Knute Rockne
|
1927 Time cover featuring Rockne |
Knute (pronounced "noot")
Kenneth Rockne (
March 4,
1888–
March 31,
1931) was an
American football player and is regarded by many as the most famous college football
coach in history.
Rockne was born
Knut Rokne in
Voss,
Norway, and emigrated while still a child to
Chicago,
Illinois,
USA. He was the laboratory assistant to
Julius Arthur Nieuwland at Notre Dame, but rejected further work in
chemistry after receiving an offer to coach football.
As
head coach of the
University of Notre Dame in
South Bend,
Indiana from 1918–1930, he set the greatest all-time winning percentage of 88.1%. During 13 years as head coach, he oversaw 105 victories, 12 losses, five ties, and six national championships, including five undefeated seasons. His players included
George 'Gipper' Gipp and the "
Four Horsemen" — Harry Stuhldreher, Don Miller, Jim Crowley, and
Elmer Layden.
He died in a plane crash in
Kansas while en route to participate in the production of the film
The Spirit of Notre Dame.
Shortly after taking off from Kansas City, where he had stopped to visit his two sons, Bill and Knute Jr., who were in boarding school there at the
Pembroke-Country Day School, one of the aircraft's wings separated in flight. Authorities and aviation journalists at first speculated that the plane came apart after penetrating a thunderstorm and experiencing strong turbulence and icing, which, it was suspected, blocked the venturi tube that provided suction to drive the flight instruments. That was thought to have resulted in a graveyard spiral under instrument flight conditions and structural failure from excessive load. But this hypothesis was not backed up by meterorological records and observations; there was no isolated thunderstorm cell or other notable buildup in the area. Also, the failure involved the sturdy wing, not the tail surfaces. A long, thorough and well publicized investigation concluded that the Fokker, operated by a company of the newly-formed
TWA, broke up in clear weather due to fatigue cracks in its famous cantilever stressed plywood wing, around where one of the engine mounting struts joined.
The Fokker Super Universal fleet was inspected and grounded after similar cracks were found in many examples, ruining the manufacturer's American reputation (the Dutch designer Anthony Fokker was then in business in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey) and resulting in a complete overhaul of standards for new transport aircraft and a competition that eventually resulted in the all-metal Boeing 247 and Douglas DC-2. The Rockne crash dominated the news for a while and was thus a tragic catalyst in the progress of civil aviation. The plane crashed into a wheat field near
Bazaar, Kansas, killing a total of eight individuals including Rockne.
[The Official Knute Rockne Web Site. URL accessed 03:54, 29 January 2006 (UTC)] On the spot where the plane crashed, a memorial dedicated to the victims stands surrounded by a wire fence with wooden posts. The memorial has been kept up all these years by Easter Heathman, who, at age thirteen in 1931, was one of the first people to arrive at the site of the tragedy.
|
The wreckage of a Fokker F10A Trimotor in which Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne was killed near Bazaar, Kansas |
Rockne was buried in Highland Cemetery in
South Bend, and a student gymnasium building on campus is named in his honor, as well as a street in South Bend, and a travel plaza on the
Indiana Toll Road. The
Matfield Green travel plaza on the
Kansas Turnpike, near Bazaar, contains a memorial to him.
The actor
Pat O'Brien portrayed Rockne in the
1940 Warner Brothers film
Knute Rockne, All American.
Rockne is one of a few coaches credited with utilizing the
forward pass as a weapon, though certainly not the first to do so for that purpose. While that is an overstatement, he did play an important role in popularizing the pass. Most football historians agree that a few schools, notably
Saint Louis University,Michigan, and Minnesota had passing attacks in place well before Rockne arrived at Notre Dame. Few of the major Eastern teams used the pass, however. In the summer of 1913, while he was a life guard on the beach at
Cedar Point in
Sandusky, Ohio, Rockne and his college teammate and roommate
Gus Dorais worked on passing technques. That fall, Notre Dame upset heavily-favored
Army, 35-13, at
West Point thanks to a barrage of Dorais-to-Rockne passes. The game played an important role in displaying the potency of the forward pass and "open offense" and convinced many coaches to consider adding a few pass plays to their playbooks. The game is dramatized in the movie, "The Long Grey Line."
In 1988, the United States Postal Service honored Rockne with a postage stamp. President
Ronald Reagan, who played George Gipp in the movie "
Knute Rockne, All American" gave an address at the Athletic & Convocation Center at the University of Notre Dame on
March 9 1988, and officially unveiled the Rockne stamp.
*
Knute Rockne - All American – A biographical movie portraying the life of Knute Rockne.
*
The Official Knute Rockne Web Site – Hosted by CMG Worldwide, and endorsed by Rockne grandson Nils Rockne
*
The Unofficial Homepage Of Knute Rockne – By Rockne relative Birger Rokne of Voss, Norway
*
ESPN.com article about the site of Rockne's fatal crash
