Don "Midnight" Miller (March 29, 1902 – July 28, 1979) was an
American football
American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with ...
player and coach. He was one of the famous "
Four Horsemen
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are figures in the Christian scriptures, first appearing in the Book of Revelation, a piece of apocalypse literature written by John of Patmos.
Revelation 6 tells of a book or scroll in God's right hand tha ...
" of the
University of Notre Dame
The University of Notre Dame du Lac, known simply as Notre Dame ( ) or ND, is a private Catholic research university in Notre Dame, Indiana, outside the city of South Bend. French priest Edward Sorin founded the school in 1842. The main campu ...
's backfield in 1924, when the Fighting Irish won the 1924 National Title. Miller was inducted into the
College Football Hall of Fame
The College Football Hall of Fame is a hall of fame and interactive attraction devoted to college football. The National Football Foundation (NFF) founded the Hall in 1951 to immortalize the players and coaches of college football that were vote ...
as a player in 1970.
Playing career
Miller's three brothers attended Notre Dame before him. The most famous of these being
Harry "Red" Miller, captain of the
1908 squad. Notre Dame head coach
Knute Rockne
Knut (Norwegian and Swedish), Knud (Danish), or Knútur (Icelandic) is a Scandinavian, German, and Dutch first name, of which the anglicised form is Canute. In Germany both "Knut" and "Knud" are used. In Spanish and Portuguese Canuto is used whi ...
called Miller "the greatest open field runner I ever had."
In 2002, the NCAA published "NCAA Football's Finest," researched and compiled by the NCAA Statistics Service. For Miller they published the following statistics:
Coaching career
After his playing career, Miller coached at several colleges, including
Georgia Tech
The Georgia Institute of Technology, commonly referred to as Georgia Tech or, in the state of Georgia, as Tech or The Institute, is a public research university and institute of technology in Atlanta, Georgia. Established in 1885, it is part of ...
and
Ohio State
The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best public ...
. He became the head football coach of
St. Xavier High School of
Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville ( , , ) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 28th most-populous city in the United States. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana border ...
in 1934.
Law career
Miller eventually quit coaching and practiced law, in which he was successful in the Cleveland area. In 1925, he played professional football for the then-independent
Hartford Blues.
On February 5, 1957, Miller appeared on ''
To Tell the Truth''.
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Miller, Don
1902 births
1979 deaths
American football halfbacks
American men's basketball players
Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets football coaches
Hartford Blues players
Notre Dame Fighting Irish football players
Notre Dame Fighting Irish men's basketball players
Ohio State Buckeyes football coaches
High school football coaches in Kentucky
College Football Hall of Fame inductees
Sportspeople from Cleveland
People from Defiance, Ohio
Players of American football from Cleveland
Basketball players from Cleveland