Remembering Knute Rockne’s Notre Dame, National Impact

Days of infamy over the past 100 years tend to resonate in one’s consciousness. They include the stock market crash on Oct. 24, 1929, or Dec. 7, 1941, Nov. 22, 1963, and more recently in the 21st century, Sept. 11, 2001.

In Notre Dame’s football lore, March 31, 1931 — 90 years ago today — eternally remains such a day, when Knute Kenneth Rockne perished in a plane crash with seven others.

Rockne spent only 43 years and 27 days on Earth, but during that relatively short stay he defined immortality.

Maybe it can be reflected by his .881 winning percentage (105-12-5) as head coach at Notre Dame from 1918-30, a mark that remains No. 1 in college football history while getting credited with four national titles, three of them consensus.

Maybe it was exhibited by President Ronald Reagan’s visit to Notre Dame on March 9, 1988 to take part in the centennial celebration of Rockne’s birth. On that day, the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp honoring Rockne for the legacy he left Notre Dame as well as the nation.

That same year, the Fighting Irish fittingly went on to capture their most recent national title.

Or maybe it can be best summarized by the legions of Notre Dame supporters he captivated to create, along with the New York Yankees, the most famous athletic team and tradition in American history during the 1920s, or about 100 years ago at this time.

Rockne and Notre Dame combined to make football more than just a recreational activity. Together, they became the embodiment of America and symbolized the initiative required to attain supremacy.

They were the top draw in an era that became known as “The Golden Age of Sports” (Babe Ruth, Bobby Jones, Jack Dempsey, etc.), and they were one of the nation’s few beacons during the age of the Great Depression.

Rockne was born on March 4, 1888 in Voss, Norway. Less than four months earlier, football had been born at the University of Notre Dame, more than half a world away. It seemed unlikely the two would ever be linked. Then again, Rockne’s life was filled with a pattern of unlikely outcomes.

He was a high school dropout — yet he would graduate from the University of Notre Dame magna cum laude in chemistry.

He was mortified as a freshman at Notre Dame when he wasn’t good enough to make the scrubs for the football team — yet by his senior year he would be captain of the varsity en route to earning some All-America mention.

His knowledge and ambition dictated a future in science — yet his heart told him to stay in coaching.

He was considered a shy, self-conscious person when he first arrived at Notre Dame — yet today he is recognized as one of the most magnetic personalities and powerful motivators in our nation’s history.

Even in his death, a transformation resulted in air travel, as noted in a recent Chicago Sun-Times article by Jim Lefebvre.

Rockne’s emigration to the States was made possible by the craftsmanship of his father, Lars, whose entry of a hand-made carriage at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago earned him a second-place prize.

Impressed by the freedom and opportunity in America, Lars eventually sent for his family back in Voss, which included 5-year-old Knute.

Growing up in Chicago, Knute developed an early appreciation of football while watching his boyhood idol, Walter Eckersall, the All-America back for the University of Chicago, lead Amos Alonzo Stagg’s teams to gridiron prominence.

Although his parents disapproved of the game, they gave him their permission to participate when he enrolled at North West Division High in 1901. He didn’t make a mark in football, but he became one of the top track and field men in the city with his exploits in the half-mile and pole vault. Once a dedicated student and always a voracious reader, Rockne began devoting too much time to his athletic exploits, and it eventually prevented him from earning his high school diploma.

In the ensuing four years, Rockne worked as a mail dispatcher in the Chicago Post Office, and the experience provided a new perspective. Thus, he saved $1,000 during his years there in order to have the opportunity to attend college.

Rockne’s intent was to enroll at the University of Illinois in Champaign, but a couple of track compatriots recommended a small Catholic university (where they too would enroll) just 90 miles east of Chicago. Only 400 undergraduates were enrolled at the University of Notre Dame, but what swayed the frugal Rockne was the tuition would be less and there would be opportunity for him to work while in school.

For years, the school had been trying to make itself worthy of acceptance from the elite who snubbed it. The Western Conference (now the Big Ten) barred it from admittance.

When Notre Dame was clobbered by Western Conference members Wisconsin and Purdue in 1904 by respective scores of 58-0 and 36-0, yet still had the chutzpah to apply for membership in the conference after the season, it was akin to the class nerd asking the head cheerleader to the prom.

Even the 1909 shocking upset of Michigan (11-3) led only to further resentment, as Michigan coach Fielding Yost canceled the game with Notre Dame the following year.

Regardless, Rockne wanted to attend the College of Pharmacy, and he gained admittance by scoring 92.5 on the entrance examination.

At first, Rockne second-guessed his decision on his collegiate choice. He was a Norse Protestant in a Catholic environment. Somewhat an oddity as a 22-year old freshman, Rockne’s shyness permeated his personality.

Physically, he was balding prematurely and his flattened nose (wrought from an encounter with a baseball bat as a youth) led to stinging inquiries from onlookers about the “homely Swede.”

Devastated by his early ineptitude in football, Rockne channeled his ambition into scholastic endeavors and other interests. In his chemistry major, Rockne impressed Professor Julius Nieuwland (who discovered one type of synthetic rubber that led to DuPont’s invention of Neoprene) to be hired as his research assistant while still an undergraduate.

After graduating in 1914, Rockne tabled medical school ambitions in St. Louis to work for Nieuwland and as a coach in various sports.

To augment his field in science, Rockne also loaded up on foreign courses and literature to get a slant on other cultures and subjects. Before taking the research assistant’s position for Nieuwland in later years, Rockne worked as a janitor in order to supplement what he had already saved.

During his undergraduate days, he also found the time to try his hand at his No. 1 sport — track. After earning a monogram as a freshman, his confidence received enough of a boost to give football a second attempt. This time, Rockne moved to end, where his speed became an asset.

With that, he became the campus Renaissance Man. He played flute for the school orchestra, took a major role in every student play, wrote for the school newspaper and yearbook, fought semi-professionally in South Bend, and one year even reached the finals of the Notre Dame marbles tournament.

By his senior year in 1913, Rockne was the easy choice for captain of the football team. Under first-year coach and athletics director Jesse Harper, the ambitious, success-starved school assembled a national schedule, highlighted by powers such as Texas in the South and Penn State and Army — a veritable machine — in the East.

Such extensive travel was unheard of in those days, but if the mountain wasn’t going to come to Notre Dame, then Notre Dame would set out to conquer the mountain.

In Rockne’s three varsity seasons, Notre Dame compiled a 20-0-2 mark, including a 7-0 mark as a senior. On Nov. 1, 1913, Rockne and quarterback Gus Dorais had a hand at helping revolutionize the game by perfecting the forward pass in a 35-13 upset of unbeaten and heavily favored Army.

Tempted to take the head coaching position at Michigan Agricultural College (now Michigan State) in 1917, Rockne was dissuaded by Harper, who told him he would soon be his successor at Notre Dame. Prior to succeeding Harper in 1918 as the head coach, Rockne was his assistant for four seasons.

Rockne became a national institution and Notre Dame became the national school. “Subway Alumni” were born in every section of the country, from the steelworker in Pittsburgh to the executive in California.

In Rockne and Notre Dame, an identity of struggle, hope and triumph could be found — as was the glamour and popularity of sport.

“Football and all athletics should be a part of culture, the culture that makes the whole man, not a part-time thinker,” Rockne wrote. “Ancient Greece was a cradle of culture, and Ancient Greece was a nation of athletes. … Boys must have an outlet for animal spirits. Their education must contain a training in clean contests, otherwise they’ll be lost in a world that thrives on competition and in which those who cannot compete cannot hope to thrive.

“Four years of football are calculated to breed in the average man more of the ingredients of success in life than most any academic course he takes. … [Athletics] stirs the pulse, captures the imagination and, at the same time, builds character without which culture is valueless.”

Among the innovations he introduced were intersectional rivalries throughout the country (hence the nickname “Rockne’s Ramblers”), reducing the amount of bulk and weight of the equipment while increasing its protectiveness, using “shock troops,” a full team of second stringers, at the start of some games, and offenses that created massive throngs in stadiums throughout the country.

From Yankee Stadium in New York to the Coliseum in Los Angeles, stadiums — and city streets — overflowed to catch Rockne and the magic of heroes.

During the 1919 unbeaten campaign, the most in attendance for a Notre Dame game was approximately 10,000. By 1927, more than 120,000 fans filled Chicago’s Soldier Field to watch Notre Dame’s 7-6 victory over USC.

In 1929, all nine of Notre Dame’s games were on the road — so to speak — while Notre Dame Stadium (“The House that Rock Built”) was under construction. But because Notre Dame had become “America’s Team,” every place was like home, and it showed with a record 551,112 in attendance in the nine games during the march to the national title.

From 1918-27, the university enrollment and endowment doubled.

By 1930, 3,200 students were enrolled at Notre Dame — eight times more than when Rockne arrived as a student in 1910.

On March 31, 1931, Rockne was killed in the prime of his life — 19 straight wins, two consecutive consensus national title — in a plane crash at Bazaar, Kansas

A nation mourned as more than 50 million people listened to his funeral service broadcast over the radio. The manner and suddenness of his death intensified the shock.

As his casket was removed from Sacred Heart Church at Notre Dame, airplanes circled overhead and dipped their wings in salute. Meanwhile, the Cathedral bells tolled the Notre Dame Victory March in funeral cadence.

When written in 1909, the Victory March was just another lyric. By the time of Rockne’s death, the verses had been translated to a dozen languages.

At times the echoes slumber and the thunder dims … but Rockne’s impact remains everlasting.

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