Brilliant, hard working, charismatic and Norwegian. What more great things can be said?

Rest in peace, Knute. I hope to be able to talk about football with you in heaven.

Sean
Sean | Email | Homepage | 03.31.06 - 11:34 am | #

I made the pilgrimage to Bazaar, Kansas several years ago to see the monument. Easter Heathman -- who was there the day Rockne died -- took me out to see it.

While we were out there, I took a deposit slip from his checkbook, which was in his truck. The slip had his address on it, and every time I go to Notre Dame, I send him a postcard (anonymously) thanking him for taking care of the monument and welcoming so many visitors.
Matt | Email | Homepage | 03.31.06 - 11:57 am | #

Rockne's been lauded for his enterprising nature in marketing the Irish -- setting up high-profile games that required a lot of travel, getting games on the radio, recruiting extra aggressively.

Combine this with interviews I've read that said Gipp and other great players from that era hardly attended classes, and it sure sounds to me like Rockne was a pioneer in college football's ills.

There's no doubting his status as coach. But he sounds a little like Jerry Tarkanian to me.
MattB | Email | Homepage | 03.31.06 - 4:49 pm | #

I will not stand for such blasphemy, MattB. Get him everyone, he's a witch!
Brad | Email | Homepage | 03.31.06 - 10:01 pm | #

Don't get me wrong. I understand that a lot of good has come from the foundation that Rockne laid. But it seems to me that ND didn't start having a soul, football-wise, until Father Ted arrived on the scene.
MattB | Email | Homepage | 03.31.06 - 11:20 pm | #

I say you blaspheme!





....if that's a real word.
Brad | Email | Homepage | 04.01.06 - 2:17 am | #

Matty-oh-boy, Rock was a great innovator, but you give him too much credit. The semi-professional student athlete was around long before Rockne.

Besides, I could name a dozen or more fellow undergrads who rarely if ever attended classes and still graduated.

And even under Father Ted a few incidents came to be...
Yago | Email | Homepage | 04.01.06 - 11:33 am | #

True, true, Yago.
MattB | Email | Homepage | 04.01.06 - 11:48 am | #

True, Rockne wasn't an angel, and as a competitor he sought every edge he could find. In this way he was similar to most of his contemporaries, only a lot shrewder.

But I think you have to realize that he was coaching during the infancy (or at least childhood) of the sport, and many practices that we rightly disregard today were de rigeur in olden times. For instance, they used to hire sportswriters as referees, ND included. Rockne had a guy from the Chicago Trib who refereed the game one day (for pay) and then wrote about it the next. And the journalists loved it; they were beating down Rockne's door for the chance to ref. And Rockne controlled their access to the team and to the games, so on a close call, which way do you think the sportswriter/ref would rule? No...no conflict of interest there, huh?

Anyway, I highly recommend Sperber's book "Shake Down the Thunder" for a comprehensive history of the wild and woolly Rockne days of ND football.
Jay | Email | Homepage | 04.01.06 - 12:34 pm | #

Sperber's book is phenomenal and, in my opinion, heightens one's appreciation of Rockne precisely because it presents a more complex picture of the man than you get in Knute Rockne, All American. Rock went at it with bare knuckles, but nothing to be ashamed of, especially in comparison with everything else going on in collegiate/amateur/semi-pro athletics in the 1920's.

My favorite example of Sperber's was about how the Notre Dame players and Army players would throw some money in a pot before the game, and the winning team split the pot. There were no rules against it, and at the time it was just no big deal. Rockne was like a sheriff in an Old West frontier town. And he did a damn good job at it.
Fitzwater | Email | Homepage | 04.03.06 - 1:58 pm | #