In 1924, quarterback Harry Stuhldreher, left halfback Jim Crowley, right halfback Don Miller and fullback Elmer Layden were the backfield on the Notre Dame football team coached by Knute Rockne. But the foursome needed some help from Grantland Rice, a sportswriter for the New York Herald-Tribune, to achieve football immortality. After Notre Dame's 13-7 victory over Army on October 18, 1924, Rice penned one of the most famous passage in the history of sports journalism.

"Outlined against a blue, gray October sky the Four Horsemen rode again."

"In dramatic lore they are known as famine, pestilence, destruction and death. These are only aliases. Their real names are: Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden. They formed the crest of the South Bend cyclone before which another fighting Army team was swept over the precipice at the Polo Grounds this afternoon as 55,000 spectators peered down upon the bewildering panorama spread out upon the green plain below."

From that point on these four have been known as "The Four Horsemen of Notre Dame". George Strickler, then Rockne's student publicity aide and later sports editor of the Chicago Tribune, made sure the name stuck. After the team arrived back in South Bend, he posed the four players, dressed in their uniforms, on the backs of four horses from a livery stable in town.

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