What Knute Knew: High School, College Football Is a Great Character-Building Game

Three months after he delivered perhaps the most famous pep talk in the history of American football, coach Knute Rockne traveled to Washington, D.C., where he spoke to a gathering of Studebaker executives and then at a luncheon hosted by the Notre Dame Alumni Association.

On Nov. 10, 1928, the Fighting Irish had played Army at Yankee Stadium in New York. Before that game, this Notre Dame team had already lost to Wisconsin and Georgia Tech and was not expected to beat the then-undefeated Cadets.

But the Irish won 12-6.

Two days later, a story in The New York Daily News carried this headline: “GIPP’S GHOST BEAT ARMY.” Its subhead said: “Irish Hero’s Deathbed Request Inspired Notre Dame.”

The story was written by Frank Wallace, who had graduated from Notre Dame in 1923 and, according to Notre Dame Magazine, had served as “the student publicity director for Rockne” starting in the 1920 season. That was George Gipp’s final year.

In his story on the 1928 Army-Notre Dame game, Wallace reported that Rockne told the team: “On his deathbed, George Gipp told me that some day, when the time came, he wanted me to ask a Notre Dame team to beat the Army for him.”

“It was not a trick,” Wallace reported. “George Gipp asked it. When Notre Dame’s football need was greatest, it called on its beloved ‘Gipper’ again.”

On Feb. 1, 1929, The Washington Herald published a story about the speech Rockne gave at the Studebaker event.

“It was Knute K. Rockne, football’s greatest psychologist and the man who made the name Notre Dame synonymous with football greatness, making a heart-to-heart talk to a gathering of high officials of the Studebaker Company yesterday at the Mayflower,” said this report.

“Asked his opinion of the reason behind his brilliant record with Notre Dame teams for the past 11 years, Coach Rockne said: ‘We have a great school out there in South Bend—a great school in a great country, and they give me hundreds of the finest lads in the world as material with which to build my teams,’” the Herald reported.

Three days later, The Washington Evening Star published a story describing the remarks Rockne made at the luncheon arranged by Notre Dame alumni.

“It is a pity that all educational leaders of the nation could not have been packed into a Washington club room last Saturday to listen to a discussion of college athletics,” The Evening Star reported. “It ranged around an informal talk by Knute Rockne, celebrated Notre Dame football coach.”

“Mr. Rockne concedes the indispensability of mental equipment for college men, but boldly declares that educational authorities overstress its importance and underestimate personality,” it said.

“The Notre Dame coach thinks this is all wrong,” said The Evening Star. “He believes college directors in particular take a myopic view of the significance of football. As Mr. Rockne and other front-rank coaches ‘teach’ the game, football is something more than sport; it is character-building.”

The continuing success of football as the leading high school sport in this country bears witness to the view Rockne expressed almost a century ago.

The National Federation of State High School Associations reported this month that there were a record 8,266,244 students participating in high school sports in the United States in the 2024-25 school year. “The total includes 4,726,648 boys and 3,539,596 girls—both record highs,” said the NFHS.

Eleven-player football led all other sports with 1,029,588 high school boys playing on a team.

Among high school boys, track and field was second with 644,235 participating; basketball was third with 540,704; soccer was fourth with 484,908; and baseball was fifth with 472,598.

Among high school girls, track and field was first with 513,808 participating; volleyball was second with 492,799; soccer was third with 393,048; basketball was fourth with 356,240; and fast-pitch softball was fifth with 338,315.

The NFHS started conducting its annual survey of high school athletics participation in 1971. In every year on record since then, football has been the No. 1 sport for boys.

In every school year from 1999-2000 to 2019-20, there were at least 1 million boys participating in 11-player high school football. Although the NFHS did not conduct its full survey for the 2019-2020 school year (because of the COVID-19 pandemic), it did report that 1,003,524 boys played 11-player football in the 2019 season. The NFHS issued no report for the 2020-21 school year. But, then, in the post-pandemic 2021-22 school year, NFHS reported that 973,792 high school boys played the game.

In each of the past three seasons, there have been once again more than 1 million boys playing high school football.

This is not just good for these boys—who get to play a great character-building game—it is good for our country.

COPYRIGHT 2025 CREATORS.COM

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

The post What Knute Knew: High School, College Football Is a Great Character-Building Game appeared first on The Daily Signal.