Notre Dame has been playing football for 135 years and along the way some momentous decisions were made to shape the history of this storied program now entering a daring new phase of college sports. This off-season, we look back at the 10 best decisions made for the Fighting Irish in the decades past.

#5
The 1913 Schedule

So many things on our countdown are woven together to make Notre Dame such an important part of the college football landscape. Nearly half our list can be connected in someway to today’s submission of the infamous 1913 football schedule concocted by Notre Dame.

Of course, this was the season with THAT upset of Army at West Point featuring the “discovery” of the forward pass where the receiver (an important guy featured prominently that day) kept running as the ball was delivered instead of stopping to catch the ball as was in fashion at the time. If anyone wanted to put that game alone in this countdown it would make perfect sense. However, the storylines leading up to the 1913 season as a whole are equally, if not more, important.

Jesse Harper was hired as head coach at Notre Dame after the 1912 season coming off a solid if unspectacular 4-year run at Wabash College in nearby Crawfordsville, Indiana. Message board posters at the time were notably upset about the small-timey hire but Harper would go on to make one of the biggest decisions in college football history.

Remember, as we chronicled in the #6 top decision, Notre Dame was wavering in the Midwest football region and preferred joining the Big Ten conference. Instead of waiting, Harper immediately acted.

Up to this point, Notre Dame rarely ventured too far away from campus. In the early years of the program, Notre Dame traveled to away games in-state or to Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio. In 1904, the team made a trip to Kansas, in 1907 to Pennsylvania, and in 1912 a trip to Missouri was scheduled.

For 1913, Harper scheduled an easy 3-game home slate to begin the year against Ohio Northern, South Dakota, and Alma (all defeated by a combined score of 169-7) and then did the unthinkable. He finished the season with 4 games, all on the road, and to far flung places away from South Bend. Perhaps even more impressive, he got the Notre Dame administration to green light the schedule!

The surprise upset of Army at West Point kicked off the road trip and would be the Cadets’ only loss across a 20-game stretch. Notre Dame then beat 1912 co-National Champion Penn State in Happy Valley (although the Nittany Lions were struggling in 1913), and then swung back west to beat Christian Brothers 20-7 outside of St. Louis.

As much as the win over Army is remembered, the road trip finale down to Austin against 7-0 Texas was just as emphatic. Notre Dame came away with a dominant 29-7 win to finish 1913 with a perfect 7-0 season.

There’d be no National Championship (because awesome rules in this sport) and Notre Dame actually ended 1913 unbeaten in the program’s last 25 games. However, the impressive finish on a national stage in all road games signaled to the rest of the country that Notre Dame was now a real contender–a promise the program would go on to fulfill in the coming years.