When Frank Leahy retired from Notre Dame after the 1953 season, he had the second-best record in the history of the game (107-13-9, .864), second only to Knute Rockne, his college coach and mentor. Seven decades later, he still does. Rockne created the image of Notre Dame, then a small Catholic university in a remote town in northern Indiana, as the premier college football program in the nation. But it was Leahy who secured that image, with six undefeated seasons and four national championships in an 11-season span. By achievement alone, Leahy should be as beloved as Rockne, who nearly a century after his tragic death remains a legend. Yet Leahy is virtually forgotten today, in many ways a victim of his own insatiable need to compete and win.
The University of Notre Dame granted Ivan Maisel rare and complete access to its voluminous cache of historical material, and Maisel has the cooperation of Leahy's family, enabling him to tell the rich story of an archetypal coach who was a celebrity in his day. Leahy made the cover of Time magazine and befriended presidents and movie stars alike. Leahy brought innovation to a program reluctant to change anything Rockne had done. But Leahy rankled opposing coaches and clashed with the priests at Notre Dame who sought to make the university as elite in academia as it had become on the field. These conflicts, coupled with the toll that Leahy's innate drive demanded of his health, brought his career to a premature end, hampering his legacy in the years to come. And what a legacy: only Nick Saban and Bear Bryant have won more national titles. The records of iconic coaches such as Bobby Bowden, Woody Hayes, and Eddie Robinson pale in comparison. Not only the Notre Dame fanbase but all college football fans will be hungry to rediscover a man and an era, the story of how Frank Leahy cemented Notre Dame's status as the defining program of college football.