First of all, President O’Donnell decided that Anderson would be the “senior” coach and Jack Chevigny the “junior” coach on the grounds that “Rockne cannot be displaced as head coach.” That was a slight to Anderson, who had been an assistant to Rockne for five years, compared with Chevigny’s one season as an assistant. That changed after the first season, when, after Notre Dame had gone unbeaten through its first seven games, the Irish lost to Southern California and Army. Following a 7-2 season in 1932, Anderson’s 1933 squad lost five of eight games—at the time, Notre Dame’s worst season ever—and he became the first Notre Dame football coach to be fired after a barrage of alumni complaints. Abrasive and profane as he was, to the dismay of priests, both from Notre Dame and visiting prelates, along with some administrators, Anderson was not totally to blame. During his brief tenure, when, as he put it, he had to coach while wearing a straightjacket, Anderson had the number of scholarships cut from forty to twenty, something Rockne wouldn’t have tolerated, although Anderson, using connections at Notre Dame, still managed to provide financial aid and jobs to more than 100 players each of his three seasons as head coach. But then Rockne’s power and authority was probably equivalent, or even more powerful, than that of the university presidents when he was the head coach. As it was, Anderson went on to a successful coaching career in the NFL, both as an assistant and then as the head coach of the Chicago Bears for four years during World War II, winning a league title in 1943, when the team’s founder and coach George Halas was in the service.
Two others who had played under Rockne, Elmer Layden, the 158-pound fullback for the Four Horsemen, and former tackle Frank Leahy, followed Anderson as Notre Dame’s head coaches—Layden for seven years, during which he had squads of as many as 215 players (in 1938), and Leahy for eleven years. During Layden’s tenure, tighter academic restrictions on football players were put in effect by President John O’Hara, and Pittsburgh was dropped from the schedule (after beating Notre Dame five times in six years) amid reports that the Panthers’ coach, Jock Sutherland, was paying his starters weekly salaries. Mainly because of Layden’s diplomatic efforts, the Irish also finally were able to book games with Big Ten schools Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, and Ohio State, most of which had declined to play Notre Dame since Jesse Harper’s days as coach before World War I.
Layden and Leahy were in turn succeeded by Terry Brennan and Joe Kuharich before Ara Parseghian in 1964 became the first non-Notre Damer to coach the Irish since Jesse Harper. As a Presbyterian, Parseghian became the first Protestant head coach at Notre Dame since Rockne, who, of course, eventually converted to Catholicism in 1925, as, supposedly, had a dying George Gipp.
During most of that stretch, and then beyond, Notre Dame remained “America’s team,” in the sense that the school had the support of more non-alumni than any other, along with being unique in that, for years, all of its games have been broadcast on a national radio network encompassing about 150 stations and televised through an exclusive contract by NBC. That, of course, made the “Notre Dame Victory March” the most listened-to college fight song in the country. Academically, Notre Dame’s undergraduate enrollment, only 550 when Rockne arrived in 1910 and slightly more than 3,000 when he died in 1931, was slightly over 8,000 by 2010.
While Rockne overshadowed his most famous player following Gipp’s death in 1920, the Gipp legend enjoyed a revival when the movie Knute Rockne: All American was released in 1940 and Ronald Reagan’s portrayal of Gipp became the most memorable part of the film. Forty years later, Reagan again revived Gipp’s spirit by frequently employing the “win one for The Gipper” rallying cry while running for president, as did a number of his supporters, including his eventual successor, George H. W. Bush. Then on May 17, 1981, Reagan made frequent references to his movie role as Gipp, which he conceded he had campaigned for, when he invoked the “win one for The Gipper” exhortation during a commencement address at Notre Dame. As he always did, he pronounced Rockne’s first name as KUH-NUTE, the correct Norwegian pronunciation, which had been anglicized by most people to Knute, with a silent K. Three years later, Reagan urged the United States Olympic Committee to “win one for The Gipper” before the start of the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Thereafter, the rallying cry was heard more than ever, more often than not by people who either had no idea who “The Gipper” was or who believed it was Reagan himself. That was fine with Reagan, who reveled in being called the “Gipper.” One of the most notable times he used the term in public was during the 1988 Republican National Convention when Reagan, addressing George H.W. Bush, who was the GOP candidate for president, said, “George, go out there and win one for the Gipper.”
As was the case when Knute Rockne’s football “Ramblers” were attracting far more attention to the football team than the university itself, to the chagrin of many of the school’s administrators and alumni, many Americans still equate Notre Dame with football eight decades after Rockne’s death. Even though the “Fighting Irish” were a perennial football power during most of those years, the university was by no means a “football factory,” as some critics—mostly rival coaches—characterized it in the second and third decades of the twentieth century. No one was saying that in the twenty-first century when, for example, in 2009, Notre Dame, along with Duke, had the highest graduation rate for football players in the top tier of college football at 96 percent. Furthermore, by the beginning of the new century, Notre Dame ranked in the top twenty academically in most polls of American universities, as did several of its separate schools such as its law school, which George Gipp had attended, somewhat irregularly, during the 1919-20 academic year. Another irony: By 2010 the Big Ten, which had repeatedly rejected Notre Dame as a football member during the Rockne years, tried hard to lure the Fighting Irish, always an independent in football, to join the conference, but was unable to do so.
In truth, Notre Dame owes its development and subsequent academic acclaim to football. It is not the only university to have benefited, and even become nationally known, because of a football or basketball team. But Notre Dame was the first to do so, and in the process became the gold standard for attracting attention through athletics. Many others have tried to emulate the onetime small and virtually unknown Midwestern university by doing the same, but none have come even remotely close to succeeding. And in large measure it’s been because only Notre Dame has had Knute Rockne, George Gipp, the Four Horsemen, and the affection and ardor of millions of loyal followers. It’s the sui generis of American universities, and, with all due respect to Yale, Harvard, Stanford, and other outstanding schools, it no doubt will always remain so.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
FIRST AND FOREMOST, everyone I dealt with at Notre Dame was not only cooperative but in many instances went out of their way to help me in my research without ever asking what I might write about the university’s most mythical, albeit flawed, sports figure, George Gipp. I am especially grateful to Charles Lamb, the head of the Archives department at Notre Dame and to his assistants Wendy Schlereth, Angela Kindig, and Sharon Sumpter for the time they spent with me during my research at Notre Dame and for the materials provided by the Archives department, both during my visit and in the months thereafter.
I am also indebted to John Heisler, the school’s senior associate athletic director for media and broadcast relations, and his staff, particularly senior staff assistant Carol Copley, who was of immeasurable help, always quick to respond to a query in her joyful fashion. A tip of the hat also goes to Veronica Primrose in the university’s Registrar’s office for her help in obtaining academic information about Gipp and Knute Rockne. Certainly no one at Notre Dame ever tried to conceal the fact that Gipp, for all of his athletic brilliance, was hardly an academic standout. For assistance on Gipp’s exploits as a baseball player at Notre Dame, I found Cappy Gagnon, a historian on Fighting Irish baseball teams, to be a font of information.
Research on this book had a long life. It started
with a story I did on Gipp more than 30 years ago for Sports Illustrated. During the course of that research, I interviewed a number of Gipp’s former teammates, including Heartley “Hunk” Anderson, Fred “Ojay” Larson, Roger Kiley, and Chet Grant while all of them were in their eighties. With more notes and good quotes than I could fit into my Sports Illustrated story, I stored them in my files, determined that someday I would write what I hoped would be a definitive biography of Gipp. My timing for my interviews with Anderson, Larson, and Kiley, along with some of Gipp’s boyhood friends, was propitious, since, sadly, they all died within the next few years. Looking back, it was a joy talking with Anderson, Larson, Kiley, and Grant about Gipp and Rockne and Notre Dame football in the years shortly before, during, and after World War II. As a boy who grew up hoping to play football at Notre Dame while the university band played the country’s best-known fight song, the “Notre Dame Victory March,” I was familiar with the Gipp legend and with the legendary Rockne, and so to talk to men who played with Gipp and for Rockne was both a labor of love and a pleasant trip down college football’s Memory Lane.
As any writer of nonfiction knows, libraries and librarians are an immense resource and always willing to help. Once again, as in my two previous books, Tunney and Giants Among Men, Susan Madeo at the Westport, Connecticut, Library was invaluable in securing old and obscure books through the interlibrary loan and microfilm of old newspapers including the South Bend Tribune, the Daily Mining Gazette, which is published in Houghton, Michigan, and the long-defunct South Bend News-Times. Yvonne Robillard, an editor of the Daily Mining Gazette, which circulates in Gipp’s hometown of Laurium, Michigan, and nearby Calumet, where Gipp, Hunk Anderson, and Ojay Larson went to high school, was also a great help.
Information on Gipp’s irregular high school career and the plaque awarded in his honor at the end of every school year came from George Twardzik, principal of Calumet High, and Elsa Green, an administrative assistant at the school in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, close by Lake Superior. Extremely helpful about Gipp’s pre-Notre Dame days in the Calumet area came from Bob Erkkila, a retired Calumet teacher, while Ed Vertin, the town administrator in Laurium, provided information about the George Gipp Recreation Area complex in his hometown and the memorial that was erected in honor of Laurium’s most famous native son. Ron and Karl Gipp, cousins of George Gipp, also provided nuggets of information about the family, particularly George Gipp’s early days, while Nils Rockne recalled what he had heard about his famous grandfather.
Writer Emil Klosinski, whose father, John, played on a semi-pro team with Gipp while Gipp was at Notre Dame and is also the author of a book about Gipp’s days in South Bend, was an excellent source of information. So was Emil’s son, Marc, who went out of his way to try to help me track down Victoria Adams Phair, the granddaughter of Iris Trippeer, the love of Gipp’s life. Victoria Phair, in turn, was gracious and helpful in reminiscing about her beautiful grandmother, who for reasons still not known left Gipp heartbroken, but still professed her love for him in the years following his untimely death.
Others who contributed to this book included Joseph Mendelson of Santa Barbara, California, a longtime benefactor at Notre Dame, who put up the funds for a Knute Rockne statue outside Notre Dame Stadium; Joe Heintzelman, owner of Oscar’s Billiards Club, a virtual landmark in South Bend, who recalled how his grandfather, for whom the billiards parlor is named, played billiards with Gipp while Gipp was at Notre Dame; Mike Stack, the public relations manager for the St. Joseph Regional Medical Center in South Bend, the hospital where Gipp died; Dr. Charles Higgs-Coulthard, a staff physician at St. Joseph; Patrick Furlong, professor emeritus of history at Indiana University, South Bend, who furnished information on what South Bend was like during the World War I era along with other historical information about both the city and the state of Indiana at that time; Kent Stephens, historian and curator at the College Football Hall of Fame in South Bend; Mady Salvani of the Athletics Communications Office at West Point for her assistance in producing materials on the long Army-Notre Dame rivalry; and Minnie Bartsch of the Rockne Historical Society in Rockne, Texas, who told me the delightful story of how and why a small Texas town is named after the most famous football coach of all time.
Once again, I must thank my agent, Andrew Blauner, for seeing to it that this book, like my two previous books, found its way into print and for his confidence in the project from the outset. Thanks, too, goes to my editor at Skyhorse Publishing, Mark Weinstein, for his editing skills after having left me to my own devices throughout the reporting and writing process. Last but most definitely not least, a ton of thanks to my computer guru, Paul McLaughlin of Norwalk, Connecticut, who was always quick to respond, by phone or in person, whenever I encountered technical problems and who, with his encyclopedic knowledge of computers, unfailingly resolved them, usually in a matter of minutes, often without having to make a house call.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JACK CAVANAUGH is a veteran sportswriter whose work has appeared most notably on the sports pages of The New York Times, for which he has covered hundreds of assignments. He is the author of Damn the Disabilities: Full Speed Ahead! (1995), Giants Among Men (2008), and Tunney (2006), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in biography. In addition, Cavanaugh has been a frequent contributor to Sports Illustrated and has written for Reader’s Digest, the Sporting News, and Tennis and Golf magazines as well as other national publications. He is also a former reporter for ABC News and CBS News. Cavanaugh, a native of Stamford, Connecticut, is currently an adjunct professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and lives with his wife, Marge, in Wilton, Connecticut.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BOOKS
Army Football 2009 Media Guide
Beach, Jim. Notre Dame Football. New York: Macfadden-Bortell Corp., 1962
Brondfield, Jerry. Rockne. The Coach, The Man, The Legend. New York: Random House, 1976
Chelland, Patrick. One For The Gipper. Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1973
Klosinski, Emil. Gipp at Notre Dame. Baltimore: PublishAmerica, 2003
Maggio, Frank P. Notre Dame and the Game That Changed Football. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2007
Notre Dame 2009 Football
Perrin, Tom. Football: A College History. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1987
Quakenbush, Robert and Bynum, Mike. Knute Rockne: His Life And Legend. October Football Corp., 1988
Rice, Grantland. The Tumult and the Shouting. A.S. Barnes and Company, Inc., 1954
Robinson, Ray. Rockne of Notre Dame. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999
Sperber, Murray. Shake Down the Thunder. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1993
Steele, Michael. Knute Rockne: A Portrait of a Notre Dame Legend. Champaign, Illinois: Sports Publishing, Inc., 1998
Total Football: The Official Encyclopedia of the National Football League. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 1997
University of Notre Dame Football Media Guide Supplement
Wallace, Francis. Knute Rockne. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1960
NEWSPAPERS
Chicago Tribune
Chicago Daily News
Detroit News
Daily Mining Gazette
Indianapolis Star
Los Angeles Times
Miami Daily News
Milwaukee Journal
New York Daily News
New York Herald Tribune
New York Sun
New York Times
Philadelphia Inquirer
Notre Dame Scholastic
South Bend News-Times
South Bend Tribune
The Sporting News
Washington Post
MAGAZINES
Collier’s
Esquire
Notre Dame Alumnus
Smithsonian Magazine
Sport
Sports Illustrated
INTERNET<
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Wikipedia.com
INDEX
A
Adams, Jack
admission charges
All-America Football Conference
All-American Girls Professional Baseball League
Allison, Tex
Alma College
amateur teams
American Medical Association
Anderson, Eddie
Anderson, Heartley “Hunk”
blood transfusion from
as coach
George Gipp’s death and
loan to George Gipp and
Notre Dame All Stars
recollections from
scholarships
scouts
Anderson, Marie Martin
anti-Catholic sentiments
Army drafts
Associated Press
B
Bahan, Leonard “Pete,”
Baker, Ed
Barry, Norm
Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations
Barton, Sir
Bartsch, Minnie
baseball
Baugh, Sammy
Bergman, Alfred
Bergman, Arthur “Dutch,”
“Big Man on Campus” status
Bertelli, Angelo
Big Ten. See Western Conference
Blaik, Red
The Gipper Page 24
