South Bend's own: Eddie Talboom of Washington High School

1921 – 1998 · Class of 2000

The one-by-one test has a positive answer, and it is a halfback from the city's east side. Eddie Talboom was born May 5, 1921, at Delphos, Ohio, and moved to South Bend, where he played football at Washington High School for Bernie Witucki — the tailback of Witucki's single-wing teams, All–Northern Indiana Conference in the Eastern Division, and the South Bend Tribune's Most Valuable Player. Frank Leahy recruited him to Notre Dame in his first class of 1941, and Talboom spent a year on the campus; the Army took him before he played a varsity game — he served as a medical corpsman in the Second World War — and his college career, when he finally made it after the war and two years of work, was made at the University of Wyoming. There, from 1948 to 1950 under Bowden Wyatt, he was a three-time first-team all-conference selection who led the Skyline Conference in scoring three straight years, broke Wyoming's school record with 130 points in 1950, became the university's first All-America that year at the age of twenty-nine, and took the undefeated Cowboys to their first bowl, the 1951 Gator Bowl, where he was named the game's most valuable player.

The Hall that took him stood in his hometown. Talboom was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in the class of 2000 — Wyoming's first Hall of Famer — and enshrined at the Enshrinement Festival in South Bend in 2001, in the building on St. Joseph Street, a short drive from the high school where his career began. The Indiana Football Hall of Fame's roster states the distinction plainly: he was the first football player from South Bend inducted into the College Hall. He is, on the record as it stands, also the only one: the test of the rest of the city's line, in the next entry, returns no second name. Two conflicts in his record are printed rather than smoothed: the Foundation's Hall of Fame biography gives his death as June 6, 1998, while the Foundation's own class-of-2000 announcement says he passed away in Florida in May of 1999; and the year at Notre Dame — a recruiting class, a spring conversion to quarterback in Leahy's new T formation, no varsity game — rests on the state hall's roster line ("University of Notre Dame 1 year") and the recruiting record, where the Foundation's biography passes directly from Washington High School to the Army to Wyoming. Neither conflict touches the tie itself: formed at a South Bend high school, enshrined into the national Hall from a western school, in the hall his hometown then housed.

Sources:

1. National Football Foundation, Hall of Fame biography of Eddie Talboom — the Delphos birth, the move to South Bend, Washington High School under Bernie Witucki, the war service, Wyoming 1948–50, the 1950 All-America honor and the first-Hall-of-Famer standing; and the Hall's inductee page (cfbhall.com), class of 2000.
2. University of Maryland and UCLA athletics, carrying the Foundation's class-of-2000 announcements — the three all-conference years, the three Skyline scoring titles, the 130 points of 1950, the undefeated season and Gator Bowl most valuable player, the 1951 Senior Bowl, and the death notice in Florida in May 1999, against the biography page's June 6, 1998.
3. Indiana Football Hall of Fame, roster entry for Eddie Talboom (ifca-hof.org) — the All-Conference and Tribune MVP honors, the Notre Dame year, the enshrinement in South Bend in 2001, and the statement that he was the first football player from South Bend inducted into the College Hall.