From "Out of Bounds"

The Gipper. Put him right up there on the pedestal reserved for our god-almighty American sports legends, where fact and fancy mingle until The Man is finally washed away and only The Hero remains, glowing like gold mined from a mountain creek. Who was The Gipper? And why are they winning all those football games on his account?

Have you known anyone so naturally talented at sports that he felt obliged to participate, even though he wasn't motivated by traditional values of the game? That was Gipp.

Have you known anyone who loved to bet large sums of money, especially on himself? That was Gipp.

Have you known anyone who could drop-kick a field goal from sixty yards, slam a baseball 360 feet, and run sixty balls in straight pool?

Probably you haven't, but that too, was Gipp.

George Gipp hailed from Larium, Michigan, a mining town on Lake Superior's shore. He came to Notre Dame shortly after his twenty-first birthday. Billy Gray, a catcher for the White Sox who had played at Notre Dame, wangled a partial baseball scholarship for him. George liked baseball well enough, and the town of South Bend promised a few years of adventure - the two reasons he appeared on campus in the fall of 1916.

Prodded by Rockne, he went out for football, which soon became his first sport. Studying, however, remained his least favorite pastime. Gipp had an extremely quick mind and could have done well in the classroom, but he preferred to catch the Hill Street trolley into South Bend to play some stud poker at the Oliver Hotel, or flush a pigeon at Hullie and Mike's Pool Hall. "Hell, that's how half the team earned their spending money," says Norman Barry Sr., now a judge in Chicago. "We'd cover Gipp's bets at Hullie and Mike's and he'd divvy up the winnings with us."

Gipp spent so much time in the dark, smoke-filled haunts of itinerant sharpies in low-brimmed hats and two-tone shoes, that for four years at Notre Dame his skin remained a pasty complexion; it seldom saw the light of day.

He usually wagered a bundle on Notre Dame's games, once betting he would outscore the entire Army team (he didn't). If he couldn't bring himself to do it for the glory of old Notre Dame, Gipp could nevertheless summon extraordinary powers when money was on the line. In the 1920 Indiana game he choreographed what Rockne later termed the greatest play he'd ever seen:
The Hoosiers were ahead 10-7 with sixty seconds in the game. Notre Dame had the ball, fourth and goal on Indiana's one-yard line. Naturally the defense's attention was riveted on Gipp - who was having trouble with his helmet. He fiddled with it, then pulled it off. When he did, the ball was snapped to Joe Brandy, who tip-toed across with the winning score. The Gipper, aware that he was a potent decoy, had arranged for the ball to be hiked when he popped his lid.

The repetitive nature of football practice irked George, so he seldom bothered to attend, at least until late in the week. When he did show, Rockne would bury him on the fourth team, where he'd stay until Saturday - when he would always get boosted into the starting line-up. Rock was no dummy.

To get his star to make up for lost practice time, the coach resorted to special tactics. The Irish were comfortably ahead of Kalamazoo in 1917. Rockne called a referee to his side. "When Gipp makes a long run, I want you to call a penalty on us, whether we've committed one or not," he instructed.

Refs were more accomodating in those days. Gipp made runs of eighty and sixty-eight yards in the first half; both were nullified. In the second period, the halfback grabbed a punt and cruised seventy yards untouched across Kalamazoo's goal line. "Bring it back!" called the referee. "Clipping, Notre Dame."

The Gipper had no fondness for frivolous exercise. He sauntered up to the official who'd been calling the penalties and dropped the ball at his feet. "Next time," he said, "give me one whistle to stop, and two to keep going."

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