Knute Rockne
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Knute Rockne
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Knut Larsen Rokne was born in Norway on March 4, 1888. His first name was therefore pronounced kə-NOOT with the "K" sounded1. The family always sounded the "K" and didn't say NOOT like most people do now.
Footnote
The upside down "e", ə, is called a schwa by linguists and is defined as "an unstressed mid-central vowel". This simply means it is a short quiet, "uh" sound.
That said, when Knut was five his family immigrated to America. As was fairly common they "Americanized" their names. His mom and dad changed their surname to Rockne and renamed young Knut Larson to Knute Kenneth. And that's the way everyone knows him today.
Knute's family settled in Chicago and unlike many early 20th Century immigrants Knute completed his secondary education all the way through high school.2 Throughout his schooling he played football and other sports, and after graduation, he worked briefly before enrolling in Notre Dame.3 There Knute studied chemistry and pharmacy and in the interim he played football mostly as an end.
Footnote
Today secondary education usually encompasses grades 6 through 12 as Middle School and High School. Before the Grade School < Middle School < High School trifecta began to dominate after the 1970's there was Grade School < Junior High < High School with a split of Grades 1-6 (Grade School), 7-9 (Junior High), and 10-12 (High School).
But even before then there were still some districts where you had only two divisions, Grammar School which were Grades 1-8 and High School being Grades 10-12. The double division was because from the 1920's through the Great Depression high school was still often seen as an affectation for rich kids and starting to work after the 8th Grade wasn't unusual.
Footnote
Because Knute spent his first years out of high school working, he didn't enroll at Notre Dame until he was 21. Such older students matriculating at college were not unusual in the early years of the 20th Century and for the same reasons. George Gipp (sometimes spelled Gypp) was also 21 when he began playing for Knute in 1917.
John Lomax, Sr., the famous folk song collector, also didn't begin his college education until he was 21. He had been working on his dad's farm when he enrolled at a small local college. He didn't enter the University of Texas to work on his bachelor's degree until he was 29. He went to Harvard to study for his master's degree in 1906 when he was 39.
Biographies about Knute tell of the famous Notre Dame - Army game on November 1, 1913. We read that Notre Dame beat Army most severely using a new innovation called the forward pass. According to some accounts, Knute came up with the idea after watching baseball games and decided that long tosses could be used to good effect in football. So he told the Gus Dorais, the Notre Dame quarterback, about his idea and they practiced it until they got it down. The success of this play threw Army off who were both amazed and dismayed as Notre Dame won 35-13.
Without detracting from Knute's contributions to his teams's effort and his undoubted ability, there is a tendency to color early stories about historical figures based on their later fame. Yes, contemporary accounts do mention Knute - he was the Captain of the Notre Dame team - but the contemporary writers also stated that picking out a single star of the game was like picking out the proverbial needle in the haystack. The whole Fighting Irish Team, they said, won the game.
And yes, the sportswriters did comment on Gus's effective use of the forward pass. But the pass wasn't new with Knute. The idea had been around from the early days of football and had even been banned until 1906. Instead running plays had been the staple of the developing game of American football.
As to why the forward pass - forbidden at first - was finally permitted, thereby hangs a tale. With football being a running game, if a player carried the ball he was likely to get mashed underneath a smothering mass of humanity. Many players eschewed helmets and those who sported those wimpish devices wore little more than leather beanies with ear flaps. Padding was minimal and collisions and pile-ons made for a dangerous game.
And not just dangerous but deadly. Between 1885 and 1905, 325 players had been killed during college football games and even high school games had yearly fatalities. Some colleges - Princeton, Harvard, and UPenn - were thinking about dropping the sport, and Columbia actually did in 1905.
But the sport was increasingly considered an All-American activity and even the highest powers in the land felt it needed to be saved from pending oblivion. In 1905 no less a personage than Teddy Roosevelt - then the US President and whose son played for Harvard - stepped in. He organized a conference of coaches and college officials to address the dangers of football and propose rule changes. And one of the suggestions was to reduce physical contact by relaxing the rules on the forward pass. So in 1906 among other reforms, most of the restrictions were lifted.
The pass was quickly adopted by the teams and when Notre Dame met Army in 1913, it had become common and routine. Even the high school quarterbacks were hurling the pigskin, for crying out loud! On December 14, 1912, the Pine Bluff and Van Buren high school teams met in Conway, Arkansas, about 25 miles north of Little Rock. In a detailed account of the game, the forward pass was mentioned no less than twenty-three times.
However, at that time the forward pass was more like the "screen pass" of modern football. That is, the pass was usually thrown to a player who ran a short distance down the field, stopped, and turned around for the catch. The Notre Dame/Army meeting changed that.
At the first the game was far from a rout. The beginning of the game had its share of fumbles, penalties, and it see-sawed back and forth. Up until the mid-point of the first quarter there had been only one forward pass and that was incomplete.
Then Gus unloaded a long bomb - a term not then used - to Knute, who took it in for the touchdown. People sat up and took notice. It was less the fact that Knute scored on a forward pass, than the length of the pass, 45 yards, and that Knute had caught it on the run. But at the end of the first half the score was still close - Notre Dame 14, Army 13.
The contest was by no means just a passing game. The third quarter only saw one pass which was incomplete. But most of the tosses in the fourth quarter were caught.
The number of passes Gus hurled wasn't recorded consistently and one report was that Gus threw fourteen passes in the game and twelve were for big gains. However, from counting the tosses from various newspaper stories, the number seems more like 19 or 20 attempts with 14 completions. This is more than 70% - a good percentage even by today's standards although a college quarterback today may toss the ball as many as 40 times in a game.
The news stories also mention that Notre Dame's formidable defense played their part when during the third quarter they held off Army on the one yard line. Army then tried - yes - a forward pass which was incomplete. This let Notre Dame begin their next drive from their own 20 yard line. In the last quarter, the Irish really came alive and produced the winning and impressive final score.
Football had become the quintessential college game even though the Notre Dame-Army game was played under rather rustic conditions. There really wasn't an actual stadium at West Point and so the teams played in a field with some wooden bleachers set up on one side. And sitting on the Army bench were two second-string players, a young cadet from Kansas, Dwight David Eisenhower (who had switched his first and middle names), and another cadet from Missouri named Omar Bradley. Neither man saw action that day although they saw plenty thirty-one years later.
But college facilities were often opulent compared to what a professional player "enjoyed" (note quotes). Unlike today where professional football practically controls the national economy, in Knute's time the professional sport was virtually a non-entity. After all, who wanted to stand on the side of a cow pasture and watch a bunch of palookas bounce off of each other? Pay was low and the seasons were short.
Knute, though, chose to turn pro. That means he had little choice but to play for the Ohio League and a popular informational reference mentions that the league was not only informal but "loose". This is true enough since the league didn't really exist.
In 1914 Knute played for the Akron Indians. However, like all pro players the job was part time and occupied only a couple of months in the fall. In 1914 while Knute was playing proball he was also working as an assistant coach at Notre Dame and was also a champion ND varsity pole vaulter.
So what was Knute? A professional or an amateur?
The confusion arises because truth to tell there really wasn't any professional football. In fact, when reporting about the early teams, the papers would sometimes use the term semi-professional. The players were paid on a per-game basis4 and for the average player it wasn't much. Even though, the biggest stars might get $250 for each contest - which was actually good money in 1910 - less stellar atheletes might get a few bucks. Sometimes college athletes would pick up a few dollars in the summer playing professional sports.5
Footnote
The per-game payment system ended in 1926 when Red Grange was paid (perhaps) $100,000 for 19 games. Of course, you can argue this is a per-game payment at $5263.16 per game.
Footnote
In the early 20th Century college sports did not fall under any official governing body. But by 1910 a distinction of amateurs and professionals was emerging. If athletes got paid anything for anything even tangentially related to any sport, they could loose their amateur status. That was true even if the "professional" sport was unrelated to what they played in college.
Jim Thorpe was the star of the 1912 Olympics in track and field. He won two gold medals but after he returned to America a story appeared in the papers relating how he had played professional baseball. What Jim had done was pick up a few dollars per game playing semi-pro ball during the summer. But getting even a dollar in any sport made him a "professional" and the Olympic committee rescinded the awards. Jim, never one to make waves, didn't argue and returned the medals.
Even at the time Jim had his defenders. Some pointed out that it was still not clear what distinguished amateur from professional standing. Jim picking up a few bucks playing baseball should not disqualify him from competing as an amateur in track and field. Besides, they said, college players routinely played sports for money in the summer, but they often did so under assumed names. Jim had been singled out because he had been honest. Jim's defenders clamored for his medals to be returned and his wins recognized.
Today, of course, the Olympics have completely erase any requirement regarding the amateur/professional distinction and the rules have been changed to make it nearly impossible for real amateurs to compete at all. Given the absurdity of having professionals who make tens of millions of dollars a year playing as "amateurs", the Olympic Committee finally restored Jim's medals in 2022 and acknowledge him as the winner of the 1912 Pentathlon and Decathlon.
The person considered to be the first professional football player ever was a man named - this is no joke - Pudge Heffelfinger. Pudge - whose real name was William - had played college for Yale, and for years it was thought that after graduation he had just played as an amateur for a local league in Pittsburg.
But in the 1960's when a scholar examined the ledgers of the Allegheny Athletic Association, he found that in 1892 Pudge had been paid $25 a game and he could count on a $500 yearly bonus if he played well. In 1892 $25 was more than a week's wages for someone with a cushy desk job, and no, none of the other players were paid.
In 1916 and after his stint at Akron, Knute went on to play with the Massillon Tigers (also from Ohio). The teams typically played six to eight games per year and by today's standards the scores were often low. Seeing a 6-0 score was not that odd. On the other hand, in 1915 the Columbus Panhandles beat the Columbus All-Stars 49-0.6
Footnote
The most disproportional football score in history remains the 1916 college game between Georgia Tech and Cumberland College where the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets whupped the Cumberland Phoenixes 222-0. This superseded a number of other lopsided to zip games: Harvard vs. Phillips Exeter Academy (in New Hampshire): 158-0 in 1886, Newberry College vs. Bailey Military Institute (both in South Carolina) in 1913 at 150-0, Florida vs. Southern Florida: 144-0 in 1913, and a 1902 contest where Notre Dame beat American College of Medicine and Surgery of Chicago, 142-0. The medical school was later incorporated into Loyola University.
There have been a surprising number of football games where the winning score was 100 or more, and you still see them post-Millennium. In 2003 Rockford University in Illinois beat Trinity College of the Bible and Theological Seminary of Evansville, Indiana, 105-0.
Some sports have a "mercy rule" where if the difference in the scores reaches a certain amount, the game will end or is at least shortened. The mercy rule in football is most commonly employed in high school or lower levels where if there is a point difference of say 35 to 45 points, the game ends. On Friday, October 28, 2011, the Temple (Oklahoma) Tigers defeated the Corn Bible Academy Crusaders of Clinton, Oklahoma, 46-0. The mercy rule ended the game after the second quarter.
In college football the rule is more flexible and the spread and circumstances are agreed on by the coaches. The rule is that the rest of the game will be played with shorter quarters - 10 or 12 minutes rather than 15 - but there is no cut-off point differential that ends the game. However, there are some games where perhaps the game should have ended early. In 1970 the University of Oklahoma beat Oklahoma State 66-6. Although the Sooners led the Cowboys 48-0 at the half, no mercy rule was invoked.
There's a story that once Knute and the Tigers were playing the Canton Bulldogs. On the Bulldogs was Jim Thorpe, even then being cited as the greatest athlete of all time. The Bulldogs were playing at home and as always Jim was a big draw.
Jim Thorpe
The World's Greatest Athlete
Burt Lancaster
The World's Greatest Actor
Playing the
World's Greatest Athlete
Jim was also one of the coaches, and having played in only two games that season, was beginning to show his age. So whenever Jim got the ball, Knute kept knocking Jim flat, stopping him from carrying the ball anywhere. Each time he got up, Jim would say, "Rock, don't do that. The people here want to see Old Jim run." But after Knute kept knocking him down, Jim finally decided enough was enough.
For the next play, Jim told the blockers to let Knute by. Knute headed straight for Jim who summoned all his former strength and speed and flattened Knute like a pancake. Jim bounded in for a touchdown. As the trainers and his team members were picking Knute up, Jim walked up and said, "That's a good boy, Rock. You just let Old Jim run."
But as in all great stories involving legends, there is a bit of a problem. For one thing it's difficult to pin down which year this game could have been played. Sources differ when Jim and Knute played on the teams but Knute seems to have been on the Tigers' roster from 1915 to 1917. There are several games in that time span when the Tigers played the Bulldogs.
There was one game on November 28, 1915 where the final score was 6-0 in favor of Canton, and yes, Jim put all the points on the board. But the six points came from a field goal and a "place kick"7 - both by Jim. And at age 27 Jim had given impressive passing and kicking exhibitions before the game and could scarcely be called old.8 The story of Jim and Knute's confrontation is almost certainly apocryphal.
Footnote
A "place kick" or a kick "from placement" was a kick when the ball was placed on the ground before being kicked. In Jim's day a "live" ball on the ground could be kicked for a goal - a holdover from rugby rules. Such a kick gave a score of three points. Today the place kicks are limited to field goals, extra points, and kick offs.
A drop kick is when the player takes the ball, drops it, and as the ball hits the ground kicks it, hopefully sending it over the goal post. Unless the drop kick was for the point-after-touchdown - which gives the team one point - a drop kick gives a score of three points like a field goal.
The drop kick was a common tactic before the 1920's because the ends of the ball were more rounded than today and it was easier to control the ball's orientation when it hit the ground. The modern football has more tapered ends (intended to make throwing easier) which makes the drop kick more difficult. Although still allowed, there have only been two drop kicks in the last 85 years. The last drop kick was when New England's quarterback Doug Flutie kicked an extra point in 2006. Before then the last drop kick was when Raymond "Scooter" McLean also scored an extra point for the Chicago Bears in 1941.
Footnote
A contemporary account of the game gives the details of the scoring and of Jim's excellent condition.
JIM THORPE BEATS
MASSILLON TIGERS
FAMOUS INDIAN ATHLETE WINS
TITLE BY FIELD GOAL AND
PLACEMENT KICK
Game Wonderful Example Kicking and Throwing
Exhibitions - 12,000 Persons Saw
Big Grid Contest
Special Dispatcher to the Intelligencer.
CANTON, O., Nov. 28 - Before a crowd of 12,000 persons, Jim Thorpe, the famous Indian athlete today almost single handedly defeated the Massillon Tigers by the score of 6 to 0. Thorpe was playing with the Canton eleven and the stakes were the supreme honors of the semi-professional [sic] grid-iron of Ohio. Neither team was able to push a man across its opponents' line for a touchdown and the wonderful Indian was called back to use his toe in the winning contest. He did and the result was a field goal and one from placement, making the score 6 to 9 in favor of the Canton eleven. "Red" Fleming played with the Tigers.
Previous to the game Thorpe gave a punting and throwing exhibition. His kicks carried a distance of 75 yards while he hurled the pigskin a distance of 165 feet. This is a wonderful record and coming from any other than the great Indian would be considered almost an impossible feat.
But IF there is one person who can be credited with inventing MODERN COLLEGE football it MUST be Knute Rockne. We saw that in 1905 college football was close to being shut down. But by 1925 the game had become such a part of American culture that one of the year's most popular comedy films - The Freshman starring Harold Lloyd - was centered on the naïve hero winning a football game. The rise and cementing of college football into America's collective consciousness was due to the Rock.
In 1914 Knute became assistant coach to Jesse Harper at Notre Dame when he was still playing pro-ball. But Jesse retired before the 1918 season and Knute took over.
Knute started off winning. His first game as head coach was against what is now Case Western Reserve University when he and the team whupped the Spartans 26-6. The winning percentage of the year was 50% which doesn't sound that great until you realize they only played six games and tied two. So a W-L-T season of 3-1-2 really wasn't that bad.
On the team was - we have to mention it - George Gipp who was only seven years younger than Knute. Remember we're talking about the real George Gipp who was not quite the All-American/Goody-Two-Shoes of cinematic representation. George smoked, drank, and always liked laying a wager. During his playing career he might stay up all night shooting pool for money or playing poker but he could still go out the next day and make the winning plays. But his penchant for gambling spilled over to playing the game. In the 1920 contest against Army, George was going to punt the ball but instead opted to throw it to Roger Kiley. Kiley - who became one of Notre Dame's best ends - dropped the ball.
During halftime, Knute - who never hesitated to call out players who made foolish mistakes - looked at George who was in the back of the room puffing a cigarette.
"And you there, Gipp," Knute fumed. "I guess you don't have any interest in the game."
"Look, Rock," George said, "I've got 400 bucks bet on this game, and I'm not about to blow it," Gipp replied. Notre Dame went on to win 27-17.9
Footnote
Of course, today a team member betting on a game would get them suspended quicker than you could say "drop-kick".
The next season was even better. The Irish not only played nine games but won them all. Over the next eleven years, Knute never had a loosing season and by 1930 had racked up an 86% winning percentage. In only two years - 1925 and 1928 - did Notre Dame lose more than one game in a season. During his tenure as head coach, Knute took the team to three National Championships, the last in 1930.
And it was in 1930 that Hollywood had decided to make a film titled The Spirit of Notre Dame starring Lew Ayres and William Bakewell. It was about two football players on the team and Knute had been asked to serve as a consultant. Always willing to help promote his school and team, Knute happily agreed.
On his way to Hollywood, Knute stopped to visit his sons who were attending a boarding school in Kansas City. The next day, March 31, 1931, Knute boarded a small commercial plane along with five other passengers and the two crew members. They had flown about 100 miles when the wing snapped off. The plane came down and crashed about three miles southwest of Bazaar, Kansas. Knute was only 43.
Knute was legendary not just for his football innovations but also for his locker room pep talks. There is a famous and obviously staged film of him urging his players to go out and FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! There is some unintentional humor in the clip where as Knute is getting more and more fired up, the players are sitting in the background, motionless, completely silent, and entirely devoid of expression. Then at the end of Knute's talk, they all give a sudden, simultaneous, and rather startling shout of approbation.
But Knute's talks weren't always rousing go-get-'em exhortations. One story was that there was a game where the team had been given a particularly hard beating. At half time the players were sitting in the locker room and waiting for "The Coach" to show up. When he did, Knute opened the door and looked in.
"Oh, excuse me, ladies," he said. "I thought this was the Notre Dame football team."
References and Further Reading
"The 150 Greatest Coaches in College Football's 150-Year History", ESPN, December 10, 2019.
Notre Dame and the Game That Changed Football: How Jesse Harper Made the Forward Pass a Weapon and Knute Rockne a Legend, Frank P. Maggio, Carroll and Graf Publishers, 2007.
Knute Rockne: Young Athlete, Guernsey Van Riper, Jr. (author), Robert Doremus (illustrator), Bobs-Merrill Company, 1952, 1959.
"Notre Dame Tears Cadets to Shreds", The Richmond [Indiana] Palladium and Sun-Telegram, November 3, 1913, p. 6.
"Bluff's Idols Shattered: Van Buren High School Eleven Romped on Them at Conway", Pine Bluff [Arkansas] Daily Graphic, December 15, 1912, p. 1,4.
"Temple 46, Corn Bible 0", Temple: A Quaint Country Town in Southern Oklahoma, October 29, 2011.
"Michigan Coach Calls Out Team", Rock Island [Indiana] Argus, September 9, 1914, p. 11.
"Notre Dame Athletes Participate in Meet", South Bend [Indiana] News-Times. June 5, 1914, p. 10.
"Jim Thorpe Beats Massillon Tigers", The Wheeling [West Virginia] Intelligencer. November 29, 1915, p. 8.
"Georgia Tech's Victory Over Cumberland Sets New Record", The Birmingham [Alabama] Age-Herald, October 22, 1916, p. 3.
"Considering History: Pudge Heffelfinger - The First Ever Pro Football Player", Ben Railton, The Saturday Evening Post, January 31, 2019.
"The Surprising Truth About Notre Dame And The Gipper Legend ", Sean O'Shea, Irish Central, October 8, 2010.
"Thorpe Was Busy in Movies", The [Allentown, Pennsyvlania] Morning Call, October 2, 2021.
Chronicling America, Library of Congress.