Frank Leahy’s rise from Winner, South Dakota, to the Notre Dame head football coach is the subject of Ivan Maisel’s latest project. 

Maisel has written a new book — American Coach: The Triumph and Tragedy of Notre Dame Legend Frank Leahy — that is being released on Sept. 16. Maisel chronicles Leahy’s journey from Winner, to playing for Notre Dame legendary coach Knute Rockne and later coaching the Fighting Irish to four national championships in an 11-season span. 

“I really think that Leahy’s life story is a great capsule of the middle of the 20th century in America,” Leahy said. “He spent his first winter in life in a tent on a prairie in South Dakota. They eventually built a home and a barn and had a ranch. He grew up on a horse and was a cowboy and somehow from there found his way to Notre Dame."

Maisel has covered college football for more than four decades, most notably for ESPN from 2002-21. He served as editor-at-large for ESPN College Football 150, a multi-platform history project that celebrated the sesquicentennial of the sport in 2019. 

That’s when Maisel took a keen interest in Leahy, his impact on college football and the Fighting Irish. Leahy still has the second-best winning percentage in Division I college football history (.864), second only to Rockne (.881). 

Leahy played on two Notre Dame teams that won national championships in 1929 and ‘30. As Notre Dame’s head coach, Leahy guided the Fighting Irish to six undefeated seasons and national championships in 1943, ‘46, ‘47 and ‘49. 

Maisel, however, said Leahy’s impressive coaching record and legacy sometimes gets forgotten, motivating him to write the biography. 

“I noticed with that record it took him 13 tries to try to be elected to the College Football Hall of Fame,” Maisel said. “So then I was really intrigued, and that led me down this road of finding out how dominant he had been and how dominant Notre Dame had been under him and really I came to realize that Leahy is who made Notre Dame, Notre Dame.”

Rockne, who won three national championships at Notre Dame, retired as the Fighting Irish football coach in 1930. The program didn’t reach the same level of success until Leahy took over in 1941. 

After a two-year head coaching stint at Boston College, Leahy was the head coach at Notre Dame from 1941-43 and again from 1946-53, compiling a career coaching record of 107-13-9. 

“They had never gotten back to the level they had been under Rockne, and Leahy got them there almost immediately, and got them to a level that Rockne never quite got them to,” Maisel said. “To me, that meant Leahy is who made Notre Dame. If Leahy had not come along, Notre Dame would have just been the school where Rockne coached. Just like Minnesota had great success in the 30s under a coach named Bernie Bierman, and Minnesota has never come close to that again. That was what I started chasing, and Leahy just had a helluva story to tell and nobody’s told it.”

Maisel has written other college football books, including A War in Dixie: Alabama Vs. Auburn, a book on one of college football’s fiercest rivalries. 

Maisel, however, had never written an autobiography prior to the Leahy project. Maisel called it a daunting task to deliver 120,000 words and 400 pages on one person. But he viewed each chapter as a feature story and relied on Notre Dame football historical archives, newspapers.com, and the Leahy family during his research.

It added up to Maisel peeling back layers of Leahy’s life, and he came away surprised with the South Dakota-to-South Bend tale. 

“His life turned out to be a much richer, more interesting story than I ever imagined,” Maisel said. “Even though he couldn’t play because he was hurt, Rockne still made him his protege and Rockne got him his start as an assistant coach. Three months before Rockne died he got Leahy a job, and 10 years later at the age of 32, he was back in Notre Dame as head coach.” 

Leahy was born in O’Neill, Nebraska, and moved to Winner with his family shortly after his birth. He graduated from Winner High School in 1926, where he played football, baseball, basketball and was also a boxer. 

It was Leahy’s dream to play at Notre Dame, and as fate would have it, a coach at Winner played for Rockne. The coach wrote Rockne a letter telling him Leahy and his teammate were good enough to play at Notre Dame. 

Leahy’s teammate, however, didn’t think they were good enough to play for the Irish and that “lit a fire under Leahy that really started him on the road to become the figure I wrote about,” Maisel said. 

As a player, Leahy was a 6-foot, 180-pound right tackle and was part of national championships in 1929 and ‘30. A knee injury derailed his playing career, but his coaching career was just getting on track. 

Leahy graduated from Notre Dame in 1931 and was an assistant coach at Georgetown University that fall. He took an assistant coaching position at Michigan State in 1932 and was an assistant coach at Fordham University from 1933-38. 

He became the Boston College head coach in 1939, guiding the Eagles to a 20-2 record in two seasons and they won the 1941 Sugar Bowl. 

Leahy parlayed that into coaching at his alma mater, immediately steering the Irish back toward national prominence. The Fighting Irish went 87-11-9 under Leahy's leadership. 

Leahy also turned the Irish around in an era when college football and Major League Baseball were America’s most popular team sports. 

“NFL was sort of an afterthought in people’s minds, and the NBA was just getting off the ground in the late 40s,” Maisel said. “So within team sports in America there were the Yankees and there was Notre Dame, and Leahy was a celebrity.”

Maisel noted how Leahy graced the cover of Time magazine, befriended Hollywood stars Bing Crosby and Don Ameche and regularly golfed with President Dwight D. Eisenhower. 

“And this is all a guy who grew up in Winner, South Dakota,” Maisel said. 

Maisel also documented Leahy’s clashes with Notre Dame priests, his confrontations with opposing coaches and health concerns that forced him to resign in 1954. Leahy was later named general manager of the Los Angeles Chargers in 1960, the first year of the American Football League.

He was selected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1970. Leahy lived in Oregon until his death from congestive heart failure in 1973. He was 64. 

“He reached the pinnacle of American success, and it ate him alive,” Maisel said. “The stress of what he thought he had to do to be that successful ruined his health, and almost ruined his marriage. That’s also an American story, too, how we chase after success. There were so many facets to the story that spoke to not only who he was, but who we are and I really had fun doing it.”

The book is available to purchase online.

The book cover for American Coach: The Triumph and Tragedy of Notre Dame Legend Frank Leahy. (Grand Central Publishing)