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Sinking Navy. Last week Lattner & Co. faced a fired-up Navy team which had rolled up 158 points against its opponents while yielding only 35, and which was relying heavily on its underdog chance of upsetting Notre Dame. But Notre Dame's Fighting Irish were fired up, too. Their revered Coach Frank Leahy had been rushed to the hospital with stomach spasms midway in the Georgia Tech game the week before. He would be watching them from his bedside by television. On the eve of the Navy game, Frank Leahy sent a note to his team asking that the game be played "for the seniors and for Notre Dame." But as Captain Don Penza explained later in the dressing room: "The boys got together and played it for the coach anyway." It was very likely the first time in his ten-year regime at Notre Dame that a team had ever disobeyed Frank Leahy.
Trouble seemed to come fast. On the first play from scrimmage, a Notre Dame fumble put Navy in scoring position on the 15-yd. line. With its back to the wall and playing "For Coach," Notre Dame's defenders growled their defiant "Yaaaahhrrr" and took the ball away on downs. Then it began, the famed Notre Dame treatment that has been likened to facing Joe Louis in the ring: a series of rocking left-and-right crunches followed by a knockout. The heavy and hard-charging Notre Dame line seemed to move as one man while Halfbacks Lattner and Joe Heap and Fullback Neil Worden supplied the power punches. Usually, when
Notre Dame needed vital first-down yardage, Quarterback Ralph Guglielmi called for Notre Dame's bread & butter boy, Johnny Lattner. In twelve carries, Johnny twisted and power-drove through Navy for 50 yds.
All through the scoreless first quarter, Navy reeled under the lefts and rights. Then Notre Dame delivered the knockout : a four-touchdown assault in nine minutes. During the second half, Lattner and his first-team teammates sat it out on the sidelines and let the second, third and fourth teams finish the job. Final score: 38-7.
Top Team. It was a good example of the kind of play that has made Notre Dame the No. i team in sportswriters' polls all season long, and made them national champions four times in Coach Leahy's ten years.
Playing the toughest schedule in the U.S.. Notre Dame toppled or tied five major college conference champions last year, and this year has managed to be "up" each Saturday for a backbreaking intersectional schedule that included Oklahoma. Purdue. Pittsburgh. Georgia Tech and Navy. This week it is Pennsylvania. Still to come: North Carolina. Iowa, Southern California and Southern Methodist.