People are enthusiastic about overcoming perceived difficulties. So it follows that the key to keeping enthusiasm up is to be in a perpetual state of almost overcoming one’s problems.
Knute Kenneth Rockne (/kəˈnuːt/kə-NOOT, though commonly pronounced /nut/NOOT; March 4, 1888 – March 31, 1931) was an American football player and coach at the University of Notre Dame. Leading Notre Dame for 13 seasons, Rockne accumulated over 100 wins and three national championships.
Rockne is regarded as one of the greatest coaches in college football history. His biography at the College Football Hall of Fame, where he was inducted in 1951, identifies him as “without question, American football’s most-renowned coach”. Rockne helped to popularize the forward pass and made the Notre Dame Fighting Irish a major factor in college football.
While many trace Knute Rockne’s debut as a Notre Dame football coach to the war-torn 1918 season, or in 1914 when he became an assistant coach under Jesse Harper, his first position was actually for the Corby and Sorin Hall football teams as a student-athlete in 1912 and 1913. These teams represented residence halls on the university grounds that competed against one other in various sports, the most popular of which was football. The term for these competitions is colloquially known as interhall sports. Ironically, while Rockne holds the highest winning-percentage of any major college football coach, his overall record in the interhall football league was a paltry 2–5–4 across two seasons.
The Notre Dame Box
During 13 years as head coach, Rockne led Notre Dame to 105 victories, 12 losses, five ties and three consensus national championships, which included five undefeated and untied seasons. Rockne posted the highest all-time winning percentage (.881) for a major college football coach. His schemes utilized the eponymous Notre Dame Box offense and the 7–2–2 defense. Rockne’s box included a shift. The backfield lined up in a T-formation, then quickly shifted into a box to the left or right just as the ball was snapped.
Rockne was also shrewd enough to recognize that intercollegiate sports had a show-business aspect. Thus he worked hard promoting Notre Dame football to make it financially successful. He used his considerable charm to court favor from the media, which then consisted of newspapers, wire services and radio stations and networks, to obtain free advertising for Notre Dame football. He was very successful as an advertising pitchman for South Bend-based Studebaker and other products. He eventually received an annual income of $75,000 from Notre Dame.
The following is a Knute Rockne locker room speech:
The former Notre Dame coach was the subject of a movie titled “Knute Rockne All American” wherein Ronald Reagan (who later became a United States President) was a star of the film. Reagan delivered his most famous line as an actor, in this film, and it subsequently became one of his nicknames in politics – “the Gipper.”
