Notre Dame Football: 15 best quarterbacks in Fighting Irish history
By John Buhler
Frank Carideo played for the Irish in the late 1920s. While his numbers have largely been lost to time, he is one of nine former Notre Dame quarterbacks to have been elected into the College Football Hall of Fame. He is also the only Irish signal-caller on this list that predates the Heisman Trophy.
Carideo was the Notre Dame starting quarterback from 1928 to 1930. He was a two-time All-American for the Irish, earning those honors in 1929 and again in 1930. In both of those seasons, Notre Dame would go on to win national championships. This was an earlier era of college football, but Carideo undeniably personified winning.
Carideo played his college ball for the legendary Knute Rockne in South Bend. Rockne deemed him the finest quarterback he ever coached. Granted, this is a statement from almost a century ago. The passing game has evolved several times over since the peak of the Rockne era at Notre Dame. Regardless, this is about as lofty of praise as you can get from a college football head coaching Mt. Rushmore candidate.
While the statistics Carideo accumulated playing quarterback for the Irish don’t stack up to today’s game, his record as the starter during those national championship years certainly does. Notre Dame went a perfect 19-0 during that two-year run of Carideo being the Irish’s star signal-caller.
After his playing career came to an end, Carideo went into coaching. He first served as an assistant to the Iowa Hawkeyes in 1931 before taking over the Missouri Tigers program in 1932. It was a disastrous three-year run with Carideo as head coach. The Tigers went a 2-23-2 playing in the old Big Six. He would go on to serve as an assistant for the Mississippi State Bulldogs and Iowa throughout the 1930s and 1940s, including a five-year run as the Bulldogs’ head basketball coach.
Carideo would be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame shortly after his coaching career came to an end. He was a member of the Class of 1954. Carideo would live a long life, passing away at the age of 83 in 1992 in Ocean Springs, Mississippi.