Chet Grant Wrote Headlines... And Then He Made Them

Grant was sports editor for the South Bend News-Times years before he was Notre Dame's starting quarterback

BY BILL MOOR // POSTED JULY 27, 2025

D.C. (Chet) Grant , who died in 1985 at the age of 93, could have been that beer commercial's “Most Interesting Man in the World.”

He was definitely the most interesting man I ever encountered.

Yep. The South Bend High graduate admitted to me that he probably had “three scores of jobs” — including sports editor of the South Bend News-Times while he was still a teenager and later the starting quarterback for Knute Rockne's 1921 Notre Dame team despite standing only 5-foot-7, weighing 138 pounds and being 29 years of age.

He often wrote about the very games in which he played.

“Can you imagine that?“ asked the late Notre Dame football coach, Gerry Faust, when he heard of Chet's passing. “He could handle my business and your business at the same time.”

Sports writing actually led to his first season at Notre Dame in 1915. “I interviewed Jesse Harper (the Irish head coach from 1913 to 1917) and he talked me into going to school (while playing football) and working for the paper in the morning.

“But I hope you don't read that interview I did with Harper,” he added. “Wrote a terrible story.”

He did fine on the football field for Harper, though, and even ran a punt back 95 yards for a touchdown against Case Tech in 1916. More than 60 years later, he still had (mostly) vivid memories of that run:

“Let's see, I received that punt deep in my own territory. Then I went right, then left or was it the other way. Now how did it go? Well, whichever way I went. I was going back and forth and even went back toward our goal line once. There weren't any openings. I reversed my field again and knew I wasn't doing what I was supposed to do but hoped they would give me credit for trying. Then all of a sudden, everything was clear in front of me except for one man and Harry Baujan, one of our ends, took that guy out and all I had to do was stagger into the end zone.”

Whew!

After that season, Chet wouldn't play again for four years. Instead, he fought in France during World War I and held down a plethora of other jobs — milking cows, spraying cherry trees, selling encyclopedias, delivering groceries on a one-horse wagon and serving as a deckhand of a Great Lakes steamer to name a few.

“Jobs lasted anywhere from two days to eight years,” he said. “I either quit or got fired. My life has really gone over a meandering route.”

It meandered back to Notre Dame in 1920 where he played for Rockne. A back-up quarterback that year, he occasionally ended up in this same backfield as George Gipp — the immortal Gipper. He admitted he wasn't a big fan of Gipp. In one game when Rockne put Chet in to protect a late lead, Gipp coerced Chet into changing the plays so Gipp could throw a couple of long passes.

“Gipp later told me he was trying to help a couple of his betting friends cover the spread,” Chet acknowledged.

Gipp died from pneumonia and strep throat after that season and became a household name after Rockne's “Win One for the Gipper” halftime speech in 1928. Chet went on to become the starting quarterback during the 1921 season and led the Irish to a 10-1 record. Their only blemish was a 10-7 loss to Iowa.

“A big star?” he said. “Hell, no. How can you be a 'big' star when you stand only 5-6 3/4. I have many memories playing football for Notre Dame but it is just a part of my past like grubbing poplar trees is.”

Ok, time to name some of his other jobs — these from the sports world. He was the press agent for the Chicago Shamrocks hockey team, a scout for the Cleveland Rams football team, the manager of the South Bend Blue Sox, a semi-pro baseball player in the Michigan State League, and Elmer Layden's backfield coach at Notre Dame.

Chet also wrote two books on Notre Dame football and a weekly newsletter about the Irish called Off the Hat by Chet Grant during Frank Leahy's coaching regime. His last job was as the director of the Sports and Games Collection at the Notre Dame Library.

My best memory of Chet is when he started to open a door on the Notre Dame campus just as a big college kid — big enough to be an offensive lineman — pulled it from the other way. Chet, almost 90 at the time, just about fell through the opening but somehow did a quick pirouette-type move, ending it with a little hop.

It was as if his stiff, old body — even below his 138-pound playing weight by then — suddenly transformed into the Notre Dame quarterback he once was, while shifting into Rockne's box formation.

A lifelong bachelor who later lived with his sister, Chet admitted he was a bit of a vagabond as a younger man. On one of his adventures, he decided to swim across the Mississippi River after being intrigued by the Greek mythology tale of Leander swimming the Aegean Sea to be with his lover.

“You can't appreciate the power of that river until you are down on its level,” he said. “When I was finished, the current had taken me far, far down from where I started.”

Later, he discovered with the help a map that Leander's swim was only about a half mile — far less than his own. He laughed.

“Hell, old Leander was just a piker when compared to D.C. Grant.”

Mostly, he was a modest man.

“Sometimes, I would like to write the memoirs of my life but I really can't justify it,” he once told me. “What do I have to show for all those years?”

Well... Where do we start?