Miscellanious things | |
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- It is said that no movie star ever accumulated the mail that Knute Rockne did. And the variety of his correspondence was amazing. He answered a good portion of the letters and some of their contents would have created sensations.
- Knute Rockne won the Brown Derby price 3 times, the prize given at the annual banquet of the Football Coaches´ Assosiation for the football coach who incorporates the best story into his speech.
- The name KNUT is pronounced "Kanute" or "Newt" the American way. The name LARS become "Lewis" in the American way. The surname was spelled Rokne. The "c" was added in America.
- At the time of Rockne´s death 23 of his boys were head coaches at colleges and universities. Dozens of others were assistant coaches and at least 150 were coaching in high school.
 Tribute to Knute Rockne.
- What they say about Knute Rockne.
- The town named after Knute Rockne.
- Notre Dame had 3 nicknames under Knute Rockne.
- Knute Rockne have been involved in two musical shows.
- Knute Rockne did not wear any number on his shirt when he played football because numbers were not assigned to any player at that time.
- One of Knute Rockne´s secret dreams was the wish to become a doctor. One of the reasons that he didn´t become so was the hard facts of financial realities.
- Some of Rockne´s friends were famous public men as Will Rogers, Mayor Jimmy Walker of New York and Babe Ruth.
- Rockne did in fact had some coaching experience before he became coach at Notre Dame. When he was dumped as a freshman by Shorty Longman, Rockne was approached by a raffish downtown club team called the Huebners. Most of their players were foreign-born and had never finished high school. The players there were a boozing, smoking and carousing bunch who played for the sheer physical exhilaration of it, and didn´t want to be limited by training rules. But they needed a coach.
- Rockne made them change their habits in a hurry. "It was out of sheer respect, it was amazing how he could command their attention - especially when he inserted himself into a game now and then and showed them he could do as well as coach", recalls Chet Grant, who was a teenaged sportswriter for the South Bend Tribune at that time.
- The Rockne teams went by train when they went to away games. But by 1929 he had discovered the early commercial airplane and was a frequent flier. Just a few weeks earlier prior to the planecrash he had taken a flight with L.W. (Chip) Roberts, the athletic director of Georgia Tech. This was Robert´s first flight so he was a bit nervous. Rockne had joked and reassured him: -"Don´t give it a thought. Each of us has a time to go, and when that time comes, no matter were we are, it strikes. So I figure it might as well be in a plane as anywhere".
- He was a third-team end in American football.
- He held the school pole vault record. - He was a finalist in the marbles tournament. - He graduated with a 90.52 average. Not bad taken into consideration that he was "only" five feet eight inches tall and weighed 160 pounds. - When Knute Rockne built the 60.000 seat Notre Dame sadium in 1929 it was at a time with the Stock Market crashing and the economy going into a tailspin. The Notre Dame teams were at that time playing in front of crows of a hundred people. And they were standing around the sidelines. Notre Dame had "only" 3.000 students at the time and the community had a population of about 80.000. Rockne´s consern was that the 60.000 seats was not enough. He wanted it to be a 100.000 all seater.
- The Scandinavians were always called "Swedes" whether they were from Norway, Sweden, Denmark or Finland.
- Rockne´s shining idol when he was a school was the All-American quarterback, Walter Eckersall, of the University of Chicago, the Mighty Mite of college football, Rockne had seen Eckersall in action for the Hyde Park High school team.
- George Halas was not an assistant to Rockne. Walter Halas coached Track & Field with Rockne from 1920-23. He also coached baseball from 1921-23. This is not the same Halas of Chicago Bears Fame.
- What the American football is all about.
- Explanation of the name Rockne.
- Knute Rockne would have been 117 years old on the 4th of March 2005 if he had been allowed to live.
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