Campus Life this month commentary on Gipp from football historian Chet Grant. (Courtesy of the Archives at the University of Notre Dame.)

[This excerpt is taken from Chet’s weekly football newsletter from the late 40s and early 50s called “Under The Hat with Chet Grant.” Much of the writing in the section included here is in a clipped notebook-type style.]

GEORGE GIPP

I didn't know, not until I saw the Rockne movie George Gipp chewed gum inveterately not to mention with a vengeance. Popular Gippography also has it Gipp didn't play high school football. I think he must have played & starred in high school ---and so thought his fellow migrants who followed him to Notre Dame from Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Ojay Larson, Hunk Anderson & Perc Wilcox should know more about that than Hollywood even. As for Rockne's "discovery” of Gipp booting impressive punts & drop kicks on an interhall field in his street shoes, possible if not plausible, what matter that the details of fact & fiction often are hard to distinguish in the Gipp saga. If some doings & sayings attributed to Gipp didn't happen they probably could have happened... For instance, what more fictional in its dimensions than Freshman Gipp's nationally noticed factual feat, when called on to punt, of drop-kick- ing 61 or 62 yards for only points of a game with Ka'zoo College.       

My first, last & only memory of Freshman Gipp (’16) involves a prophetic performance...Freshmen were given the ball on our ten. Gipp was at left half. My perspective was the safety point of a flat diamond secondary defense. I still can visualize the six-foot Gipp, modeled like a greyhound & as swift, circling our right flank by sheer speed, scoring without my hand or anybody else's laid on him… During Gipp's '17 grid campaign I read, in a military camp, how Army Had Too Much (Joe) Brandy & Gipp Gipped (soft “g” as in jipped)--the Army. During football season of '18 I was in France & it was mid-fall of '19 before I first saw Gipp with the varsity, vs. Indiana. I'd just got back to South Bend. Already he'd become virtually a living legend. In '20 I returned to school. "So you played with Gipp,” fans exclaim. "Yes," I answer. "About five minutes.” In the five minutes I played with Gipp, he ran, passed, punted, exhibited his leadership, exerted his charm & revealed his poised, calculating approach to competition. I think I saw the whole Gipp in that packed interval. But to me there remained to the end an unreality about his coming & going, an impersonality in his very presence, that gave him, indeed, a legendary aura even as he performed his most tangible feats on the football field.

Great backs were a dime a dozen at ND in '19. Established stars were such returned war vets as Arthur (Little Dutch) Bergman, Grover Malone, Fritz Slackford, Walter Miller & Joe Brandy (switched to QB.). Brilliant if erratic was Soph Johnny Mohardt. Dud Pearson, mentioned with Gipp in '18, was still on deck. QB Pete Bahan had previously starred as a ball carrier… But dominant name among the backs still was Gipp… For instance, vs. Army, Gipp's “clever forward passing, end runs & stellar defensive work” made him "stand out head & shoulders” on the field...Bergman might be hailed (justly) by Eugene Kessler of SB Trib as ND's best open-field runner, praise might be lavished on Slackford for his "power running"...But typical was Archie Ward's salute in SB Trib after the Purdue game: "It was a glorious thing for Notre Dame that George Gipp was in the lineup…”

 Gipp was missing when practice started in fall of '20--under suspension for scholastic irregularity. He had forfeited the captaincy been replaced by his arch-rival for leadership, Little Willie (6-3, 220#) Coughlin, tackle… Knute Rockne saw in Gipp a genius so rare it transcended normal rules. Gipp wasn't indispensable to the '20 team. John Mohardt, his alternate at LH, was a great passer & runner. But Gipp was an added feature to any ball game; he contributed a special something the artistically sensitive Rockne was first & foremost to recognize & equally resolved not to lose. Rock exerted his combined prestige as an already successful coach & esteemed faculty member to arrange for some skipped scholastic tests which he knew Gipp could pass if persuaded into wanting to. Then he had to find Gipp, He had no idea where he was until he received a telephone call from a Chicago friend who'd been tipped off by Carl Zievers, manager of the Simmons professional baseball club of Kenosha.

Rock set out immediately for Kenosha, where he'd been advised there was an outfielder on the Simmons club name of Gipp…Carl Zievers told me recently Gipp had expressed positive preference for baseball; he was determined not to return to ND for his fourth football season. He was a good prospect. said Mr. Zievers; hastening to add, apparently in protection of Gipp's amateur status, he'd been on the bench so far. It took hours of Rockne's best salesmanship, with the stubborn supporting counsel of George's brother Louie, to change his mind.

Thus reluctantly did George Gipp commit himself to the final reach of his course to football immortality. To Rockne, this tall, slim yet strong limbed, pale young man of 25 was like a fragile specimen of art--to be handled with meticulous & particular care, possession of the rare object depending on a tenuous tie which an awkward touch might break or sever. Gipp seemed to make his own hours on the field… We'd be catching punts for 20 minutes or half an hour before he'd show up. With a nod, perhaps a little grin & small voiced greeting, but without leave or apology, as coolly & naturally as if by some divinely given right, he'd take the next kick- ---the next 4 or 5 kicks in succession with an enviable grace & ease, as we stood back & watched him without resentment. Then he'd take his punting turn & after a few boots he'd say, or indicate by his movements: “Let's go, I'm ready.”

Rock attributed Gipp's irregular attendance of practice to a bad leg. Good- humoredly, we assigned it to the fact that Gipp was Gipp. “He was a great player,” said Grover Malone, as close to Gipp as anyone. “But George took care of himself.”