Knute Rockne
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Knute Kenneth Rockne (
// kə-NOOT; March 4, 1888 – March 31, 1931) was an
American football player and coach, both at
the University of Notre Dame. He is regarded as one of the greatest coaches in
college football history.
[2] His biography at the
College Football Hall of Fame calls him "without question, American football's most-renowned coach." A
Norwegian American, he was educated as a chemist at the
University of Notre Dame. He popularized the
forward pass and made Notre Dame a major factor in collegiate football.
Early life
Knute Rockne was born
Knut Larsen Rokne in
Voss, Norway,
to the smith and wagonmaker Lars Knutson Rokne (1858–1912) and his wife
Martha Pedersdatter Gjermo (1859–1944). He emigrated with his parents
at five years old to
Chicago.
[3] He grew up in the
Logan Square area of Chicago, on the northwest side of the city.
[4]
Rockne learned to play football in his neighborhood and later played
end in a local group called the Logan Square Tigers. He attended North
West Division High School in Chicago playing football and also running
track.
After Rockne graduated from high school, he took a job as a mail
dispatcher with the Chicago Post Office for four years. When he was 22,
he had saved enough money to continue his education. He headed to
Notre Dame in Indiana to finish his schooling. Rockne excelled as a football
end
while at the university, winning All-American honors in 1913. He also
helped to transform the collegiate game in a single contest. On November
1, 1913, the Notre Dame squad stunned the highly regarded
Army team 35–13 in a game played at
West Point. Led by quarterback
Charlie "Gus" Dorais
and Rockne, the Notre Dame team attacked the Cadets with an offense
that featured both the expected powerful running game but also long and
accurate downfield
forward passes
from Dorais to Rockne. This game was not the "invention" of the forward
pass but it was the first major contest in which a team used the
forward pass regularly throughout the game.
He graduated from Notre Dame in 1914 with a degree in pharmacy. After graduating he was the laboratory assistant to noted
polymer chemist Julius Arthur Nieuwland at Notre Dame and helped out with the football team, but rejected further work in
chemistry after receiving an offer to coach football. In 1914, he was recruited by
Peggy Parratt to play for the
Akron Indians. There Parratt had Rockne playing both end and
halfback and teamed with him on several successful forward pass plays during their title drive.
[5] Knute wound up in
Massillon, Ohio, in 1915 along with former Notre Dame teammate Dorais to play with the professional
Massillon Tigers.
Rockne and Dorias brought the forward pass to professional football
from 1915 to 1917 when they led the Tigers to the championship in 1915.
[6]
Notre Dame coach
- Portions of this section are adapted from Murray Sperber's book Shake Down The Thunder: The Creation of Notre Dame Football
During 13 years as head coach, Rockne led his "Fighting Irish" to 105
victories, 12 losses, five ties, and three national championships,
including five undefeated seasons without a tie. Rockne posted the
highest all-time winning percentage (.881) for an American FBS/Division I
college football coach.
[7] His players included
George 'Gipper' Gipp, the "
Four Horsemen" (
Harry Stuhldreher,
Don Miller,
Jim Crowley, and
Elmer Layden),
Frank Thomas,
Frank Leahy, and
Curly Lambeau.
Rockne introduced the "shift", with the backfield lining up in a T
formation and then quickly shifting into a box to the left or right just
as the ball was snapped. Rockne was also shrewd enough to recognize
that intercollegiate sports had a show-business aspect. Thus he worked
hard promoting Notre Dame football so as to make it financially
successful. He used his considerable charm to court favor from the
media, which then consisted of newspapers, wire services and radio
stations and networks, to obtain free advertising for Notre Dame
football. He was very successful as an advertising pitchman, for
South Bend-based
Studebaker and other products.
For all his success, Rockne also made what an
Associated Press writer called "one of the greatest coaching blunders in history."
[8] Instead of coaching his 1926 team against
Carnegie Tech, Rockne traveled to Chicago for the
Army–Navy Game to "write newspaper articles about it, as well as select an All-America football team."
[8]
Carnegie Tech used the coach's absence as motivation for a 19–0 win;
the upset likely cost the Irish a chance for a national title.
[8]
On November 10, 1928, when the "Fighting Irish" team was losing to
Army, 6-0, at the end of the half, Rockne entered the locker room and told the team the words he heard on Gipp's deathbed in 1920: "
I've
got to go, Rock. It's all right. I'm not afraid. Some time, 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 about it, and I'll be happy." This inspired the team, who then outscored Army in the second half and won the game, 12-6.
Personal life
Rockne was married to Bonnie Gwendoline Skiles (December 18, 1891 –
June 2, 1956), the daughter of George Skiles and Huldah Dry. They had
four children. He converted from the
Lutheran to the
Roman Catholic faith in 1923. They were married at Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Sandusky, Ohio.
Plane crash and public reaction
Main article:
TWA Flight 599
Rockne died in the crash of an airplane --
TWA Flight 599—in
Kansas on March 31, 1931, while en route to participate in the production of the film
The Spirit of Notre Dame (released October 13, 1931). He had stopped in
Kansas City, to visit his two sons, Bill and Knute, Jr., who were in boarding school there at the
Pembroke-Country Day School, A little over an hour after taking off from Kansas City, one of the
Fokker Trimotor's wings separated in flight. The plane crashed into a wheat field near
Bazaar, Kansas, killing Rockne and seven others.
[9]
Coincidentally, Jess Harper, a friend of Rockne's and the coach whom
Rockne had replaced at Notre Dame, was living about 100 miles from the
spot the crash, and was called to identify Rockne's body.
[10][11]
On the spot where the plane crashed, a memorial dedicated to the
victims stands surrounded by a wire fence with wooden posts; it was
maintained for many years by
James Easter Heathman, who, at age 13 in 1931, was one of the first people to arrive at the site of the tragedy.
[12]
The sudden, dramatic death of Rockne startled the nation, and
triggered a national outpouring of grief, comparable to the deaths of
presidents. President
Herbert Hoover called Rockne's death "a national loss."
[12][13] King
Haakon VII
of Norway (Rockne's birthplace) posthumously knighted Rockne, and sent a
personal envoy to Rockne's massive funeral. Tens of thousands of people
from across the nation gathered for the funeral, which was broadcast
around the globe.
[14][15]
Rockne was buried in Highland Cemetery in
South Bend, which is several miles from the Notre Dame campus.
[16]
Driven by the public feeling for Rockne, the crash story played out
at length in nearly all of the nation's newspapers, and gradually
evolved into a demanding public inquiry into the causes and
circumstances of the crash.
[10][17][18]
The national outcry over the air disaster that killed Rockne (and the
7 others) triggered sweeping changes to airliner design, manufacturing,
operation, inspection, maintenance, regulation and
crash-investigation—igniting a safety revolution that ultimately
transformed airline travel worldwide, from the most dangerous form of
travel to the safest form of travel.
[10]
Legacy
Knute Rockne bronze sculpture in Voss, Norway.
Rockne was not the first coach to use the
forward pass,
but he helped popularize it nationally. Most football historians agree
that a few schools, notably St. Louis University (under coach
Eddie Cochems),
Michigan, Carlisle and Minnesota, had passing attacks in place before
Rockne arrived at Notre Dame. The great majority of passing attacks,
however, consisted solely of short pitches and shovel passes to
stationary receivers. Additionally, few of the major eastern teams that
constituted the power center of college football at the time used the
pass. In the summer of 1913, while he was a lifeguard on the beach at
Cedar Point in
Sandusky, Ohio, Rockne and his college teammate and roommate
Gus Dorais
worked on passing techniques. These were employed in games by the 1913
Notre Dame squad and subsequent Harper- and Rockne-coached teams and
included many features common in modern passing, including having the
passer throw the ball overhand and having the receiver run under a
football and catch the ball in stride. That fall, Notre Dame upset
heavily favored
Army, 35-13, at
West Point
thanks to a barrage of Dorais-to-Rockne long downfield passes. The game
played an important role in displaying the potency of the forward pass
and "open offense" and convinced many coaches to add pass plays to their
play books. The game is dramatized in the movies
Knute Rockne, All American and
The Long Gray Line.
Memorials
Memorial plaque to Knute Rockne in his birth town of
Voss, Norway
- Notre Dame memorializes him in the Knute Rockne Memorial Building,
an athletic facility built in 1937, as well as the main football
stadium.[19]
- The Rockne Memorial, crash site, Bazaar, Kansas,
at the site of the crash of TWA Flight 599, memorializes Rockne and the
7 others who died with him. Erected by Easter Heathman (d.), who as a
boy was a crash eyewitness, and among the first to respond. Every five
(5) years since the crash, a memorial ceremony is held there (and at a
nearby schoolhouse), drawing relatives of the victims, and Rockne /
Notre Dame fans, from around the world. Now part of the Heathman family
estate, accessible only by arrangement, or during memorial
commemorations.[10]
- The Matfield Green rest stop travel plaza (center foyer), on the Kansas Turnpike,
near Bazaar (where TWA Flight 599 crashed, killing Rockne), has a
large, glassed-in exhibit commemorating Rockne (chiefly), as well as the
other crash victims, and the crash.[10]
- The town of Rockne, Texas,
was named to honor him. In 1931, the children of Sacred Heart School
were given the opportunity to name their town. A vote was taken, with
the children electing to name the town after Rockne, who had died in a
plane crash earlier that year. On March 10, 1988, Rockne opened its post
office for one day, during which a Knute Rockne twenty-two-cent
commemorative stamp was issued. A life size bust of Rockne was unveiled
on March 4, 2006.
- The Studebaker automobile company of South Bend marketed the Rockne automobile between 1931 and 1933. It was a separate product line of Studebaker and priced in the low cost market segment.
- Symphonic composer Ferde Grofe composed a musical suite in Rockne's honor shortly after the coach's death.
- The short film I Am an American (1944) featured Rockne as a foreign born citizen[20]
- A biographical musical of Rockne's life premiered at the Theatre at the Center in Munster, Indiana, on April 3, 2008. The musical is based on a play and mini-series by Buddy Farmer.[22]
- The US Navy named a ship in the Liberty ship class after Knute Rockne in 1943. The name of the ship was SS Knute Rockne. The ship was scrapped in 1972.[23]
Head coaching record
| Year |
Team |
Overall |
Conference |
Standing |
Bowl/playoffs |
| Notre Dame Fighting Irish (Independent) (1918–1930) |
| 1918 |
Notre Dame |
3–1–2 |
|
|
|
| 1919 |
Notre Dame |
9–0 |
|
|
|
| 1920 |
Notre Dame |
9–0 |
|
|
|
| 1921 |
Notre Dame |
10–1 |
|
|
|
| 1922 |
Notre Dame |
8–1–1 |
|
|
|
| 1923 |
Notre Dame |
9–1 |
|
|
|
| 1924 |
Notre Dame |
10–0 |
|
|
W Rose |
| 1925 |
Notre Dame |
7–2–1 |
|
|
|
| 1926 |
Notre Dame |
9–1 |
|
|
|
| 1927 |
Notre Dame |
7–1–1 |
|
|
|
| 1928 |
Notre Dame |
5–4 |
|
|
|
| 1929 |
Notre Dame |
9–0 |
|
|
|
| 1930 |
Notre Dame |
10–0 |
|
|
|
| Notre Dame: |
105–12–5 |
|
|
| Total: |
105–12–5 |
|
| National championship Conference title Conference division title |
Further reading
- Jerry Brondfield, "Rockne: The Coach, the Man, the Legend" (1976, reissued 2009)
- Ray Robinson, "Rockne of Notre Dame: The Making of a Football Legend" (1999)
- Murray Sperber, "Shake Down the Thunder: The Creation of Notre Dame Football" (1993)
- Norsk Biografisk leksikon (NBL)
- Kelly, Jason. "St. Knute had a ruthless side too." South Bend Tribune. July 28, 2006.
- Carter, Bob, Sports Century Biography:"Knute Rockne was Notre Dame's master motivator,", Special to ESPN.com
- Lindquist, Sherry C. M., "Memorializing Knute Rockne at the
University of Notre Dame: Collegiate Gothic Architecture and
Institutional Identity," "Winterthur Portfolio" (Spring 2012), 46#1 pp
1–24. DOI: 10.1086/665045
See also
