Rockne of Notre Dame: The Making of a Football Legend

Michigan Historical Review, Fall, 2000 by Donald Spivey

Ray Robinson. Rockne of Notre Dame: The Making of a Football Legend. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. 290. Bibliography. Index. Cloth, $25.00.

Rockne of Notre Dame: The Making of a Football Legend is sportswriter Ray Robinson's offering on the life and times of the most heralded coach in the history of college athletics. It is a highly readable account of the Rockne story from his birth in Norway in 1888 to his untimely death in a plane accident in 1931. The real focus is, of course, on the years from 1918 to 1930 when Rockne built Notre Dame football into the pinnacle of the sport. His teams won six national championships and five of those teams had unbeaten and untied seasons. This incredible record paled only in comparison to Rockne's powerful personality.

Sports buffs and avid fans of college athletics in general and Notre Dame football and its legendary coach in particular will appreciate Robinson's book. It is full of all of the famous Rockne cliches and pep talks. It also has a serious side, as Robinson paints a vivid picture of a struggling young Catholic school during the fast three decades of the twentieth century and the role its success-driven football coach played in bringing Notre Dame out of obscurity.

Rockne's success, as Robinson understands it, was both a blessing and a curse for Notre Dame's leaders. In the minds of many faculty members and outside critics, the school's athletic prowess and the questionable tactics used to recruit athletes and keep them eligible to play stood in marked contrast to its goals of academic integrity and educational excellence. Not to Rockne, however. He never backed down from his advocacy of the positive value of both football and a winning tradition.

Historians and other scholars looking for a new take on Rockne will find this book a disappointment. It is not original research even though Oxford University Press is the publisher. The book is more a synthesis of the previous publications on Rockne. Footnotes are disturbingly absent. Nevertheless, Robinson is to be commended for his efforts to refine and update the Rockne story and to convey the public and private complexities of the man. He moves from an analysis of Rockne as a brilliant football tactician, to his conversion to Catholicism, to his use of football to mold and educate young men. Along the way Robinson outlines Rockne's strengths as a motivator and his shortcomings, including his ego in his later years. Readers will come away from this book with an understanding both of Rockne and of his unique importance to college athletics and the world of sports.

Donald Spivey
University of Miami