The Washington times., 1931-04-03

OF Gunga DIN interest III I'LL
He's a better man than you
are, and you know it.
And the fact that he happens
to be a star while you are lucky
to be a third string substitute on
a freshwater college team, doesn't
make much difference. After all,
the cleat marks on your back
are prime evidence that you've
lived-and the aching muscles
are a constant reminder of lust
how the score stood and why.
The 1912 NOtre Dame team
was quite a football team, even
though it hadn't yet been
crowned with publicity's dia-
dem by the effete dwellerS of
an effete football East. For
which I've always been very
thankful indeed.
If it hadn't been so powerful,
and so efficient, perhaps we never
would have reached the third
string substitutes that october
day-and failing to reach the
third string subs would have
meant going through life without
the imprint of Knute Rockne's
cleats abaft the spine.
Ruddy-Faced, Sturdy Lad
Though perhapS. thev weren't
Rockne after all. They may
have belonged to DoriaS, or Eich-
enlaub, or Bergman. There were
so many of them. coming so fire.
Quently that it's just a bit hard
to discriminate.
Which is, of course beside the
point. The point is that the
germ of Notre Dame greatness
was builded across the pOck-
marked clay of old Cartier field
backs there in the hazy distant
days of 1912-and the star VINO
even then was building football
destiny, though he didn't know
it at the time. was a ruddy-
faced, sturdy lad, with sparse
locks of a sort Of hybrid carrot
straw color, and an infectious
grin.
And a voice that was both
rauc0us and commanding; as
inharmOniOuS as an Off-tune
calliOpe, yet as penetrating as
q tin flute in a symphony or.
vvNsa0 hANnnmnn
to a young star named Knute
ROckne.
But, wait a minute. He wasn't
really a star, either. Just Nor.
wegian kid, who loved football
and played it like he studied
chemistry-with all the fervor
and all the energy of his being.
It's wrong to call Knute
Rockne real star. He wasn't:
It's doubtful if Rockne himself
realized his destiny back in those
sun-baked october days of 1912.
It's cinch no one else did.
No Sign of Grid Genius
To have marked him out as the
coming football genius OF all
time would have been to incur
the jeers Of the multitudes. They
grew football players strong and
rough and ready, out there in
the Mississippi Valley in those
days, and Rockne-Well, he didn't
quite class. !
At Chicago Nels Norgren and
Pat Page, twin magogs of grid
iron destruction, were riding
rampant like raiding Morgans
down a dozen gridirons. Illinois
had it's Patsy Clark and its Siler;
Indiana had its Berndt and itsV
Bill and its Messick: at Purdue a
raging Oliphant-an Oliphant in
finitely better than the man the
Army later knew and honored-
was ripping hope to shredS and
scattering the debris of enemy
tacklers up and down the Indiana
landscape.
Up at Michigan a lad named
Maulbetsh was just beginning
to send his star across the
horizon.
Even the smaller schools scin-
tillated in football greatness, De
pauw with it's Walker (now
broker in New York;; Wa
bash with it's scintillating Skeets
Lambert and the genius of Jess
Harper directing Butler with its
Gully Thomas, than whom few
better dropkickers ever lived.
Even at Notre Dame the power
that was Eichenlaub and the
glory that was Darias rather put
the little Norwegian kid in the
shade, And, of course, the Mid
die West, though it had never
seen, could read of the Indian
Thorpe, and marvel.
1.-THE second chapter OF Mr..
Frick'S life story of Knute
Rockne will nppenr in The