Winning One for the Gipper.

Winning One for the Gipper. In 1928 University of Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne gave his team one of the most famous locker room speeches in the history of American sports. . Winning One for the Gipper Did George Gipp, lying on his deathbed, really tell Knute Rockne to tell the boys to "win just one for the Gipper"? Rockne, the famed coach of the University of Notre Dame's Fighting Irish, told the story at halftime of the 1928 Notre Dame-Army football game. Retold by Rockne several other times, including in his autobiography, the story has been repeated and reprinted endlessly. It was even replayed in the movie Knute Rockne--All American (1940), starring Pat O'Brien as Rockne and Ronald Reagan as Gipp, Notre Dame's star player. It is an American sports legend. But did it ever happen? Rockne waited eight years after Gipp's untimely demise in 1920 to inspire his players with the tale. He told the story at halftime when the Army game was tied 0-0 during one of the worst seasons in Notre Dame history. Rockne was both a shrewd football strategist and a brilliant motivator of young men. In 1928, however, Rockne's Fighting Irish machine sputtered. In the second game of the season, Wisconsin clobbered Notre Dame, 22-6, in Notre Dame's first loss to a Big Ten team in eight years. Georgia Tech then shut out the Fighting Irish, 12-0, to even Notre Dame's record at 2-2. Victories over Drake and Penn State took the team to 4-2 on the season, but in the week before the Army game at Yankee Stadium in New York there were mutterings that Rockne had lost his touch. The Army team had defeated Notre Dame in 1927, and most of its players were back for the 1928 season. Halfback Chris Cagle led the undefeated Cadets. Notre Dame managed to drive to the Army 5-yard line early in the game. Irish halfback Fred Collins, however, fumbled, and Army recovered in the end zone for a touchback. When the tired players headed for the locker room at halftime, the game remained scoreless. Rockne cleared the locker room of visitors and, forgoing his usual staccato speaking style, began to talk to his players in a low, halting voice. Gripping a cigar, he told the players about one of Notre Dame's most beloved stars, George Gipp. Gipp's life read like a Hollywood movie script. Born in Laurium, Michigan, in 1895, Gipp made his way to Notre Dame after playing sandlot baseball and driving a taxi for three years after high school. He accepted a scholarship to play baseball at Notre Dame in 1916. That fall, Gipp was kicking a football in street clothes one afternoon when Rockne spotted him. "He picked up the ball," Rockne recalled, according to Ken Rappaport's book Wake Up the Echoes," poised his body with natural grace, slid the ball to the ground and drop-kicked with perfect ease--50 yards. For about 10 minutes I watched. His kicks were far and placed evidently where he wanted them to go to give the other player catching practice. Here, I thought, was somebody worth examining." Rockne accosted the unknown undergraduate as he left the field, and demanded his name. When Rockne asked if he played football, Gipp casually answered, "No. Don't particularly care for football. Baseball's my dish." Undeterred, Rockne convinced Gipp to come out for freshman football. Gipp swiftly became a star, dropkicking a 62-yard field goal to win the first game he played in. "Gipp's swaggering character matched his sublime talents," wrote Rappaport in Wake Up the Echoes," and he became Rockne's most glorified player and easily his most eccentric figure." A spectacular natural talent, Gipp could do everything well on a football field: run, pass, catch, kick, and throw. He led Notre Dame to consecutive undefeated seasons in 1919 and 1920, gaining a total of 4110 yards in his career and leading his teammates with unabashed self-confidence and a flair for the dramatic. Gipp had a swagger off the field as well. A noted pool shark and gambler, he frequented South Bend's less savory establishments and kept hours that would have earned any other player a swift dismissal from the team. In an era when gambling and college football seemed congenial bedfellows, Gipp often served as the team bookie--for wagers on Notre Dame games. Accused by Rockne of lacking interest in the 1920 Notre Dame-Army clash, Gipp reportedly replied, "You're wrong there," according to Wake Up the Echoes. "I've got five hundred bet on this game, Rock, and I don't intend to blow it." He then went out and threw for one touchdown and returned a punt for another as Notre Dame won, 27-17. Normally an iron disciplinarian, Rockne made exceptions for his mercurial star. Gipp blithely broke team rules against cigarettes and liquor. Rockne winked at it all and let Gipp run free on the field--until the halfback became seriously ill at the end of his final Notre Dame season. Gipp had strep throat, perhaps exacerbated by his late-night carousing and his consumption of whiskey and tobacco. The illness developed into pneumonia, and the gifted, exuberant athlete sank swiftly. As the student body, and, reportedly, most of the citizens of the town of South Bend, prayed for his recovery, Gipp lay on his deathbed on December 14, 1920. As Rockne told it, he and Gipp's mother, brother, and sister maintained a vigil at the player's bedside. As the end neared, Gipp motioned Rockne closer and began to speak. "I've got to go, Rock," he said, according to many accounts. "It's all right. Sometime, Rock, when the team is up against it, when things are going wrong and the breaks are beating the boys--tell them to go in there with all they've got and win just one for the Gipper. I don't know where I'll be then, Rock. But I'll know all about it, and I'll be happy." As Rockne finished this story in the locker room at Yankee Stadium, most of the team sobbed openly. "Boys," said Rockne, according to the book 100 Years of Notre Dame Football, "I'm convinced that this is the game George Gipp would want us to win. Okay, let's go get 'em." Inspired, the Fighting Irish started the second half by driving 80 yards, but the drive ended with a fumble in Army territory. The Cadets battled back and scored to make it 6-0. After that it was all Notre Dame. Another drive led to a touchdown that tied the score. In the fourth quarter, end Johnny O'Brien made a juggling catch of a pass from halfback Butch Niemiec, staggered forward, and dove into the end zone. Notre Dame won, 12-6. The next day the headline in the New York Daily News read: GIPP'S GHOST BEATS ARMY: IRISH HERO'S DEATHBED REQUEST INSPIRED NOTRE DAME TO VICTORY. Serious doubt exists about the story's truth. Commentators scoffed at Rockne's romantic tale, noting that it would have been out of character for the flippant Gipp to make such a florid speech. More importantly, Gipp's family never corroborated the story. Rockne himself, however, never wavered in asserting that the deathbed request actually happened. Undeniably, however, the tale inspired one of the greatest motivational feats in sports history. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.