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haps the most quoted phrase in sports history: “Outlined against a blue, gray
October sky the Four Horsemen rode again... They formed the crest of the
South Bend cyclone before which another fighting Army team was swept over
the precipice at the Polo Grounds this afternoon as 55,000 spectators peered
down upon the bewildering panorama spread out upon the green plain
below.” By 1927, more than 120,000 fans filled Chicago’s Soldier’s Field to
watch Notre Dame’s 7-6 victory over USC. The Irish became “America’s
Team” long before the Dallas Cowboys were even founded. They played
games all over the country, becoming known as “Rockne’s Ramblers” for
their travels and they were, and remain, both the most beloved, and hated,
team in college football history. Rockne died in a plane crash in March, 1931
and the nation mourned as it would—without the same media of course—
when Princess Di or Michael Jackson died decades later. Rockne still holds
the record for college coaching success, with 105 wins, 12 losses, and 5 ties, a
winning percentage of .881. Along with the Yankees and the Babe, the Bears,
and other sports heroes of the decade, Rockne and Notre Dame made sports
both popular, incredibly profitable, and a social priority in an era that seemed
to offer endless entertainment. That would all change, soon, however.“Pop” Goes the Economy
Economists, politicians, and professors often talk of an economic “bubble,” a
condition where prices and assets rise incredibly high based on “irrational”
confidence in the market, and then burst, causing a major economic downturn
[like the “dot com” bubble of the late 1990s or housing bubble of 2008].
People may speculate that a particular capital purchase will bring back huge
returns [like Enron or the tech investors of the late 20th century] or be lured
by low, or nonexistent, interest rates [like those individuals who bought
houses in the early 2000s], and then find that their investments were worth-
less, their money gone. No bubble ever burst like the U.S. economy in 1929.
While we generally associate the well-known stock market crash of 1929 with
the calamities of that era, which we call The Great Depression, the market was
just one cause of the largest economic crisis in American history; there were
many reasons the prosperous bubble of the 1920s popped.
From 1929 until the Second World War, Americans endured the deepest
economic crisis in national history. The enormity of the depression can be