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How does Notre Dame do it? Many Notre Dame critics—and they are legion, particularly among rival coaches—point out that Notre Dame's bird-dogging alumni fervently flush out football players by the covey. Even nonalumni, e.g., New York's subway variety, feel such a kinship for the Fighting Irish that they adopt Notre Dame and flood it with batches of scouting reports on swivel-hipped high-school backs, blockbusting linemen. Notre Dame acknowledges the bird-dogging tactics of its alumni talent scouts, but points out briskly that, unlike some institutions which pull players out of trees and suit them up, Notre Dame has demanding scholastic standards: though the passing grade is 70, Notre Dame athletes, to be eligible to play, must maintain at least a 77 average.
Notre Dame's winning ways are only partly attributable to talent. More important, by far. is an intangible spirit that seems—like the guttural yaaaahhrrr—to make super-players out of ordinary mortals like Johnny Lattner. In a school where the first religion is Roman Catholicism, athletics is No. 2 for the 5.401 undergraduates who live under the strictest collegiate discipline west of West Point and Annapolis. Notre Dame football players get much of their spiritual lift from the pre-game dressing-room chats by Coach Leahy. "Usually." says a lineman, "he tells us that we are a team with a lot to lose and little to gain because we win so often. He also tells us what Notre Dame stands for all over the world. He says Catholic youngsters all over the world are watching us. Now that the games are carried by short wave, it's even more so."-
"Kind of Choked Up." Johnny Lattner was imbued with the Notre Dame spirit the moment he set foot on the campus as a green freshman three years ago: "I came down that driveway and I saw that golden dome with the statue of our Blessed Mother all lighted up, and it was one of the biggest thrills of my life. I got kind of choked up, and I was awful glad I came here." The Notre Dame indoctrination, particularly of football players, is as relentless as the Marine Corps boot training. Johnny recalls: "The first night, they showed the movie Knute Rockne—All American, with Pat O'Brien and Ronald Reagan [portraying Notre Dame's first football All-America, George Gipp]." Lattner, who was one day to become
Notre Dame's 62nd All-America. left the theater "kind of choked up" all over again. "I mean I got a big bang out of it. I was ready to kill anybody who said a word against Notre Dame. I still am."