Shenanigans
Notre Dame at Morningside,
1919. (George Gipp broke his leg in this game)
It was this game that produced one of the most hilarious and probably most
apocryphal of all Irish football stories. It was so cold that the
Morningside coach equipped all his players with white cotton gloves. On one
of the first plays from scrimmage there was a huge pile-up and, allegedly,
the Notre Dame linemen came up wearing the white gloves.
"Not quite true," said Rock, "but a couple pair did change
hands during the game."
* * * * * *
At a Christmas Eve party given
for the Notre Dame team during our stopover in Houston on the way to the
1925 Rose Bowl, Rockne was his familiar humorous self. After-dinner speeches
were in order and he was asked to comment on the city.
"What do you think of Houston?" somebody wanted to know. Houston
was only then beginning to grow.
Rock grinned.
"I'm afraid to answer that," he said. "in New Orleans, I was
asked what I thought of that city and I remarked that I thought it was a
very unique town. One of the good Latin padres challenged my choice of the
word unique.
" 'You mean,' he said, 'unus, meaning one; and equus, meaning horse.
What you're saying, Mr. Rockne, is that New Orleans is a one-horse town!'
"And so," Rock told our Houston audience, "I don't think I'd
better answer your question about what I think of Houston."
* * * * * *
Nordy Hoffman, guard on
Rockne's famous undefeated team of 1931 recalls:
"'A few years ago I was coming out of my office in Washington, D.C.,
and a woman was standing on the sidewalk in front of me, trying to talk to
me. I was so busy and feeling so important that I walked right by her and
jumped in a cab and rode away. On the ride I started thinking about the
woman and about Rockne and about how this was not what he'd taught me. I
realized that I was such a jerk. I told the cabdriver to go back to my
office and he did. I found the woman and asked her what she'd been trying to
tell me. 'I haven't eaten in a week,' she said. I gave her some money and
she promised to repay me. I said she already had."
* * * * * *
To read previous versions of Shenanigans click below:
|