The 1913 Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team represented the

University of Notre Dame The University of Notre Dame du Lac, known simply as Notre Dame ( ) or ND, is a private Catholic university, Catholic research university in Notre Dame, Indiana, outside the city of South Bend, Indiana, South Bend. French priest Edward Sorin fo ...

during the

1913 college football season The 1913 college football season had no clear-cut champion, with the ''Official NCAA Division I Football Records Book'' listing Auburn, Chicago, and Harvard as having been selected national champions. All three teams finished with undefeated re ...

Jesse Harper Jesse Clair Harper (December 10, 1883 – July 31, 1961) was an American football and baseball player, coach, and college athletics administrator. He served as the head football coach at Alma College (1906–1907), Wabash College (1909–1912), an ...

became head coach in 1913 and remained so until he retired in

1917 Events Below, the events of World War I have the "WWI" prefix. January * January 9 – WWI – Battle of Rafa: The last substantial Ottoman Army garrison on the Sinai Peninsula is captured by the Egyptian Expeditionary Fo ...

. During his tenure the Irish began playing only intercollegiate games and posted a record of 34 wins, five losses, and one tie. This period also marked the beginning of the rivalry with

Army An army (from Old French ''armee'', itself derived from the Latin verb ''armāre'', meaning "to arm", and related to the Latin noun ''arma'', meaning "arms" or "weapons"), ground force or land force is a fighting force that fights primarily on ...

and the continuation of rivalries with

Michigan State Michigan State University (Michigan State, MSU) is a public land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, the first of its kind in the United States. It i ...

. In an effort to gain respect for a regionally successful but small-time Midwestern football program, Harper scheduled games in his first season with national powerhouses

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...

, Penn State, and

Schedule

Season summary

Week 4: at Army

Notre Dame burst into the national consciousness and helped to transform the collegiate game in a single contest. On November 1, the Notre Dame squad stunned

, 35–13, on

The Plain The Plain (french: La Plaine), better known as The Marsh (french: Le Marais), was the majority of independent deputies in the French National Convention during the French Revolution. They sat between the Girondists on their right and Montagnar ...

West Point The United States Military Academy (USMA), also known Metonymy, metonymically as West Point or simply as Army, is a United States service academies, United States service academy in West Point, New York. It was originally established as a f ...

. Led by quarterback

Gus Dorais Charles Emile "Gus" Dorais (July 2, 1891 – January 3, 1954) was an American football player, coach, and athletic administrator. Dorais played college football at the University of Notre Dame, where he was an All-American in 1913 at quarterback ...

and future head coach Knute Rockne at end, Notre Dame attacked the Cadets with an offense that featured both the expected powerful running game but also long and accurate downfield forward passes from Dorais to Rockne. This game has often been miscredited as the invention of the forward pass. Prior to this contest, receivers would come to a full stop and wait on the ball to come to them, but in this contest, Dorais threw to Rockne in stride, changing the forward pass from a seldom-used play into the dominant ball-moving strategy that it is today.

References

Notre Dame Notre Dame Fighting Irish football seasons College football undefeated seasons Notre Dame Fighting Irish football {{Indiana-sport-team-stub