Famous quotes from Knute Rockne during the annual football bowling season
The annual college football bowling season is full of surprises and spectacular moments. Famous coaches have had some memorable comments about America’s most popular sport, and here are some from legendary Notre Dame coach Knute Rockne, who is considered by many to be the best of the best.
Knute Rockne’s head coaching record in college football was second to none, and his win-loss percentage is better than any other college or pro coach.
In 13 years with the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, Rockne’s regular season win-loss percentage was 90% (105-12-5), his all-game winning percentage was 86%, and he led Notre Dame to 6 national championships, winning titles. in 1919 (9-0), 1920 (9-0), 1924 (10-0), 1927 (7-1-1), 1929 (9-0), and 1930 (10-0). Five of their 6 national championships have come from undefeated teams.
Along the way, he trained the immortal George “Gipper” Gipp, whose many skills propelled Notre Dame to national fame, and the “Four Horsemen” backfield of Harry Stuhldreher, Don Miller, Jim Crowley and Elmer Layden who led the Fighting Irish. to a 28 -2 registers.
While covering a Notre Dame football game, sportswriter Grantland Rice wrote the famous opening story, “Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the four horsemen rode again,” which has become legendary in history. of sport.
Rockne’s influence on football was immense. He is credited with helping to popularize the forward pass, start intersectional rivalries, build a national calendar, and institute the “Rockne Shift,” a T-formation in the backfield that quickly morphed into a left or right box formation when the ball was broken.
He was also the first coach to realize the market potential of soccer as an entertainment medium and openly promoted Notre Dame soccer by courting the media for free publicity so that Notre Dame’s soccer program would be financially successful.
Knute Rockne was a Norwegian immigrant who graduated magna cum laude from Notre Dame in 1914, played winger for the Fighting Irish who defeated the top-ranking Army team for the first time in 1913, and was a graduate assistant in chemistry before eventually becoming at Notre-Dame. head coach in 1918. Protestant, he converted to Catholicism later in his life.
Following his undefeated sixth national championship in 1930, Rockne died at age 43 as a passenger in a tragic Fokker plane crash that would help revolutionize the transportation business and lead to the all-metal Boeing 247 airliner. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1951 as a founding member.
Here are some of Knute Rockne’s best known quotes:
“It is estimated that four years of football provides the average man with more ingredients for success in life than almost any academic course he takes.”
“At home we are the hosts and I never liked the idea of being embarrassed in front of our friends.”
“On the road we are someone else’s guests, and we play in a way that they will not forget that we visited them.”
“We’re counting on winning. And if we lose, don’t be mad. And the best way to avoid fighting is: don’t lose.”
“Let’s win one for the Gipper.”
“I’ve found that sentences work better when you have great players.”
“You don’t have to see a good tackle. You can hear it.”
“One loss is good for the soul, too many losses are not good for the coach.”
“Show me a good, fancy loser and I’ll show you a failure.”
“Yeah, I know you feel like you’re not strong enough. That’s what the enemy thinks too. But we’re going to fool them.”
“The secret is to work less individually and more as a team. As a coach, I play not with my best eleven, but with my best eleven.”
“One man practicing sportsmanship is better than a hundred teaching it.”
“Most men, when they think they are thinking, they are simply rearranging their prejudices.”
Copyright © 2008 Ed Bagley