Maybe the most enduring image of Knute Rockne is that of the master psychologist. His rallying cry for the 1928 Army game, "Win one for The Gipper," needs no ballyhooing here. Other halftime talks, not so well documented and perhaps apocryphal, are almost as famous. "Let's go girls," was the complete text of one. "Fighting Irish? Bah!" was another. The coach waxed more expansive at the midpoint of the 1925 Northwestern game: "You can tell your grandchildren you had the honor of playing on the first team to quit at Notre Dame." So saying, Rock abandoned his players for a seat in the stands. But he was back on the sidelines by the fourth quarter to see Notre Dame nail down the 13- 10 victory.

The impression then is of Rockne, the locker room psychologist. But that is unfair. This was a man who could tailor any ego to fit his team, could turn any emotional situation to his benefit. His last game went far beyond the bounds of stirring pep talks. It was psychological warfare from start to finish.

By December there were no words left for the 1930 USC Trojans. "The Wonder Boys" they were called, the best the West had ever seen. They did, indeed, seem unstoppable, blowing top-rate opponents off the field by incredibly lopsided scores: 32-0, 52-0, 74-0. What would it be against Notre Dame?

Rockne's Ramblers were figured to be overrated. The defending national champs and winners of eighteen in a row were visibly weary. Two tough, tight games against Army and Northwestern had wasted the team to its breaking point. And with Savoldi and Mullins out of the line- up, there was no fullback in sight to plug that gaping hole in the Irish backfield.

Why bother with alibis? Every sportswriter in the country agreed that USC could not be beaten, whomever the opponent. Rockne himself as much as admitted impending disaster. "We're not giving up the ship," he sighed a week before the game. "but we're prepared to man the lifeboats."

The Notre Dame Special chugged out of Chicago's LaSalle Street Station on 9:30 of a Tuesay evening, November 30. In his private compartment Rockne sat, stuck his chin in his hand, stared out the black window, and plotted. Within the next few days, he would orchestrate the emotions of thousands of people, and spring an unprecedented hoax on the entire nation.

The con job started as soon as the Ramblers arrived in Tucson for Wednesday and Thursday workouts, standard procedure for a Notre Dame team traveling to the coast. Rockne's first problem was to find a fullback. Advice was plentiful: every newspaper in America had already announced that Dan Hanley was the only logical choice. Rockne, however, decided to gamble, and stuck third-string halfback Bucky O'Connor into the starting fullback spot. The difficult assignments and precise rhythms of Rockne's ever-shifting backfield made this sort of reassignment impossible, which is probably why the coach decided to keep it a secret.

Very quietly, Rockne had Hanley and O'Connor switch jerseys. The whole team was in on the gag when O'Connor impersonated Hanley at Wednesday's practice. Play after play, the transplanted halfback plowed unimpressively into the middle of the line, never once flashing his brilliant outside speed. Los Angeles sportswriters yawned and wired back reports that Rockne's backfield was indeed in trouble. Like Will Rogers, and much to Rockne's delight, Southern Cal knew only what they read in the newspapers. Two years earlier the West Coast scribes had described Notre Dame's Tucson practices in such detail that Rock blamed them for his team's 27-14 defeat. Now the writers were on his side, if unwittingly.

Bill Henry of the Los Angeles Times actually interviewed Hanley (nee O'Connor) after the Wednesday scrimmage. O'Connor obligingly answered every question without stirring the slightest suspicion. Rockne, it seems, had coached him on Hanley's background the night before.

When the reporters demanded a prediction, Rock was uncharacteristically glum. He expected to lose by two touchdowns. But the familiar grin had to be bursting behind the coach's unhappy mask. The switch had gone off without a hitch.

"Men will work twice as hard under the stress of emotion as they would otherwise," Rockne had once written. Now he proceeded to prove it.

Nordy Hoffman, Marty Brill, and Tom Conley decided to dress early for Thursday morning's practice. The Arizona fieldhouse was open, but the door to the dressing room was jammed shut.

"Let's wait outside." The three bounced cheerfully down a dark hallway to a door opening onto a bright, sunny field. Purple mountains loomed in the distance, an intoxicating view. This seemed the ideal place to wait for the locker room to open.

Other players arrived, joining the men on the meadow. No sense bothering with the dressing room; the place was sure to be locked, what with fellows lounging about in street clothes, taking in the sights.

Most of the squad was working on a little applied geometry - "how far away do you suppose those mountains are?" - when Rockne suddenly appeared five minutes before the scheduled start of practice. "What's the idea?" The coach had never looked angrier. "Not a one of you dressed and on the field!" "The door's locked," someone volunteered. "That door is not locked," Rockne seethed.

A few players rushed inside. "It's open," came the cry, followed by a stampede for the lockers. No one can strip, slip into pads, tape up, lace up, pull on a uniform, and be ready for football inside of five minutes. It is doubly impossible when surrounded by a bundle of beefy baliplayers attempting the very same thing. But the entire Notre Dame team did it that day, scrambling to the held as if the dressing room had been on fire.

Embarrassed, the Irish hustled through the motions. Rockne was not buying. He sourly called the team together and announced his resignation. "Forget it," he thundered. "I'm out here against doctor's orders, risking my life with this phlebitis, and you numbskulls can't even get to practice on time. It's obvious you don't care about a thing. You don't care about yourselves or your team. So forget it'I'm taking the next train back to Chicago. Coach yourselves. Or get somebody else to do it. I'm a sick man, and I've had it."

Rockne, as it turns out, was almost surely responsible for the locked dressing room; but his players would not realize that until weeks later. Now they simply believed they were being abandoned.

The coach turned to leave. Someone blurted. "Give us another chance, Rock." Everyone chimed in: "Another chance!" One player loudly insisted that Rock had to be present when the team "beat hell out of Southern Cal."

At first, like the locker room door, Rockne could not be moved. Then he seemed to sway a bit. The pleading continued and finally the coach held up his hand.

"One last chance," he said. "Maybe. I'll be back here at one o'clock to quiz you on your assignments. I won't be associated with anyone who doesn't know exactly what he has to do when the ball is snapped." With that Parthian shot, he disappeared.

A leisurely lunch did not ensue. Each player was expected to know every defensive set, every offensive play his team could use. The mountains seemed too far away and unimportant now. Everyone was cramming.

Rockne arrived promptly after lunch and quizzed everyone orally: "You, think fast, what would you do in this situation? Why? Take the man on your right, what will he be doing and how can you compensate?"

Practice ended that afternoon when Line Coach Hunk Anderson read aloud a wire service news story about Tom Lieb, another Notre Dame assistant who had recently moved to California. Popular, much-admired, Lieb was every player's friend; thus did the story shock so deeply. Lieb had predicted the winner of Saturday's game: Southern Cal, hands down.

The team that steamed out of Tucson on Friday morning was riding high. Rockne's threatened walk-out - put on or not - had touched a nerve. The O'Connor-Hanley exchange was so bizarre it jangled the team's guts like a ticking time bomb. Lieb's prediction was a shot of adrenaline Rockne had switched on his team's emotions like an electric current.

Notre Dame arrived in Los Angeles to the sound of sirens. A police escort met the Ramblers at Union Station and led team buses up Sixth Street to the Ambassador Hotel. Rockne seemed unusually unnerved by a small crowd of well- wishers and reporters waiting in the lobby. "No one speaks," he warned his players, and shunted them upstairs to their rooms.

The improbable drama climaxed that evening at a giant USC pep rally where Rockne graciously agreed to address the Trojans. His message was simple: We know how good you are. Don't beat us too badly, and we'll try to give you a better game next year.

"it will be no disgrace to lose to a team with such spirit," announced the coach. "I have warned my boys against over-ambition. We are not over- ambitious in the game. There is room at the top for only one great team."

The Trojans listened intently and liked what they heard. After the rally, they floated away convinced of their greatness, assured of victory. Not a one of them noticed the trap, the Trojan horse of complacency that Rockne had wheeled into their collective subsconscious.

Nearly 100,000 people squeezed into the Los Angeles Coliseum that Saturday to see Notre Dame's shame. Back in the locker room, the kick- off fast approaching, Rockne chalked still another new play on the board, a deceptive pass he insisted would go for a touchdown. Then he played his last psychological card.

"You all know that Moon here is from Alhambra, just a few miles away." Rock touched the shoulder of the likable fullback whose bandaged knee had sentenced him to the bench. "Moon's friends and family are here, sitting in the stands. They want Moon in the line-up and so do 1. Now, if you players can get us a fourteen point lead by halftime, Moon goes in."

"Just get those fourteen points," cried Rockne, and his team burst onto the field determined to play their popular friend into action. A quick pass, the one that Rockne had just outlined, made it 7-0. The "66-2 reverse" to O'Connor, whom almost everyone still thought was Hanley, resulted in an eighty-yard streaking touchdown. The dizzy USC players looked like small boys who had just smoked their first cigars.

Everyone was stung by this one. The sportswriters who looked silly for trumpeting USC's invincibility lost all semblance of credibility when it was learned that Rockne had pulled the O'Connor-Hanley switch right before their unseeing eyes. The USC players had been floating on a sea of praise all season; Rockne tipped them over and watched them sink. The Notre Dame team was shamed, angered, pumped up into giving an unbeatable performance. Looking back, it is obvious that Rockne expected to win all the time.

It was the master psychologist's last national championship.

His last game.