The Fullback of Notre Dame

This year big-league professional football will be 21 years old. Last week its guardians hired an outsider to manage its man-sized affairs. The new commissioner of big-league football is no white-headed Judge Landis. But the football world last week agreed that no one could be better suited for the job than 37-year-old Elmer Layden, for the past seven years athletic director and football coach at Notre Dame.

To reign at Notre Dame is the dream of many a college football coach. Yet last week Elmer Layden voluntarily left the campus that had made him famed--first as one of the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame and later as successor to his teacher, the late great Knute Rockne. The old Horseman took a practical view of the matter. "I did it for the future welfare of my family," said he. "The National Football League is the fastest growing institution in American sport. I hope and believe I can be helpful in the further development of the organization." Layden's salary: $20,000 a year (for five years), double the pay he got at Notre Dame.

While college football viewed Coach Layden's departure with alarm--he is the fourth esteemed college coach to go over to the pros within a year--football fans speculated on his successor. Traditionally, Notre Dame's coach must be an alumnus. That specification applied to 40-odd possible candidates, notably, Jim Crowley (Fordham), Harry Stuhldreher (Wisconsin), Jim Phelan (Washington), Buck Shaw (Santa Clara), Eddie Anderson (Iowa), Frank Thomas (Alabama), Clipper Smith (Villanova), Gus Dorais (Detroit), Frank Leahy (Boston College), Charlie Bachman (Michigan State). At South Bend people thought that the University would probably ignore these top-notchers, promote Line Coach Joe Boland, for seven years Layden's understudy.

* Other three: Jock Sutherland of Pittsburgh, Jimmy Conzelman of Washington University (St. Louis), Greasy Neale of Yale, now coaching respectively the Brooklyn Dodgers, the Chicago Cardinals, the Pittsburgh Steelers.

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