Notre Dame Football, Knute Rockne, and how they Changed the Green Bay Packers and Pittsburgh Steelers

How different would NFL history be if Curly Lambeau and Art Rooney been a bigger part of Notre Dame football?

Nov 12, 2023; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA; Pittsburgh Steelers running back Jaylen Warren (30) is tackled by Green Bay Packers cornerbacks Keisean Nixon (25) and Corey Ballentine (35) during the fourth quarter at Acrisure Stadium. / Philip G. Pavely-USA TODAY Sports

Few last names in any sport mean as much as Lambeau does to the Green Bay Packers or Rooney does to the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Curly Lambeau founded the Green Bay Packers in August of 1919, and Art Rooney founded the Steeler franchise - then the Pittsburgh Pirates - way back in 1933.

Had it not been for Knute Rockne turning both away from Notre Dame's prestigious football program, perhaps neither franchise would have ever been founded.

These stories from Murray Sperber's Shake Down the Thunder, The Creation of Notre Dame Football ...

Curly Lambeau's Notre Dame Career

Curly Lambeau was a star athlete at Green Bay East High School and, as the story goes, was supposed to attend the University of Wisconsin to star on their football team. However, Lambeau worked construction with his dad and played for different football teams while traveling.

While at the University of Notre Dame in 1918, Lambeau impressed new head coach Knute Rockne enough to earn a spot on the football team, which was coming off a 6-1-1 campaign the year before.

Lambeau made the varsity squad, and in 1918 Notre Dame went 3-1-2 under Rockne.

As fate would have it, Lambeau wouldn't play at Notre Dame again, but there is debate as to what actually happened.

Some claim that Lambeau, who was dealing with a bout of tonsillitis in the spring of 1919, chose to never go back to Notre Dame. Others claim that Lambeau had his football scholarship pulled by Rockne and chose to stay back in Green Bay, where he created the Packers in August of 1919.

Art Rooney never made it to Notre Dame

Before founding the Pittsburgh Pirates - now Steelers - in 1933, Art Rooney was an up-and-coming multi-sport athlete from Pittsburgh.

He was an AAU champion boxer and a star high school running back who was so good that then-Pittsburgh Gazette Sports Editor Richard Guy mailed Knute Rockne a letter in 1919 recommending the Notre Dame head coach offer Rooney a scholarship.

The scholarship never came, and Rooney wound up attending Indiana Normal School of Pennsylvania - now Indiana University of Pennsylvania - before spending his senior year at Temple on an athletic scholarship.

Rooney played minor league baseball and semi-pro football, but he never left the state of Pennsylvania for an extended amount of time like spending four years at Notre Dame would have been.

As a result, when the state of Pennsylvania relaxed its laws and finally allowed professional sports to be played on Sundays in 1933, Rooney spent $2,500 - equivalent to $60,418.27 in 2024 - to found the Pittsburgh NFL team, then known as the Pirates.

Although it changed the name to the Steelers in 1941, winning would evade the franchise for decades. In fact, during World War II the Steelers merged with the Philadelphia Eagles and Chicago Cardinals for a season each.

Fast forward to the 1970s. After hiring Chuck Noll and drafting legends like "Mean Joe" Greene, Jack Lambert, Terry Bradshaw, and Franco Harris, the Steelers would go on to win four Super Bowls in six years.

To this day the Pittsburgh Steelers are owned by the Rooney family and remain one of the model franchises in the NFL.

What if Curey Lambeau and Art Rooney Attended Notre Dame for Four Years?

Would either the Packers or Steelers be what they are today without Knute Rockne making the decisions he did over 100 years ago?

Nobody knows the answer to that but it's certainly fun to ask.

Nick's Quick Take: The timing of Lambeau leaving Notre Dame in the spring of 1919 and founding the Packers just months later is crazy. He founded/captained/coached them for much of their infancy and although there is path to seeing them still get founded, the franchise having the staying power to remain in small market Green Bay without the planets all aligning is difficult to see.

As for the Steelers, Pittsburgh was bound to have an NFL team as soon as Pennsylvania relaxed those Sunday laws.

However, what if Art Rooney wasn't the one who founded the Pittsburgh football franchise? Would the ownership group be one that would stand by head coaches the way the Rooney family has for over a half-century?

The Steelers are a model franchise by NFL standards as their six Super Bowl titles are tied for the most in league history. They've had three head coaches since Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped on the moon and are one the best-run organizations year-after-year in all professional sports.

Sure, Pittsburgh would have had a football team without Art Rooney but it's hard to imagine it having this kind of football team without his family putting their fingerprints all over it.

These stories and more information can be found ...

Sperber, Murray. Shake Down the Thunder, The Creation of Notre Dame Football. First Edition, Henry Holt And Co., New York, 1993

Related: When Notre Dame's Football Team Was Called the Blue Comets Instead of Fighting Irish