SOUTH BEND — The story behind the story of this college football season opener is staggering.
When fifth-ranked Notre Dame football starts on Sunday, Sept. 6, against Wisconsin, it will do so in Lambeau Field, named for Green Bay native Earl “Curly” Lambeau, one of the men responsible for bringing professional football to Northern Wisconsin.
He was a former Notre Dame fullback who played a key role in the first game of the first season for Irish coaching legend Knute Rockne.
True story.
Lambeau’s name is listed there on page 262 of the Notre Dame football record book, right between former Irish linebacker Jack Lamb and current offensive lineman Guerby Lambert. Lambeau, Earl (Curly) FB, Green Bay, WI.
Born in 1898, Lambeau graduated in 1917 from Green Bay East High School, where he played football for four years. There were reports that Lambeau had a tryout with the University of Wisconsin in 1917, but he never enrolled. Instead, he worked for his father in construction and played some local club football. That was Lambeau’s post-high school life.
Until 1918 when he enrolled at Notre Dame. Lambeau was a 5-foot-10, 187-pound fullback for Rockne, then the first-year head coach who replaced Jesse Harper, who finished 6-1-1 the previous season.
On September 28, 1918, Notre Dame opened the season in Cleveland against Case Tech (now Case Western Reserve University). Lambeau scored the first touchdown under Rockne in a 26-6 win.
There’s no record of how Lambeau scored. Maybe it was a dive from one yard out. Maybe he rumbled up the middle from the 10- or 15-yard line. Maybe it was his first carry of the game. Maybe it was his 12th.
Maybe he lined up in front of a left halfback named George Gipp.
Lambeau scored again in that opener. Of Lambeau, the Notre Dame Scholastic wrote following the 1918 season that he was “a line-plunger of terrific power” and was “wonderful in off-tackle drives.”
Scholastic opined that Lambeau “has a bright future in his two remaining years of competition.”
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Notre Dame went 3-1-2 in 1918, a season limited to six games (most teams played only nine) due to an influenza pandemic that would become known as the “Spanish Flu.” With no vaccines or antibiotics or antiviral drugs, the outbreak reportedly killed more than 675,000 in the United States and anywhere between 50 and 100 million worldwide.
The pandemic ended the Notre Dame football season in 1918. It also effectively ended Lambeau’s time at Notre Dame in 1919.
That spring in South Bend, Lambeau was diagnosed with a serious case of tonsilitis, which was often feared to be an early symptom of the Spanish Flu. Lambeau returned to Green Bay to convalesce. He never returned to Notre Dame.
Instead, Lambeau went to work at the Indian Packing Company in Green Bay, where he earned $250 a month. He also returned to his alma mater – East High – and coached football. Lambeau was a combined 14-4-3 over three seasons (1919-21). One of the players Lambeau coached at East was running back Jim Crowley, who would become one of Notre Dame’s famed “Four Horsemen.”
In August 1919, Lambeau and a Green Bay sportswriter, George Whitney Calhoun, founded the Green Bay Packers.
Indian Packing Company reportedly put up $500 ($9,600 today) to outfit the Packers. Lambeau is said to have modeled the Packers’ uniforms – blue and gold – after Notre Dame. Green Bay did not adopt its current green and gold color scheme until the late 1930s.
Two years after the Packers formed, they joined the Professional Football Association, known today as the NFL. Lambeau played 10 years for Green Bay. He later coached the team for 29 seasons and went 209-104-21.
In 1963, Lambeau was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. In 1965, two months after he died of a heart attack, the Packers renamed their home – City Stadium – Lambeau Field. On Sept. 6, it will host only the third college football game in its history and first since 2016.
And the first visit from Lambeau’s old school.
Follow South Bend Tribune and NDInsider columnist Tom Noie on X (formerly Twitter): @tnoieNDI. Contact Noie at tnoie@sbtinfo.com
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: How Notre Dame football, Lambeau Field are connected in history
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