THE FOUR HORSEMEN
2006
12” x 12” x 10”
bronze

Outlined against a blue, gray October sky the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as famine, pestilence, destruction and death. These are only aliases. Their real names are: Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden. They formed the crest of the South Bend cyclone before which another fighting Army team was swept over the green plain below.

So were the words written in 1924 by Grantland Rice, the poetic sportswriter for the New York Herald-Tribune. Perhaps they are the most fabled quartet in college football history.

The photographic image, a sports icon today, was taken by George Strickler, Coach Knute Rockne’s student publicity aide and later sports editor of the Chicago Tribune. After Notre Dame’s 13-7 victory over Army on October 18, 1924, the team arrived back in South Bend. Strickler posed the four players, dressed in uniforms, on the backs of four horses from a nearby livery stable. None of the four young men stood taller than 6 feet and none weighed more than 162 pounds. The wire services picked up on the now-famous photo and the legend was born.
That Rockne led Notre Dame team went on to a 10-0 record and a 27-10 victory over Stanford in the 1925 Rose Bowl to give the Fighting Irish a national championship. The Four Horsemen, all four players, were eventually elected to the National Football Foundation Hall of Fame.

This sculpture was executed from that famous photo – the only photo - of the Four Horsemen. It has never before been captured in the 3 dimensional form of sculpture. The first casting is in the Alumni House on the Notre Dame campus and the dream is to see this work pointed up, or enlarged, to life-size and installed on the Notre Dame campus one day.