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