildering panorama spread out upon the green plain below…”

Rockne was also immortalized, though in a very different way. After back-to-back national championships in 1929 and 1930, Rockne died suddenly in a plane crash. He was only 43 years old, presumably with a lot of life – and Notre Dame football – still ahead of him.

Rockne’s legend hung over the program through the 1930s, where the Irish were often good but never quite great. There was a return to form in the 1940s, when former player Frank Leahy returned to South Bend to right the ship. 

Leahy, who played under Rockne from 1928 to 1930 and helped win two national championships as a player, won his first as a coach in 1943. He then joined the Navy – not the football program, but the actual Navy, amid World War II – where he served for two years. He was honorably discharged as a lieutenant, returned to Indiana, and promptly won three more national championships in 1946, 1947, and 1949. 

It was arguably one of the most successful decades any individual American citizen has ever had. 

Leahy departed after the 1952 season, ushering in a slow decline back to mediocrity for Notre Dame. The Irish struggle peaked in the early 1960s, when Joe Kuharich resigned in the spring of 1963 after feeling too much pressure from the high expectations of fans. The glory days of the 1920s and ’40s had yet to fade in their minds. 

Freshman team coach Hugh Devore oversaw the team in its transitional 1963 season, where the team bottomed out at 2-7. 

In 1964, Notre Dame hired away Ara Parseghian from Northwestern, who quickly reversed course and brought Notre Dame back to the top of college football. The Golden Domers earned seven finishes in the top five of the AP rankings during Parseghian’s 11-year run from 1964 to 1974, including national championships in 1966 and 1973.

Notre Dame would continue to spin off elite years in the late 20th century, winning the 1978 Cotton Bowl against Texas and the 1989 Fiesta Bowl against West Virginia. Both seasons culminated with national championships, under Dan Devine and Lou Holtz, respectively. 

But as conferences shifted and grew, and resources piled up in other sections of the country, Notre Dame’s relevance declined in small but meaningful ways. Notre Dame has remained a strong academic institution, and in a football-first modern academic culture, that has sometimes been a headwind for the Irish. 

Notre Dame won at least nine games from 10 different times from 1990 (still Holtz) through the end of Charlie Weis’ tenure in 2009. Brian Kelly arrived in 2010, delivering a BCS championship appearance in 2012 and two CFP semifinal appearances in 2018 and 2020. Additionally, there were also New Year’s Bowl appearances in 2015 and 2021. 

Marcus Freeman has kept the Irish playing at a high level, leading the Irish through the inaugural 12-team playoff bracket in 2024 and back to another national championship game appearance. 

But Notre Dame has yet to claim a championship since the 1980s. Even that one comes with at least a mild asterisk, since College Football Hall of Fame quarterback Major Harris separated his shoulder on the third play of the game. 

Notre Dame remains a top program in modern college football. But in an age of conference elitism and NIL, it’s hard to see how Notre Dame Football could ever return to the kind of dominance once defended by pioneers like Rockne and Leahy. 

Notre Dame Football Coaches: The Complete History

• J.L. Morison (1894)
• H.G. Hadden (1895)
• Frank E. Hering (1896-98)
• James McWeeney (1899)
• Pat O’Dea (1900-01)
• James Farragher (1902-03)
• Louis Salmon (1904)
• Henry J. McGlew (1905)
• Thomas Barry (1906-07)
• Victor M. Place (1908)
• Frank Longman (1909-10)
• John L. Marks (1911-12)
• Jesse Harper (1913-17)
• Knute Rockne (1918-30)
• Hunk Anderson (1931-33)
• Elmer Layden (1934-40)
• Frank Leahy (1941-43; 1946-53)
• Edward McKeever (1944)
• Hugh Devore (1945; 1963)
• Terry Brennan (1954-58)
• Joe Kuharich (1959-62)
• Ara Parseghian (1964-74)
• Dan Devine (1975-80)
• Gerry Faust (1981-85)
• Lou Holtz (1986-96)
• Bob Davie (1997-2001)
• Tyrone Willingham (2002-04)
• Charlie Weis (2005-09)
• Brian Kelly (2010-21)
• Marcus Freeman (2022-present)

Notre Dame Football Conference History

Notre Dame is unique in that it has always been an independent program.

When the era of the independents began to dry up in the 1970s and ’80s, Notre Dame kept its status. It still plays an independent schedule today, for better or for worse.

The only exception was 2020 – the COVID college football season – where Notre Dame temporarily joined the ACC for schedule simplicity purposes. 

Notre Dame Football All-Americans

Notre Dame football has had 92 total consensus All-Americans in its history. In recent years, the Irish have specialized in producing excellent tight ends and offensive linemen such as Ronnie Stanley and Michael Mayer.

Other prominent 21st-century All-American names include Golden Tate, Kyle Hamilton, and Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah.

Notre Dame Football Draft Picks

Since the start of the NFL draft in the 1930s, Notre Dame has had 538 players selected – more than any other college football program.

That includes 69 first-round picks and five No. 1 overall picks: QB Angelo Bertelli (1944), QB Frank Dancewicz (1946), end Leon Hart (1950), RB Paul Hornung (1957), and DE Walt Patulski (1972).

Notre Dame Football Heisman Winners

Seven Notre Dame players have won the Heisman Trophy, but they all came before 1990. 

They are Angelo Bertelli (1943), John Lujack (1947), Leon Hart (1949), Johnny Lattner (1953), Paul Hornung (1956), John Huarte (1964), and Tim Brown (1987).