November 10, 1928: The football teams of the University of Notre Dame and the U.S. Military Academy, a.k.a. "Army," played at Yankee Stadium. A crowd of 78,188 saw the Cadets lead the Fighting Irish 6-0 at halftime. It wasn't that surprising: Army was undefeated, 6-0, while Notre Dame was only 4-2.
In his halftime pep talk, instead of discussing strategy, Notre Dame coach Knute Rockne told his players, who would have been in junior high school in 1920, about George Gipp. A back on both offense and defense, and a also a great kicker, Gipp had led Notre Dame to the National Championship that season.
But he had gotten sick -- how it happened depends on who's telling the story -- and, in those pre-antibiotic days, he was doomed to die at the age of 25. As Rockne told it, he went to see Gipp on his deathbed on December 14, 1920, and Gipp told him:
I've got to go, Rock. 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, ask 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.
Having told the 1928 players that story, Rockne concluded by saying, "Gentlemen, this is that game." And the players left the locker room in tears, and came from behind, with Jack Chevigny and Johnny O'Brien scoring touchdowns, and beat Army 12-6.
That's the story. But it makes no sense. First of all, why choose this game? Because it was in New York? Because it was against Army? Certainly, Rockne didn't need to be afraid of losing his job: He was already an icon in South Bend, Indiana.
Second of all, they were only down by 6 points. Maybe if they needed a much bigger effort, to overcome a 2-touchdown deficit, such a speech might be warranted.
Third of all, like I said, those players were just kids when Gipp died. They never saw him play. It's not like there was television back then. The newsreels probably never showed Gipp. For all they knew, Rockne could have been lying, and Gipp could have walked into the room at that moment, and they wouldn't have recognized him. (Another coach, Edward "Slip" Madigan of St. Mary's in the San Francisco Bay Area, allegedly once told tearfully his players about his sick son, and said to win the game for him, when the son walked in, just fine.) Gipp's legend shouldn't have had any effect on the 1928 Fighting Irish.
And fourth of all, if the locker room speech did happen, Rockne probably made it up. As one sportswriter put it, decades later, If Gipp said anything to Rockne as he was dying, it was probably more along the lines of, "Put a hundred bucks on the 4 horse in tomorrow's 7th race at Arlington for me."
Rockne was killed in a plane crash near Bazaar, Kansas on March 31, 1931. On October 4, 1940, the film Knute Rockne, All-American premiered. Pat O'Brien played the coach. Ronald Reagan, who had played guard at Eureka College in Illinois, now an NCAA Division III school, played Gipp, and played the speech scene straight.
As Reagan went into politics in the 1960s, and was elected President in 1980, he often played up his connection to Notre Dame. At the 1988 Republican Convention, at the Superdome in New Orleans, knowing he couldn't run for a 3rd term, he told the new nominee, his Vice President, George H.W. Bush (who played baseball at Yale), "Go out there, and win one for the Gipper!" Meaning himself. Bush did win the election.
As Reagan fell victim to Alzheimer's disease, and could no longer make public appearances, campaign signs reading, "WIN ONE FOR THE GIPPER" appeared at rallies for Bob Dole in 1996 and George W. Bush in 2000. Reagan died in 2004, and during Bush's re-election campaign, there were more "Gipper" signs than ever before. They still come up, every 4 years: For John McCain in 2008, for Mitt Romney in 2012, and for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020.
Reagan's political career was built on many, many lies. The "Win one for the Gipper" story was the first. If the truth about Gipp had been widely known in 1966, when Reagan was making his 1st run for public office, for Governor of California, he might never have won an election. After all, the other movie people tended to remember him for was Bedtime for Bonzo, where he worked with a chimpanzee.
George Gipp was a real person, and he really was a great football player. But the thing everybody remembers about him almost certainly isn't true. But, like Reagan's campaign promises, Rockne's Gipper speech was a fraud -- or, as the actual Irish would say, it was blarney -- that worked very well.
*
November 10, 1928 was, like most college football days, a Saturday. There were no baseball games. The NHL season wouldn't start for another 5 days. The NBA wouldn't be founded for another 18 years. But there were NFL games played that day. Because Pennsylvania banned professional sports on Sunday until 1933, the Frankford Yellow Jackets played the Pottsville Maroons on this Saturday, and the Jackets won, 19-0 at Frankford Stadium in Northeast Philadelphia.
And there were other college football games played that day:
* Georgia Tech, 5-0, played Vanderbilt, 6-0, at Grant Field in Atlanta. Tech won, 19-7.
* The championship of the Big Six Conference, the league that would eventually become the Big Eight and 2/3rds of the Big XII, was decided when Nebraska renewed its rivalry with Oklahoma, and won 44-6 at Memorial Stadium in Norman, Oklahoma.
* New York University defeated Alfred University of Alfred, in Western New York State, at Ohio Field in The Bronx.
* Fordham did not play on that day. Instead, they had an Armistice Day (Veterans Day) matinee 2 days later, against Boston College at Fenway Park. BC won, 19-7.
* Rutgers lost to Lafayette, 17-0 at Neilson Field in New Brunswick.
* And Princeton beat Washington & Lee University, 25-12 at Palmer Stadium in Princeton.