Campus Life

Campus Life will feature a wonderful chapter on Gipp from Francis Wallace's book The Notre Dame Story.

When Gipp first came to Notre Dame he was on campus and worked as a "hasher" or table-waiter, a favorite occupation for athletes then and now at schools which operate the Job Plan. In his last two years, he lived downtown at the Oliver Hotel where, it is now generally accepted, he paid his expenses by certain skills around the green tables, skills he had probably developed during his salad days in the old home town. What is not true is that he educated students in such indoor sports. I once heard Hunk Anderson, his pal and fellow townsman, say with some indignation: "George wouldn't play cards with the college boys."

He was billiard champion of the town and did play 15-or-no-count pool; but he never played with students for much more than fun-and l I qualify as an expert witness here because I was the guy who racked up the balls at the Oliver. What probably is true is that he matched his poker proficiency with town hotshots and hotel transients with no more than reasonable success, because he lived simply; and it's just as well for football history that he operated quietly because Notre Dame considers a nickel crap game cause for expulsion.

Should the University have known that George played poker? That would have taken a lot of detection. It certainly wasn't common knowledge at the time because I never heard of it until years later and I worked at the hotel where George lived. I'm bringing it up here because it's one of those things that has crept into the legend and I'm giving what I think are the facts.

Personally he was a nice guy. I first met him socially in the spring of my freshman year at an evening party at one of the many lake resorts in northern Indiana-which might also have been against the campus law for all I know, though all of us lived in town. There was some necking which impaired nobody's amateur standing; and George's attitude toward such goings-on was consistent with his attitude toward the rest of life. He could take it or leave it alone; and in this case he must have left it alone.

The girls were all townies, nice girls, too, with cars, which is the nicest attribute a girl can have in a college town. Coming back I was in the car with George and his girl was driving. One of her friends, who evidently considered that George had not been properly attentive, pointedly remarked that plenty of other young men were interested in his companion.

Gipp promptly intercepted that very forward pass and ran it back for a quick touchdown. -"Whenever the competition gets too tough for me," he said, "I just drop out."  Which seemed to settle that though it was obviously a big lie because George never really started to work until the competition began to get too tough for the rest of the team.

I was moving up in the hotel business by an unorthodox method I do not recommend, had been fired from the billiard parlor for talking back to the big boss but had bobbed up again behind the desk as mail clerk. On my first evening there, while waiting for the big boss to catch up with me (which, of course, he eventually did) Gipp came over and shook hands. I was about as unimportant a freshman as you could find on the campus but the big star had come over to shake hands with me. That was Gipp.

It is also Notre Dame, where any man of distinction seems at pains to hide the fact, to go out of his way to avoid taking bows. It may stem from the goofing tradition which respects no position; but it does carry over. I still think the high spot of our football achievement was reached during the Penn game in 1930 when the squad rambled at will against the Quakers the week after having done the same thing against Pitt -both representative Eastern teams. That evening the squad had a private dinner at the Penn A. C. -just the gang and Connie Mack -but nobody, not even Rockne, would sit at the head of the table.

Gipp had to be aware of his position on the campus but he went to an extreme length to hide it-wore his monogram sweater inside out, a fashion adopted by other athletes at the time. Two weeks after the end of his last season the annual football dinner was held at the Oliver. Gipp was there to receive his letter; but when he was called upon, he was not there. We chuckled at that, figured George had ducked out to avoid making a speech. But two days later we learned that this had not been a simple case of modesty.

George was confined to his hotel room with tonsilitis. A few more days and he was in the hospital with pneumonia-which didn't worry anybody because a little thing like pneumonia didn't figure to bother Superman. But his condition quickly became critical. There was gloom on the campus as we waited; and daily bulletins in the press of the country about the fight for life by the Player of the Year.

Every so often sport produces an off-the-field situation much more gripping than anything on the field. This was one. A young man was dying. People who didn't care much about football prayed for his right to live.

The drama mounted when Walter Camp picked him on his all-American eleven-the first Notre Dame man who had ever made Camp's first team. And it was announced that he had been signed by the White Sox.

In a quiet hospital room two things happened which have become firmly rooted in the Notre Dame tradition. Gipp made a request which has been confirmed by the hospital chaplain who was in the room at the time. And he became a Catholic. Somewhere along the line of battle the spirit of this worldly young man had also been touched.

One of the finest things about the Notre Dame football tradition is the deep respect non-Catholic boys have for the spiritual feeling of their teammates. Some of them become Catholics later on, as Gipp and Rockne did; and the others get something out of it which they never lose. At our twenty-fifth class reunion, the first night had the customary masculine alcoholic tinge; but the next morning there was a mass for the deceased members of the class and everybody was in the chapel-including two Protestant ex-football players, who were also Masons.

He was to be buried at Laurium and business stopped in South Bend as we took him to the station in a snow storm. A platoon of police preceded the foothall eleven who marched in signal formation with the left half position vacant. The Monogram Club led the 1,500 students in a procession deathly silent by comparison with the riotous march of a few weeks before, the night of the Army game. The faculty, then George, with six members of the squad as pallbearers, including the three from George's home town who had followed him to Notre Dame- Hunk Anderson, Ojay Larson and Perce Wilcox. Then the family.

At the station we waited. The train came in and hats came off. We climbed telephone poles and baggage trucks as they put him in the baggage car. We were young and this was death. Most of us really found out about death that day.

The six pall-bearers followed him to the grave. The last six miles of the journey were made by sleigh.  And the snows of Christmas powdered the grave of Thanksgiving's Hero.

Because he died so soon after going into the Northwestern game with a broken collarbone, it is sometimes said this led to his death. This is not true. We had all forgotten that injury before he was stricken. He had always had a chronic throat, as, strangely enough, had Rockne, both being caused by bad tonsils. A strep germ hit him and his resistance must have been low. There was no penicillin then; pneumonia reduced his vitality and the poison raced through him. George had been a magnificent physical specimen, had the perfect halfback physique-six feet, 185 pounds.

When he died he weighed eighty pounds. I did not go to see him dead. I did not want to remember George Gipp weighing eighty pounds.

Just bow good a football player was he? What is his true stature in gridiron history? There is no doubt but that his final season and tragic death have dramatized his memory, helped to place him among the immortals, frequently, and by Rockne himself, on all-time backfields along with Jim Thorpe. Nobody really knows about such things because nobody has seen them all. I have watched most of the publicized stars since 1919, and my judgment may be colored because I knew and liked him; but for what it is worth, I believe he has as much right as any I've known to rank at the top.

George was one of the first to be known as a triple-threat back. He has that dropkick in the record book and was a fine punter though not as long as some I've seen. They didn't shoot much for the coffin-corner in those days but he would have had the poise and skill for that.

He was the best passer of his time, threw an arching ball with a flick of the wrist, that was easy to catch. The bullet pass had not yet come in but he had a baseball arm and could have done it. He was not a sensational open-field runner of the Red Grange type, but he was fast enough, could do the hundred in 10.1. His favorite play was off-tackle; he was a smart runner, could drive and hit hard, cut fast or change pace in the open, turn it off and on, outsmart tacklers and was a joy to watch in setting up his blockers.

He handled the ball on almost every play and was not called upon to do much blocking but could do that too. He would have made a great quarterback, occasionally did take over such chores -and, as previously said, was expert at improvising and executing spot strategy.

He was the defensive captain, a sharp tackler; and Rock wrote that he was the one player he ever saw about whom it could truly be said that 'nobody ever completed a pass against him."

Above all the ordinary mechanical factors was his ideal playing temperament. Rock said that no matter how aroused George seemed to be in his purple moments, he was ice-cold inside. The fact seems to have been that no matter who was captain or quarterback, Gipp was the leader at all times. And he had that hallmark of the champion: He was at his best when his best was needed; he had a quiet confidence in his ability to do the right thing at the right time; and he seemed to have had a good idea when he was going to have to shoot the works. A few years ago I came upon a telegram he sent to a friend at school from Lincoln, the night before a Nebraska game: "They'll be tough but brains win win ... Gipp."

It all seems to add up to the best -a specialist at everything. The moderns who remind me most of Gipp are Johnny Lujack and Doak Walker; but he could do more things better than either of them, had more hidden fire and maturity.

There was one thing more about George. I was vaguely conscious of it while he lived but the thought recurs whenever I see one of his rare photographs. He had sad eyes, seemed always to be waiting. Perhaps that was why he was not too much concerned with the commonplace.

A most peculiar kind of a saint.