The Adventures of Johnny Lujack
The following feature has been re-published at Heisman.com with the permission of Notre Dame Athletics.
The Adventures of Johnny Lujack
On October 9, 2015, 1947 Heisman Trophy winner and four-sport Notre Dame standout Johnny Lujack returned to campus for a weekend visit for the first time in a decade. In addition to taking in the Notre Dame – Navy football game, where he flipped the ceremonial coin pregame, the World War II veteran (Navy) and former Chicago Bear great made stops by Notre Dame Stadium and its historic locker room, the Grotto and Sorin Hall, where he discovered that the dorm’s lounge is located in the same spot as his old room and is named the Lujack Lounge. Journey with us as we take a look back at the adventures of Johnny Lujack.
Lujack’s Legacy
He was perhaps the best T-formation quarterback ever, a brilliant passer who was also a clever ballhandler, decent runner and inspirational leader for the University of Notre Dame football program.
But that was only half of what won Johnny Lujack the Heisman Trophy in 1947. He was just as good on defense. Veteran Irish fans still talk about his open-field tackle on Army’s great Doc Blanchard that preserved the 1946 scoreless tie in Yankee Stadium.
A six-foot, 180-pounder from Connellsville, Pennsylvania, Lujack led the Irish to a 20-1-1 record in his two and a half varsity seasons. After his Heisman Trophy year, he had another year of eligibility remaining because his career had been interrupted by World War II, but Lujack elected to graduate and go on to the pros, where he became a star for the Chicago Bears.
After four brilliant seasons as Sid Luckman’s replacement, Lujack surprised the football world by announcing his retirement, at age 26, to return to South Bend as a backfield coach under Frank Leahy, the legendary Irish coach for whom Lujack had played during his college career.
When Leahy retired after the 1953 season, his job went not to Lujack, but to Terry Brennan, who had been one of Lujack’s Notre Dame teammates. Instead of serving on Brennan’s staff, Lujack left coaching to go into the automobile business in Davenport, Iowa, where he built the biggest Chevrolet agency between Chicago and Des Moines.
“When I got out of Notre Dame, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do,” Lujack once told an interviewer. “There was the job with the Bears, of course. I was thrilled with the idea of playing for the great Chicago Bears. But even then I was looking beyond and wondering what I would do eventually. I wasn’t silly enough to think that heroes last forever.”
But they do at Notre Dame. Mention the name Johnny Lujack around veteran Irish fans and you’ll probably have no trouble finding someone who’ll contend he remains the best of the school’s seven Heisman winners. Leahy called him “my most coachable player.” His coach with the Bears, the legendary George Halas, paid Lujack this compliment: “Completely stripped of all his amazing football skills, Lujack is indispensible for one thing—his poise.”
He first showed that poise in 1943. The Irish were unbeaten that season when quarterback Angelo Bertelli, the eventual Heisman Trophy winner, was called to active duty with the Marines. Pressed into service as Bertelli’s replacement, Lujack engineered a 26-0 victory over Army in his debut. However, after two more wins, the team’s hopes for an unbeaten season were dashed by the Great Lakes Naval Station in the last game. The team still was voted the national champion.
After the season, Lujack went into the Navy for two years. Upon his discharge, Leahy welcomed him back to South Bend and Lujack quickly regained his starting job on both offense and defense. In 1946, the great Army team of “Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside,” Blanchard and Glenn Davis, was the only opponent that came within 20 points of the Irish.
The Game of the Century
Held on Nov. 9, 1946, before 74,000 fans, the Notre Dame-Army game matched two of the finest teams in the game’s history. During the war, when Leahy and his star players were in the service, Army had pinned a couple of humiliating defeats on the depleted Irish, by 59-0 in 1944 and 48-0 in 1945. The week before the game, Leahy had his players take periodic breaks so they could chant, “Fifty-nine and forty-eight, this is the year we retaliate.”
Going into the final moments, the closest thing to a scoring threat had come in the second quarter, when Lujack guided Notre Dame to the Army four, only to have the Cadets hold on downs. But then the frustrated Blanchard, winner of the Heisman in 1945, almost broke it open for Army.
From his own 37, “Mr. Inside” crossed up the Irish by breaking outside, going around end and heading down the sideline. Only Lujack had a shot at him. Sprinting across the field, he finally dove for Blanchard’s ankles and brought him down at the Irish 37. Army failed to score and the game ended 0-0. That turned out to be the biggest play of the season, considering Notre Dame replaced Army as the national champion.
“They said Blanchard couldn’t be stopped one on one in the open field, yet I did it,” said an exhausted Lujack, who had played 60 minutes. “I really can’t understand all the fuss. I simply pinned him against the sideline and dropped him with a routine tackle.”
While most historians remember that game for Lujack’s tackle on Blanchard, who was headed for a certain touchdown, Lujack remembers the game for what happened when teammate Bob Livingston missed a couple of tackles. He told the story to illustrate Leahy’s legendary temper and personality.
“Bob Livingston missed a tackle,” Lujack said. “I was high as anybody and I screamed at him, ‘Livingston, you S.O.B.!’ I just let it slip. It didn’t mean a thing. But there was Coach Leahy, and he was angry at me. I could feel the heat up my spine like a blow-torch.”
As Lujack recalls it, Leahy dressed him down in front of the entire team for being disloyal to a teammate in the heat of battle.
“Another profane outburst like that, Jonathan Lujack,” said Leahy, “and you will be asked to disassociate yourself from our fine Catholic university. You might well remember that when I recruited you, I promised your parents you would have a splendid Catholic upbringing.”
Chastened, Lujack slumped on the bench and pulled up the hood of his parka. A short time later, poor Livingston missed another tackle. Lujack bit his lip this time, but a red-faced Leahy turned to the Irish bench to roar, “Gentlemen, I fear that Jonathan Lujack is right about Robert Livingston.”
The Road to the Heisman
At the end of the 1947 season, Lujack had completed 49 of 100 passes for 778 yards and six touchdowns. He also carried the ball 23 times for 108 yards and another TD, in addition to punting and playing defense. In the Heisman voting, he finished third, the award going to Army’s Davis.
As a senior, Lujack was the all-around star of what was easily the nation’s best team. In rolling up nine straight wins, capped off by a 38-7 drubbing of a USC team headed for the Rose Bowl, the Irish put 291 points on the board while allowing only 52.
Once again a triple-threat star—quadruple threat, if you could count his tackling—Lujack completed 61 of his 109 passes for 777 yards and nine TDs, ran 12 times for 139 yards and another TD, and handled the punting.
The Notre Dame star won the Heisman easily, amassing 742 points to 555 for runner-up Bob Chappuis of Michigan. Further back in the balloting were such standout players as Doak Walker of SMU, Charley Conerly of Mississippi, Bobby Layne of Texas and Chuck Bednarik of Penn.
Why Lujack over that kind of talent?
“I could run, pass, kick, play defense,” he once said. “And playing for Notre Dame, being the quarterback, losing only one game in three years…it probably was a combination of all that. I wasn’t real fast, but I was quick and had good instincts. I could plan in my mind what the other team was trying to do, which enabled me to anticipate the next play.”
As a rookie with the Bears, Lujack made his initial impact on defense, tying a record with eight interceptions. He also led the team in scoring, as he was to do in each of his four years with the Bears. In 1949, he set a record with 468 yards in a single game. He was all-pro his last two years.
When he retired prematurely and returned to Notre Dame as a Leahy assistant, some observers felt he was positioning himself to be Leahy’s replacement. However, Lujack once told writer Bob Addie that his motives weren’t nearly that political.
“I hurt my shoulder,” Lujack said. “It’s as simple as that. We were playing an exhibition game against the Packers and I was supposed to rest. But we got behind and Halas put me in. I got lucky and clicked for two quick touchdowns. After that, there was no staying out.
“I couldn’t throw a ball, my shoulder was so sore. But I wasn’t too bad once I got in a game. It’s a funny thing about that. A lot of athletes are so sore they can’t walk or throw. But put them in a game and they seem to forget all about it.
“But there came a time when I couldn’t forget it. The job as backfield coach at Notre Dame opened up and I was undecided for a long time. Finally I made the plunge.”
Elected to the National Football Foundation College Football Hall of Fame in 1960, Lujack stayed close to the game by doing some broadcasting. He also seldom missed a Notre Dame game, even though the drive from his home in Iowa was eight hours round-trip. Now retired, he spends most of his time in California.
Lujack kept his Heisman in his den. He’s understandably proud of it—”Quietly proud,” as he once put it—yet he’s proudest of the fact that he played for Notre Dame. He talked to writer John Hall about it before a Notre Dame-USC game in the early 1970s.
“The pride and thrill I get from hearing the Notre Dame Victory March is something hard to describe,” said the 1947 Heisman winner. “I’ve never heard it when goose bumps didn’t fly up and down my spine. In this age, we’re perhaps supposed to be above emotion and sentiment, let alone admit to it. But I couldn’t be prouder of admitting exactly how I feel about Notre Dame. I owe her more than I’ll ever be able to repay.”
About the author
A long-time Lexington Herald-Journal and Louisville Courier-Journal columnist, Billy Reed is now the executive editor of the Catholic Sports Network in Louisville. He wrote articles for the Notre Dame football gameday program for many years while juggling a 30-plus year career as a senior writer at Sports Illustrated that saw him cover 15 different sports and write more than 700 by-lined articles.
