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JRN 362/SPS 362 Story of Football Rich Hanley, Associate Professor Lecture Nine

JRN 362 / SPS 362 - Lecture Nine (September 27, 2016)

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Page 1: JRN 362  / SPS 362 - Lecture Nine (September 27, 2016)

JRN 362/SPS 362 Story of FootballRich Hanley, Associate ProfessorLecture Nine

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JRN 362/SPS 362 Story of Football

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JRN 362/SPS 362 Story of Football

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Review• The 1920s and 1930s are

described as the Golden Age of football.

• The college game saw unprecedented construction of large stadia from coast to coast.

• And the game furnished its first true star in Red Grange of Illinois.

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Review• What’s more, the private, for-

profit world of professional football emerged as a coherent entity for the first time, with teams attracting some former players such as Grange to play for pay.

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Review• Still, the focus of the nation

remained on college football, and many saw the college game as superior to that of the pro version.

• And colleges saw the pro game as incompatible with the moral code installed in the game by Walter Camp.

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Review• And the college game would

receive an added boost from the University of Notre Dame and its coach, Knute Rockne.

• Rockne’s storyline would run parallel to Grange’s through the mid 1920s but his legacy would endure in the method and madness of coaching.

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Rockne• Knute Rockne was born in Voss,

Norway in 1888.

• His family moved to Chicago in 1893.

• Rockne learned to play football with a local club team – the Logan Square Tigers – and later played in high school.

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Rockne• Rockne enrolled at Notre Dame

when he was 22 years old.

• In 1913, he was named captain of the team and earned All-America honors at end.

• He played a key role in Notre Dame’s victory over Army that year.

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Rockne• That win over Army featured the

forward pass in a prominent role in Notre Dame’s offense, with Rockne catching several passes in the 35-13 rout.

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Rockne• Rockne did more than play

football.

• He earned a degree in pharmacology in 1914.

• Rockne agreed to stay at the college as a graduate assistant in 1914 only if it allowed him to assist football coach Jesse Harper.

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Rockne• Jesse Harper, Rockne’s coach,

retired after the 1917 season.

• Notre Dame named Rockne to replace him.

• The decision changed the college and football.

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Rockne• Simply put, Rockne was a force

of nature.

• During his 13 years as coach of Notre Dame, Rockne led the team to five undefeated, untied seasons.

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Rockne• Rockne’s lifetime winning percentage

of .881 (105-12-5) still ranks at the top of college and pro lists.

• He revolutionized the game with shifts on offense so effective that college football had to modify its rules.

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Rockne• Rockne also deployed “shock troops”

in order to wear down his opponents.

• The first team would be inserted into the game after the second team had played the first five minutes.

• Remember that the teams played both offense and defense.

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Rockne• Rockne created the first national

team in terms of fan support and interest by taking Notre Dame anywhere the faculty would allow.

• His teams included many Roman Catholic players of Irish ancestry, leading crowds rooting against the team to use ethnic slurs.

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Rockne• Rockne created the template for the

modern coach: part tactician, part disciplinarian, all psychologist.

• He added another piece that only he mastered: chief publicist, as he authored a weekly newspaper column, wrote books and appeared in newsreels and films.

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Rockne• Rockne earned fame as a

motivational speaker, too, carefully delivering halftime speeches he knew would be reported in the press.

• In short, Rockne was a thoroughly modern figure in an age just getting used to that idea.

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Rockne• Even so, Rockne himself traced his

ideas to a foundation first created at Yale in the 19th century.

• His college coach, Jesse Harper, had played for the University of Chicago under coach Amos Alonzo Stagg, a Yale graduate.

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Rockne• “… just as we all trace back to Adam,

so does Notre Dame football go back to Stagg and Yale,” said Rockne.

• Yet during his tenure at Notre Dame, he developed a game that was dramatically different from the game played in the East, and he would later bash Eastern football for being soft.

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Rockne• Rockne based his system of play

on fast, mobile and smart players who could grasp his complex use of motion and the forward pass.

• The system was known as the Notre Dame box: seven linemen, including ends, and four backs.

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Rockne• How Rockne found he found

players athletic and big enough to run the offense remains open to question but Rockne consistently rejected comments by critics that he focused on recruiting.

• Rockne also credited the way the team practiced for attracting talent.

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Rockne• “I believe we do pay more

attention to young players and give them more of a chance than any other football system,” said Rockne. ”I keep the boys on the field all the time with the varsity squad and the substitutes and I give them considerable of my own time …

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Rockne• “I also allow them to hear the

varsity men coached and see them taught how to kick, run, block and tackle.”

• Nevertheless, he did acknowledge that Notre Dame alumni might play a role.

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Rockne• “Notre Dame has no scouting

system for young players,” he said. “Of course, there may be some rapid Notre Dame alumnus who may go to a high school boy and tell that that he could become a great player at Notre Dame.”

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Rockne• Rockne’s relationships with his

players varied according to the needs of the moment, foreshadowing modern coaching style.

• His strategy: keep the players on their toes by making each uncomfortable and insecure.

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Rockne• Rockne’s thoroughly

contemporary coaching techniques and system of play emphasized offense rather than defense.

• And within that offense, deception and movement were keys to Rockne’s extraordinary success, both on and off the field.

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Rockne• In the war-shortened season of

1918, Rockne’s first, Notre Dame finished 3-1-2.

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Rockne• Rockne’s 1919 and 1920 teams

went unbeaten and featured a halfback by the name of George Gipp, who the coach described as the best player to compete for Notre Dame.

• The 1919 team (shown here) was named by historian Parke Davis as the mythical national champion.

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Rockne• Gipp died of pneumonia after his

season ended in 1920. Eight years later, Rockne would summon his ghost in a legendary pre-game speech that resonated through the ages even though Gipp was far rowdier than the moral player Rockne led later teams to believe.

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Rockne• After those first three years

under Rockne, Notre Dame began to earn a reputation as a “commuting” or “tramp” team, one that preferred to play road games.

• Rockne wanted it this way to publicize the team.

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Rockne• The Notre Dame faculty,

however, would not allow the team to travel just anywhere, blocking efforts to schedule games in the south.

• In 1922, the faculty relented, and a team of Irish Catholics went to Atlanta to play Georgia Tech.

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Rockne• A year later, Walter Camp would

describe the first game between the two colleges as “a startling exhibition of the development of shift plays” and “a great contest.”

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Rockne• Notre Dame’s first trip to Atlanta

was important in many ways.

• Atlanta hosted the national headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan.

• Catholics were one of the Klan’s primary targets for hate. 

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Rockne• In Atlanta, the game was interpreted as a cultural clash between what

Atlanta Constitution writer Craddock Goins called the “skillful,” “keen, graceful and merciless” “Indianans” against “the spirit of the south.”

• He wrote, “The game between the Yellow Jackets and the great Notre Dame team will draw the eyes of southern football lovers from every gridiron in the nation Saturday, and the attention of football students throughout the land will be largely turned to what promises to be one of the greatest exhibitions of flash and fly in the history of the modern game ... It is southern football’s greatest opportunity...It will mean the greatest possible impetus to football in this section.”

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Rockne• Notre Dame won, 13-3.

• Afterward, another writer for the Atlanta Journal Constitution described the game as “epic.”

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Rockne• “Epic is the word. For the 20,000 people who jammed those stands

Saturday afternoon will never blot from memory the sixty hair-raising minutes of ripping and tearing, doing and daring performed by the two teams who had foregathered to do each other battle. It was one of those struggles that cause sane people to write books, an event that was shot to the core with romance and drama …

• “It was one of those reasons small boys believe the dime novels, for it proves nothing colorful is impossible to red-blooded men.”

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Rockne• A halftime speech by Rockne

probably helped.

• According to witnesses, Rockne told the team that their unofficial “mascot,” his own six-year-old son, Billy Rockne, was in the hospital and extremely ill.

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Rockne• Billy’s message to the team:

“Please win this game for my daddy. It’s very important to him.”

• The Notre Dame players reacted by roaring out of the locker room.

• That’s something the team did everywhere on the road.

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Rockne• Outside of the south, Notre

Dame would eventually travel to the west coast to play Southern California and Stanford in addition to its usual east coast game against Army.

• In between, Rockne would take the team to Carnegie Tech (Pittsburgh) Princeton and Penn State.

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Rockne• Notre Dame had a home –

Cartier Field – but Rockne took the team on the road so much that it acquired a nickname – Rockne’s Ramblers or simply The Ramblers.

• That nickname wouldn’t last.

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Rockne• In New York, Notre Dame

generated an enormous following of “subway alumni,” or fans who did not attend the school but attended games against Army in the Polo Grounds or at Ebbets Field (1923).

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Rockne• In that 1923 game, Rockne’s four

junior backs -  Harry Stuhldreher, Don Miller, Jim Crowley, and Elmer Layden – continued to establish their reputation.

• Notre Dame lost only twice in 1922 and 1923, both times to Nebraska.

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Rockne• All our hailed from the football

crescent: Stuhldreher from Massilon, Ohio; Crowley from Green Bay; Miller from Defiance, Ohio; and Layden from Davenport, Iowa.

• As seniors in 1924, the four would embed Notre Dame in the mythology of football where it has remained.

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Rockne• The four formed the core of

Notre Dame’s motion offense, which confounded opponents.

• One of the four would carry the ball or pass but the system of motion prevented defenses from immediately seeing the ball, the carrier or passer.

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Rockne• As noted, Rockne’s offense was based on that deception, which he said

accounted for 25 percent of its output.

• The rest was built on power, speed, and skill in passing and receiving.

• Notre Dame’s four senior backs were the best in the nation and had three years of experience running the motion offense.

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Rockne• On October 28, 1924, the four

led Notre Dame to a rough 13-7 victory over Army at the Polo Grounds in New York.

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Rockne• Grantland Rice covered the

game and wrote an opening paragraph – the lede in journalism terms – that would enter the history of the game and transform the four backs into immortals.

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Rockne• “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 … They formed the crest of the South Bend cyclone before which another fighting Army football team was swept over the precipice at the Polo Grounds yesterday afternoon as 55,000 spectators peered down on the bewildering panorama spread on the green plain below. “

• Afterward, Notre Dame’s publicity department asked the backs to pose on horses.

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Rockne• At the end of its 9-0 season,

Notre Dame accepted an invitation to the Rose Bowl to meet Stanford for its only bowl appearance until 1970.

• It would be Notre Dame’s first trip to the west coast.

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Rockne• Stanford was coached by Pop

Warner, thus pitting two of the greatest coaches of the game against each other.

• Stanford featured back Ernie Nevers, an All-America back described famously by Warner as “the football player without a fault.”

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Rockne• Stanford dominated Notre Dame

but committed eight turnovers, including three that led to Notre Dame touchdowns.

• Nevers rushed for 114 yards, outgaining the four horsemen by himself.

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Rockne• Layden scored three times

including two on interceptions, however, and Notre Dame capped the 9-0 season with a 27-10 victory.

• Rockne’s team now commanded the national stage, the only college team other than Army to reach that status.

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Rockne• Notre Dame had earned its first

consensus national championship and that had elevated Rockne to the status of the best football coach in America.

• Still, Rockne was unhappy. He knew he could earn more money elsewhere.

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Rockne• Throughout the 1920s, Rockne

spread his system through a series of coaching clinics held all over the country in summer.

• Coaches and athletic administrators flocked to hear him discuss the motion offense and other intricacies of Notre Dame football.

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Rockne• Rockne understood his value to

Notre Dame and to the game.

• He was unhappy with his $10,000 annual salary and reckoned he could earn more elsewhere or at least threaten to earn more elsewhere.

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Rockne• Notre Dame faculty – mostly priests - had grown increasingly hostile over

Rockne’s “cant, humbug and hypocrisy,” as one writer put it.

• Fears of faculty and administration were stoked by the Taylorville scandal, in which players from Notre Dame and Illinois played in a semipro game in 1921. The scandal surfaced in 1922, damaging Notre Dame’s reputation.

• Rockne had defended the players before they were expelled, claiming they had competed as a “lark.”

• Columnists defended Rockne and criticized the hypocrisy of the amateur code.

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Rockne• “Our system of amateurism is all

wrong,” wrote one columnist. “It is constructed on the lines of the English idea of simon pure, and, as you know, nobody but gentlemen, so-called, are amateurs over there. Athletes who have to work are pros …

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Rockne• “Many an athlete wearing

shabby clothes and so ashamed of his appearance that he refrains from participating in the social life of the college will make the leap to reestablish his sense of pride.”

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Rockne• Rockne himself was hardly

immune to the advantages that football fame accorded him.

• He was recruited frequently to pitch products and other colleges often enticed him to leave Notre Dame, including Columbia in New York.

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Rockne• Rumors flew that Rockne would reject Columbia and join Red Grange in the

NFL.

• But it was Columbia that offered Rockne a firm $25,000 deal to leave Notre Dame and resuscitate its football team.

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Rockne• Rockne accepted on the condition that it not be immediately announced as

he wanted to use it as leverage to extract a new contract from Notre Dame.

• The national press, however, spread the story.

• Rockne was scared. Would Notre Dame take him back?

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Rockne• Notre Dame forgave Rockne

after he apologized and the university would not regret it as the coach led the football team to even greater heights to match his personal fame.

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Rockne• Rockne emerged from the 1924

season and 1925 Rose Bowl victory as a true celebrity, photographed with the likes of baseball’s Babe Ruth and other stars.

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Rockne• In 1926, Notre Dame expanded

its regular-season schedule to the west coast with its first game at the University of Southern California.

• Notre Dame won, 13-12, setting of an intersectional rivalry that would endure.

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Rockne• The 1926 season also featured a

curious decision on November 27 by Rockne to miss a game against Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh to write about the Army-Navy game that weekend in Chicago.

• Unbeaten Notre Dame lost, costing it a national title.

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Rockne• In 1927, USC traveled to Chicago

to meet Notre Dame in a college football double-header that also featured Stanford versus Yale.

• Babe Ruth (ND shirt) and Lou Gehrig (SC) attended the press luncheon, along with Pop Warner (left)

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Rockne• Ruth, Gehrig and 110,000

watched at Soldier Field as Notre Dame won, 7-6.

•The game marked USC’s first trip to the east.

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Rockne• Rockne’s standing now stretched

from New York to Los Angeles

• Time honored him with its cover in November 1927.

• But the rules committee seemed to have it out for his team.

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Rockne• In 1927, the Intercollegiate Rules Committee outlawed the Notre Dame

shift, requiring players to be set for two seconds before the snap of the ball.

• Rockne was furious and described eastern football as soft.

• Rockne said that football would no longer be covered in the sports pages if the eastern coaches who dominated the rules committee had their way.

• Looking ahead, Rockne said a game in1935 would be published in the society pages, not in the sports pages. He went on to state:

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Rockne• “Raw courage is the basic foundation of football. You can teach a team the

technique of the game and school the members to perfection but if they haven’t got the thing politely called courage, your team has been wasted. Not only does this apply to football but also to the game of life. That is why the young generation needs the game of football.”

• He added, “Of late teams from all other sections of the country have had little trouble defeating eastern teams. Not only in football but in track and rowing ... They are tired of the real game of football. It is too rough for them. They want to change it to a silk-stocking affair in hope of regaining their superiority which they held for a long period when the game was in its infancy.”

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Rockne• Rockne didn’t stop there. In 1927, he wrote,

• “These mezzanine floor hurdlers infest hotel lobbies. They are soft and perfumed and boost raccoon coats and enlarged hip pockets. They don’t exercise, for to perspire is vulgar. They haven’t much pep in the daytime but at night they become very active.”

• Rockne’s language underscores his view that football not for elites from the east any longer as it has become contaminated by urban comforts.

• Still, the Notre Dame shift was banned, and Rockne accepted the changes in the rules.

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Rockne• But later in 1927, Rockne revolted and led other coaches in threatening to

leave the NCAA over proposed rules that would ban fumbles on punts.

• The NCAA and Rockne reached a compromise when it agreed to add coaches to the rules committee.

• Fumbles on punts, the rules committee reported, could advanced after all.

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Rockne• Meanwhile in 1927, Notre Dame

officially adopted the nickname Fighting Irish.

• What had once been a slur directed against the students had now become its identity.

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Rockne• Notre Dame also moved to

upgrade its home field.

• Despite Rockne’s misgivings about the cost of a stadium, the university began to build a massive structure to hold its football team.

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Rockne• With Rockne’s attention stadium

building and nurturing alumni and his celebrity, the team struggled in 1928.

• Nevertheless, the largest crowd in college football history – 117,000 assembled at Soldier Field in Chicago – to watch Rockne’s Notre Dame beat Navy, 7-0.

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Rockne• But it would be a victory over

Army in 1928 not the record crowd against Navy in a mediocre 5-4 season that entered college lore.

• At halftime of the game, Rockne told the story of George Gipp, the star of the 1920 team.

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Rockne• The speech – which is largely a

work of fiction – focused on Gimp's last words as he lay dying of pneumonia.

• “Win one for the Gipper,” he allegedly told Rockne.

• Notre Dame beat Army, 12-6.

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Rockne• The 1928 season also included

Rockne’s only home loss and the team’s first in South Bend in 23 years. It wasn’t close.

• Carnegie Tech routed Notre Dame 27-7; a week later, USC did the same.

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Rockne• In 1929 and 1930, Rockne’s

teams rebounded from the 5-4 campaign in 1928.

• They went undefeated in both seasons, winning Rockne’s fourth and fifth national championships (1919, 1920, 1924).

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Rockne• The 1930 season also featured

the dedication of Notre Dame Stadium, which held some 58,000 fans.

• Rockne stood atop the world again and he made plans to visit Los Angeles in March to advise on a football film.

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Rockne• That image in the previous slide

was the last taken of Rockne.

• On March 31, 1931, Rockne died in a plane crash in Kansas while en route to Los Angeles to work on a movie. He was 43.

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Rockne• A day later, noted humorist and close Rockne friend Will Rogers wrote the

following in the New York Times:

• “We are becoming so hardened and used to about any misfortune and bad luck that comes along that it takes a mighty big calamity to shock all this country at once. But Knute, you did it. Just as you have come from behind all your life and fooled ‘em where they though you didn’t have a chance, you did it again …

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Rockne• “We thought it would a President or a great public man’s death to make a

whole nation, regardless of age, race or creed, shake their heads in real sincere sorry and say, ‘Ain’t it a shame he is gone.’ Well that’s what this country did today, Knute, for you, you old bald-headed rascal, you died one of our national heroes. Notre Dame was your address, but every gridiron in America was your home.”

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Rockne• Sportswriters and editors in 1931 voted Rockne’s death as the top sports

story of the year by a wide margin, as his influence over the national press was fully revealed and resolved.

• “This was not only a national first-page story,” one editor wrote, “but it was also an event that reached newspapers in all corners of the globe and affected millions who had come to know Knute Rockne as one of the most dynamic leaders in athletics.”

• “Unquestionably the passing of no other figure in American sport ever has stirred such emotional reaction,” the Associated Press reported in a story on the poll results that selected Rockne’s death as story of the year. “

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Rockne• The outpouring of emotion at

news of Rockne’s death showed just how far college football had traveled from just 26 years earlier, in 1905, when the game faced an existential crisis over the deaths of 19 players.

• Now, the world mourned a coach.