football coach sales promotion manager partner in a brokerage firm
Knute Kenneth Rockne was born in Voss, Norway, on 4 March 1888. He was the second child of Lars Knutson and Martha (Gjermo) Rockneand, and the only son in a family of five children. His father, a stationary engineer with a taste for invention, came to the United States in October 1891 to prepare a carriage of his contrivance for exhibition at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The family followed eighteen months later and Knute grew up in Chicago.
In Chicago he attended Brentano Grammar School and the Northwest Division High School.
Before he finished high school, however, he was dropped for cutting classes.
He entered the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, in 1910 and was graduated with the degree of Bachelor of Science, with distinction, in 1914, having specialized in chemistry.
After being expelled from the school he washed windows in Chicago, worked on a ferry-boat, harvested in Wisconsin, and was for four years a mail dispatcher in the Chicago Post Office. He saved enough money to begin a delayed college career in 1910. He was editor of the college literary annual in his senior year and in 1913 was captain of the Notre Dame team which astonished the intercollegiate football world by defeating the strong Army team at West Point by brilliant use of the forward pass. Football critics agree that the work of Charles Dorais and Rockne in that game opened the eyes of the football coaches of the country to the possibilities of the "open game. "
After graduation, Rockne became a chemistry instructor at Notre Dame and assistant football coach. Upon the retirement of Jesse Harper in 1918 he became head football coach and from that year he developed football teams of remarkable excellence.
During the thirteen years of his coaching, Notre Dame won 105 games, lost twelve, and tied five.
He was an advocate of intersectional football and the Notre Dame team traveled all over the country, meeting strong opponents in the East, the West, and the South. Rockne's colorful and highly trained teams became favorites with the non-college public and attracted huge crowds.
Over 110, 000 spectators witnessed the game between Notre Dame and the University of Southern California on November 16, 1929.
Through the success and popularity of his teams, he became a figure of national prominence and a powerful influence in the development of the game. His players went out in great numbers to be football coaches at colleges all over the country, carrying with them the splendid technique and infectious enthusiasm of their famous coach.
He conducted summer schools for football coaches, managed a tour of Europe, and was for a brief time a partner in a brokerage firm in South Bend, Indiana.
His contact with the Studebaker Corporation as sales promotion manager began in May 1928 and continued until his death. Partly as a result of his many activities he suffered a serious breakdown in 1929 but was well on the road to complete recovery when, on March 31, 1931, he met death in an airplane crash on the plains of southeastern Kansas.
He is buried at Notre Dame, Indiana.
Five of the Rockne-coached Notre Dame teams were undefeated and several were acclaimed unofficial national champions. The so-called "Rockne System" featured speed and deception and provided a place for the lighter and faster man on the football field. Though Rockne originated little in football strategy, he brought the forward pass, the shift, the spinner plays, and the flexing-end play to a high type of perfection.
He became a Roman Catholic in 1925.
In college he was an all around athlete and a good scholar.
Medium in size, muscular, bronzed, and prematurely bald, he was a man of energy, with a keen mind, a ready tongue, and a rollicking sense of humor. He became noted as an after-dinner speaker, and met many demands for radio talks, moving pictures, and syndicated articles on football.
He was married on July 15, 1914, to Bonnie Gwendoline Skiles, who, with their four children, survived him.
