Hello, and welcome to American Catholic History, brought to you by listeners like you. If you like our podcast, please become a supporter, rate us 5 stars, and give us a great review. I’m Noëlle Hiester Crowe, and I’m Tom Crowe.

Today we’re talking about Knute Rockne, the legendary Notre Dame player and coach, and how the example of young men going to Mass brought about his conversion.

There are few names as connected to the glory days of Notre Dame football as Knute Rockne. His success started as a player, and then really took off once he was head coach.

Well, Notre Dame football was nothing special before he came along. As a player at Notre Dame he was key in making the forward pass a formidable weapon in offensive play calling. And then, as coach, he led Notre Dame through a remarkable stretch of success.

But if you looked at his beginnings you wouldn’t have predicted any of it.

No, which makes his story really a quintessentially “American Dream” sort of thing.

Right: he was born in Norway in March 1888. Pretty much everyone in Norway at the time was Lutheran, and that included Knute’s family. His father, Lars, was a blacksmith and carriage maker. In 1891, when Knute was three years old, Lars came over to the United States by himself.

Now, he wasn’t abandoning his family, but the World’s Fair would take place in Chicago in 1893, and Lars needed to come over to prepare.

He apparently was a pretty innovative carriage builder, so he wanted to make sure he was prepared to show his best work.

Well, his sacrifice paid off, because he won first prize for his category. So in 1893, he paid for his wife and children to make the crossing, and the Rockne family settled in the Logan Square portion of northwest Chicago. Knute was 5 at this point.

He grew up playing football with his friends in the neighborhood, but he only played for one season in high school before he dropped out. He intended to continue his education, but he was done with high school.

He got a job at the Post Office where he saved up to pay for further education and by 22 years old he had a decent sum saved up. He took and passed the High School equivalency exam. His parents encouraged him to apply to the University of Notre Dame. He did, and was accepted in 1910.

At Notre Dame his first sport was actually track and field, and he was pretty good at it. He also joined the football team, where he was part of the first two undefeated, 7-0 seasons in Notre Dame history.

But his senior year, 1913, was where the real magic happened.

This success was born where so many other great world innovators were born: Ohio.

Really?

Yes: the Wright Brothers, Neil Armstrong, John Glenn, Thomas Edison, all from Ohio. Heck, the National Football League was born in Ohio, so it’s perfectly appropriate that the forward pass was innovated right here in THE Buckeye state.

… Sigh. Let’s just continue.

OK! So yes: in the summer of 1913, before their senior year, Rockne and his good friend, Gus Dorais worked at Cedar Point resort near Sandusky. Cedar Point, of course, is the greatest amusement park for roller coasters on earth nowadays, but in its early days it was a lakeside resort right on Lake Erie.

Rockne and Dorais worked as lifeguards and busboys in the restaurant. During their downtime they worked on some new offensive techniques. In particular, since Dorais was the quarterback and Rockne played tight end, they practiced plays where Dorais would throw the ball downfield to Rockne while Rockne was in motion running down the field.

The forward pass was allowed within the rules of football, but it was hardly ever used.

Yeah, it had been legalized in 1906 largely because teams had perfected various ways of just inflicting violence on their opponents, and many players actually died from the violent clashes happening as masses of bodies smashed into one another. So in 1906 the rules committee approved the use of the forward pass. Some teams used it a few times just to overcome an impregnable defensive onslaught, but no one featured it or relied on it outside of extreme need.

Also, the receiver generally would run to a spot and turn and wait for the pass. Quarterbacks — who were just another running back along with the tail back, half back, and full back — didn’t practice throwing much at all, let alone throwing to a receiver who was in motion.

That is, until 1913, on the beaches of Sandusky, Ohio.

… yes.

When the 1913 season began, Notre Dame’s first three games were against easy opponents. They beat Ohio Northern, South Dakota, and Alma, by a combined score of 169 - 7. They did all of that without revealing their new weapon: the forward pass.

Their fourth game was against Army, and the game was at West Point. This was the time to pull out the new stops.

Army was a very good team at the time, so this would be Notre Dame’s first real test of the year. The game was on November 1 — All Saints Day. It was a day that changed football forever.

Gus Dorais dropped back and threw the ball 17 times, completing 14 passes. Exact stats were not kept, but Rockne caught at least one touchdown pass, and his deep-threat receiving forced Army to spread out their defense, which opened lanes for Notre Dame’s running attack.

Army was seen as the stronger team before the game, but Notre Dame won in a rout, 35-13.

From that day, teams scrambled to develop their own forward pass plays.

But enough about that one game. It was far from the last success in Rockne’s career.

He graduated with honors in 1914 with a degree in chemistry and pharmacology. He considered medical school, but ultimately stayed at Notre Dame to teach chemistry. That same year he married Bonnie Skiles, who was Catholic.

He also, happily, took on an assistant coaching position with the Notre Dame football team, before being named head coach in 1918.

As a coach he continued his innovative ways. He developed offensive techniques and blocking schemes that had never been used before. Some of which, like certain types of pre-snap shifts, were so successful that the league had to change the rules to give the defenses a chance!

But he adapted continuously, and he was a master motivator. His fiery, passionate speeches before games and during halftime motivated his players to play with spirit and power.

His formula worked. In his 13-year career as head coach at Notre Dame he compiled an incredible record of 105 wins, 12 losses, and 5 ties. That included five perfect seasons, three national championships, and the all-time best winning percentage for a major college coach.

During three of those great seasons, 1923-25, one of his standout players was Clement Crowe, who was one of my great-grandfather’s brothers. Clem was a two-time all-American at tight end for the Fighting Irish, and he was elected team captain in 1925, so that’s cool.

But what is even more cool is that my great-granduncle Clem may have been part of Knute Rockne’s conversion.

Yes. Rockne had remained Lutheran through his days as a student, and then into his marriage and coaching career, surrounded by Catholics.

But in the early 1920s something began to change.

One part of it was that whenever the team traveled to another town for a game, the mostly Catholic players would make a beeline for the nearest Church to get to Mass as soon as they got off the bus. Rockne did not require this of them. They did it on their own.

Rockne thought it would look odd if his players were heading to Mass while the coach was heading to the hotel, so he would join them and just sit in the back.

So he noticed the constant faith of his players, that they regularly went to Mass as a group when they arrived in a city. That certainly had an impact, but he tells of one particularly powerful moment.

They had traveled to some city on the east coast for a big important game. The night before the game he was having a tough time sleeping, worrying about the game that day. So he got up about 3 in the morning and went down to the lobby, where he paced about and talked with the bellboys to get his mind off the game.

After a while he noticed a few of his players, dressed well, heading out through the lobby, and out into the street. Then a few more came down. He figured that the only place they could be going at that hour was Mass, so he sat in a place where he couldn’t be seen to see how many would come down. More came. Some by themselves, others in groups,

Rockne related what happened next this way:

“In a minute or two, the last of the squad hurried out of the elevator and made for the door. I stopped them and asked them if they, too, were going to Mass, and they replied that they were. I decided to go along with them. Although they probably did not realize it, these youngsters were making a powerful impression on me with their piety and devotion, and when I saw all of them walking to the Communion rail to receive, and realized the several hours of sleep they had sacrificed in order to do this, I understood for the first time what a powerful ally their religion was to those boys in their work on the football field. Then it was that I really began to see the light; to know what was missing in my life, and later on I had the great pleasure of joining my boys at the Communion rail.”

Rockne came into the Church in 1925, joining his wife and four children, as well as his college football players, including Uncle Clem, at the Communion rail.

Good work, Uncle Clem!

Rockne went on to coach for five more years, through the 1930 season, leading the Irish to three national championships, including two in his final two seasons.

And the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame were officially on the map.

It wasn’t just his football success that changed everything for Notre Dame football and Rockne personally. He also possessed a great charisma, and had an innate understanding of how to promote his team and himself in the new national media environment. Rockne was keen to schedule games in major cities with large radio stations and newspapers. He actively courted reporters to cover his team. His voice was one of the most instantly recognizable ones in the country during the 1920s. He was a major national figure up there with Babe Ruth and just a few others. He was a cultural phenomenon.

Yes, Rockne himself, the son of an immigrant carriage maker from Norway, had become a national celebrity. As we said at the outset: quintessentially “American Dream” stuff.

Which makes the sudden end of his life so tragic. He was riding high. He was at the top of his profession. He had found his spiritual home in the Church. He and his wife had four beautiful children.

But in April 1931 he boarded a TWA airplane in Kansas City on his way to Los Angeles to help with the production of the movie The Spirit of Notre Dame. The flight took off in a storm, and it didn’t last long. Only about 130 miles into the flight, the left wing of the plane broke off and the plane crashed in a field just outside Bazaar, Kansas, killing everyone on board.

Rockne’s death was a national calamity. News stations coast to coast — the same stations Rockne had courted to broadcast Notre Dame games — carried updates about his death as quickly as they could get them.

The country was in shock, and his funeral Mass four days later was broadcast live over the radio.

The crash led to changes in airplane construction and how crash investigations were conducted. Investigators determined that the plane had crashed because the glue used to make the wings was water soluble. So long as they stayed dry they had no problem. But they had gotten soaked before the flight, and then were flying through more rain. The wing literally came apart mid-flight as the glue dissolved.

It’s sad that it took the tragic death of a major celebrity, but many important improvements in airplane safety came about because of Knute Rockne’s death.

Small comfort to his family and those who loved him, but at least something positive came from it.

Rockne’s status as a cultural icon was cemented on the big screen in the 1940 film, Knute Rockne, All American

That movie, of course, is better known as the vehicle for Ronald Reagan to deliver the immortal line, “Win one for the Gipper.”

Rockne was played by Pat O’Brien. Reagan played George Gipp, a real person who had played for Rockne at Notre Dame from 1918 through 1920. Gipp actually died of strep throat and pneumonia! But yes: that legendary line became one of Rockne’s oft-used phrases to rally his team, and it is the real reason we still talk about that film today.

Rockne left behind his wife of just 16 years and their four children. But, he also left a legacy that revolutionized American sports. In South Bend, he turned Notre Dame into college football’s most storied powerhouse. Yet for a man who spent his life leading young men, his greatest transformation came when he chose to follow them - converting to Catholicism after being moved by their quiet devotion. When rescuers reached the wreckage of that devastating plane crash, they found Rockne still clutching his rosary. He had built a football empire, but in the end, it was his faith that anchored his soul.

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I’m Noelle Hiester Crowe, and I’m Tom Crowe. Thanks for listening to American Catholic History, brought to you by the support of listeners like you.