The Gipper Read online

  It was not uncommon in those days for outstanding football players to work for several years after leaving high school while playing amateur or semi-professional football until—bigger, stronger, and invariably better—they were lured to play on the college level, even though not many were cut out to be college students. Gipp’s situation, though, was different, since he had not played football in high school and had played it only rarely with some Calumet area semi-pro teams. Possessing great speed, uncanny balance, natural athleticism, and the supreme confidence he seemed to have in any athletic endeavor he stood out as a running back, passer, and kicker nonetheless.

  Many of the tramp athletes were lured to other universities by unscrupulous coaches and well-heeled boosters, in some cases even after they already had played four years of college football and then were paid to play football. The United States Military Academy was one of the worse offenders in its recruiting, often bringing in outstanding players who already had played football for up to four years at other schools. In an era when there was no central watchdog organization like the National Collegiate Athletic Association, it was usually difficult to track the provenance of school-jumping football players, a few of whom, some coaches claimed, wound up at Notre Dame, although that was never determined. Many of the tramp athletes, along with more than a few legitimate college players who confined themselves to one school, also played with professional or semi-pro teams on Sundays, the day after college games, under assumed names (as Gipp would do on at least one occasion) and often with the knowledge of their coaches. Rockne had not only done so as a player but he had also coached several professional teams in the South Bend area. Though, like Gipp, he had never graduated from high school, Rockne still found the time—and had the inclination—to be an exemplary college student, graduating with an A average in 1914 after starring in Notre Dame’s upset of Army the previous fall. By then, because of Notre Dame’s propensity to schedule teams from as far off as Army, Penn State, and Syracuse in the East, South Dakota and Nebraska in the Northwest, and Texas and Rice in the Southwest, many sportswriters called the team the Ramblers, Hoosiers, Catholics, Westerners (when they ventured East), and even the Harps, Micks, Hibernians, and Papists—though not yet the Fighting Irish.

  Largely because of the age discrepancy and a maturity that belied his twenty-one years, Gipp, as a freshman, felt out of place and uncomfortable on the Notre Dame campus. From the time he arrived, he was bored and pretty much a loner who did not go out of his way to make friends at Brownson Hall, where freshmen were housed and which was one of the two wings on the administration building renowned for the golden dome atop it. During his first year, he took a full load of courses—English, biology, history, political science, and German—and earned his room and board waiting tables, a task that, according to students he served, he performed well and in a friendly fashion. But boredom soon set in, as Gipp recounted in a letter to a friend in his hometown of Laurium, Michigan. “I got here alright and got away with a pretty good start,” he wrote, “but I’m in a mood tonight where I’d like to go straight up. I want to come and go as I please. Sometimes I wonder what I’m here for.” The reference to go “straight up” apparently was an allusion to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Gipp went on to say, “I’d like to give up and quit right now, chuck everything and go anywhere.”

  Gipp’s letter reflected his difficulty in adjusting to a structured way of living, especially among much younger, and less mature, college students. Subsequent letters also manifested his discomfort, even though by then he had established himself as a burgeoning football star. This seemed to have given him little satisfaction. “Becoming in his freshman year a hero of campus talk is enough to inflate any youngster’s head,” Rockne was to write years later, “but this boy Gipp had the superb personal policy of being indifferent to everything.” At twenty-one years of age, Gipp, of course, was hardly a “boy,” but rather a street-smart and somewhat cynical young man who, having spent much of his last five years associating with men older than him playing cards and pocket billiards for money, was, not surprisingly, uncomfortable amid much younger freshmen both in his dormitory and during his classes. Making him all the more uncomfortable was the composition of the Notre Dame’s unusual student body, which ranged from five-year-old first graders to twenty-five-yearold—and even older—college students, all of whom shared the same campus, if not the same classrooms and dormitories.

  Gipp’s first roommate, Elwin Moore, was hardly one to help Gipp assimilate to college life or convince him to savor his success as a football star. Nicknamed “Dope” because of his encyclopedic knowledge of sports statistics (and not because he was short on intelligence), Moore also enjoyed the nightlife in South Bend more than he did his studies. A polished three-cushion billiards player, he taught Gipp the finer points of the game. Because of his skill in straight pool, an easier game that he had mastered as a boy and young man in the Calumet area, Gipp soon became accomplished at three-cushion billiards, which does not require players to deposit balls in the six pockets of a conventional pool table. By late in the first semester in 1916, Gipp, already tired of campus life and with few friends, was spending much of his time around pool tables in downtown South Bend, then one of the major manufacturing centers in the Midwest, where bars, restaurants, cigar stores, and even pharmacies often served as hosts for high-stakes billiard and poker games and, in later years, speakeasies in the rear. Though South Bend, like much of Indiana, had gone dry well before the Prohibition amendment was ratified in 1919, Gipp, who enjoyed a drink and the convivial atmosphere of a pool hall or a poker table far more than that of a campus dormitory, soon realized it was his kind of town.

  2

  THE CHANCE MEETING OF A LIFETIME

  IN ADDITION TO his newfound downtown haunts, Gipp spent a considerable amount of time during his first semester at Notre Dame in the campus recreation room shooting pool. “He’d always be alone and would spend an hour or so playing by himself,” said one of Gipp’s few early friends on campus, Walter Miller, a fullback on the football team and one of five Miller brothers to play football at Notre Dame. “I remember watching him run off as many as eighty balls without missing a shot, and all the while not saying anything to anyone who might be watching him play alone. Students who’d watch him were amazed, since they’d never seen anyone play like he did. As for Gipp, he never said a word nor changed his expression.”

  Before long, aware that he had no competition in straight pool at the recreation center, especially for money, Gipp soon began to concentrate more on pool parlors in downtown South Bend, notably at Hullie and Mike’s restaurant, speakeasy, and pool parlor on Michigan Street, where Rockne himself frequently ate both as a student and as an assistant coach. His success with cue and cards allowed Gipp to give up his waiter’s job on campus without hurting his income. Along the way, Gipp paid less and less attention to his studies, although his grades were good, and he began to miss classes often. Never the picture of health to begin with, Gipp’s lifestyle took a toll on him, which was reflected by a pallor and loss of weight that made him look older than his twenty-one years. By the spring of 1917, Gipp had become a familiar figure at the Hotel Oliver, an elegant sixstory, 250-room South Bend landmark, distinguished on the outside by its Italian Renaissance architecture and on the inside by its ornate but tasteful lobby (which included sixteen life-size paintings representing, among other things, the four seasons and muses of dance, drama, and music). Regarded as one of the most opulent and stylish hotels in the Midwest, attracting a high-end clientele that included the cream of South Bend society, the Oliver also was distinguished by its basement, which hosted what were reputed to be the highest-stakes poker games in Indiana. While the clientele was neither as prosperous nor as elegant as that on the floors above, the billiard and poker tables drew some of the best players in the Chicago area, which by then included student-athlete George Gipp.

  If Rockne had nothing to do with Gipp coming to Notre Dame, he h
ad everything to do with having Gipp come out for football through a fortuitous—and for Notre Dame propitious— meeting. In the movie Knute Rockne: All American, Rockne (played very well, albeit much too saintly, by Pat O’Brien) is taken aback by an obviously long kick that had sailed onto the playing field during a Notre Dame practice in the early fall of 1916. Upon investigation, he discovers that the kicker is Gipp (played in the film by Ronald Reagan), whom he thereupon convinces to come out for the freshman football team. Closer to the truth, it seems, was Rockne’s own version, wherein, while walking past a near deserted practice field on campus about midway through the 1916 season, he spotted a casually dressed student wearing street shoes booming punts and dropkicks to a freshman player in uniform, obviously bent on practicing fielding punts and kickoffs. For about ten minutes Rockne watched the pale-faced, somewhat emaciated-looking kicker sending long spiral punts through the air, along with gracefully dropping footballs to the ground and, in a fluid and smooth motion, kicking one ball after another fifty yards and longer straight down the middle of the field. Well aware that no Notre Dame player, freshman or varsity, could come close to drop-kicking a football that far, Rockne then approached the student and asked, “What’s your name?”

  “Gipp. George Gipp,” he replied nonchalantly, not recognizing Rockne even though, by then, the assistant varsity football coach had become well-known on the Notre Dame campus. “I come from Laurium, Michigan.”

  “What led you to come to Notre Dame?” Rockne persisted.

  “Friends of mine are here,” Gipp responded, though in fact he was not aware of anyone on campus from the Calumet area.

  “Played high school football?” Rockne asked.

  “No,” Gipp replied. “Don’t particularly care for football. Baseball’s my game.”

  Intrigued by Gipp’s confident air, his matter-of-fact demeanor, and his athletic bearing, Rockne wasn’t about to give up, and, after introducing himself, thereupon did what he usually did best: He made a command. “Put on a football suit tomorrow and come out with the freshman scrubs,” Rockne said pointedly but with a smile. “I think you’ll make a football player.”

  As Gipp nodded and walked away, the player who had been catching Gipp’s punts and dropkicks said to Rockne, “He’s been kicking those punts and drops with ordinary street shoes. What’ll he do with football shoes on?” A smiling Rockne thought he knew the answer. The question, though, was whether the young man from Michigan could do anything else with a football.

  That, of course, was Rockne’s story of how Gipp came out for football at Notre Dame—a version that was told some time after Gipp had died. So far as is known, it was never corroborated. Many other stories Rockne told, some as part of his trademark pep talks, turned out to be apocryphal. But that was part of Rockne’s charm.

  Despite Rockne’s persuasiveness and conviction that Gipp would “make a football player,” Gipp had no intention of going out for the freshman team, which already had been practicing, often against the varsity, for more than a month, though it had yet to play a game. Afternoons, to Gipp, were for sleeping. By the following day, though, the highly competitive Gipp—motivated by Rockne’s speculation that he might become a football player—would have had a change of heart and decided to show up for practice. Reporting to freshman coach Freeman Fitzgerald, who had been told about Gipp by Rockne, Gipp made an immediate impression when, at his suggestion, he lined up as a halfback and on his first carry burst through the line and raced forty yards for a touchdown. Looking on from an adjacent field where the varsity was practicing, Rockne felt a surge of satisfaction. Not only can he kick like hell, the young assistant coach thought, but he can run like hell, too.

  Rockne saw even more of Gipp in the ensuing weeks during scrimmages between the freshman and varsity teams when, time and again, Gipp raced through and around the varsity defensive line for long gains or touchdowns. Inexplicably, this preternaturally cool and poised freshman with no football pedigree was turning out to be the best running back at Notre Dame.

  Even though Gipp was restricted to playing with the Notre Dame freshman team, he was hardly missed by the varsity, at least through the first four games when the Ramblers, as they were called because of their increasingly national schedule, amassed 182 points while holding its opponents scoreless and extending its winning streak to nine games going back to the previous season. But a powerful Army team, led by All-American fullback Elmer Oliphant, a remarkably versatile athlete, loomed as the fifth opponent at West Point on November 4. Typical of the era, Oliphant was in his second go-around as a varsity athlete, having already graduated from Purdue in his native Indiana in 1914 after earning varsity letters in football, basketball, (in which he was an All-American in 1913 and 1914), baseball, and track while also competing with the varsity wrestling and swimming teams.

  Only five feet seven inches tall and about 175 pounds, Oliphant won another eleven letters over a four-year period at West Point in the same four sports he earned letters at Purdue, while also earning monograms in boxing, swimming, and hockey. The week before the Notre Dame game, Oliphant had scored six touchdowns and a total of 45 points in a 68-0 rout of Villanova. That was two more points than Oliphant had scored for Purdue four years earlier in 1912 when his 43 points set a Boilermaker record that still stands almost a century later.

  Army’s ability to recruit star football players from other schools where they had been sports letter-winners, frequently for four years, gave it what many schools felt was an unfair advantage and helped the Cadets win several national football championships during the first few decades of the twentieth century. It also kept a number of the nation’s strongest college football teams from scheduling Army, forcing the Cadets to play lesser teams such as Lebanon Valley, Maine, and Springfield. Among the Army stars who played college football elsewhere for four years before coming to West Point was Chris Cagle, one of Army’s greatest running backs, who after scoring a school-record 235 points while playing for (and graduating from) Southwestern Louisiana from 1922 through 1925, played four years of football at Army, where he earned All-American honors his last three seasons. While serving as Army’s captain during his senior year in 1929, he was featured on the cover of Time magazine. Cagle, who sometimes played without a helmet and scored 169 points at West Point while averaging 6.4 yards a carry, later played five seasons in the National Football League, three with the New York Giants and two with the Brooklyn Dodgers. For two seasons, one of Cagle’s backfield teammates was another Army legend and All-American, “Lighthorse Harry” Wilson, who also had an extended collegiate football career. After playing three seasons at Penn State, Wilson switched to West Point, where he was a halfback for four years and, as at Penn State, an All-American. He captained the Cadets in 1927. Given Army’s propensity to recruit All-American players like Oliphant, Cagle, and Wilson—players who already had played as many as four seasons at other schools—it was no wonder that Army was one of the country’s best teams in the 1920s and that many schools, which held themselves to a four-season eligibility standard, wanted no part of the Cadets. Indeed, to national powers like Yale, Harvard, and Princeton, Army’s practice of importing All-Americans who had already played four years elsewhere made it a football pariah. Yet for an aspiring school like Notre Dame, a game against the Cadets guaranteed it national publicity, and, if the Ramblers won, increased self-esteem for the little university in Indiana.

  Impressed by Gipp’s performances in scrimmages against the varsity, Rockne suggested to head coach Jesse Harper that Rockne explain Oliphant’s style of running to Gipp so he could emulate the great Army running back in a scrimmage before the team left by train for West Point. The tactic, Rockne was sure, would be very beneficial to Notre Dame’s defensive line when it lined up against Army, and Oliphant in particular, on Saturday. Notre Dame coaches in the past had had players imitate Oliphant before previous Army games, but to no avail.

  “For three days I took him personally in hand, making hi
m vary his pace, break his runs and cut back and dodge,” Rockne later wrote in an article that appeared in Collier’s magazine in November 1930. “The varsity knew Gipp was going to be sent in against them. They were primed to stop him. They didn’t. Gipp gave a perfect imitation of Oliphant and ran wide around end, passing the secondary defense with ease, and scoring a touchdown.”

  Theoretically, that should have made Notre Dame ready to cope with Oliphant, who also was captain of the team as a senior. It wasn’t. Despite Gipp’s outstanding impression of Oliphant, Army’s All-American fullback had an outstanding afternoon, running for more than 100 yards, catching a touchdown pass, completing a number of passes that led to two Army touchdowns, and kicking two field goals and two extra points as the Cadets scored 24 unanswered points in the second half to beat Notre Dame, 30-10. Asked about Oliphant’s performance after the game by a South Bend sportswriter, Rockne smiled and, after relating Gipp’s outstanding role as a doppelganger for Oliphant during scrimmages leading up to the Army game, said, “The only drawback was that Oliphant gave a perfect imitation of Gipp.”