[4] From the 1890s to the 1910s, the Wabash football team played schedules against many much larger colleges, such as Illinois, Indiana and Purdue, against whom the Little Giants occasionally won impressive upsets.
[5] In 1903, the Wabash football team fielded its first black player, Samuel S. Gordon, and the following season added another, Walter M. Cantrell.
Many opposing teams threatened boycotts, but school president William Patterson Kane insisted the men be allowed to play.
[5] Incidentally, both head coaches that season, Pete Vaughan of Wabash and Knute Rockne of Notre Dame, had played college football together for the Fighting Irish.
[9][10] A further connection between the schools was College Football Hall of Fame inductee Jesse Harper, who coached Wabash from 1909 to 1912, and then Notre Dame from 1913 to 1917.