American Coach: The Triumph and Tragedy of Notre Dame Legend Frank Leahy

Award-winning sportswriter Ivan Maisel brings the forgotten legend of Notre Dame head football coach Frank Leahy back to life, based on rare and complete access to Fighting Irish football historical archives and the Leahy family.

When Frank Leahy retired from Notre Dame after the 1953 season, he had the second-best record in the history of the game (107-13-9, .864), second only to Knute Rockne, his college coach and mentor. Seven decades later, he still does. Rockne created the image of Notre Dame, then a small Catholic university in a remote town in northern Indiana, as the premier college football program in the nation. But it was Leahy who secured that image, with six undefeated seasons and four national championships in an 11-season span. By achievement alone, Leahy should be as beloved as Rockne, who nearly a century after his tragic death remains a legend. Yet Leahy is virtually forgotten today, in many ways a victim of his own insatiable need to compete and win.
The University of Notre Dame granted Ivan Maisel rare and complete access to its voluminous cache of historical material, and Maisel has the cooperation of Leahy’s family, enabling him to tell the rich story of an archetypal coach who was a celebrity in his day. Leahy made the cover of Time magazine and befriended presidents and movie stars alike. Leahy brought innovation to a program reluctant to change anything Rockne had done. But Leahy rankled opposing coaches and clashed with the priests at Notre Dame who sought to make the university as elite in academia as it had become on the field. These conflicts, coupled with the toll that Leahy’s innate drive demanded of his health, brought his career to a premature end, hampering his legacy in the years to come. And what a legacy: only Nick Saban and Bear Bryant have won more national titles. The records of iconic coaches such as Bobby Bowden, Woody Hayes, and Eddie Robinson pale in comparison. Not only the Notre Dame fanbase but all college football fans will be hungry to rediscover a man and an era, the story of how Frank Leahy cemented Notre Dame’s status as the defining program of college football.

Ivan Maisel has covered college football for more than four decades, most prominently at ESPN from 2002-2021, where he wrote for ESPN.com, appeared on television, ESPN Radio and on podcasts. He also served as Editor-at-Large for ESPN College Football 150, the multi-platform history project that in 2019 commemorated the sesquicentennial of the sport. Prior to joining ESPN, Maisel covered national college football for Sports Illustrated, Newsday, and The Dallas Morning News. Most recently, he served as Vice-President, Editorial, and part-owner of On3, a new college football website/app. Maisel left the site in June 2023 to focus on writing books but retains his ownership. He has been honored eight times for Best Story by the Football Writers Association of America, and twice by The Associated Press Sports Editors, which in 2019 named him one of the 10 best sports columnists. He has written three books, including I KEEP TRYING TO CATCH HIS EYE, a memoir of dealing with grief after the death of his son in 2015. Maisel earned a bachelor’s degree in American Studies at Stanford University in 1981.