Fighting Irish Football


Fighting Irish Football was a program that featured former football coach Joe Boland. He was a Notre Dame graduate and played under the legendary coach Knute Rockne on the 1924 team. Boland coached at St. Thomas in Minnesota and then became an assistant coach at his alma mater in 1934 until 1940. He started the Irish Football Network to broadcast Notre Dame games with him as the announcer. In this first episode, the guest is Terry Brennan (graduate '49), new coach of the Notre Dame football team. He was just 26 years old, earning the job based on his successful years as a high school football coach in Chicago. He was about to start what would be a very successful inaugural season for Notre Dame, finishing the season 9-1. The rest of his coaching history was rocky as scholarship players recruited by the prior coach were not as talented as thought. He also had to deal with an increasing emphasis by Notre Dame on academics among its athletes, and was limited in the number of football scholarships that could be offered compared to other competitors. His final season as coach was 1958, and he never coached college football again. He from football to a career in investment banking where his law degree would serve him well. This recording is from September 20, 1954. Joe Hehn was fascinated by Notre Dame football as he was a graduate of the college. * * * Joe Hehn (1931-2020) was a pioneering collector of radio recordings when the hobby emerged in the 1960s. The Joe Hehn Memorial Collection is comprised of many recordings and documents. The latter include scripts, program documentation, catalogs of fellow collectors, and old time radio fanzines of the period. These documents are being scanned into Adobe Acrobat PDF files. Digitizing his collection of reel tapes and discs is the effort of a wide range of North American volunteers, and includes assistance of some international collectors. The groups supporting this effort with their funds, time, technology and skills are the Old Time Radio Researchers and a small group of transcription disc preservationists who refer to themselves as the "The Knights of the Turning Table."

This recording is part of the Old Time Radio collection.