The Gipper

by Jack Cavanaugh

  Similar tributes appeared in the Scholastic, the monthly campus magazine, and the Dome, the university’s yearbook. An article in the Dome in the spring of 1921 recalled that, in the aftermath of Gipp’s great performance at West Point only six weeks before he died, at least one newspaper had described him as the “Lochinvar of the West,” a reference to a heroic figure in “Marmion,” a poem by Sir Walter Scott, “while others had portrayed Gipp as ‘a demigod of football.’” That the writer of the Dome article did not explain the significance of the literary Lochinvar indicates, perhaps, that he assumed that the school’s students were familiar with Scott’s poem.

  Newspapers, both on sports and editorial pages, paid tribute to Gipp. Many dwelled on the irony and sadness of Gipp dying during the same month that he was named to every All-America team. Eight years later, W. O. McGeehan, a highly respected sports columnist for the New York Herald Tribune, described Gipp as “the greatest triple-threat man I ever saw in action.” McGeehan went on to write, “I do not ever expect to see on a football field as dynamic, as colorful a figure as this George Gipp of Notre Dame.” Some years after that, Arthur Daley, the sports columnist for The New York Times starting in 1942—the Times had only one sports columnist until the 1960s—wrote, “It has been a long parade of superstars who have marched through that capital of the gridiron world (Notre Dame), but at the head of that parade and greatest of them all was Notre Dame’s beloved Gipper.”

  Sadly, though, controversy and rancor between the university and the Gipp family would develop, mainly over Gipp’s putative conversion to Catholicism and the cost of his medical bills and funeral. To the chagrin of the university, it would be a controversy that would attract national attention.

  The doctors who had been summoned to attend Gipp, including the two specialists from Chicago, had billed Notre Dame for their services, whose costs ran into the thousands of dollars. At first Father Burns, the university president, thought that the Gipp family was obligated to pay part of the costs. But when they realized Rockne had contacted the specialists in Chicago, Burns agreed that Notre Dame should pay all of the medical expenses, which amounted to around $4,500. Gipp’s brother Matthew, who had been at his side when he died, apparently paid for Gipp’s casket and for other funeral expenses. However, Burns and other Notre Dame officials said the university, along with many of his classmates, also paid about $500 to defray the costs of shipping Gipp’s body from South Bend to Michigan and sending six of his teammates to the funeral in Laurium.

  The university was forced to divulge those expenses after reports circulated that the Gipp family had had to pay all of Gipp’s hospital and funeral expenses. One of those who made such a charge was Fielding Yost, the football coach at Michigan, a devout Methodist and Rockne’s bete noir, whom Rockne had in the past labeled as anti-Catholic. Rockne had long felt that Yost’s bias and negative comments about Notre Dame had been instrumental in the repeated rejection of the university’s application to join the Western Conference, which later became known as the Big Ten. For Rockne, having Notre Dame join the Big Ten was virtually a moral imperative. Playing Big Ten schools like Northwestern and Purdue was fine, but Rockne resented the implication that Notre Dame, as an institution, wasn’t in the same class academically as schools in what many still called the Western Conference. Rockne, a Lutheran who converted to Catholicism in 1925, justifiably could not understand whatever bias did exist toward Notre Dame, whose student body in 1920 was about twenty percent non-Catholic. Nor could Rockne’s predecessor as coach, Jesse Harper, who was also a Protestant. “I was the head coach at Notre Dame for five years, and during four of those years my captains, who were elected by the other players, were Protestants,” Harper said. “I found that the religious beliefs of a man were never important at Notre Dame. They take a man for what he’s worth.” Years later, Harper and others who had been connected with Notre Dame were pleased to note that, in one of Notre Dame’s most memorable victories, in 1935, star halfback Bill Shakespeare, a Protestant, threw a touchdown pass in the final minute of play to Wayne Milner, a Jew, to upset Ohio State. And then, of course, there was Gipp, the son of a Methodist father and Baptist mother.

  When reports that Notre Dame felt the Gipp family was responsible for Gipp’s medical and funeral bills came to the attention of Grantland Rice, the eminence gris of sportswriters and a close friend of Rockne, he wrote a column criticizing the university for not paying for Gipp’s funeral expenses, and that, as a result, Gipp’s parents “had to mortgage their small home to pay the charges.” Since Rice’s column was nationally syndicated, and because he was highly respected in journalistic circles, those allegations were damaging—at least for a while—to Notre Dame’s prestige. Rockne himself was upset over what he considered unfair charges against Notre Dame. A week after Gipp’s death, the coach wrote a letter of sympathy to Gipp’s parents in which he said Gipp would be a paradigmatic figure for all future Notre Dame football players and would be missed by all of Notre Dame’s students and that he himself would greatly miss the greatest player he had ever coached.

  In the aftermath of Gipp’s death, the question naturally arose as to whether, somehow, his life could have been saved. The consensus of medical experts was that it apparently could not, but that strep throat, as streptococcus is commonly known, is easily controllable. “Had antibiotics been available, Gipp’s streptococcus infection could have been cured,” said Doctor Charles Higgs-Coulthard, the chairman of the Family Practice Department at the Saint Joseph Regional Medical Center in South Bend. That is now the case, as it has been for more than seventyfive years as a result of antibiotics and penicillin. “In my sixteen years of practice, I’ve never heard of anyone dying from strep throat,” Doctor Higgs-Coulthard said.

  Strangely enough, Gipp’s youngest sibling, Dorothy, may have written a friendly letter in late December to Iris Trippeer, Gipp’s former fiancée, who apparently had jilted him and married another man three months before his death, unbeknownst to Gipp. In the typewritten letter, whose authenticity has been difficult to establish, Dorothy Gipp discusses Gipp’s reputed conversion to Catholicism, which, she purportedly wrote, “is quite a well-discussed subject here—and elsewhere too, I imagine.” By “here,” she apparently referred to Gipp’s hometown of Laurium, which, surprisingly, she misspells “Larium.” “If it were not for those other Calumet & Larium [sic] boys at Notre Dame, we could deny it openly at South Bend, but it seems that it would make it hard for them—so I understand it,” she wrote of her brother’s supposed religious apostasy. Her reference to “boys” appears to be to Hunk Anderson, Ojay Larson, and Perce Wilcox, all of whom were from Calumet and were pallbearers for Gipp’s coffin both in South Bend and in Laurium. That Miss Gipp, a schoolteacher who grew up in Laurium, would misspell the name of her hometown seems somewhat surprising.

  Among the many encomiums to Gipp was a long, unbylined piece in the Notre Dame Scholastic that described his memorial service in South Bend as “a tribute which some of the Caesars had not received.” Later, the writer, apparently referring to Gipp’s off-campus lifestyle, said, “There were things in his character we did not understand, and there were others in which he may have fallen short of our ideal.” It was one of the few instances where anyone lamenting Gipp’s death had alluded to his pool and card playing, and his deficiencies as a student. Overall, the tributes from those who knew Gipp well focused mainly on his popularity among his teammates and other students, his low-key persona, his determination to play in crucial situations while injured, and his trustworthiness and honesty.

  “Let me give you the human side of Gipp as I knew him,” said Arthur “Little Dutch” Bergman, one of Gipp’s former roommates, who later became the head football coach at Catholic University in Washington. “No man is a hero to his valet, they say, and that goes double for a roommate, yet you couldn’t help admiring George. He was the soul of generosity. Though he came from a poor family, money meant nothing to him. I’ve seen him win $500 i
n a crap game, and then spend his winnings buying meals for destitute families. No wonder he was idolized by the South Bend townies.”

  On the first anniversary of Gipp’s death, another former teammate, Ed DeGree, by then a junior, wrote of Gipp in the Notre Dame Scholastic, “Notre Dame men, especially those who knew him best, his teammates, coaches, and fellow students, were given the privilege of knowing him not as George Gipp the All-American, but as George Gipp the man. George Gipp was a true gentleman and friend of splendid character and high ideals. Notre Dame shall always cherish his memory and point with mingled pride and sorrow to George Gipp as a man well worth emulation.”

  Those comments added to the martyrdom of Gipp and seemed to dispel the perception by some people, including at least a few in the Notre Dame family, of Gipp as an indulgent hedonist and loner who defied social mores and team rules and was indifferent about the Notre Dame football team—and the baseball and basketball teams, too—and his teammates.

  Gipp’s final statistics, which reflected his great versatility, were both glittering and remarkable. His rushing average of 8.1 yards per carry in 1920 and his career average of 128.4 total yards a game for a non-quarterback still stood as school records in 2010, while his career record of 2,341 yards rushing in 27 games stood for 58 years until Jerome Heavens broke it in 1978. No records were kept for passing at Notre Dame during Gipp’s career, but it was generally conceded that he was probably the best long passer in the country, deadly accurate as long as 50 yards with the oblong ball of the era, which made long-range passing difficult. “Until Sammy Baugh came along, Gipp was the greatest long-range passer of all time,” said Dutch Bergman, referring to the star halfback from Texas Christian whose exploits with the Horned Frogs and the NFL’s Washington Redskins in the 1930s and 1940s established him as one of the best, if indeed not the best, passer in the game’s history. Perhaps Gipp’s most astonishing achievement, though, for which no records have ever been kept, was not allowing a completed pass in his territory over a four-year, twenty-eightgame period when Gipp played both offense and defense. And then, of course, there was Gipp’s 62-yard dropkick field goal as a freshman in 1916. No Notre Dame player has ever kicked a longer field goal by placement, which is acknowledged to be a lot easier than by drop-kicking, a method that went out of style in the 1930s.

  Even without Gipp, indisputably the greatest back he would ever have, Rockne kept on winning. Still underpaid at less than $10,000 a year compared with the likes of Fielding Yost, Pop Warner, and a number of other high-profile coaches, but earning more than double Notre Dame’s most highly paid professors, Rockne arranged Notre Dame’s longest schedule ever for 1921—eleven games. With a veteran team that included a virtual fraternity of future coaches in linemen Eddie Anderson (the team captain), Hunk Anderson, Clipper Smith, Harry Mehre, and Tom Lieb; quarterback Frank Thomas; fullback Chet Wynne; and the squad’s best back in Johnny Mohardt, the Fighting Irish ran their winning streak to twenty games before losing to Iowa, 10-7, in the third game of the season. In that game, Duke Slater, an outstanding Hawkeye tackle who played without a helmet, as only a few players still were doing in 1921, endeared himself to the Fighting Irish late in the game by his gentleness. Bearing down on Chet Grant, the 135-pound Notre Dame quarterback, after Grant had fielded a punt, Slater grabbed the diminutive Grant—whom he outweighed by more than 100 pounds—and pulled him gently to the ground. Francis Wallace, at the time a student sports aide for Notre Dame, said years later that had Slater hit Grant with full force, “Grant could have been annihilated.” Instead, Wallace recalled years later, it was one of the most sportsman-like gestures he had ever seen on a football field. Like Roger Kiley and Norm Barry, Slater also became a judge in Chicago—in his case one of the first black Superior Court judges in the city.

  Following the loss to Iowa, Notre Dame recovered to win its last eight games to finish at 10-1, while starting a new winning streak of fourteen games, which would end with a scoreless tie at Army in 1922. Before the second game of the 1921 season, against Indiana in Indianapolis, Rockne was said to have invoked George Gipp’s name for the first time. Before the opening kickoff, Rockne supposedly claimed that rough play by the Hoosiers in the 1920 game had resulted in dislocating Gipp’s shoulder and could have hastened Gipp’s death. Whether that was the reason the Irish beat Indiana, 28-7, is unlikely, although the allegation, true or speculative, was typical of Rockne, who was not averse to stretching the truth or fabricating an anecdote to inspire his charges.

  For years, Rockne, exerting the clout he had amassed at Notre Dame, had resisted overtures for games from other Catholic schools such as Georgetown, St. Mary’s, John Carroll, and Marquette. His position was that by playing those schools it could divide the loyalty that Catholic fans throughout the country had amassed for Notre Dame, mainly because of the stronger opposition it played, its nickname, its charismatic coach, and the great George Gipp. That Rockne and Gipp were both Protestants did not matter. Notre Dame actually had played Marquette five times, but that was from 1908 through 1912 when Notre Dame was still a relatively unknown school and certainly not yet a football power. Somehow Rockne had tentatively acquiesced in 1919 to play Marquette in 1920, but then, as he sometimes was wont to do, decided to play a better-known school instead. Marquette officials subsequently complained to the Notre Dame administration, and Rockne was in effect forced to schedule Marquette in 1921. Angered over Marquette’s athletic director having gone over his head to get a game with Notre Dame, Rockne got even by never scheduling the school again, although he did agree to play three other Catholic schools between 1922 and 1930—St. Louis, Detroit, and Loyola of New Orleans. Charming and likeable as he was, Rockne was quick to take umbrage and never forgot a slight, as Marquette was to find out.

  Perhaps the most notable aspect of the 1921 season was Notre Dame playing three games within the span of eight days. After beating Army on Saturday, November 5, the team remained in the New York area, staying and practicing at the Bear Mountain Inn near West Point, and then made its New York City debut on the following Tuesday, Election Day, by routing Rutgers, 48-0, before a crowd of less than 12,000 at the Polo Grounds, home of baseball’s New York Giants and New York Yankees. Despite the short period of time between the games, Rockne had accepted an offer from Rutgers—which Notre Dame had never played—to play at the Polo Grounds because it would attract the attention of New York’s dozen newspapers and Notre Dame alumni in the metropolitan area, along with hopefully adding to its growing “subway alumni” who had no connection with the school. Returning home the following day, the players were able to return to their classes on Thursday and Friday before demolishing the Haskell Institute, a school for native Americans, 42-7.

  While playing two games in the New York area in four days did attract considerable media attention, it wasn’t a financial windfall. Notre Dame received less than $7,000 ($70,000 in 2010) as its share for the two games, but train travel, hotel, and food expenses resulted in a net profit of less than $3,000. Because of the newspaper coverage, however, Rockne thought the trip was well worth it for Notre Dame.

  Much as he appreciated what George Gipp had done for his first three teams—from 1918 through 1920—Rockne hoped that never again would he have to depend so much on one player. That certainly was the case starting in 1922 when four undersized backs—Don Miller, Elmer Layden, Jim Crowley, and Harry Stuhldreher, who together averaged 158 pounds, light even by the standards of the 1920s—joined the varsity. Two years later, they would be immortalized by Grantland Rice following a Notre Dame victory over Army in their only meeting at the Polo Grounds in what is considered the most memorable, and best, lead ever written by a sportswriter under deadline pressure:

  Outlined against a blue gray October sky the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as Famine, Pestilence, Destruction, and Death. These are only aliases. Their real names are Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley, and Layden.

  Rice, a colorful and literate write
r prone, like many sportswriters of the era, to hyperbole, was referring to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in the New Testament of the Bible. Hyperbolic? Yes. But this was not only the Golden Age of Sport, but the Golden Age of Gee-Whiz sportswriting. Although Rice also tended to deify some athletes and overly dramatize some games, he wrote far more elegantly than many of his star contemporaries. He was also better educated than most, having received a degree from Vanderbilt University in his native Tennessee, where he played football. Later, as a young sportswriter for the Nashville Tennessean, he clearly demonstrated his talent for elegant writing when he wrote a poem about sportsmanship that was to become a classic:

  “For when the One Great Scorer comes

  To write against your name

  He marks—not that you won or lost—

  But how you played the game”

  Copies of the poem, which made it into Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, were to be hung up in locker rooms and other venues where athletes gathered as a reminder that the way one played was far more important than the outcome of a sporting contest.

  Years after the Rice lead, which immortalized the Four Horsemen, George Strickler, the Notre Dame student press aide who handled the football team’s public relations in 1924, said that he had seen the movie, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, starring the silent screen star Rudolph Valentino, at Washington Hall on the Notre Dame campus the night before the team left for the Army game at the Polo Grounds. At halftime, Strickler said he was talking to Rice, Damon Runyon, and some other sportswriters in the press box during which several of the writers raved about the precision of the Notre Dame attack. After mentioning he had only recently seen the movie, Strickler said to the writers, “Just like the Four Horsemen.”