JRN 362 - Lecture Nine

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

Review
• The 1920s and 1930s are described
by scholars as the Golden Age of
football and sports.
• The college game saw
unprecedented construction of large
stadiums.
• And the game furnished its first true

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.

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 by Walter Camp

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.

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.

Rockne
• Chicago served as the centerpiece of
football in what was then called the
west because of the University of
Chicago.
• The Maroons and Michigan vied for
regional supremacy, with games on
Thanksgiving determining who would
be the “champion of the west.”

Rockne
• It was one such game between the
two rivals that connects Rockne to
this great tradition.
• On Thanksgiving Day 1905, Chicago
hosted Michigan in what is widely
considered to be the first great
“Game of the Century” one of several
so designated over the 20th century.

Rockne
• Amos Alonzo Stagg, the former Yale
All-American, coached Chicago.
Fielding Yost coached Michigan.
• The game would be played with
temperatures in the 10s with light
snow. Some 27,000 – including
Walter Camp – jammed the wooden
stands at Marshall Field.

Rockne
• On the bench for Chicago that day
was Jesse Harper, a substitute
quarterback who had learned football
under Stagg.
• Chicago beat Michigan, 2-0, on a
safety that later figures in the death of
one of the players years later.

Rockne
• Harper would graduate in 1906 and
go on to coach football teams at Alma
College in Michigan and Wabash in
Indiana until he became coach at
Notre Dame in 1913.

Rockne
• Rockne had enrolled at Notre Dame
when he was 22 years old.
• He became captain of the team in
Harper’s first year as coach in 1913,
earning All-America honors at end
while leading the team to an upset
over Army.

Rockne
• That win over Army featured the
forward pass in a prominent role, with
Rockne catching several passes in
the 35-13 rout.
• The game was described as the
second “Game of the Century” after
the first in 1905 between Chicago
and Michigan.

Rockne
• Rockne did more than play football.
He earned a degree in pharmacology
in 1914.
• Rockne agreed to stay at Notre
Dame as a graduate assistant in
1914 only if the school allowed him to
be an assistant to Harper.

Rockne
• Harper decided to leave coaching
after the 1917 season.
• During his four years, he went 34-5-1
and put Notre Dame on the map as a
looming football power, helped
immeasurable by the upset over
Army in 1913.

Rockne
• Rockne succeeded Harper and led
Notre Dame to a 3-1-2 record in the
war- and flu-ravaged 1918 season.
• The legend would grow from there.

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

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
to stop Notre Dame’s offense.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Rockne
• Even so, Rockne himself traced his
ideas to a foundation first created at
Yale in the 19th century.
• As noted, Rockne had learned the
game from Harper who had learned it
from Stagg, of Yale.

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.

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.

Rockne
• How Rockne found he found players
athletic and big enough to run the
offense is an open question but
rejected comments by critics that he
focused on recruiting.
• Rockne credited the way the team
practiced for attracting talent.

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 …

Rockne
• “I also allow them to hear the varsity
men coached and see them taught
how to kick, run, block and tackle.”
• He did acknowledge that Notre Dame
alumni might play a role.

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,” Rockne said.

Rockne
• Rockne’s relationships with his
players varied according to the needs
of the moment, foreshadowing
modern coaching style.
• His strategy: keep the players alert by
making each uncomfortable and
insecure.

Rockne
• Rockne’s 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.

Rockne
• Rockne’s 1919 and 1920 teams went
unbeaten and featured a halfback by
the name of George Gipp.
• The 1919 team was named by
historian Parke Davis as the mythical
national champion in just Rockne’s
second year.

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.

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.

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 went to Atlanta to play Georgia
Tech.

Rockne
• A year later, Camp would describe
the first game between the two
colleges as “a startling exhibition of
the development of shift plays” and “a
great contest.”

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.

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.”

Rockne
• Notre Dame won, 13-3.
• Afterward, another writer for the
Atlanta Journal Constitution
described the game as “epic.”

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.”

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.

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.

Rockne
• Outside of the south, Notre Dame
would later in the decade add
Southern California and Stanford in
addition to its usual east coast game
against Army.
• Rockne would also take the team to
Carnegie Tech (Pittsburgh) Princeton
and Penn State.

Rockne
• In New York, Notre Dame generated
an enormous following of “subway
alumni,” or fans who did not attend
the school but went to games against
Army in the Polo Grounds or at
Ebbets Field (1923).

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 to Nebraska.

Rockne
• All four 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
become mythological figures.

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 motion prevented defenses
from immediately seeing the ball, the
carrier or passer.

Rockne
• Rockne’s offense was based on that
deception, which he said accounted
for 25 percent of its output; power,
speed, and skill in passing and
receiving accounted for the rest.
• The four senior backs were the best
in the nation experienced.

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

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.

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

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.

Rockne
• Stanford was coached by Pop
Warner, thus pitting two of the
greatest coaches of the game against
each other.
• Stanford featured Ernie Nevers, an
All-America back described famously
by Warner as “the football player
without a fault.”

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.

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.

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.

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 of Notre Dame
football.

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

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, criticizing Camp’s hypocrisy of amateurism.

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
…

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.”

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.

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.

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 feared Notre Dame might not
take him back.

Rockne
• Notre Dame forgave Rockne after he
apologized.
• The university would not regret it as
the coach led the football team to
even greater heights in the late
1920s.

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 celebrities.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

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 in 1935 would be published in the society
pages, not in the sports pages. He went on to state:

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.”

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 from the east had become
contaminated by urban comforts.
• Still, the Notre Dame shift was banned, and Rockne accepted the changes in the
rules.

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 be advanced after all. That
rule would be modified over the years

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 brand identity.

Rockne
• Notre Dame also moved to upgrade
its home field.
• Despite Rockne’s misgivings about
the cost, the university began to build
a permanent on-campus stadium.

Rockne
• With Rockne’s attention on stadium
building, the team struggled in 1928.
• Nevertheless, the largest crowd in
college football history at the time –
117,000 at Soldier Field in Chicago –
watched Notre Dame beat Navy, 7-0.

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.

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,” Rockne
quoted allegedly Gipp as saying.
• Notre Dame beat Army, 12-6.

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.

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 were the others).

Rockne
• Also in 1929, Notre Dame began
work on the new stadium.
• Rockne planned many details of the
58,000-seat, on-campus building,
modeled on Michigan Stadium, which
was modeled on the Yale Bowl.

Rockne
• On October 11, 1930, Notre Dame
dedicated the stadium.

Rockne
• Rockne stood atop the world again,
and he made plans to visit Los
Angeles in March to serve as an
advisor on a Hollywood football film.
• The photo, left, would be the last
taken of the coach.

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

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 thought you didn’t have a chance, you did it again …

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.”

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.

Rockne
• “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.”

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.

JRN 362 - Lecture Nine

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JRN 362 - Lecture Nine