Though the Odds Be Great or Small: Notre Dame's 1957 Comeback Season and the Year That Changed College Football

by Terry Brennan, William Meiners, Johnny Lujack (Foreword)

On November 16, 1957, an unranked Notre Dame football team squared off against the No. 2 Oklahoma Sooners. It was supposed to be an easy Sooners win. But despite being 19-point underdogs, the Fighting Irish, guided by their young and tenacious coach Terry Brennan, maneuvered their way to a 7–0 upset, ending the Sooners’ NCAA-record 47-game winning streak.

Though the Odds Be Great or Small chronicles the story of legendary coach Terry Brennan, from his days as a player at Notre Dame under Frank Leahy, to his selection as the head coach in 1954, to the high-intensity comeback season of 1957 in which Notre Dame finished in the top 10 overall. This book provides the social, cultural, and athletic context to understand college football before and after 1957—a year that changed how the game was played at Notre Dame for decades.

The 1957 season remains one of the most important seasons in Notre Dame football’s storied history. In Though the Odds Be Great or Small , Coach Brennan shares his version of what happened in the trenches and on the sidelines during a time when a college football game had the power to keep an entire country on the edge of its seat.

Genres: Sports

288 pages, Paperback

Published August 24, 2021

Reviews

[Mike Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Terry Brennan was a Notre Dame Football Letterman under coach Frank Leahy during their post World War II run of dominance. After coaching at Mount Carmel high school in Chicago and passing the bar, he was hired by legendary Notre Dame President Father Ted Hesburgh at the age of twenty five to take over the storied program as head coach. Terry Brennan led the Irish over four up and down years including “The Upset of the Century” over an Oklahoma team that had won forty seven games in a row until Note Dame pulled out a 7-0 win. The book is written by William Meiners and Terry Brennan himself, although Mr. Meiners seems to do most of the heavy lifting with occasional insight from Coach Brennan. Of course that is to be expected as Coach Brennan was in his early nineties when the book was written.

The book was very well researched with direct insight from Coach Brennan himself. I enjoyed this book as it shed light on a period of Notre Dame Football that is not well known outside of “The Upset of the Century,”. It was a time of change as a new young President, Father Ted Hesburgh, was molding Notre Dame into a prestigious university. Father Hesburgh did not make it easy on Coach Brennan as he limited scholarships and did not allow Notre Dame to sign recruits until April, well after other schools were able to sign these same recruits.

The one downfall of this book is that Mr. Meiners tended to get off topic and run down the whole history of Notre Dame football. I found these tangents we researched and interesting, but they tended to take away from the flow of the book and many times was not needed to further the story.

Overall I really enjoyed this look at Coach Brennan and the Norte Dame Football program in the 1950s. If you are a fan of Notre Dame Football or even just a fan of college football history I think you will enjoy this book. It is detailed and well researched. The insights Coach Brennan offered in the book gave it a unique view that you don’t often get so long after the events took place. I’m glad this book was written when it was as Coach Brennan passed shortly after it’s publication. I would recommend checking out this book. Thank you to NetGalley, Mr. Meiners, Coach Brennan, and Loyola Press for an advance copy of this book for an honest review.

[Len · Rating 3 out of 5]

My grade for this book is 3.5. Terry Brennan is an under appreciated Notre Dame football coach; while his fellow head coaches (Rockne, Leahy, Parseghian, Holtz, etc) have had much written about them, there is very little written about Brennan. Brennan was dismissed just before Christmas 1958 despite having posted a winning record and coaching ND over Oklahoma in the "upset of the century" in 1957. The author is listed as Brennan himself, but the book is actually written by William Meiners who uses some quotes from Brennan to justify the credit Brennan is given. Meiners goes to some length to make the case that Brennan was treated unfairly by the ND administration (ie Fr. Hesburgh and Fr. Joyce) who were focused on upgrading ND's academic standing, even at the expense of diminishing the football program.
I'm not quite sure why 1957 was the year that changed football (the book's title).
There were several mistakes of fact in the book, which, though minor, distract from Meiners' goals.

[Sheila · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received an advance copy of, Though the Odds be great or Small, by Terry Brennan, and William Meiners. I am a big fan of Notre Dame, and I really enjoyed this book. The only off putting was the word Manuscript on every page, that made it hard to read the book.