The 1924 Notre Dame football team was led by a stellar quintet of a backfield named by "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse". Together, Harry Stuhldreher, Don Miller, Jim Crowley and Elmer Layden torched college football, leading the Fighting Irish to an undefeated season and national title. None of that would have been possible without an equally stellar line. This is their story and their further impact in the sport.
Chuck Collins, Left End
Chuck Collins originally went to Notre Dame on a basketball scholarship, but hoops would not be what defined his time in South Bend. Although he was scrawny at 6'0" 170 pounds, Knute Rockne knew that Collins could be good enough to set the edge in Notre Dame's crushing rushing attack. He was a good student too, earning a law degree from Notre Dame in 1925, just months after helping the Fighting Irish win the national championship.
After graduation, he served as the head coach of North Carolina from 1926 through 1933. While he ended his time with the Tar Heels with a 38-31-9 record, his best year was 1929 when his team finished 9-1. Despite their success, they never did win a conference championship.
In 1934, he left football behind and joined National Carloading. It took a while but by 1957, he was its president and after a merger, he served as Universal Carloading and Distributing. Company's executive vice president. He spent the final decade of his working days running his own law practice in New Jersey.
Joe Bach, LT
Hailing from the small mining town of Chisolm, Minnesota and raised by Austro-Hungarian immigrants, Joe Bach's blissful childhood was interrupted when his father died suddenly when he was just six years old. He struggled for years trying ot find an outlet for his grief and was even sent to the Minnesota Training School for a spell.
But, the young man with boundless energy rebounded and soon found a worthy outlet for the void in his life: sports. In those days, the Chisolm school system was blessed with an abundance of resources thanks to the tax situation of their local mining companies. As a result, their schools were equipped with doctors and nurses to tend to the sick and injured, terrific teachers to guide students through college prep courses (very rare for the time) and a wide variety of after-school activities to keep young minds and bodies active throughout the day.
Joe Bach seized upon the opportunity, naming himself captain of the swim team, leading his basketball team to a district championship and leaving bewidlered defenders helpless as he dashed through opponents as a star running back on the football team.
Carolton's football coach, Cub Buck, noticed Bach and invited him to play for the "Harvard of the Midwest". Since it was in a lower division, Bach could play immediately as a freshman and it quickly became apparent that he was much too talented for that level of competition. Later in that 1921 season, St. Thomas coach and Notre Dame alumnus Joe Brandy was smitten by Bach as he ran straight through the St. Thomas defense. Not wanting to face him again, Brandy convinced Bach that he was too good for Carolton and should pursue transferring elsewhere.
So with a semester under his belt, Joe Bach transferred to the University of Notre Dame. After sitting out 1922 due to transfer rules, Bach stepped in when Gus Strange went down with a broken leg. Bach proved to be a natural at left tackle, amply leading the way for Notre Dame's lethal rushing attack. He also proved to be a natural tackler on the other side of the line, routinely making tough tackles for loss and generally wrecking havoc in opposing backfields.
Bach began his coaching career immediately upon graduation in 1925 as an assistant at Syracuse University. From there, he went to Pittsburgh as an assistant for Duquesne University in 1929, staying there through 194 where he ended his stay as the school's head coach. He went 8-2 in his lone season as their head coach before moving no to the NFL's Pittsburgh Pirates. In total, he served two two-year stints as the Pirates/Steelers head coach, never winning more than he lost.
His greatest success came with Niagara University from 1937 through 1941 where he led the football program to four Western New York Little Three Conference titles. After coaching the lines of the Boston Yanks (1948) and New York Bulldogs (1949), Joe Bach returned to the Steel City where he coached the Steelers in 1952 and 1953 before stepping down as a coach.
He would remain with the organization for the rest of his working days as a scout. Joe Bach passed away from a sudden heart attack minute after bing inducted into the Pittsburgh Sports Hall of Fame in 1966.
John Weibel, Left Guard
Though he stood just 5'9" and weighed just 165 pounds, John Weibel possessed the keen mind that all great guards must have to survive within the trenches. Inspired by his radiologist/pathologist father, Weibel vigorously pursued med school while mastering the finer points of Knute Rockne's box offense.
He spent two years as one of the program's most capable backups, stepping in whenever Harvey Brown went down with an injury. He proved his value early on while stepping in for Brown during Notre Dame's 0-0 tie with a powerful Army squad at West Point's Cullum Hall Field.
Once he reached his senior year, Weibel proved to be the anchor of one of the country's best offensive lines. The Scholastic even called him one of the greatest linemen ever developed at Notre Dame. After graduation, Weibel attended med school at Vanderbilt while coaching and scouting under Dan McGugh for two years, briefly leaving to assist Elmer Layden at Duquesne in 1927 before returning to finish his studies in 1928.
By 1931, he was almost finished with his internship at Pittsburgh's Mercy Hospital when he was felled with appendicitis. Besides their best efforts, his doctors were unable to save him and John Weibel died at the age of 26. His death occurred just a month before his coach, Knute Rockne perished in a plane crash.
Adam Walsh, Center
The captain of Notre Dame's undefeated squad was a master psychologist of gamesmanship. Once, Army's "Lighthorse" Harry Wilson was running wild against Notre Dame's defense. Knowing that he stood little chance of taking down the explosive running back, Walsh began to banter Wilson with insults whenever he could. Soon enough, Wilson began to lose focus on the game and pay too much attention to what was being said in his direction. Notre Dame triumphed 13-7.
After graduation, Walsh began a long coaching career. During his career, he coached Santa Clara College (1925-1928), Yale's line (1929-1933), Harvard's line (1934 and 1944), Bowdain College (1935-1942 and 1947-1958) and the Cleveland/Los Angeles Rams. While he managed to win 11 MIAA titles while at Bowdain, Walsh's career-defining accomplishment was in Cleveland where he won the NFL championship in 1945.
After stepping down from the game in 1958, Walsh entered politics, serving two terms in Maine's House of Representatives and was a U.S. Marshall for the state of Maine under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1968.
Noble Kizer, Right Guard
Ironically, Noble Kizer's high school in Plymouth, Indiana didn't have a football team. After organizing and playing on the basketball and track teams at school, Kizer dropped out of school to enlist in the U.S. Marine Corps at the tail end of WWI. He was still in training at Quantico when the war ended November 1918, so he returned home and finished with his graduating class of 1919.
After nearly tasting the horrors of war, Noble Kizer knew that he wanted more out of life so he began working at the South Bend YMCA to save money for higher education. There fate intervened. Knute Rockne saw him workout one afternoon and talked him into enrolling at Notre Dame and playing for its football team. Rockne didn't care that he had never played the sport before. He figured that he could coach him to greatness.
At 5'8" 165 pounds, he was a perfect fit as Rockne's "watch-charm guard", a smaller player that relied heavily on quickness, leverage and a keen intellect to block for the ball carriers. He split time with a much larger George Vergara (6'1" 187 pounds) his first couple of years in South Bend and it looked like Kizer would have to split time again as a senior since they were in the same class. However, before 1924 began, it was discovered that a Vergara had played half of a game for Syracuse three years earlier, thus rendering him ineligible for the year.
So he spent 1924 with a coach's whistle, tutoring Kizer on the finer points of the position from the sidelines. As a direct result of his guidance, Noble Kizer played better than ever. After graduation, he worked as an assistant for former Irish quarterback James Phelan at Purdue University from 1925 through 1929.
After Phelan left for the University of Washington in 1930, Kizer immediately took over the Boilermakers program, staying in that role through 1936. He even managed to scrounge up a couple of Big 10 championships in 1931 and 1932 while accumulating a 42-13-3 record. However, his greatest accomplishment as a coach may have been leading his squad to a resounding 19-0 win over Notre Dame at Notre Dame Stadium in 1933, a year after Knute Rockne died.
Poor health forced him to quit coaching in 1937, but he was far from done at Purdue, serving as the Athletic Director from 1933 through 1940. Throughout his time at Purdue, Noble Kizer spent a considerable amount of time traveling the state, starting high school football programs for schools that needed that kind of structure. He died from high blood pressure and kidney failure in 1940.
Rip Miller, Right Tackle
The 5'11" 180 pound right tackle from Canton, Ohio was a good fit for Knute Rockne's program, earning Notre Dame's Scholar Athlete Award. After graduation, he served as the line coach at Indiana and Navy before becoming the Midshipman's head coach in 1931.
In 1933, his last as the head coach, Ed "Rip" Miller led Navy to their first win ever over Notre Dame, a 7-0 statement victory. But despite his success as a head coach, his true passion was in molding offensive linemen so he returned to that role in 1934, allowing Tom Hamilton to take over. Miller served as Navy's Athletic Director until retiring in 1974.
Ed "Bugs" Hunsinger, Right End
Ed "Bugs" Hunsinger was the kind of player that just had a knack for stumbling into opportunity. He didn't play football in high school and yet he returned a fumble for a touchdown in Notre Dame's 27-10 win over Stanford in the 1925 Rose Bowl. After college, he played briefly for the Waterbury Blues (1925), Hartford Blues (1925) and Brooklyn Horsemen (1926), before settling on coaching.
He served as an assistant at Villanova from 1925 through 1931 when he moved on to Fordham. While there, the line coach taught the secrets of the game to a wide-eyed right guard named Vince Lombardi.
After serving in the Navy during World War II, Ed Hunsinger spent his remaining working days as a construction engineer in Philadelphia.
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