Harry Augustus Stuhldreher was an American football player, coach, and college athletics administrator.
Background
Harry was born on October 14, 1901 in Massillon, Ohio, United States. He was the son of William J. Stuhldreher and Flora Witt. As a child in Massillon, an early hotbed of professional football, he was befriended by his future mentor, Knute Rockne, who coached and played end for the Massillon Tigers.
Education
He attended St. Mary's Grammar School and Massillon High School, quarterbacking the football team there in 1917, 1918, and 1919 under coach Jack Snavely. His high school grades were not good enough for him to enter college directly, so in 1920 he attended Kiski Preparatory School in Pennsylvania. He graduated from Notre Dame in 1924 with a A. B. degree.
Career
Stuhldreher played on the Notre Dame freshman team in 1921. The 1921 freshman team did not do very well; it lost to both Lake Forest Academy and the Michigan State freshmen. Stuhldreher, though, caught Rockne's eye. The best blocker but poorest runner of the future "Four Horsemen, " Stuhldreher, at five feet, seven inches, and 150-155 pounds, was the smallest.
In 1921 Rockne had begun to experiment with what came to be known as the "Notre Dame shift, " a technical innovation that had the running backs change positions immediately before the play began. This concept of backfield "motion" caused a storm of protests from opponents; several amendments to Rule 9, Section 5 - the part of football rules that dealt with restrictions on backfield motion - resulted. Concurrently, Rockne blended new "sleight of hand" and "misdirection" techniques into the quarterback's repertoire, with noticeable success.
Stuhldreher later wrote that the "shift" was the key to Notre Dame's offensive success while he was there. The following year, Stuhldreher, Layden, Miller, and Crowley began to play as a unit.
In 1923 sportswriter Grantland Rice, who coined the "Four Horseman" name, first saw them in action. He had chosen to attend the Notre Dame-Army game at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn instead of covering the World Series, and stood at the midfield sideline with Brink Thorne, Yale's 1895 football captain. Stuhldreher led the interference on a left-end sweep that resulted in a twelve-yard gain for Crowley.
It was not until 1924, though, when Rice, in the Polo Grounds press box this time, watched the backfield march eighty yards in seven plays to key Notre Dame's victory over Army by 13-7, that the name "Four Horsemen" was actually applied to the backfield.
Notre Dame did not lose a game in 1924, beating Nebraska by 34-6. In that game Stuhldreher threw an eighty-yard touchdown pass to Crowley. The Irish also beat Georgia Tech 40-19, Stuhldreher completing fifteen of nineteen passes, including twelve in a row, for three touchdowns. In the Four Horsemen's only bowl game, Notre Dame defeated Glenn ("Pop") Warner's Stanford squad 27-10 in the Rose Bowl on January 1, 1925.
Stuhldreher was named to Walter Camp's 1924 All-America team, the only member of the Four Horsemen to receive that honor.
During his four years there, Notre Dame won two national championships, compiled a 26-2-1 record in his three years on the varsity squad, and was undefeated in the fall of 1924.
In 1925, Stuhldreher became football coach and athletic director at Villanova University. During an eleven-year tenure there he was credited with upgrading the football program while compiling a 65-24-10 record.
In the spring of 1936, Stuhldreher was appointed head football coach and athletic director at the University of Wisconsin. His teams compiled a record of 45-62-6 through the 1948 season, when he resigned the coaching position under fire but remained as athletic director.
On October 23, 1948, Mary Stuhldreher, in response to what she felt was unfair treatment of her husband by some of the local fans, published an article, "Football Fans Aren't Human, " in the Saturday Evening Post.
In 1950 Stuhldreher left Wisconsin to join the industrial relations division of the United States Steel Company in Pittsburgh. He later became assistant to the vice-president and director of community relations and recreational programs for that corporation.
He was one of the smallest quarterbacks in Notre Dame football history, standing 5' 7" tall and weighing just 151 pounds.
Quotes from others about the person
"Even as a freshman, " Rockne said, "he was a good, fearless blocker and was mentally sharp. "
Connections
In 1927 he married Mary McEnery, a movie columnist for the Philadelphia Ledger who later wrote an autobiography, Many a Saturday Afternoon (1964), about her life as a football coach's wife. They had four sons.