Terlep also won two Grey Cup championships in the Canadian Football League (CFL), once as an assistant with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and once as the general manager of the Ottawa Rough Riders.
He went on to play as a backup quarterback at Notre Dame in 1943 under head coach Frank Leahy, but left the following year to serve in the U.S. military during World War II.
He then became general manager of the Ottawa Rough Riders, and was responsible for bringing future hall of fame quarterback Ron Lancaster into the league.
[3][5] After high school, Terlep enrolled on a football scholarship at Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, a Catholic university near his hometown.
[1][6] He played at quarterback for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish in 1943, when the team finished with a 9–1 win–loss record and won a national championship under coach Frank Leahy.
[5] Terlep left Notre Dame toward the end of the 1944 season to join a V-12 Navy College Training Program put in place during World War II.
[8] He was transferred to the Great Lakes Naval Training Station in Illinois and played quarterback for the base's football team under Paul Brown, the former head coach at Ohio State.
[3] Marquette finished with a 6–3–1 record that year, but Blackbourn resigned after the season to become the head coach of the NFL's Green Bay Packers.
[3] The team finished that season with a 10–4 record and beat the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in November to win the Grey Cup, the league's championship.
[16][30] Lancaster was viewed as too small in stature to play in the American professional leagues, but he became one of the most successful quarterbacks of his era in the CFL and is a member of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame.
[31] The Rough Riders finished second in their division in 1961, but Terlep resigned after a 6-7-1 season in 1962 and was replaced by the team's former wide receiver Red O'Quinn.
[32][33] Terlep, who hosted a radio and television program about football, had clashed with Rough Riders head coach Frank Clair over the team's play-calling.