The Gipper

by Jack Cavanaugh

  When Rockne held his first practice on September 18, he didn’t know what to expect, given that he now had so many new players who he knew little about. Missing were practically the entire defensive unit that had allowed only one touchdown in 1917, most of whom had graduated. Also gone were seven lettermen who had been called to Army duty—quarterbacks Joe Brandy, Tex Allison, and Grant; linemen Slip Madigan and Dave Hayes; halfback Grover Malone; and fullback Walter Miller, Gipp’s roommate during Gipp’s sophomore year. As it was, the outlook for the 1918 season looked bleak indeed, and grew even bleaker when only twenty prospects turned out for the first practice on September 17 on a field made muddy by a steady rain. At his oratorical best, Rockne reminded the players that they faced an uncertain season because of the flu pandemic and that some games might be scheduled at the last minute, which turned out to be true. At that twenty players comprised a decent turnout. As few as a dozen showed up for the initial practice sessions at some well-known football schools, such as Minnesota, and, because of the dearth of players, many schools canceled the 1918 season. Rockne, his voice softer than usual, also pointed out that since they were all of draft age, the Notre Dame players were lucky to be playing football at a time when young men their age were dying on battlefields in France and tens of thousands of others had died of the Spanish Flu.

  Writing about the initial practice, a sportswriter for the South Bend Tribune reported in the next day’s editions, “Green is the word to describe the material for the gold and blue”—the team’s colors—“Not that the youngsters do not know any football at all, or that they are an awkward squad. Some of them look promising, but they have a long way to go to measure up to traditional varsity standards.”

  It was also a very light team, even by the standards of Notre Dame, where Harper, like Rockne, put a far greater stress on speed than weight. Only one starter, tackle Rollo Stine, weighed more than 185 pounds, while four weighed less than 170 pounds, including guards Hunk Anderson and Maurice “Clipper” Smith, and end Eddie Anderson, another future coach, who weighed 149 pounds. The only other player on the eventual twenty-nine-man squad who weighed more than 200 pounds was reserve tackle Romanus “Peaches” Nadolney. And this, mind you, was on a team whose starters played both offense and defense, as was the case with every collegiate team at the time when rules forbade unlimited substitutions and mandated that a player leaving the game could not return until the following quarter. Indeed, the two-platoon system, wherein one set of players play on offense and one on defense, was still three decades away.

  In the coming days, Gipp, fellow halfbacks Pete Bahan, the team captain, and Norm Barry, along with the other three returning letterman, found that Rockne was essentially staying with Jesse Harper’s playbook, both on offense and defense. Considering that while playing for one season under Harper and serving as an assistant with him for four seasons Notre Dame had won thirty-four games and lost only five, Rockne was not about to interfere with a winning style of play. Moreover, he admired Harper, both as a person and as one of football’s most innovative and cerebral coaches. Rockne also appreciated the fact that Harper, soft-spoken and not given to inspirational pregame or halftime talks, had often delegated that task to his far more outgoing and glib chief assistant. As it was, the only noticeable change Rockne made was slightly altering the shift Harper had instituted by having both ends shift along with the four backs, who under the Notre Dame formation had the quarterback line up to the left or right of the center and the other three backs in a line about six feet from the center. Under Harper, only the backs had moved in unison before the ball was snapped in what had become known as the “Notre Dame shift,” even though the Notre Dame version was patterned after the shift originated by Walter Camp at Yale and modified by Amos Alonzo Stagg at Chicago, where Harper had learned it as a player. In an unusually candid moment, Rockne, asked where, if anywhere, his version of the shift had come from, said, “From Yale, where everything in football comes from.” Given the fertile football brain of the great Yale coach Walter Camp, that, of course, was very close to being the truth.

  Despite its lack of heft, Notre Dame had no trouble in its opening game against Case Tech (now Case Western Reserve) in Cleveland on September 28. After the home team had taken a 6-0 first-quarter lead, Notre Dame responded with 26 unanswered points, the first a touchdown by Curly Lambeau in the second quarter and two touchdowns by Gipp in the third period. Pointing out that it was the lightest team Notre Dame had fielded since he came to Notre Dame in 1910, Rockne said, “This team, despite its light weight, has all the spirit and fight that any of the older and heavier teams had.” Overall, though, Rockne was not satisfied with the team’s play, which he described as “ragged” while also criticizing it for poor tackling and blocking. Above all, Rockne never tolerated poor blocking. A player could miss a tackle or drop a pass, but, to the onetime 165-pound end, missing a block was inexcusable. It was one of the reasons Rockne often went out on the practice field to physically demonstrate the proper way to block.

  Because the Spanish Flu intensified in the Midwest, as it did across most of the United States that fall, the team did not play again until November 2, canceling all four scheduled games in October. Practices were also sharply curtailed, giving Gipp more time to sleep off his many all-night gambling sessions in downtown South Bend. The November 2 game was hastily arranged after Nebraska canceled out against Notre Dame just before the Ramblers were to board a train for Lincoln after the city’s city council banned all sporting events because of the flu pandemic. Somehow, Rockne managed that night to arrange a game with Wabash in Crawfordsville, Indiana, for the following afternoon, which required Notre Dame to board a train before daybreak for the 185-mile trip to Crawfordsville. Even lighter and with a smaller squad than that which had been crushed by Notre Dame, 60-0, two years before, Wabash lost by the same margin again, 67-7, even though Gipp spent most of the second half on the bench because of the one-sided score. Rockne was not about to risk injury to his best player when he wasn’t needed.

  While Gipp was playing, though, Wabash had difficulty containing him. “I may have laid a hand on him once or twice, but that was all I could do,” said John Ott, a Wabash end. “He didn’t seem extra fast, but that was good enough, combined with his elusiveness and strength.” In its remaining three road games in the abbreviated season, Notre Dame lost to Michigan Agricultural in a game in which Gipp sustained a broken blood vessel in his face and missed most of the second half; beat in-state rival Purdue as Gipp accounted for almost 200 yards running and passing; and, in a make-up game, played a 0-0 tie against Nebraska. As against the future Michigan State, the Ramblers were without Gipp for most of the Nebraska game after he was forced to leave in the first half with a severe sore throat that hampered his breathing.

  The team’s best effort came in its only home game, on November 9, against a strong Great Lakes Naval Training Station team comprised mainly of former college stars, including former All-American Paddy Driscoll and the later legendary George Halas, both of whom eventually played for and coached the Chicago Bears. Though outweighed by an average of ten pounds per man, Notre Dame scored first on a touchdown by Gipp in the first quarter, which was quickly matched by a touchdown run by Driscoll. Thereafter, Notre Dame played Great Lakes on even terms in a game that ended in a 7-7 tie. After the game, both Driscoll and Halas paid tribute to their much-younger and lighter opponents, especially Gipp and his fellow halfback, the 155-pound Pete Bahan.

  Two days after the Great Lakes game, South Bend, like cities and towns across the United States, erupted with joy on the morning of November 11 when news of the war’s end—the armistice—was announced on radios throughout the country. As many as 15,000 people assembled in downtown South Bend, where a spontaneous parade began through the city’s streets and a huge bonfire was set in the courthouse square. Even George Gipp, never prone to showing emotion, exulted when Larson awakened him to tell him that the war was over. Gipp’s concerns about bein
g drafted, after so many close calls, were now assuaged for good. On hearing the news, Rockne, never one to hide his inner feelings, was ecstatic, hugging his wife, Bonnie, before leaving for his office that morning. Rockne had another reason to be happy; the armistice meant that as many as a half dozen players with remaining eligibility would probably return from military service to resume playing football at Notre Dame in 1919.

  That night, Larson and Anderson, anxious to celebrate the war’s end but unable to leave campus, found themselves stymied by Indiana’s premature prohibition law, which had taken effect earlier that year. “Then I realized that George might be able to help us,” Larson said. “So I got in touch with him downtown, and before we knew it he was back on campus with a bottle, which didn’t surprise us at all considering his connections downtown. But I also remember that he didn’t take a drink.”

  Maybe Gipp was just hung over from the night before.

  Because of the impact of the Spanish Flu on college football teams, the 1918 season did not count against a player’s eligibility, which meant that Gipp, among others, would have an extra season of eligibility, assuming, of course, that he would take advantage of it. Rockne was well aware that there was no guarantee Gipp would. Between the last game on November 28 and the Christmas break, Gipp again spent more time gambling in South Bend than he did on campus. “George made a lot of money during that period,” said Hunk Anderson, who, like Larson, tended to speak of Gipp in reverential terms. “I mean a lot—hundreds of dollars.” Because of the extra time the players had, Gipp and Pete Bahan, one of his closest friends on the team, bought a quantity of blue and gold pennants, buttons, pins, and campus calendars, which they sold on campus for a considerable profit.

  Gipp invested much of his share of that profit, along with his gambling earnings, in a sizable quantity of bootleg liquor to take back to Calumet. Gipp’s intention was hardly altruistic nor was he smitten by the Christmas season. Shortly before Christmas, Gipp boarded a train for Calumet with Anderson and Larson, along with two suitcases of whiskey stashed below their seats. As Anderson recalled, somewhere along the way, the train was stopped for an inspection, not uncommon at the time, since it was illegal to carry liquor aboard trains in the Midwest.

  “Spotting the suitcases, one of the inspectors asked us what was in the bags, which George had put under our seats,” Anderson recollected. “We were worried, to say the least, and we had to think fast. I finally said, ‘Our clothes are in the bags.’ The inspector looked at the bags again and thankfully he walked away. When we got back to Calumet, George sold the booze for about $500. It was a risk—arrest and confiscation of the liquor—he was willing to take. And, as usual, George came out ahead.”

  8

  THE FIGHTING HIBERNIANS

  GIVEN THAT NOTRE Dame was founded by seven Frenchspeaking priests, it is somewhat ironic that the university’s sports teams became known as the “Fighting Irish.” At that, credit for the nickname is hard to pin down, although it appears that it was first used by the Notre Dame Scholastic, a weekly campus newspaper, as early as 1917, George Gipp’s second season in South Bend. Regardless, the nickname stuck, supplanting Hoosiers, Ramblers, Westerners, Micks, Catholics, Hibernians, Harps, and Papists, even though the football team was rarely dominated by players of Irish descent. That was the case on Gipp’s teams, when, on average, about a third of the thirty or so players could have lived up to the name “Fighting Irish.”

  Ever since 1909, when Notre Dame upset Michigan and beat Michigan Agricultural, Pittsburgh, and Miami of Ohio, while yielding only three points (to Michigan) in that span, Notre Dame had made its mark in football in the Midwest. But it wasn’t until 1913 that the school became nationally known, at least in the sports world.

  Even though Dorais and Rockne had been involved in only one losing game since their freshman year, a span of twenty-four games, the Ramblers were a heavy underdog to a heavier and also undefeated Army team when they met on The Plain at West Point. Harper knew that his team could not beat Army with its ground game, even though in fullback Ray Eichenlaub it had an outstanding runner; the only path to victory lay with its passing attack against a team that rarely threw the ball and had never played against one that passed very often.

  Remembering the success Amos Alonzo Stagg had enjoyed with the pass when Harper was a backup quarterback at Chicago, the new coach had used the pass often and effectively as Notre Dame scored 169 points during its first three games while yielding only one touchdown. Fortunately for Harper, Dorais and Rockne—while working at a resort hotel in Cedar Point, Ohio, on the bank of Lake Erie during the previous summer—had spent hours of their spare time throwing and catching passes on the beach and on a grass field near the resort’s main building.

  They did so after Harper had told Rockne, the incoming captain, before the summer break that Notre Dame would be playing Army during the 1913 season. Harper welcomed their plan and gladly loaned Rockne and Dorais two footballs they had requested to take to Cedar Point. As he did, Harper suggested to Rockne, by no means an outstanding receiver, that he start catching the ball with his hands, rather than with his arms and chest, which was the conventional way to catch a forward pass at the time. “Jesse stressed catching the ball with what he called soft hands, and I worked on that at Cedar Point,” Rockne said. Even more important, Harper told Rockne and Dorais to work on pass patterns wherein Rockne caught passes on the run, rather than as a stationary target, as was the norm during the early days of the forward pass.

  That summer, Rockne also worked on developing a relationship with a young waitress at the resort named Bonnie Gwendoline Skiles. The following July, a month after Rockne’s graduation, they were married at a nearby Catholic church in Sandusky, Ohio, shortly after Bonnie had converted to Catholicism (Rockne was still a Protestant). Dorais was the best man. Shortly after the wedding, Rockne and Dorais wound up as the two finalists for the head football coaching job at St. Joseph’s College in Dubuque, Iowa. Rather then both apply, the two friends decided to settle the issue with a coin toss, which Dorais won. He then got the job. Rockne, who had always harbored thoughts of becoming a doctor, enrolled in medical school at St. Louis University while taking a job coaching football at a high school in order to cover some of his expenses. However, when medical school administrators got wind of Rockne’s off-campus job, they told him it wouldn’t be feasible for him to attend classes and coach football, prompting Rockne to drop out of school and return to South Bend, where Harper hired him as an assistant and he was made a chemistry instructor in the prep school.

  Although he was an early exponent of the forward pass, Harper had used it sparingly while coaching at Alma College in Michigan and at Wabash College in Indiana after it was legalized in 1906. The legalization of the pass—which had been used occasionally, albeit illegally—came about after President Theodore Roosevelt had summoned representatives from Yale, Harvard, and Princeton to the White House in October 1905 because of his concern over an increase in football-related deaths. It was an era when football was, in effect, a no-holdsbarred, anything-goes sport in which linemen faced each other only inches apart, holding and even punching were condoned, and many players played without helmets. Glenn “Pop” Warner, the legendary coach for whom Pop Warner youth football is named, was coaching at Cornell at the time and had invented shoulder and thigh pads that year, but while they were credited with reducing injuries at Cornell, they seemed to have had little bearing at some other schools, which also began to use the new safeguarding equipment.

  A physical fitness buff himself, who liked to box and wrestle, President Roosevelt had been alarmed over how football, in trying to eliminate its rugby elements, had become more vicious and even brutal. In meeting with the representatives of the three Ivy League schools, which usually produced the nation’s best football teams, Roosevelt had let it be known that unless steps were taken to curb the violent play, he might call for the abolition of the game. By the end of 1905, as Roosevelt was well
aware, eighteen football players had been killed and 159 seriously injured that year, according to the Chicago Tribune. Over a twenty-five-year period, from the virtual onset of college football in 1880 through 1905, 325 deaths had occurred along with more than 1,000 serious injuries. Roosevelt was hardly the only one concerned. Because of the growing violence in the sport and the increasing death toll, a number of schools abandoned their football programs by the end of 1905, among them Columbia, Stanford, the University of California, and Northwestern, although all of them eventually would reinstate the sport.

  In early December, two months after Roosevelt’s summit meeting on college football, the chancellor of New York University, which had what would develop into a big-time football program, assembled representatives from thirteen other football-playing schools to discuss ways to end the violence in the game. Two weeks later, representatives from sixty-two schools assembled in a follow-up meeting and formed the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States, the first organization to oversee collegiate sports in the country. Then, in January 1906, the organization, the forerunner of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, established a rules committee. Among the new rules promulgated was the legalization of the forward pass, albeit it with rules that hardly encouraged its use. For one, before throwing a pass, a player had to run at least five yards to the left or right of center after taking a snap and could not throw the ball more than twenty yards. If throwing the stubby, oblong ball was difficult, catching it was not easy either, since a defender could hit and knock down a potential receiver before he could get his hands on the ball. One of the few advantages of throwing a pass was that, on last down, a pass thrown out of bounds gave the ball to the opposing team at that point, making a long sideline pass as effective as an out-of-bounds punt. Most college teams were slow to incorporate the pass into their offensive repertoire because of some of the aforementioned rules and because the ball—about three inches bigger in circumference than the ball in use today—was difficult to throw. Some players placed the ball on the palm of their passing hands and hurled it, often end-over-end, in a sort of shot-put fashion. Gipp, though, had long fingers that enabled him to get a better grip on the ball and throw a spiral, which was much easier to catch than an end-over-end pass.