Presented is a 1925 University of Notre Dame college yearbook, “The Dome of ‘25”, including a section on the fall 1924 Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team with “The Four Horsemen” under legendary head coach Knute Rockne. The 486-page, 8 x 11-inch hardbound book features a black leatherette cover with an embossed “stained-glass window” design incorporating a dark brown panel embossed with the school’s seal above the legend “The Dome of ‘25”. That design is repeated on the spine. The binding is in good condition, as are the interior ivory paper pages, which include numerous black & white photographs, text, and two-color illustrations. There is an extensive section of coverage of the 1924 Notre Dame football team, under the direction of Rockne, including reprints of national newspaper pages about the team, and the text with illustrations of Grantland Rice’s famous article about the Fighting Irish’s 13-7 win over Army at New York City’s Polo Grounds on October 18, 1924, with the headline “The Four Horsemen”. Rice’s story begins, “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…” Notre Dame’s “Four Horsemen” were the backfield of the 1924 football team. The players that made up this group were Harry Stuhldreher, Don Miller, Jim Crowley, and Elmer Layden. Rice’s story and that nickname transformed the backfield into one of the most noted groups of collegiate athletes in football history. The quarterback, Stuhldreher, along with left halfback Crowley, right halfback Miller, and fullback Layden had run rampant through Irish opponents' defenses since Rockne devised the lineup in 1922 during their sophomore season. During the three-year tenure of the Four Horsemen, Notre Dame lost only two games; one each in 1922 and 1923, both to Nebraska in Lincoln before packed houses. The yearbook features numerous inscriptions by the original owner and his classmates on the interior pages, in black and blue fountain pen, including in the final three interior pages.

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