The land of the echoes

Sporting News, The, August 22, 1994 by Terry Frei

Myth: Saint Knute

Listen to the legends, and you reach the conclusion that Knute Rockne was a saint -- and not because he coached the Irish to three consensus national championships in his 13-season regin. No, Rockne is supposed to be a saint because he scrupulously ran a clean, exemplary and high moral-ground football program.

As Edward Sorin might have said: "Au contraire."

Rockne was a great coach and innovator and certainly a superb -- if highly inventive -- motivator. But he constantly was pushing the envelope of even the looser collegiate football standards of the 1920s, when Notre Dame's mandate to Rockne was to abide by Western Conference (Big Ten) guidelines in an attempt to gain admission. (That's myth within a myth. Notre Dame was not a fesity independent by choice; it repeatedly was rejected by the Big Ten before settling in as a contented independent with a national schedule.)

From 1918 to '30, Rockne oversaw a system under which Notre Dame football players got the majority of on-campus jobs to "pay" their way in an era when "full rides" were against the rules, and bird-dog alumni financially sponsored talented recruits. Rockne chafed against academic eligibility restraints and tried to circumvent them whenever possible. He ruthlessly manipulated newspapermen, for years hiring influential sportswriters to officiate Irish games while they also wrote about the team. Walter Eckersall of the Chicago Tribune was a Rockne referee/writer favorite. (Seems incredible, but that was part of the system in those days, and Rockne was by far the best at using it to his advantage.) He also, in essence, bribed writers by supplying them valuable complimentary tickets, at times by the dozen, knowing they would be scalped. He even was known to skip Notre Dame games to make money as a print commentator at other big college games. A Notre Dame man forever? He talked with other schools, including Columbia -- with which he even signed a contract -- and Southern California.

Rockne was a master of artfully (or otherwise) stretching the truth. Knute's "Win One For The Gipper" speech for the 1928 Army game was bunk; there is no indication that George Gipp ever made such a request, or that Rockne was even in position to hear it from a dying Gipp in 1920. Moreover, the words used in "Knute Rockne -- All American" apparently were the invention of Rockne's ghostwriter for his autobiographical articles in Collier's magazine -- which were turned into a book after his death. But hand this to Rockne: Notre Dame upset Army, 12-6, in that 1928 game, in part because Eckersall -- the journalist/referee -- whistled the game over with Army on the 1-foot line. That game was played the Saturday after Herbert Hoover routed Al Smith, the Catholic governor of New York, in the 1928 presidential election. To many, the election showed that an America in which the Ku Klux Klan was powerful wasn't ready to jettison ridiculous and hateful anti-Catholic prejudice. So Rochne's speech came when Catholics needed a boost.