Welcome back to the One Foot Down Book Club, where we are reading Murray Sperber’s “Shake Down the Thunder” (Amazon, B&N, IU Press, eBay). This is the third meeting of the club, and we’ll cover Chapters 8-11 today.
Father James A. Burns and football coach Jesse Harper both made high stakes bets. Father Burns’ paid off handsomely, while Harper’s was a severe miscalculation.
Burns, the first Notre Dame president with a doctorate, wanted to make his university “the Yale of the West” and sought accreditation from the most powerful agency at the time, the North Central Association.