Four Horsemen

Four Horsemen, name given by the sportswriter Grantland Rice to the backfield of the University of Notre Dame’s undefeated football team of 1924: Harry Stuhldreher (quarterback), Don Miller and Jim Crowley (halfbacks), and Elmer Layden (fullback). Supported by the Seven Mules (the nickname given to the offensive line that cleared the way for the four backs) and coached by Knute Rockne, they gained enduring football fame when the nickname appeared in Rice’s report in the New York Herald Tribune describing Notre Dame’s 13–7 victory over Army on October 18, 1924. Rice likened them to the mythological Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse for the damage they did to Army’s team. A later photograph of the four, dressed in football uniforms and mounted on horses, caught the fancy of fans. The Four Horsemen and their teammates lost only 2 of 30 games played from 1922 to 1924. Stuhldreher, Crowley, and Layden went on to coaching careers.

(Read Walter Camp’s 1903 Britannica essay on inventing American football.)