Terry Brennan, Youthful Notre Dame Football Coach, Dies at 93
One of Leahy’s Lads as a player on national championship teams, he was hired as coach at 25 and fired at 30.
Terry Brennan in September 1954, for the duration of his first season as teach of Notre Dame’s football group.Credit...John Dominis/The LIFE Picture Collection, via Getty Images Terry Brennan became considered one of Leahy’s Lads, the elusive runners, strong-armed passers and muscular linemen who propelled Notre Dame to 4 countrywide soccer championships below Coach Frank Leahy in the Nineteen Forties.
Brennan performed halfback on two of those groups, and he starred inside the annual rivalry with Army. But he changed into remembered most for succeeding Leahy at age 25, a flow that startled the university football world.
Notre Dame introduced Wednesday that Brennan, who became residing in Wilmette, Ill., has died at 93. It did now not offer info.
Brennan took over a soccer application that had converted Notre Dame from a small, in large part unknown Roman Catholic institution in South Bend, Ind., to a storied name in popular subculture. But his coaching résumé was limited to three high college championship teams in Chicago and three hundred and sixty five days as Leahy’s freshman educate.
When Leahy retired and Brennan changed him in February 1954, the sports columnist Red Smith saw turbulence looming.
“He’s most effective 25,” Smith wrote. “By the time he’s 30, he’ll be a good deal more than 5 years older. Coaching Notre Dame is the maximum coveted process in football, and in all likelihood the maximum demanding.”
At the age of 30, Brennan was fired.
He had coached 4 prevailing groups in five seasons. His 1957 crew pulled off certainly one of university soccer’s greatest upsets, a 7-0 road victory over Oklahoma, snapping its report-setting 47-sport prevailing streak. But he have been faced with a reduction in athletic scholarships ordered through Notre Dame’s president, the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, who become decided to have Notre Dame considered as a renowned educational group and only secondly as a soccer powerhouse. Father Hesburgh had, in fact, taught Brennan at Notre Dame and had favourite his intellect.
Brennan become possibly doomed by using his failure to win a country wide championship, some thing that Notre Dame’s alumni had come to count on without a doubt each 12 months. And Leahy, in retirement, feuded with him, wondering the crew’s combating spirit.
Brennan’s firing, 4 days before Christmas in 1958, became widely condemned in the soccer world.
“Notre Dame received’t appearance superb inside the eyes of the u . S .,” stated Louisiana State’s Paul Dietzel, the 1958 college coach of the 12 months.
The Indiana Catholic and Record, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, said that the real losers in Brennan’s firing had been “the monks and laymen at Notre Dame who have been trying, successfully, we consider, to remake the general public image of Notre Dame from football manufacturing facility to fine university.”
Terence Patrick Brennan turned into born on June 11, 1928, in Milwaukee. He changed into a high college football celebrity, then made the Notre Dame lineup as a freshman in 1945, while maximum of the regulars have been serving in World War II.
In the postwar years, Notre Dame, led by means of quarterback Johnny Lujack, vied with Army for college soccer supremacy. Brennan, gambling on each offense and protection, made a key play of their 1946 sport at Yankee Stadium, a matchup of unbeaten squads, intercepting a halfback option pass by Army’s Glenn Davis on the Irish eight-backyard line late inside the first length. The groups played to a 0-zero tie, however Notre Dame became voted countrywide champions.
In the 1947 Army sport Brennan ran the opening kickoff again 97 yards for a landing and scored once more on a 3-yard run in the first period, sending Notre Dame to a 27-7 victory and another countrywide title.
He led the Irish in receiving and scoring in 1946 and ’forty seven and he rushed for 1,269 profession yards, but knee problems kept him from a seasoned soccer career.
Brennan coached Mount Carmel High School of Chicago to three consecutive Catholic league championships whilst obtaining a regulation diploma from DePaul University in Chicago, then became Leahy’s freshman teach in 1953. Leahy developed health troubles that season, leading to his retirement.
Brennan had hassle getting into Notre Dame’s stadium for his first home recreation as head instruct, in opposition to Texas, whilst he encountered roadblocks funneling site visitors. “The police wouldn’t permit me down Notre Dame Avenue, nor would they trust I changed into the top teach,” he once recalled. “I bet I appeared too younger.”
Notre Dame went nine-1 and 8-2 in Brennan’s first seasons as teach with players recruited via Leahy. But with the expertise drying up in the face of scholarship regulations and better admission necessities for athletes, the Irish ought to now not dominate. Notre Dame plunged to 2-eight in 1956, though quarterback Paul Hornung won the Heisman Trophy.
On the eve of the 1956 season finale, at Southern California, Leahy stated: “It’s not the losses that disillusioned me. It’s the attitude. What has passed off to the vintage Notre Dame spirit?”
Brennan’s teams went 7-three and 6-4 in the following two seasons, however with Notre Dame’s glory days simply at an end, he was requested to surrender. He became fired after refusing to do so, telling Sports Illustrated quickly in a while that he didn’t want to be visible as “quitting and walking out.”
He changed into changed by using Joe Kuharich, a Notre Dame guard of the 1930s who have been training the Washington Redskins. Kuharich in no way had a prevailing crew in 4 seasons at Notre Dame.
Brennan have become an investment banker in Chicago. He in no way coached soccer again.
Brennan in survived by four sons, Terry, Chris, Joe and Matt; daughters, Denise Dwyer and Jane Lipton; 25 grandchildren and 32 brilliant-grandchildren. His spouse, Mary Louise, died in 2001.
Looking back at his firing, Brennan felt that grievance from Leahy had became Notre Dame alumni towards him. “Psychologically in his thoughts, if the person that followed him succeeded, someway that took away from what he did,” Brennan instructed The South Bend Tribune in 1999. “I had certainly little need for him.”
“It’s a actual shame, type of sad,” Hornung said of Brennan. “He could have been one of the super coaches in Notre Dame history.”
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