Forget About Points, Take the Gipper

The most famous speech in U.S. history?

--Abe Lincoln’s “Fourscore and seven years ago . . . “

--Nate Hale’s “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”

--Pat Henry’s “Give me liberty, or give me death.”

All fine nominees, you bet, but the choice here has to be Knute Rockne’s “Win one for the Gipper.”

Sixty years ago last Thursday, the Notre Dame coach gathered his football team in a cold locker room at Yankee Stadium and delivered what was, depending on one’s point of view, either the most moving and inspirational pep talk ever, or the classic example of athletic hokum and bunkum, rivaled only by Tom Lasorda urging the Dodgers to win one for Bob Costas.

This, then, will be a brief history lesson, featuring eyewitnesses. We need this update because the years, as they will do, have left many of us with only a hazy impression of the Gipper speech. It did not, for instance, involve Ronald Reagan.

Bare facts: Nov. 10, 1928, Yankee Stadium, Notre Dame (4-2) is playing unbeaten Army. Underdog Notre Dame is riddled with injuries and, with two tough opponents left on the schedule, Rockne knows this game is what we call pivotal.

Scoreless tie at the half. . . . Just before the start of the second half, Rockne tells his players a story about George Gipp, the great Notre Dame running back and hell raiser who died during his senior season 8 years before.

Rock tells how he was at Gipp’s deathbed.

“ ‘I’ve got to go, Rock,’ ” Rockne says, quoting Gipp. “ ‘It’s all right. I’m not afraid. Some time, Rock, when the team is 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.’

“The day before he died,” Rockne went on, “George Gipp asked me to wait until the situation seemed hopeless, then ask a Notre Dame team to go out and beat Army for him. This is the day, and you are that team.”

Most of the players were in tears as they ran out to the field. Army scored a touchdown, then Notre Dame came back with two touchdowns for a 12-6 victory.

Paul (Bucky) O’Connor was a second-string halfback on that team.

“It was just before we were ready to go out,” says O’Connor, a famed surgeon, recently retired. “Everyone had their orange juice and sugar cubes. He gathered us all around, after emptying the locker room, asking all the visitors and alumni and hangers-on to leave. It was brief, 5 minutes or less. It was very inspiring. He didn’t do this (emotional speech) all the time, he was usually very straightforward, it was not his style at all.

“For the 2 years I played after that, I never heard him speak that way, never that dramatic. Everyone had tears in their eyes.”

With all due respect to Dr. O’Connor, there is evidence that Rockne went for the heartstrings more than that one time.

“Oh, yes, nearly every game, if there was doubt (that the Irish would win),” says Jack Elder, another reserve halfback in ’28.

Elder was not at the Army game, but he recalls similar Rockne moments.

“I remember when we played USC at Soldier Field in 1927,” Elder says. “I’ll never forget, we were getting ready for the game, Rockne came in and said, ‘All right, I want everyone out. Coaches and players only.’

“It was sort of an eerie feeling. He said, ‘I’ve got something special to say. This is probably my last day of coaching at Notre Dame. It’s too much time away from my family. I’m thinking of giving this up, going into a business less trying.’

“It just stunned everyone, you could feel the tension. The game got under way and we were a beaten group, really had our daubers down, no animation. You could see the boys were worried about Rockne leaving.

“Rockne was sharp, he could size up a situation in a hurry, he could see it (his speech) was backfiring. After SC scored, you could see two or three of our coaches conferring with Rockne. Next thing you know, they’re coming down the line telling us, ‘Rockne’s reconsidered, he’s going to coach again.’

“You could feel the emotion, the uplift. We scored, made the extra point and won, 7-6 or 8-7 (it was 7-6). . . . So we realized he was a great psychiatrist.”

Elder tells of another game when Rockne peeked into the locker room at halftime and said sarcastically, “Oh, I beg your pardon, I thought I was in the Notre Dame locker room.” He told the coaches, “This team stinks, I’m sitting in the stands the second half.”

And he did. In mortal fear of losing their beloved coach’s affection, the Irish rallied and won the game.

Norm Herwit, a reserve guard on that ’28 team, remembers a time Rockne told the players about his son, Jackie, who had the flu. Rock urged his team to “win this for Jackie.”

And it has been written that at the 1920 Army game, Rock pulled out a telegram from his son, Billy, who had the measles. Rockne read the lad’s message: “I want Daddy’s team to win.”

“He was dramatic at times,” Herwit says, “he did influence the play with passionate speeches.”

The obvious question: If Rockne used the tear-jerker tactic with some regularity, why, when he told the boys to win one for the Gipper, didn’t the players roll their eyes and yawn at the obvious con job?

“He was never that dramatic (as with the Gipp speech),” O’Connor says. “We all had tears in our eyes.”

Elder says, “He was such a commanding presence, he had such a wonderful way of speaking, that he didn’t leave any doubt about his honesty and sincerity.”

“It was heartfelt,” Herwit says, “it was really an emotional moment. It wasn’t something that happened so often it didn’t have an effect.”

In other words, whatever Rock was selling that day, the Irish kids were buying, and history was keeping.

Two footnotes:

--There is absolutely no evidence that Gipp actually made that deathbed speech, or anything like it. But wherever the Gipper was that day, he knew about it, he understood and he was happy--because he probably had $500 on the Irish.

--Notre Dame finished the ’28 season with losses to Carnegie Tech and USC. After all, Gipp said “win just one .”