Hemingway Wrote About the Notre Dame/USC Rivalry in his story 'The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio'

Hemingway at work on a piece of writing.

By Mark Schipper

College football is such a permanent fixture in American culture the legendary writer Ernest Hemingway found multiple spots in his novels and short stories to feature the game, never more prominently than the The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio from his 1933 short-story collection, Winner Take Nothing.

The story is set at a convent-run hospital in Montana, focusing on a writer recovering from an injury and an excitable young nun called Sister Cecelia. The events take place during the last peak of Knute Rockne's run at Notre Dame and the final months of college football's biggest boom decade. At a time when stories of nuns leading classes in prayer for Notre Dame football were common, Hemingway found a way to make you see how the team from South Bend had been adopted by the faith.

In the story Hemingway demonstrated one of his strongest talents, which was attaching his art to durable cultural events. Whether it was San Fermines in Pamplona, which few people outside of Basque France and Spain knew of when he made it famous in The Sun Also Rises, or the five-year-old football rivalry between USC and Notre Dame in the United States, the writer had an instinct for what would last.

Details from the story make it clear Hemingway was writing about the 1930 Notre Dame/USC game from Los Angeles. Found amongst several timeline markers, including an exchange about the World Series between the St. Louis Cardinals and Philadelphia Athletics, Hemingway references a popular, comedic song from that year called "Betty Coed."

It is a funny track, bawdier than what you thought your great-grandparents were into, and still a great listen with its many references to college football culture:

Betty Co-Ed has lips of red for Harvard/

Betty Co-Ed has eyes of Yale deep blue/

Betty Co-Ed's a golden head for Princeton/

Her dress I guess is black for old Purdue!/

Betty Co-Ed's a smile for Pennsylvania/

Her heart is Dartmouth's treasure, so 'tis said/

Betty Co-Ed is loved by every college boy/

But I'm the one who's loved by Betty Co-Ed!/

Hemingway's story unfolds over several nights and days, but mostly nights, at the hospital. A writer named Mr. Frazier, healing from a broken leg suffered during a horse-riding fall, tells us what is going on.

It is sometime after midnight when a Mexican gambler shot twice through the gut, and a Russian laborer shot through the thigh, are brought to the emergency room and treated by doctors and later questioned by police. The gambler was shot over a minor sum he'd won off of a local laborer. The Russian was collateral damage, hit accidentally by the shooter, who was not a professional killer and, distraught over money he couldn't afford to lose, fired wildly into the all-night restaurant before fleeing.

In the hospital we meet our Sister, idealistic and self-sacrificing. She talks about her lifelong dream of becoming a Catholic saint and how she's dedicated her existence to making it happen. The Sister is sweet, excitable, and prays for everything, including sports, the excitement of which agitates her when she listens over the radio.

The writer, on the other hand, listens calmly to the radio all night as he tries not to over-think. The reception, because of the x-ray machine in the hospital and ore in the ground and mountains around it, is poor during the day but, beginning in the late afternoons, starts to pick up signals all the way out to the coast, including stations in Denver, Salt Lake City, Seattle, and Los Angeles.

The writer switches from station to station, moving along the coast as the programming ends, until dawn begins to show out the window. He finishes the cycle with the early-morning programming out of Minneapolis, which is an hour ahead of him, as the hospital stirs back to life and the listening ends for another day.

Radio in 1930 was a decade into its commercial existence. Local programming had been improving for several seasons when the 1922 Princeton at Chicago game became the first national broadcast of a college football game. Five years later, on New Year's Day 1927, the Rose Bowl marked the first-ever transcontinental production as NBC transmitted the Alabama/Stanford game live across the country.

Notre Dame, largely due to Rockne's preternatural understanding of brand marketing, was one of the first programs to put their games on radio, paying for the privilege themselves in the days before the sport commercialized its broadcasting rights. By 1930 people across the country were accustomed to hearing Fighting Irish games, which is one of the reasons Hemingway used them in the story.

The writer Frazer, who does not have any regular visitors, enjoys the sister's company and invites her to join him for Notre Dame's game out in Los Angeles. But the sister does not want to listen—not because she does not like football—but because passively listening to the team she calls Our Lady is too much for her. The sister has all the overwrought allegiance and anxiety of a true college football fan.

"Do you want to come up and hear the game this afternoon?" Frazer asks her.

"Oh, no," she said. "I'd be too excited. I'll be in the chapel praying."

"They're playing on the coast and the difference in time will bring it late enough so we can get it all right."

"Oh, no. I couldn't do it," says the sister.

"The World Series nearly finished me. When the Athletics were at bat I was praying right out loud: 'Oh, Lord, direct their batting eyes! Oh, lord, may he hit one! Oh, lord, may he hit safely!' Then when they filled the bases in the third game, you remember, it was too much for me. 'Oh, lord, may he hit it out of the lot! Oh, lord, may he drive it clean over the fence!' Then you know when the Cardinals would come to bat it was simply dreadful. 'Oh, lord, may they not see it! Oh, Lord, don't let them even catch a glimpse of it! Oh, lord, may they fan!' And this game is even worse. It's Notre Dame. Our Lady. No, I'll be in the chapel. For Our Lady. They're playing for Our Lady. I wish you'd write something sometime for Our Lady. You could do it. You know you could do it, Mr. Frazer."

"I don't know anything about her that I could write. It's mostly been written already," Mr. Frazer said. "You wouldn't like the way I write. She wouldn't care for it, either."

"You'll write about her sometime," the Sister said. "I know you will. You must write about Our Lady."

USC coach Howard Jones is pulled by his players in a Ben-Hur style chariot.

"You'd better come up and hear the game."

"It would be too much for me. No, I'll be in the chapel doing what I can."

The 1930 Notre Dame/USC game was a major early battle in a rivalry that has hit ninety-two meetings with no end in sight. I have participated in three of them, two in Los Angeles and one in South Bend. They are big on-campus pageants, full of everything that makes college football the special American game, and one of the sport's greatest rivalries and traditions.

Two years earlier USC had won the school's first national championship. That season, under sixth-year head coach Howard Jones, the Trojans beat up on Notre Dame in Los Angeles, but lost the next year at Soldier Field in Chicago in front of a crowd of 115,000. USC was crushing opponents again in 1930, entering the game at 8-1 with a one-point, upset loss at Washington State back in October the only thing between the Trojans and an undefeated team.

As the Fighting Irish arrived at Union Station that November the 1928 loss at USC stood as their last loss, period. Notre Dame was a perfect 9-0 and riding a seventeen game winning streak. But the team was experiencing some turmoil. Less than a month earlier Rockne had kicked his star running back, Jumping Joe Savoldi, off the team after his divorce papers were filed and became public record.

Savoldi's marriage had been a well-kept secret but the newspapers got word of divorce proceedings and published them. It was against the rules to be married at Notre Dame—an all-male school until 1972—and it was more against the rules to be married and divorced. Just like that Jumping Joe was out. Not even Rockne could clean up that mess.

With Savoldi gone and Notre Dame off back-to-back slugfests against a good Northwestern team and an even better Army squad, writers in Southern California believed a well-rested USC could be as high as four-score favorites over the Irish. That was the situation when Rockne, who had a propensity for playing mind games, turned his attention toward the press, the boosters in Southern California, and the Trojans themselves.

“I’m afraid we’re going to take a beating from Southern California Saturday in Los Angeles," Rockne told a reporter as the Irish prepared to leave. "I am willing to wager we will not be defeated by four touchdowns, as some Los Angeles newspapermen have predicted, but if we can hold the Trojans to a two-touchdown difference we’ll go home feeling pretty good.”

Headlines ran in the Los Angeles newspapers: “Knute Sees Defeat for Irish Team” and “Battered Irish Team on Way to Los Angeles.”

“I’m not kidding you or attempting to use psychology on the players when I say I do not expect to win,” Rockne told another reporter. “While my boys may rally enough to give the Trojans a fairly good game, I see no chance of victory. No coach could expect three victories on successive weekends over clubs the caliber of Northwestern, Army and Southern Cal.”

Rockne got a shot to address the Trojans directly at a joint banquet prior to the game. He solicited the lads not to batter his beat-up squad too badly. A throttling would not only humiliate the Irish, who were the good friends of USC, but might reflect poorly on the reputation the Trojans had gained as gentlemen. Beat us, sure, but let's keep it sporting and afterwards shake hands.

Rockne of Notre Dame

A USC team that many considered the best of Jones's early era, a squad that averaged more than 500 yards offense at a time when 300 was enough to beat anybody, considered the message.

On that Saturday, in the middle of an expansion to accommodate the 1932 Olympic Games, a record crowd of 88,000 filled the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Scalpers were getting between $30 and $50 cash for seats, which is in the ballpark of $450 to $800 today. It was the game of the year from the coast and the commercial engine of college-football was roaring.

That was the scene out west when Hemingway wrote the rivalry into his story . . . .

The game was about five-minutes old when a young probationer came into the room and said, "Sister Cecelia wants to know how the game is going?"

"Tell her they have a touchdown already."

In a little while the probationer came into the room again.

"Tell her they're playing them off their feet," Mr. Frazer said.

A little while later he rang the bell for the nurse on floor duty. "Would you mind going down to the chapel or sending word down to Sister Cecelia that Notre Dame has them fourteen to nothing at the end of the first quarter and that it's all right. She can stop praying."

The Coliseum when it was young and home to both USC and UCLA football.

In a few minutes Sister Cecelia came into the room. She was very excited. "What does fourteen to nothing mean? I don't know anything about this game. That's a nice safe lead in baseball. But I don't know anything about football. It may not mean a thing. I'm going right back down to the chapel and pray until it's finished."

"They have them beaten," Frazer said. "I promise you. Stay and listen with me."

"No. No. No. No. No. No. No," she said. "I'm going right down to the chapel to pray."

Mr. Frazer sent word whenever Notre Dame scored and, finally, when it had been dark a long time, the final score: Notre Dame 27, Southern California zero.

The Fighting Irish had scorched a powerful USC team and finished the season 10-0. That night the Irish boarded their chartered train for a three-day ride back to Chicago. Along the way the newspapers awarded them the 1930 national championship, the third and last captured during Rockne's twelve-year crusade out of South Bend.

The next morning Sister Cecelia visited. She was very pleased.

"I knew they couldn't beat Our Lady," she said. "They couldn't" . . . .

When the Irish arrived to Chicago on December 9 their train was met by a mob at the LaSalle Street Station. If it was possible to wind back space and time ninety-two years I could have looked down from my writing room onto the platform as the cars chugged in and hissed to a stop. Thousands of fans swarmed the cars to celebrate the triumph on the coast. Railroad security began walling off paths so the team could get off.

The next day the Fighting Irish were taken to La Salle Street, where the mighty Board of Trade building looks out over the long canyon of skyscrapers that make up the city's financial district. Because Rockne was struggling to get a permanent stadium built that could accommodate ticket demand, most of Notre Dame's biggest games were hosted at Soldier Field, making Chicago the program's second home. The city staged a ticker-tape to celebrate the undefeated season. The Irish were driven up the street in a cavalcade of cars as the confetti and tape streamed down.

It was the last great event of Rockne's run at Notre Dame. Three months later the coach was killed when his commercial flight cracked up in midair and crashed into a wheat field in Kansas. His death was treated as a national tragedy and his funeral service was broadcast live over the radio from coast to coast. But his final team could not have engineered a better way to seal off the era. And Hemingway, using the tools a writer has, captured what college football and Notre Dame meant with a story about a faithful nun at a convent hospital in Montana.