Twelve vs. Twelve
Nobody asked me.
But nobody has been divorced like me, either.
Take it from a true goat in the game of marriage, Mr. Twelve is going to be just fine without Mrs. Twelve nipping at his GOAT horns twenty-four-seven.
The Twelves have so much fucking money that my use of the always-magnificent f-word is just downright irrelevant. Their obscene joint account spits on human economic decency
Do I really have to regurgitate Mr. Twelve’s football accolades? Google “greatest of all time in anything.” Mr. Twelve is the white guy next to Mr. Twenty-Three, another divorcee who slayed every NBA opponent in sight with a slew of championships and MVP awards. Still, Mr. Twenty-Three deserved the Nobody Gives A Shit About Your Divorce Award because his ex was never a supermodel.
The Twelves’ divorce is like the cat fixated on the moving red dot. Mr. Quarterback versus Mrs. Victoria’s Secret.
Even more compelling than the vision of Mrs. Twelve modeling silky lingerie is the fact that she banked twice as much moolah as the world’s highest-paid supermodel than her iconic quarterback husband. In the All’s Fair in Love and Fuck-You Department, Mrs. Twelve should be paying Mr. Twelve alimony.
While it’s safe to say the Twelves won’t be hitting a soup kitchen for a meal anytime soon, the two have lived separately ever since Mr. Twelve decided to unretire and continue playing quarterback greater than anybody in the history of quarterbacks. He’s in the mansion overlooking Tampa Bay; she’s in the lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-famous crib in Costa Rica.
Oh, for the sake of the kids.
It’s beyond my wildest speculation why a gazillion dollars can’t buy two superstars enough happiness to do their own superstar thing and still co-exist as man-and-wife who were side-by-side at the front of the line when the Creator was handing out matching cheek bones, talent, and enough mortal joy and mirth to outshine the sun.
But there is one thing divorce has taught me about life’s most overrated institution: Once things go south behind closed doors, neither all the money in the world nor a chainsaw can cut through the tension. Every word is a chihuahua biting at the privates. Every conversation is a dogfight. Death is wished upon for merely existing.
Mrs. Twelve has been spotted lately not wearing her ring. She is fed up with Mr. Twelve holding her back with only one ring to show for 10 years’ worth of trouble.
Mr. Twelve does not have a ring problem, or any problems shy of taking his spoiled marriage out on the next poor bastard who tries to guard one of his receivers. With all that peace restored at home, Mr. Twelve is once again the odds-on favorite to slip an eighth ring on his true love’s finger.
Till death do they part.
Repeat Performance
Knute Rockne first arrived at Notre Dame in 1910. Feeling “the strangeness of being a lone Norse Protestant, if word must be used, an invader of a Catholic stronghold,” Rockne went out for football because “a fellow wasn’t thought of as much unless he joined his hall’s football team.”
The following is an excerpt from the “Rockne On Rockne” section of “Rockne of Ages.”
A varsity man, Joe Collins, recommended me for a chance with the big boys, though Coach Shorty Longman wasn’t enthusiastic. Freshmen were played in those days, and with a small enrollment we needed them.
Coach Longman sent me out with the scrubs in a test game with the regulars. He made me fullback. They should have changed my position to drawback. Never on any football field was there so dismal a performance. Trying to spear my first punt, I had frozen fingers, which caused me to fumble the ball. It rolled everywhere it wasn’t wanted. Longman kept me in that agonizing game.
Finally, I tried to punt. I might have just as well been a statue of a player. Nothing was coordinated. I was half-paralyzed. A 200-pound tackle smashed into me. My 145 pounds went backwards for a 15-yard loss.
Shorty Longman knew much about football, but he talked even more. Our offense was typical for the game then, principally, a punt and a prayer varied with an occasional line plunge.
Longman’s method of coaching included an old-fashioned oratory before each game. He would enter the dressing room dramatically, toss back his shock of black hair and burst into rhetoric.
“Boys,” he declared, “today is the day. The honor of the old school is at stake. It’s now or never, we must fight the battle of our lives. I don’t want any man with a streak of yellow to move from this room. You’ve all got to be heroes... heroes, or I never want to see you again. Go out and conquer. It’s the crisis of your lives!”
I was tremendously impressed when I heard his speech the first time. The team went out and all but pushed the opposing team, Olivet, over the fence.
The next Saturday, Coach Longman entered the dressing room. “Boys,” he detonated, “today is the day of days. The honor of the old school is at stake. The eyes of the world are on you. Go out and bleed for the old school, and if anybody has a yellow streak, let him . . .”
I sat there awe-stricken. Then I saw two veterans, Charles Dorais and Al Bergman, casually yawn.
“What do you think of the act today?” asked Bergman.
Not so good,” said Dorais. “I thought he was better last week.”
One oration a season is quite enough for any football squad. Action brings reaction, and if the coach talks too much, his words lose weight.
From “Rockne of Ages” by Jeffrey G. Harrell, Mato Enterprises 2021
Lost And Downed
LOST & DOWNED
The only question left hanging 90 years after the plane crash that killed Knute Rockne and seven others: Who received $55,000 in reward money paid out by three Chicago newspapers in lieu of the arrest and conviction of the killer of Chicago Tribune reporter Jake Lingle, and what happened to the $55,000 in cash reportedly possessed by one of the crash victims?
The following is an excerpt from “Rockne of Ages” and “As God’s Witness: The Death of Knute Rockne.”
The Chicago Tribune paid out $25,000 to an undisclosed source in total confidentiality through the Illinois State Attorney General's Office. The Chicago Herald-Examiner added $25,000 to the reward pot, and the Chicago Evening Post kicked in another $5,000, for a total of $55,000.
Within two days of the Rockne crash, newspapers splashed reports that one of the victims, H.J. Christen, an interior designer in Chicago who earned a modest living setting up floor fixtures for downtown department and sporting goods stores, had cashed a check for $55,000 the day before boarding the plane. Crash responders found only $400 in Christen's clothes when his body was recovered.
The post-crash spotlight fell on a bigger inquisition: How did newspaper editors know immediately to report in first-day accounts that a modest interior designer named H.J. Christen, a virtual nobody in the world of fame and fortune occupied by Knute Rockne, had cashed a check for $55,000 one day before the plane went down? Was it coincidence that $55,000 was the same combined amount paid out by their own employers?
And for whom was the money earmarked? Christen? Could Christen have been a bag carrier flying under the radar of vengeful mobsters to deliver the reward money to its rightful benefactor in a place far away from Chicago where the transaction could be conducted out of sight and mind?
It was unlikely that the reward money was for Rockne. But Rockne had been traveling with John Happer, comptroller for Great Western Sporting Goods, another victim of the crash. Did Christen have a business relationship setting up floor fixtures for Happer's sporting goods store in Chicago? Could the two have been flying to Los Angeles with Rockne to set up a new Great Western Sporting Goods Store? Or was there other, more covert business planned? Christen and Happer were the only two actual residents of Chicago flying on that plane.
How Christen obtained $55,000 was a question that died in the crash with him.
(From “Rockne Of Ages” and “As God’s Witness: The Death of Knute Rockne” by Jeffrey G. Harrell - Boulevard Books, Copyright 2021)
NON-GROUNDED
"I don't know who signed the plane off, but they took the airplane," Long told DOC investigators. "Nobody was safe in that aircraft."
____________
March 31, 2021 marks the 90th anniversary of the plane crash that killed Knute Rockne on the Kansas plains. The following is an excerpt from “As God’s Witness: The Death of Knute Rockne” depicting the back story of events leading up to the plane’s takeoff.
____________
§
Three days prior to the crash, Anthony Fokker "personally inspected this plane" and signed off on the air ship's safety, DOC investigators stated in the Aeronautics Branch of the U.S. Department of Commerce's official accident investigation report.
Fokker approval on his product's safety condition was business as usual. The Fokker F-10A Super Trimotor wooden-structured, wooden-winged aircraft operated with a payload of 12 passengers with three 425-horsepower Pratt & Whitney Wasp engines that could hit 154 miles an hour at top speed. Like all aircraft designed by the famous airship designer, the Fokker F-10A was said to be among the safest planes in the world during the late 1920s.
The military begged to differ.
Three months prior to the Rockne crash, the Fokker F-10 came under intense military scrutiny in the wake of extensive testing at Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio. U.S. Army and Department of Commerce engineers revealed a suspect wooden wing structure that, when reaching a speed of 80 miles per hour, caused the plane to "fly like a duck."
"The plywood-covering checks in very good shape," wrote Dillard Hamilton, a National Parks Airways inspector, in a letter to Gilbert G. Budwig, director of Air Regulation for the Aeronautics Branch. "But I always worry about the spars and internal bracing. That is covered up where one cannot check."
Hamilton noted that a representative from Fokker's factory suggested adjusting the F-10's "allerons," or control surfaces on the wing, to "relieve tail heaviness." But Hamilton remained concerned that an adjustment – which entailed rigging the angle of alignment – might cause the pilot to lose control during a turn in bad weather.
Budwig replied: "We are not familiar with the factory recommendation... and do not believe that such rigging will correct tail heaviness. In view of the turning characteristics which you describe, it would be advisable to rig the allerons in the normal manner."
Further concerns arose when U.S. Navy officials summarily rejected the Fokker F-10A on two separate occasions during additional military testing in early 1931. The Navy's rejections prompted the Aeronautics Branch to announce intentions to ground the Fokker F-10A after Rear Admiral William A. Moffett, chief of the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics, made it known that a trial board ruled the F-10 "unstable" following a flight test at the Anacostia naval air station on January 15, 1931.
But the Aeronautics Branch of the Department of Commerce took no immediate action. The Fokker F-10 remained in the air.
“Six passengers were manifested, only half filling the 12-place cabin…” retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Colonel Boardman C. Reed wrote in the January 1989 issue of “Vintage Airplane” magazine, “but one had a change of plans at the last minute. Knute Rockne took his place.”
Rockne was traveling on the overnight train to Kansas City when the Transcontinental Western Air Express Fokker F-10AF-1 NC 999E flew into Kansas City from Los Angeles. The plane was scheduled to be turned back to retrace its route to Los Angeles as "Flight 5" the next morning, March 31.
TWA mechanic E.C. "Red" Long thought better of putting the plane in the air on his signature. Long had inspected the plane a few days before and found "... the wing panels were all loose on the wing. They were coming loose and it would take days to fix it, and I said the airplane wasn't fit to fly."
Long refused to sign the log. But an unknown TWA supervisor pulled rank on the mechanic by claiming the company needed the plane in service.
"I don't know who signed the plane off, but they took the airplane," Long told DOC investigators. "Nobody was safe in that aircraft."
That morning, TWA Flight 5 was supposed to depart Kansas City Municipal Airport at 8:30 a.m. The plane remained on the ground for 45 minutes to wait for a late shipment of mail. According to the investigation report, “… the airline removed four seats from the rear of the plane and replaced it by a mail bin." The late-addition mail bin was filled with 28 pouches that weighed 95 pounds.
“I don’t know who signed the plane off, but they took the airplane,” Long told DOC investigators. “Nobody was safe in that aircraft.”
"Would that have any effect in balancing?" one investigator asked in the DOC official crash investigation report. "If Govt. or private inquiry shows that the airline was negligent, what penalty can the govt. inflict on the airline?"
TWA employees would not have protested if Flight 5 had stayed grounded under mechanic Red Long’s order. In the wake of drastic salary cuts outlined in the DOC investigation, pilots and mechanics were ready to walk off the job with morale among all employees “shot” after the company cut the pay of pilots “about 30%” with “no warning or notice,” lead investigator Leonard Jurden wrote in a letter to Gilbert Budwig.
"Due to this condition and then the accident, morale sagged even lower and nerves ragged," Jurden noted.
Red flags all over Kansas City Municipal Airport that March 31, 1931 morning begged the question: Why was Fokker F-10A Flight 5 allowed to take off?
The TWA flight mechanic had refused to sign off on the plane’s structural safety. A last-minute ticket transfer had put Knute Rockne aboard as a passenger… meaning, the TWA supervisor who overruled Red Long at the last minute knew that one of the most beloved sports figures in the country was potentially in danger of traveling on a plane that had already been determined by the military and TWA to be structurally unsafe.
Then, takeoff was delayed for 45 minutes to await the arrival of a late mail shipment. Four passenger seats were removed to make space for a bin filled with 95 pounds of mail.
Weather conditions were cold, cloudy and iffy. And TWA employees were ready to walk off the job over sudden salary cuts.
Somebody wanted that plane carrying Knute Rockne in the air.
& As God’s Witness: The Death of Knute Rockne
— Chapter 17 —
As God’s Witness
As Father John Reynolds stepped off the train in downtown Chicago’s Randolph Street train station in the early afternoon of June 9, 1930, he witnessed the Al Capone-ordered mob hit of Tribune reporter Jake Lingle and kicked off a string of events over the next several months that would determine the fate of Knute Rockne...
Seeing the victim lying on the ground bleeding profusely from the head, Father Reynolds hurried to the mortally wounded man just in time to attempt to administer last rites. The man was barely able to whisper in the priest's ear before he took his final breath.
Only Father Reynolds knew the words the fallen victim had whispered. He got up, left the man dead in a pool of blood on the platform, and started to make his way out with the crowd when he bumped into a large man with a big stomach.
"Somebody has been killed, I'm getting upstairs to see what is going on," Father Reynolds said to Patrick Campbell.
The priest hurried up the stairway out to the street. Upon exiting the subway stairway onto Michigan Avenue, he peered around the street corner. He saw a frantic scene of people pouring out from the station. Father Reynolds was stunned to spot the light-haired accomplice standing on the corner.
The man appeared to be waiting for a pickup. Nobody stopped, so he ducked into a nearby store and asked to use the toilet. The suspect disappeared into the restroom, unwrapped a small piece of paper containing white powder, snorted the powder and left the paper behind in a stall for police to recover later. He walked hurriedly out of the store and disappeared down State Street.
Back inside the subway station, the dark-haired gunman had tossed the murder weapon on the cement and was now lost in a crowd of bedlam.
Father Reynolds bolted from the scene without stopping to talk to police. He skipped his doctor's appointment and, instead, decided to get out of Chicago as quickly as possible on the next train back to South Bend.
Excerpt from the chapter “God’s Witness” taken from “Rockne of Ages” and “As God’s Witness: The Death of Knute Rockne”
The Gipper Ever After
George Gipp lost his mortal life 100 years ago today.
The same day, Dec. 14, 1920, the Gipper’s immortality was born.
“George Gipp seemed indestructible on the football field,” Knute Rockne wrote…
George Gipp Memorial in Laurium, Michigan.
On this day 100 years ago, George Gipp lost his mortal life.
The same day, Dec. 14, 1920, the Gipper’s immortality was born.
“George Gipp seemed indestructible on the football field,” Knute Rockne wrote, as depicted in “Rockne of Ages.”
“But on a damp, freezing afternoon he contracted an infected sore throat around the time of our game with Northwestern. The whole city of South Bend joined the university in anxiety over Gipp. His condition worsened and he had to be hospitalized.
“’It’s pretty tough to go,’ said someone at the bedside.
“’What’s tough about it?’ Gipp smiled up at us feebly. ‘I’ve no complaint.’
“He turned to me. A few minutes later he motioned me forward. I leaned over his bed and he said to me, ‘I’ve got to go, Rock. It’s alright. I’m not afraid.’
“His eyes brightened in a frame of pallor.
“’Some time, Rock,’ he said, ‘when the team’s up against it, when things are wrong and the breaks are beating the boys, tell them to go in there with all they’ve got and win just one for the Gipper. I don’t know where I’ll be then, Rock. But I’ll know about it, and I’ll be happy.’
“It became national news when Gipp died, but that was only the measure of his athletic celebrity,” Rockne recalled. “What was never in the news was his utter gameness.”
George Gipp was an athletic phenomenon despite being a heavy smoker, a habit that caused Rockne to lament, “My fear for Gipp was that Nature had made him such a fine athlete that, over-gifted, he would not appreciate nor respect his talents.”
A deadly virus tackled Gipp on November 20, 1920. The country had already been writhing in a second wave from the 1918 Pandemic that had struck down hundreds of thousands of victims who went out coughing, racked by pain and high fever, gasping for oxygen.
“During the final hours of his fight for life, Gipp was rational and was said to show remarkable grit as he gradually grew weaker...” the Chicago Tribune reported.
Gipp was only 24 when he died. Medical experts say one marked difference between COVID-19 today that threatens older adults with compromised immune systems and the 1918 Pandemic... the most affected groups 100 years ago were otherwise healthy adults between the ages of 20 to 40.
Gipp’s death may be the most legendary case of life being cut way too short. All things considering today, the Gipper’s legend takes on new immortality.
Football... is an afterthought.
Excerpts taken from “Rockne of Ages”
Photo 1 via Bobak Ha’Eri, Photo 2 via Public Domain
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Roll Tide Has a Rockne Ripple
Knute Rockne. George Gipp. Bear Bryant...
Bear Bryant?
The link between Knute Rockne and Bear Bryant... Frank Thomas... rolls out a legacy between Notre Dame and Alabama that stands one and two at the top of college football’s powerhouse rankings to this day.
Alabama and Notre Dame, two of football’s greatest powerhouses, have a special connection going back to 1919, ft. George Gipp and a remarkable friendship with Frank Thomas.
Learn more in “Rockne of Ages”
Knute Rockne. George Gipp. Bear Bryant...
Bear Bryant?
The link between Knute Rockne and Bear Bryant... Frank Thomas... rolls out a legacy between Notre Dame and Alabama that stands one and two at the top of college football’s powerhouse rankings to this day.
In Thomas, Rockne got a new quarterback admitted into Notre Dame in 1919. And Thomas got a new roommate - George Gipp. Thomas and Gipp were best friends immediately. Like Thomas, Gipp was also an outstanding baseball player, and both played professional baseball in the off-season. Together at Notre Dame, they formed the most frightening backfield to date for any defensive opponent to encounter.
But Thomas’ and Gipp’s fast friendship ended too fast, tragically. In the middle of the 1920 season, Gipp suddenly came down with a severe throat infection. One hundred years ago on December 14, 1920, Gipp died from pneumonia. Thomas was devastated.
“I broke down and cried like a baby,” Thomas said during an interview years later. “It was like losing a brother.”
Thomas was Rockne’s quarterback from 1920 to 1922. Rockne praised his quarterback as “a fine field general” to sportswriters. Following one Thomas-led Notre Dame victory, Rockne reportedly told his assistants: “It’s amazing the amount of football sense that Thomas kid has. He can’t miss becoming a great coach someday.”
Thanks to Rockne’s personal reference, Thomas had his first assistant coaching job waiting in the wings at the University of Georgia when he graduated from Notre Dame in 1923. Two years later, Thomas landed his first head coaching position at the University of Chattanooga, where he led the squad to a four-year record of 26-9-2 that captured the attention of the University of Alabama.
Wallace Wade resigned in 1931 after establishing Alabama as a football powerhouse with three national championships. He hand-picked Thomas to take over a defending national championship team that was losing 10 of its 11 starters to graduation. Thomas’s Crimson Tide rolled off nine wins against only one loss and outscored their opponents by a season-combined score of 370-57.
Thomas followed his initial season with eight wins and two losses in 1932. In 1934, Thomas’s men steamrolled their way to an undefeated 10-0 season crowned by a win over Stanford in the Rose Bowl that sealed a national championship.
Among the players that helped Thomas win his first national championship as a head coach: Paul “Bear” Bryant. When Bryant graduated from Alabama in 1936, Thomas hired Bryant as an assistant and gave the future Alabama legend his first coaching job.
During an era that spanned from 1931 to 1946, Thomas guided Alabama to six bowl appearances, four of which were wins – the Rose Bowl in 1935 and 1946, the Cotton Bowl in 1942, and the Orange Bowl in 1943. Health issues from heart and lung disease forced him to step down as head coach in 1946 after amassing a career record of 141-33-9.
Thomas was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as a coach in 1951. After leaving coaching in 1946, he stayed on at Alabama as the school’s athletic director until 1952.
Frank William Thomas was only 55 years old when he died at Druid City Hospital in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in 1954. Rockne’s protégé was so beloved as an Alabama football legend, an illustrated book published later that year paid tribute to Thomas with his life story.
“Before heading up the Crimson Tide, Thomas played for none other than Notre Dame…”
Today, the University of Alabama practice fields are named for Thomas and his 1946 successor, Harold Drew. Like his mentor who has several statues erected in his memory, including the Rockne statue at the North Gate of Notre Dame Stadium, Thomas’ bronzed likeness stands alongside the statues of Alabama’s other national championship-winning coaches in the school’s history - Wallace Wade, Gene Stallings, Thomas’s protégé, Bear Bryant, and Alabama’s current coach, Nick Saban.
(Excerpts from the “Disciples” section in “Rockne of Ages”)
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Over Confidence is a Season Killer
Rockne warned. “Tell them they must have more grit, and more pluck, and greater determination…”
Rockne was often prudent with his coaching advice and issued a warnings to his players.
Notre Dame is 9-0. The No. 2-ranked college football team in the country. Their next opponent, Syracuse, is 1-9, one of the weaker teams in the country. And they’re playing at Notre Dame Stadium Saturday afternoon.
What could possibly go wrong for Coach Brian Kelly’s Fighting Irish?
“If you are afraid that a team is overconfident,” Knute Rockne advised in “Rockne of Ages,” “you might try to impress upon them that their opponents are going to go through them here, there, and everywhere. Impress upon them that losing this game might ruin the whole season, and appeal to their pride.
“However,” Rockne stresses, “over-confidence, once it sets in, is a hard thing to counteract.”
Notre Dame quarterback Ian Book seems to have the over-confidence thing in check. In a recent interview with ESPN reporter Holly Rowe, Book said Kelly is making the players well aware that any stumble at this point of an undefeated season would be disastrous in their ultimate quest for a national championship, even though they’ve already locked up a spot in the ACC conference championship game and a potential rematch with Clemson.
“It’s good to be aware of that, but also just to focus week by week on who we’re playing,” Book said. “Syracuse is a good team. They have good players and they’re going to come here and want to ruin our season, and there’s no point of looking too far ahead.”
Book says Kelly is punching the right buttons in the locker room this week.
“Coach Kelly really just sets the message every week that every week is a new battle, a faceless opponent every week, taking the season one week at a time and the rest will take care of itself.”
Rockne cautioned it’s healthy to be as nervous before a game against a 1-9 team as it is against a top-ranked squad.
“The whole thing is to get your team to realize exactly the situation,” Rockne warned. “Tell them they must have more grit, and more pluck, and greater determination...
“Or they will be beaten.”
Knute Rockne excerpts taken from “Rockne of Ages”
Ian Book interview published in IrishIllustrated.com Dec. 4, 2020
***
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Thankfully Blessed to have Rockne
Notre Dame Dome and Washington Hall at Sunset from War Memorial Fountain, seen from North Quad.
Being thankful on this Thanksgiving seems too trivial. Drawing down on a year paralyzed by a deadly pandemic, buckled by politics dividing entire communities, slammed by mayhem, disorder, distrust and disaster after natural disaster, merely giving thanks over a turkey with football on the tube seems as empty as the stadiums facilitating the games.
I’m thankfully blessed... mortally blessed to have the immortal Knute Rockne in my soul. Without Knute, I wouldn’t have explored the life of a great man who took on the toughest challenges of the toughest sport in its toughest infancy – a great man who defeated opposition at a rate that stands alone to this day on a pair of crippled legs and a body exhausted on the brink of collapse with charm, wit, intelligence, vision, coaching skills never seen before or since, and a will to win by any means necessary.
When I first published “Rockne of Ages” back in June, I felt like I was going into battle with Knute Rockne next to me in the bunker. Knowing that I was also surrounded by book designer Rochelle Day, spiritofknute.com web magician Georges Toumayan, Avi Gvili at Boulevard Books, and friends like Dr. Len Clark (ND Football Heritage Project) and the one and only Jim “Augie” Augustine providing sanctuary at his South Bend institution, Augie’s Locker Room, I knew the spirit of Rockne would lead us out of this year with a rejuvenated sense of hope.
Like Rockne would tell his players, “one play at a time,” it’s still one day at a time. But we have good friends, good support, we’re picking up new readers every day across the country and all over the world, and we have the resurrected spirits of Father John Reynolds and Knute Rockne motivating us with a kick in the ass to never give up.
On this Thanksgiving, “Rockne of Ages” is blessed to be looking forward to 2021.
***
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Oh, Say Can You See, Elmer Layden
The National Anthem before Thanksgiving Day, Detroit vs. Green Bay, 2007, Ford Field. Image via Dave Hogg.
When you hear the “Star Spangled Banner” before a National Football League game, think of Elmer Layden.
Of all the players who emerged from Knute Rockne’s indomitable football system at Notre Dame, it was the speedy 160-pound fullback who ran alongside Harry Stuhldreher, Jim Crowley and Don Miller as a member of the immortal Four Horsemen backfield that carried his fabled mentor’s torch into Notre Dame coaching infamy.
Born in Davenport, Iowa, Layden’s offensive accomplishments with the Four Horsemen earned him All-American honors his senior season in 1924 and overshadowed slick defensive skills Layden flashed on the other side of the ball. Most noteworthy were two interceptions Layden ran back for touchdowns in Notre Dame’s 27-10 victory over Stanford in the 1925 Rose Bowl, his final collegiate game.
Layden hung up his spikes in 1926 for a coaching job at Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa. The next year he moved to Pittsburgh to take over the coaching helm at Duquesne. In seven years at Duquesne, Layden’s teams racked up a 48-16-6 record, and capped off the 1933 season by winning the Festival of Palms Bowl, the precursor to today’s Orange Bowl.
The Festival of Palms bowl win on New Year’s Day 1934 was Layden’s final victory at Duquesne. Three years after Rockne was killed in a plane crash on March 31, 1931, Notre Dame brought Layden back to take on the dual role of head football coach and athletic director.
After taking over a Notre Dame football program that had suffered from sagging ticket sales since Rockne’s death, Layden was appointed commissioner of the NFL in 1941 and left the Notre Dame athletic program with football ticket receipt totals that had nearly doubled since he took over,
Layden guided the NFL through the World War II years, a span that saw teams using many players with inferior professional football skills while the game’s regulars were fighting in the war. Layden allowed some teams, most notably the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Philadelphia Eagles, to merge due to lack of manpower, and he once conducted an investigation into a betting scam without advising the owners.
Once the war was over, Commissioner Layden called on all of the league’s teams to play “The Star Spangled Banner” before the kickoff.
“The National Anthem should be as much a part of every game as the kickoff,” Layden proclaimed. “We must not drop it simply because the war is over. We should never forget what it stands for.”
(Excerpt from “Rockne of Ages” and “As God’s Witness: The Death of Knute Rockne.”)
A Rockne Game Plan For Clemson
What would Knute Rockne do this week against Clemson?
At 7-0, the country’s top-ranked football juggernaut averages more than 46 points a game – even without all-everything quarterback Trevor Lawrence who is out after testing positive for COVID-19.
Notre Dame, 6-0 and ranked No. 4, is set to face backup quarterback D.J. Uigalelei, who threw for 342 yards in a 34-28 win against Boston College last week. Running back Travis Etienne also rushed for 84 yards, grabbed another 140 receiving yards with a touchdown, and became the ACC’s all-time leading rusher.
In “Rockne of Ages,” Coach Rockne explicitly spells out what he would do in the Fighting Irish’s biggest game of any year.
“Unexpected weaknesses may appear where we least expect it, and the big thing is to be able to recognize these,” Rockne explains.
Look no further than the Miami game earlier this season to see that Clemson’s Achilles’ heel lies in their special teams, particularly on the foot of kicker B.T. Potter. The Tigers manhandled the Hurricanes 42-17, but all three field goals Potter attempted were blocked, and one was returned for a touchdown.
Notre Dame’s defense has shut down every opponent so far. Last week, led by end Daelin Hayes and sophomore Kyle Hamilton, the Fighting Irish kept Georgia Tech out of the end zone with a pair of field goals and just 238 yards of total offense on 4.0 yards per play in a 31-13 victory. The lone touchdown came on a fumble return by the Yellowjackets’ defense.
Coach Rockne would devise schemes with assorted blitz packages to pressure and contain Uigalelei in the pocket; force Clemson to keep the ball on the ground and run into Notre Dame’s strength... a strong defensive line. Squash the big plays. Exploit a leaky field goal unit and Potter’s shaky foot. Make Clemson play defense.
“If we have a quarterback and players who are heady enough to find these things and to recognize them, what remains is simple,” Rockne notes. “Play the plays which will not hit the strong points, but which will take advantage of the weak points.”
On offense, Notre Dame’s lack of explosion and red zone issues have been problematic all season – but quarterback Ian Book has shown flashes. The O-line has opened holes for running backs C’Bo Flemister and Kyren Williams, and Book has utilized his talented receiving corps to stretch the field at times. Against big, fast and powerful Clemson, Book will need to control the game with all the consistency he can muster.
“It must be borne in mind,” Rockne envisions in “Rockne of Ages,” “that a powerful, crashing fullback is the threat which will make your ends-runs good.”
Control the ball on offense. Contain the quarterback on defense. Stack the run. Make Clemson’s weakness – their kicker - kick. Grind out a low-scoring barn burner.
Win this big one the way Rockne would.
“I would leave nothing undone to win this first big game. This game will either make or break the season.”
***
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The Spirit of Knute
The spirit of Knute Rockne is doing just fine.
The most influential essence in the history of football is still on the receiving end of every perfect forward pass. His heavenly hands still apply wet heat to every sprained ankle. His aura continues to hover over Notre Dame - and the game he built still played with the ball he shaped - like a pulsating heart. His voice still resonates throughout the locker room of the stadium he built and carries on into all walks and circles of life wherever a motivational charge is required.
Yet, ask the average Notre Dame student if they know anything about Knute Rockne, and you’re liable to get an answer like the one given by a Notre Dame law student. “He’s got a statue at the stadium, that’s all I know.”
Or, as one current assistant coach replied: “When I was first hired, (Athletic Director) Jack Swarbrick took me on a tour of the locker room, and we passed his bust.”
Somewhere out there, Rockne’s memory is flabbergasted: “That’s all you got? A statue? A bust? A memorial mass on the anniversary of my plane crash where the priest doesn’t as much as mention my name?”
Knute Rockne fathered the Notre Dame Fighting Irish into a national institution to this day on par only with the New York Yankees, and singlehandedly sold the game of football to an entire nation.
Today, the country is paralyzed by a raging global pandemic. Life is at a standstill.
But they’re playing football.
Football. The game Knute Rockne built, perfected, and won better than anybody, dead or alive.
So, when you watch a quarterback snap off a perfect spiral and hit a receiver in stride, you’re watching Knute Rockne. When you hear a coach barking motivation to a player, you’re listening to Knute Rockne. When you feel that fresh youthful enthusiasm of a college football atmosphere, you’re feeling Knute Rockne.
And when you step foot on Notre Dame’s campus, no matter who you are, where you’re from or where you’re going, you’re breathing Knute Rockne.
Rockne’s spirit doesn’t need resurrecting. He’s in the air. Strong as ever. Forever.
It’s the living who can use a Knute Rockne rejuvenation.
An Al Capone Offer Martha Refused
Al Capone occasionally traveled to the small town of Mishawaka, Indiana to conduct business. The Midway Lunch, a local watering hole tucked on 4th Street in a predominantly Belgian neighborhood, had been renamed from Martha’s Midway Tavern & Dance Hall to avoid any law enforcement eyes that followed prohibition during the 1920s.
Al Capone arrived at the Midway Lunch with his usual dozen roses for the owner, Martha Antheunis.
The notorious Chicago bootlegger occasionally traveled to the small town of Mishawaka, Indiana to conduct business. The Midway Lunch, a local watering hole tucked on 4th Street in a predominantly Belgian neighborhood, had been renamed from Martha’s Midway Tavern & Dance Hall to avoid any law enforcement eyes that followed prohibition during the 1920s.
Midway Lunch served chicken for 25 cents and “near” non-alcoholic beer for a nickel. But it was what Martha cooked up in her backyard that drew customers. After checking for strangers or police, Martha would stroll back to her garage, fill a glass with her homemade moonshine, tuck it in her apron, then return inside and serve her regulars.
Capone was no stranger. He was, in the words of Martha’s daughter, Albertina, “nice, friendly, good looking, considerate, and all the nice adjectives.” Whenever he showed up at the Midway, he brought flowers for the owner.
On this day, Capone walked in with a dozen roses – and an offer of a business opportunity.
“Let me sell your hootch in Chicago,” he said. “You could make a lot of money.”
Martha was flattered by the offer. But she knew better... she declined politely.
“I only keep it for the neighbors,” Martha replied. “I want to keep it small, it’s just for my neighbors.”
Later, when Martha relayed Capone’s offer to her husband, Cyriel, the street-wise tavern owner admitted the blunt truth for her refusal.
“There’s no way I’m going to do business with that man,” she said.
Capone would return to the Midway often, always with a dozen roses. Today, Capone’s picture is prominently displayed in the front window shrine that exhibits the rich history of what has become a Mishawaka landmark and a national stopping point for the greatest blues artists in the country.
An offer Capone made that Martha refused was never brought up again.
The Day Indians Discovered Rockne
Rockne, however, learned early-on that American Indians could be the first to offer welcoming comforts to lost immigrants in spite of the atrocities they endured on their own land.
He was a 5-year-old boy fresh off the boat with his Norwegian-immigrant family and didn’t know one word of English.
Suddenly, young Knute Rockne found himself lost in the massive crowd of the Chicago Exposition celebration.
“When my dad was elated by an award for his carriage at the Chicago Exposition in 1893, he failed to check my curiosity,” Rockne recalled of the experience depicted in “Rockne of Ages.” “I wound up in the midst of a sort of miniature Indian reservation.”
The day was three years removed from the Wounded Knee massacre and the height of the government’s forced relocation of Native Americans onto reservations. If any group had a reason to ignore a little lost tow-headed boy, it may as well have been the American Indian of 1893.
Rockne, however, learned early-on that American Indians could be the first to offer welcoming comforts to lost immigrants in spite of the atrocities they endured on their own land.
“The contrast – between me, a white-haired Nordic fresh from the homeland and the jet-haired Indian papooses – must have struck some Indian chief as odd,” Rockne wrote. “A weary policeman passing by the make-believe reservation beheld a blonde-head ringed in feathers bobbing through a noisy mob of Indian kids wielding a wooden tomahawk and yelling for scalps.”
Rockne dressed as a Native American for a theater production at Notre Dame
The cop gathered young Rockne and returned him to his “puzzled parents.” What could have been a tragically frightful experience for a young boy left an indelible impression the legendary coach carried with him for the rest of his life.
“I’ve held Indians in affection and high esteem ever since that childhood adventure,” Rockne maintained.
One would stand above all as the greatest football player Rockne ever witnessed.
“In a review of my playing career, one hard day stands out above all others,” Rockne admitted, “the day I was playing professional football and tried to stop Jim Thorpe.
“My job was to tackle him, which I did two times successfully, but with much suffering. After the second time, Thorpe smiled genially at me. ‘Be a good boy,’ he said. ‘Let Jim run.’”
Catholics vs. Klan
A riot percolated at the South Bend train station in May 1924.
Four months ahead of the start of the final season of Notre Dame football’s iconic Four Horsemen, hundreds of Notre Dame students gathered to meet a train carrying members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Born in the South after the Civil War to stifle black freedom and maintain white supremacy, the KKK had disintegrated by the mid-1870s, then resurged in 1915 with a fresh agenda of hate and a new stronghold – Indiana – where membership had exploded to nearly 250,000 adult white men.
By May 1924, the Klan’s wrath had settled on the Catholic Church, and their decision to hold a rally in South Bend was no accident. Notre Dame stood as a symbol of rising Catholic power in the country. Knute Rockne’s football teams were building a national sports institution. The Klan was out to intimidate the school, its faculty and students, and let them know that Notre Dame was not welcome in America’s Heartland.
Klan members arriving in trains, buses and cars were greeted by a crowd of 500 Notre Dame students. They ripped away hoods and robes, and chased the startled Klansmen into a downtown headquarters on the corner of Wayne and Michigan streets where the image of a fiery cross made from red light bulbs shined in the office’s third-floor window.
Students spotted a grocery store on the ground floor selling potatoes. Suddenly, potatoes were missiles breaking the window and most of the lights of the “cross.” When star quarterback and Four Horseman Harry Stuhldreher reared back with his cannon arm and fired a potato into the last shining light bulb setting off a shower of sparks, the crowd roared.
The weekend of clashes boiled over on May 19 when thousands of students crashed the rally aiming to destroy the local Klavern. But when Notre Dame president Father Matthew Walsh arrived, cooler heads prevailed and the violence was quashed. The following day, Coach Rockne gave perhaps the most important speech of his storied life. Students followed his decree to obey Father Walsh and refrain from instigating any further violence.
The following week, the KKK shut down its South Bend Klavern. 96 years later, it’s as if they never left.
The Gipper Pandemic
“Gipp was Nature’s pet and, as with many of her pets, Nature also punished him.”
— Knute Rockne
George Gipp may have died 100 years ahead of his time.
The official cause of the legendary Notre Dame football star’s death was listed as streptococcic throat disease, or strep throat. “Pneumonia also helped weaken the athlete,” the Chicago Tribune reported in its coverage of Gipp’s death on December 14, 1920.
“Specialists called from Chicago succeeded in ridding his system of pneumonia... but Gipp did not have the stamina left to ward off the poison resulting from the throat infection.”
Consider the time frame: The global Influenza Epidemic of 1918 killed an estimated 50 million worldwide and more than 675,000 Americans. Cities closed schools. Public gatherings were banned. Statewide orders made masks mandatory. Businesses were shut down across the country. Fines were imposed on those who failed to wear a mask in public, which prompted protests.
Sound familiar?
Gipp was an athletic beast despite being a heavy smoker, a habit that caused Knute Rockne to write, “My fear for Gipp was that Nature had made him such a fine athlete that, over-gifted, he would not appreciate nor respect his talents.”
When Nature tackled Gipp with a deadly virus on November 20, 1920, the country was nearing the end of a second wave that had struck down hundreds of thousands of victims who went out coughing, racked by pain and high fever, and turning blue because they couldn’t get enough oxygen.
“During the final hours of his fight for life, Gipp was rational and was said to show remarkable grit as he gradually grew weaker...” the Chicago Tribune reported.
George Gipp was only 24 when he died. Medical experts say one marked difference between COVID-19 today that threatens older adults with compromised immune systems and the 1918 Pandemic... the most affected groups 100 years ago were otherwise healthy adults between the ages of 20 to 40.
Gipp’s mortal life was cut way too short. His legend remains immortal. But Gipp’s death, all things considering today, may be taking on a whole new immortality.
“Gipp was Nature’s pet and, as with many of her pets, Nature also punished him.”
— Knute Rockne
Watch Author Jeff Harrell interview with Len Clark, Irish 101
Len Clark interviewed “As God’s Witness” Author Jeff Harrell for Irish Illustrated on Jeff’s piece for Notre Dame Magazine regarding the theory that the Knute Rockne plane crash on March 31, 1931, was caused by a bomb planted on the order of Al Capone. The interview took place at Augie's Locker Room in South Bend, Indiana, prior to Notre Dame's annual Blue-Gold game on Saturday, April 13. Watch it here!