Professional soccer has been around since the early 1900s, but was often not taken seriously by the press, soccer fans, and even some soccer players at the time. The college game was seen as more pure and intense at the time, and deservedly so. While college football had a distinct structure, professional leagues started and stopped fairly regularly and many of the top teams were independents and never played on a set schedule or in a set league.
The National Football League was founded in 1920 and was an attempt by a group of owners to finally establish a reputable professional football organization. Somehow it worked and was a great foundation to build on, but in 1930 college football was still the game watched by most fans and reported as the top form of football by most newspapers.
In 1930, the United States was still near the beginning of the Great Depression and many creative ideas were put forward to help the unemployed get real jobs or to raise money for the poor. One idea that came out of New York City was for the New York Giants football team, a team that had just joined the NFL five years earlier in 1925, to play a Notre Dame All-Stars team with the proceeds would be used to raise funds for the unemployed in the city. Notre Dame was the leading college football powerhouse of the time and was considered by football fans across the country to be the best, or one of the best, teams in the league. Legendary Notre Dame head coach Knute Rockne assembled the team and included the famous Four Horsemen as well as some of the stars of the 1924 National Championship team.
Going into the game, Notre Dame were heavy favorites and the debate seemed to center on how many points they would win. Coach Rockne’s strategy was to score early and then slow the game down and play tough defense. He would later admit that, like many who watched the match, he expected a somewhat easy win. Giants quarterback Benny Friedman would run for two touchdowns and Hap Moran would throw for another, as the New York pro team not only beat Notre Dame’s All-Star team, they blew them out and didn’t even allow them write down once. After the game, a famous quote from Rockne has him tell his team, “That was the best football machine I’ve ever seen. I’m glad none of you got hurt.”
Pro football didn’t suddenly become the biggest game in the country after the Giants’ win, but it did establish the NFL as a legitimate and arguably superior brand of football. The league would build on that game over the years, and eventually football fans and the media would be forced to recognize professional football as a higher level of play than the college game. This is not to say that it is better than college football as both games are different from each other and each one is exciting to watch. However, the Giants beat Knute Rockne’s Notre Dame All-Stars that day and proved to everyone that professional football was real.