The Gipper

by Jack Cavanaugh

  With Gipp eligible to play once again, Arch Ward, a sportswriter for the South Bend Tribune and recent Notre Dame graduate who would go onto become a nationally known columnist for the Chicago Tribune, wrote in advance of the opening game, “Notre Dame fandom is fizzing and foaming like an uncorked bottle of pop in anticipation of another glorious gridiron campaign.” Hyperbolic writing? Yes, but typical of the gee-whiz school of sportswriting of the era. That Gipp had broken an untold number of rules at Notre Dame and at best had been an occasional student during his second and third years mattered not at all to most of the student body, alumni (both actual and “subway”) and South Benders who had vested interests in Notre Dame’s success, both academically and in sports.

  For the third time in four years, Notre Dame’s opening day opponent was Kalamazoo, which had not scored at all in the first two meetings. The largest crowd ever to see an opening-day Notre Dame game—about 5,000 spectators—turned out on a mild day for a three o’clock start. On hand, too, was Rockne’s favorite and handpicked referee, Walter Eckersall, who would once more be doing double duty by both officiating and covering the game for the Chicago Tribune. Again, Kalamazoo offered little resistance as Notre Dame routed the visitors 39-0 (in six contests between 1917 and 1923, Notre Dame outscored Kalamazoo by a combined score of 284-0), allowing Rockne the opportunity to give ample playing time to the second team—his so-called “shock troops,” who were probably better than many starting college teams.

  Though he played little more than half of the game, Gipp ran 16 times for 183 yards, an average of more than 11 yards a carry. The game marked the debut of Roger Kiley, who would turn out to be an outstanding end. Early in the game, Gipp launched a long pass to Kiley, which he dropped. “I felt like running right out of Cartier Field and all the way home to Chicago,” Kiley said more than a half century later. “The great George Gipp throws me a pass for the first time, and I drop it. When I went back into the huddle, George didn’t say a word to me, but told Joe Brandy, the quarterback, to call the same play, and he did, and this time I caught the pass and a couple of others during the game. After the game George asked me to come early to a practice the following week so we could get better acquainted. That’s the way he was, whether you were a veteran player and a new guy like I was.”

  Another rout followed the next Saturday on an unseasonably warm afternoon at Cartier Field when Western Michigan was crushed, 41-0, with Gipp gaining 123 yards on only 14 carries (nearly a 9-yard average). A week later, though, Notre Dame found itself in an underdog role against a strong Nebraska team in Lincoln. But even though Gipp had a sub-par game by his standards, gaining just 70 yards on 15 carries and completing only 6 of 20 passes, the Irish prevailed on a rainy Saturday afternoon, 16-7. After the game, Nebraska’s All-American tackle Clarence Swanson said Gipp was the best all-around back that he had ever played against.

  Returning home to play before the largest crowd ever to watch a Notre Dame home game—around 7,000—Notre Dame had to come from behind in the second half to turn back a much heavier intrastate opponent, Valparaiso, 28-3. In that game, Rockne did something extraordinarily rare—and which he would often do in future seasons—starting his outstanding second unit, which played the entire first quarter and most of the second period as Valparaiso took a 3-0 halftime lead. To Rockne’s way of thinking, this enabled his starters to look for weaknesses and strengths in their opponents and also let the shock troops soften up the opposition for the regulars. With the first unit playing the entire second half, the Irish, again led by Gipp’s passing and running, scored 28 unanswered points, 14 of them on two touchdowns by Gipp and two drop-kicked extra-points. On his first touchdown run, Gipp electrified the crowd when he burst off left tackle and carried four would-be tacklers into the end zone. He was equally dazzling on his second touchdown when, dodging and twisting, he literally eluded the entire Valparaiso defense during a 39-yard scoring run.

  Good as that performance was, it actually amounted to a warm-up for the Army game the following Saturday at West Point, when George Gipp would play the greatest game of his life against an undefeated Army team, which had given up only two touchdowns through their first five games, one more than Notre Dame had yielded in four. Army’s opposition, though, had been the weakest it had been in years—Union, Marshall, Middlebury, Springfield, and Tufts. None of those opponents were in the class of Nebraska, which Notre Dame had beaten, or Syracuse, Boston College, and other such strong teams the Cadets had played in the past. The softer schedule was not of Army’s choice, but was the result of more and more major football powers opting not to play the Cadets due to their inclination to use outstanding players who had played elsewhere for years.

  After a twenty-two-hour train trip, a Notre Dame squad of twenty-three players arrived at West Point in late morning on Friday, October 29, and held a brief workout. The next morning, by pre-arrangement, Hunk Anderson once again met with the manager of the Army team for breakfast, after which each of them gave an off-campus shoemaker about $2,000 to hold as a winner-take-all pot.

  In their advance stories, many sportswriters played up the head-to-head meeting between Gipp and Army’s star running back, Walter French. Like Elmer Oliphant before him, French, only five feet seven inches tall and weighing around 155 pounds, had been an All-American at another school before coming to West Point. In French’s case, it was at Rutgers University, where he had won letters in football, basketball, and baseball. That Army still recruited such stars after they had played as many as four years at other schools made it increasingly difficult for the Cadets to book top-flight opponents, who felt that using such experienced players gave Army a huge advantage. That did not seem to matter to Notre Dame, which was still having difficulty booking games against football powers in the Midwest and, of course, found that playing Army had attracted national publicity to the university.

  A capacity crowd of about 10,000, including about 500 Notre Dame fans, packed the bleachers at West Point’s Cullum Field—Michie Stadium would not open until 1924—on a gray and chilly afternoon. Also on hand were sportswriters from major newspapers in the Northeast, and as far west as Chicago, including two of the country’s most famous writers, Grantland Rice and Ring Lardner, once a sportswriter for the South Bend Tribune but by 1920 a celebrated writer for the Chicago Tribune. Lardner would achieve his greatest acclaim as a short-story writer, but also had a passion for Notre Dame football. Asked in advance of the Army game what Notre Dame’s strategy should be, Lardner had a succinct answer: “Give the ball to Gipp and let him decide what to do.” Before the game, Gipp gave Rice, Lardner, the other writers, and the crowd a portent of what was to come when, while practicing drop-kick field goals, he went to midfield with four footballs. As he had done before a few other Notre Dame games, Gipp then turned toward one goal post and calmly drop-kicked two balls through the uprights. He then turned to face the other goal post and nonchalantly did the same with the other two balls as the West Point cadets and others in the crowd cheered.

  To paraphrase the great entertainer of the era, Al Jolson, they hadn’t seen anything yet.

  As expected, Gipp and French were the central figures in the game. Both teams scored two touchdowns in the opening half, and their star running backs were largely responsible for both. A 40-yard run by French was the key play that led to the game’s first touchdown by the Cadets, while Gipp ran back the ensuing kickoff 38 yards and then gained another 23 yards rushing and 25 yards on a pass to end Roger Kiley as Notre Dame tied it at 7-7 on a 5-yard run by halfback Johnny Mohardt. A 57-yard punt return by Gipp, followed by a 38-yard touchdown pass to Kiley and Gipp’s second drop-kicked extra point gave the Fighting Irish a 14-7 lead early in the second quarter.

  Shortly thereafter, the diminutive French caught a Gipp punt, raced 60 yards for a touchdown, and kicked his second extra point to tie the game at 14. Just before the end of the half, the redoubtable French booted a 15-yard field goal to give Army a 17-14 lead in a game that had
lived up to all expectations, particularly the brilliant play of Gipp and French. The Army lead could have been even larger as a result of a Gipp gamble that failed late in the half. With the ball inside the Notre Dame 10-yard line on fourth down, quarterback Joe Brandy called for Gipp to punt. But Gipp had other ideas, knowing that Army, expecting a punt, would be vulnerable to a pass, even a long pass. He then told left end Roger Kiley, but not Brandy or anyone else, “When I get the ball, you tear down the left side, and I’ll pass it.”

  In punt formation on the Notre Dame goal line, Gipp took the snap from center, and instead of punting, did indeed fire a 45-yard pass to a wide-open Kiley, who, for what is believed to be the only time in his distinguished career, dropped the ball. “That was gambling, absolute gambling,” Rockne was to say, “and proved to me that Gipp was a gambler.”

  That remark indicated that Rockne was guilty of naivete or was speaking with tongue in cheek. In fact it wasn’t until after Gipp had played his last game that Rockne said he had belatedly learned that Gipp was indeed a gambler. That, almost everyone agreed, was hard to believe since the coach was anything but naive.

  Fortunately for Notre Dame, Gipp’s unsuccessful gamble did not cost it, since Army was unable to capitalize on its excellent field position after the incomplete pass and had to be content with a 17-14 halftime lead.

  As the players left the field for the halftime break, Rice turned to Lardner and said of Gipp, “He’s really something special.” Whereupon Lardner, who had watched Gipp play often, replied, “I think he’s just getting started.”

  In the Notre Dame locker room, Rockne proceeded to give what Hunk Anderson would say many years later was one of his best halftime pep talks. Before a game, a Rockne pep talk often would include such rallying calls as “Go get ’em. Hit ’em and knock ’em down. Then hit ’em again. Then knock ’em down and make ’em stay down!” At halftime, though, Rockne tended to be caustically critical of individual players whom he felt had either made crucial mistakes or were not going all-out in their blocking and tackling, which to Rockne were far and away the most important aspects of football. As he spoke during halftime of the 1920 Army game, Rockne, still fuming from Gipp’s pass from the Notre Dame goal line late in the half, spotted his star left halfback in a corner puffing on a cigarette. “And you there, Gipp,” he said in a voice dripping with sarcasm, “I guess you don’t have any interest in this game.”

  “Look, Rock, I’ve got 400 bucks bet on this game, and I’m not about to blow it,” Gipp replied, evoking laughter from his teammates and even a grin from Rockne.

  Ring Lardner was right—Gipp was even better in the second half, when he more than atoned for the ill-advised pass to Kiley, slashing through and around the bigger Army line and completing all three passes he threw. Following a scoreless third quarter, Notre Dame took a 21-17 lead early in the final period when a 10-yard run by Mohardt punctuated a touchdown drive highlighted by Gipp’s dazzling running.

  On its next possession, Gipp ran back a French punt 40 yards to the Notre Dame 47. Gipp then connected on passes to Kiley and captain Frank Coughlin to put the ball on the Army 8-yard line, from where fullback Chet Wynne scored the game’s final touchdown, making the score 27-17. With less than three minutes left and a Notre Dame victory virtually assured, Rockne took out Gipp, who by then had gained 150 yards rushing on 20 carries (an average of 7.5 yards) and completed 5 of 9 passes for 123 yards, a total of 273 yards. In addition, Gipp had run back punts and kickoffs for 112 yards to give him an overall offensive total of a remarkable 375 yards, and had played brilliantly on defense. Indeed, Knute Rockne was to say years later that Gipp was also a “master of defense.”

  “I can say of him what cannot, I believe, be said of any other football player—that not a single forward pass was ever completed in territory defended by George Gipp,” Rockne said in praise of his star’s defensive play.

  Many years later, Roger Kiley, by then an eighty-five-year-old federal judge in Chicago, vividly remembered the crowd’s reaction as Gipp headed toward the Notre Dame bench near the end of the Army game. “I have never seen an athlete get the acclamation George received when he walked off the field that day,” Kiley said. “He was tired and pale, and his face was a little bloody, and the crowd at West Point stood up although nobody applauded. It was thrilling. Awed silence.”

  After the game, Gipp was showered with plaudits by Army players and from sportswriters. “Gipp just would not be stopped,” Army end Donald Storck said. “Whatever he did, it was with little effort, but with grace and agility. His long-legged gallops through our line were as difficult to stop as might be those of an antelope in an open field. His long strides made his deceptive speed difficult to time, with the result that most of the time we were tackling air.”

  The writer for The New York Times also used an antelope as a metaphor in the lead of his story, which read, “A lithe-limbed Hoosier football player named George Gipp galloped wild through the Army on the plains here this afternoon, giving a performance which was more like an antelope than a human being.” The New York Herald rhapsodized, “This man Gipp could do everything with a football that there was to be done. He proved an all-round star of the first magnitude. They do not come any better.”

  The New York Morning Telegram story said of Gipp, “All he did for his team was hit with a nice slashing drive that brought many gains, skim the ends in great style, punt beautifully, throw forward passes when they accomplished most, and essay an occasional dropkick.”

  After dressing, Hunk Anderson hurried over to the shoemaker’s shop in nearby Highland Falls to collect $4,200, the total of the team’s wager and the money bet by the Army team. Gipp’s share alone was $800 (about $8,000 by the second decade of the twenty-first century). Even for the high-stakes poker and billiards player from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, that amounted to a sizable payday.

  Considering how he had powered his way through and around the Army defense, Army center Frank Greene said he was stunned upon seeing Gipp later. “Several of us saw Gipp in the shower room after the game and were shocked to see how emaciated he was,” Greene said. “He was literally down to skin and bones, and we discussed it later in the squad room.”

  Were all of the late nights and his overall lifestyle finally catching up to Gipp? His teammates were used to his facial pallor and occasionally gaunt look. But the observations by Greene and his teammates were especially telling.

  With Rockne’s blessing, Gipp and the rest of the Notre Dame team went out on the town in Manhattan that Saturday night before leaving Sunday morning for South Bend, where the team would be greeted shortly after midnight on Monday by more than 1,000 Notre Dame students and townspeople. Gipp, no lover of crowds, retreated to a rear car of the train, from where he alighted and joined Bonnie Rockne, the coach’s wife, who was cradling her baby son on the station platform, to watch the late-night festivities, which included a brief talk by Rockne in which, as usual, he downplayed his own role while crediting the Notre Dame victory entirely to his players, who, of course, knew better.

  That same Sunday, sports sections across the country featured the Notre Dame victory and the heroics of Gipp, by then regarded by journalistic giants such as Grantland Rice, Ring Lardner, and Damon Runyon as the best football player in the country, playing for one of the nation’s best teams. Further, the victory over Army not only focused more attention on Notre Dame but also boosted the spirits of tens of thousands of Irish Catholics throughout the country—many of whom had never set foot on a college campus but had become enamored of a team and a university with which they now had a common bond. These newfound followers of Notre Dame football would come to be known as the school’s “subway alumni,” since so many of them were from New York City and travelled by subway to and from Army-Notre Dame games at Yankee Stadium. Indeed, from the Gipp era on Notre Dame’s football team would become their team, even if most of them had never been near Indiana. For the most part, that allegiance and rooting intere
st could be attributed to the team’s colorful, innovative coach and its handsome star halfback—both Protestants, no less—and, of course, its nickname. Though he welcomed the backing of the “subway alumni,” Father Burns and some faculty and alumni members found the name “Fighting Irish” offensive. Burns also felt that the nickname would mislead many prospective students and their parents into thinking that the university was exclusively Irish and Catholic. While the majority of the roughly 1,500 students were Catholic, the names on the football team’s roster showed that only fifteen of the thirty-five players could be classified as “fighting Irishmen.” That same proportion had existed since Rockne’s days as a player. As the nickname took hold, Burns realized that it was not meant to signify that all of the players were Irish and Catholic and relented in his opposition, aware, too, that “Fighting Irish” was a lot better than Papists, Catholics, or Harps.

  For all of the euphoria across the Notre Dame campus in the aftermath of the latest victory over Army—Notre Dame’s third in a row with Gipp in the backfield—the school and the city of South Bend were abuzz over their upcoming first-ever homecoming game, against Purdue, which would draw hundreds of alumni back, including former players such as Louis “Red” Salmon, the star running back from Notre Dame teams of the turn of the century, who, until Gipp, had been regarded as the school’s most illustrious football player. The night before the game, almost the entire Notre Dame student body, about 1,500 students, marched to the Hotel Oliver to serenade the Purdue team, who was staying there. Players from both teams spoke at the rally, during which chants of Gipp! Gipp! Gipp! were shouted. Alas, but not surprisingly, Gipp was not on hand for the rally. A few cynics suggested that he might have been inside the hotel, which, of course, was one of his favorite playpens, shooting pool or playing poker for high stakes. In fact, though Gipp still had a room at the hotel, he usually had the good sense to spend nights before home games on campus in his rarely occupied bed in Sorin Hall.