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DEADLY FLU PANDEMIC CUTS SHORT ROCKNE’S FIRST SEASON

KNUTE ROCKNE COULD hardly have become Notre Dame’s head football coach at a worse time. When preseason practice began, not only was World War I still being fought in France, but the deadliest flu pandemic in history had spread throughout the globe, infecting about a third of the world’s population, including millions in the United States. Among the least significant developments stemming from the pandemic was a drastic curtailing, and in some cases even a canceling, of the 1918 college football season.

Believed to have originated in the Far East, the flu spread rapidly, and was first detected in the United States at about the same time (March 1918) at Fort Riley, an Army base in Kansas, and in the borough of Queens in New York City. A more virulent strain of the influenza manifested itself in late August by which time millions of people had died on virtually every continent, including more than 20,000 in New York City, then a city of six million, and about 13,000 in Philadelphia. Particularly puzzling was that most of the victims were healthy young adults, rather than infants and the elderly who were usually most vulnerable to outbreaks of influenza. That made it of special concern to high schools and universities, including Notre Dame, which, like many colleges, canceled most of the 1918 football season because of the outbreak of the pandemic. (The deadly disease had been named the Spanish Flu because most of the reports about the flu had come from Spain, a neutral country, during World War I and whose press thus was not hindered by the censorship on the epidemic imposed in most of the countries involved in the war.)

As the epidemic spread into Indiana, the state board of health on October 10 prohibited all public gatherings in the state. By then about eighty cases of Spanish Flu had been reported in South Bend, and downtown movie theaters had closed. Then, during a single day, forty-two people in South Bend died of the disease, including two students and a nun at Notre Dame. By October 25, the flu had claimed eighty-seven lives in South Bend. After abating for a while, the epidemic resurged in early November when more than 750 additional cases of the Spanish Flu were reported in South Bend. By the end of the month, 152 South Bend residents had lost their lives.

Making conditions worse and contributing to the spread of the deadly virus was the closeness of soldiers during the massive troop movements in the United States, in Europe, aboard cramped transport ships, and in their close living quarters. Described by medical experts as the worst medical holocaust in modern history, the pandemic—which began to wane in late 1918—killed more than fifty million people, including more than a half million in the United States while infecting another half million.

As a result of the pandemic, Notre Dame played only five of nine scheduled games during the 1918 football season and just one at home, a contest against a team from the Great Lakes Naval Training Station, which was arranged after the season began. For Rockne, the shortness of the season was welcomed since most of the 1917 starting team was gone, either graduated or inducted into the armed forces, including virtually all of the defense, which had allowed only one touchdown the season prior. Fortunately for Rockne, freshmen had been made eligible to play varsity football in 1918, mainly because the military draft had depleted rosters, and the incoming group of freshmen was one of the best Notre Dame had ever had. Seven freshmen would become starters in 1918, including Anderson and Larson; ends Eddie Anderson and Bernie Kirk; tackle Charlie Crowley; quarterback Bill Mohn; and fullback Earl “Curly” Lambeau, who would drop out of Notre Dame before his sophomore year because of a severe case of tonsillitis and in 1919 become a co-founder, player, and coach of the Green Bay Packers.

At Gipp’s suggestion, Larson roomed with him at Sorin Hall—at least occasionally, as Larson was to recall years later. “When we roomed together, George would often come in during the middle of the night, or later, usually after playing cards or shooting pool downtown,” Larson said while working in the Cook County Assessor’s Office in Chicago while he was in his eighties. “Of course I knew he did a lot of gambling, and I’d played cards with him myself. He was an uncanny poker player, the kind who never gave you the slightest hint of what he had. George wasn’t the type who would volunteer personal information, but I once asked him how he was doing at poker and pool, and he told me he had made at least $5,000 the previous year (the equivalent of $50,000 in 2010), and from the looks of things, would top that amount that year we roomed together.”

“He was a helluva card player, one who could deal them off the top, the middle, or the bottom,” Anderson recalled. “He’d win four or five hundred a night playing cards, but sometimes, instead of settling for that, he’d try to double it in craps. Unfortunately, he was a lousy crap shooter—probably the only thing he couldn’t do well. He would make eight or nine passes, but then blow it all on one throw of the dice. But then George always said he preferred poker or pool because you had control over what you were doing. With dice, as he said, it’s all luck. But one thing’s for sure: George made everything he made on his own” In saying that, Anderson no doubt was alluding to his knowledge of some star football players accepting payments from well-to-do alumni. Whether it happened at Notre Dame was never proven. The practice was still prevalent in the twenty-first century.

Gipp’s old schoolmate also remembered Gipp’s talent with a pool cue. “He was the best shooter around Calumet before he even came to Notre Dame, where, even as a kid, he was winning lots of money,” Anderson said. “And he became the best around South Bend, too. He was the classic hustler—although he didn’t look like one—who would play a stranger for a dollar or two at straight pool and do real bad, but then raise the stakes and clean up at twenty-five or fifty dollars a game. Once in a while, some hotshot players from Chicago would come to South Bend looking for some fresh action, knowing it was a good gambling town. As I was to find out, George would take them on at a hundred dollars a game at places like Hullie and Mike’s. They were crackerjack players who made their living shooting pool, but George would take them almost every time. He’d also go to Elkhart, which is about fifteen miles from South Bend, to play cards on some Friday nights. Elkhart was a railroad town, and Friday was payday, and a lot of the railroad workers liked to play poker, and George knew it. George would go over to Elkhart and make the railroad workers’ paydays his paydays at the poker table,” Anderson said with a laugh.

As for Gipp’s usually pale and sallow complexion, “It was the smoking and the hours he kept,” Anderson said. “If you stayed out all night, night after night, chain-smoking, playing cards, and shooting pool, usually for a lot of money, and hardly getting any sleep, you’d be pale, too. Let’s face it—George didn’t take very good care of himself.”

The evidence also seems to indicate that Gipp liked to drink, sometimes a lot, while playing poker or shooting pool, although none of his teammates interviewed said they ever saw him drunk, contrary to some reports. “From what I saw, George carried his liquor very well,” said Chet Grant, who took the odd path of going from a sportswriter for the South Bend Tribune to a five-foot seven-inch 135-pound backup quarterback for Notre Dame in 1916, 1920, and 1921 (he was a lieutenant in the Army from 1917 until 1919), when he was twenty-nine years old. “He was a gentleman in every way and that included his drinking.”

When Rockne held his first practice on September 18, he didn’t know what to expect, given that he now had so many new players who he knew little about. Missing were practically the entire defensive unit that had allowed only one touchdown in 1917, most of whom had graduated. Also gone were seven lettermen who had been called to Army duty—quarterbacks Joe Brandy, Tex Allison, and Grant; linemen Slip Madigan and Dave Hayes; halfback Grover Malone; and fullback Walter Miller, Gipp’s roommate during Gipp’s sophomore year. As it was, the outlook for the 1918 season looked bleak indeed, and grew even bleaker when only twenty prospects turned out for the first practice on September 17 on a field made muddy by a steady rain. At his oratorical best, Rockne reminded the players that they faced an uncertain season because of the flu pandemic and that some games might be scheduled at the last minute, which turned out to be true. At that twenty players comprised a decent turnout. As few as a dozen showed up for the initial practice sessions at some well-known football schools, such as Minnesota, and, because of the dearth of players, many schools canceled the 1918 season. Rockne, his voice softer than usual, also pointed out that since they were all of draft age, the Notre Dame players were lucky to be playing football at a time when young men their age were dying on battlefields in France and tens of thousands of others had died of the Spanish Flu.

Writing about the initial practice, a sportswriter for the South Bend Tribune reported in the next day’s editions, “Green is the word to describe the material for the gold and blue”—the team’s colors—“Not that the youngsters do not know any football at all, or that they are an awkward squad. Some of them look promising, but they have a long way to go to measure up to traditional varsity standards.”

It was also a very light team, even by the standards of Notre Dame, where Harper, like Rockne, put a far greater stress on speed than weight. Only one starter, tackle Rollo Stine, weighed more than 185 pounds, while four weighed less than 170 pounds, including guards Hunk Anderson and Maurice “Clipper” Smith, and end Eddie Anderson, another future coach, who weighed 149 pounds. The only other player on the eventual twenty-nine-man squad who weighed more than 200 pounds was reserve tackle Romanus “Peaches” Nadolney. And this, mind you, was on a team whose starters played both offense and defense, as was the case with every collegiate team at the time when rules forbade unlimited substitutions and mandated that a player leaving the game could not return until the following quarter. Indeed, the two-platoon system, wherein one set of players play on offense and one on defense, was still three decades away.

In the coming days, Gipp, fellow halfbacks Pete Bahan, the team captain, and Norm Barry, along with the other three returning letterman, found that Rockne was essentially staying with Jesse Harper’s playbook, both on offense and defense. Considering that while playing for one season under Harper and serving as an assistant with him for four seasons Notre Dame had won thirty-four games and lost only five, Rockne was not about to interfere with a winning style of play. Moreover, he admired Harper, both as a person and as one of football’s most innovative and cerebral coaches. Rockne also appreciated the fact that Harper, soft-spoken and not given to inspirational pregame or halftime talks, had often delegated that task to his far more outgoing and glib chief assistant. As it was, the only noticeable change Rockne made was slightly altering the shift Harper had instituted by having both ends shift along with the four backs, who under the Notre Dame formation had the quarterback line up to the left or right of the center and the other three backs in a line about six feet from the center. Under Harper, only the backs had moved in unison before the ball was snapped in what had become known as the “Notre Dame shift,” even though the Notre Dame version was patterned after the shift originated by Walter Camp at Yale and modified by Amos Alonzo Stagg at Chicago, where Harper had learned it as a player. In an unusually candid moment, Rockne, asked where, if anywhere, his version of the shift had come from, said, “From Yale, where everything in football comes from.” Given the fertile football brain of the great Yale coach Walter Camp, that, of course, was very close to being the truth.

Despite its lack of heft, Notre Dame had no trouble in its opening game against Case Tech (now Case Western Reserve) in Cleveland on September 28. After the home team had taken a 6-0 first-quarter lead, Notre Dame responded with 26 unanswered points, the first a touchdown by Curly Lambeau in the second quarter and two touchdowns by Gipp in the third period. Pointing out that it was the lightest team Notre Dame had fielded since he came to Notre Dame in 1910, Rockne said, “This team, despite its light weight, has all the spirit and fight that any of the older and heavier teams had.” Overall, though, Rockne was not satisfied with the team’s play, which he described as “ragged” while also criticizing it for poor tackling and blocking. Above all, Rockne never tolerated poor blocking. A player could miss a tackle or drop a pass, but, to the onetime 165-pound end, missing a block was inexcusable. It was one of the reasons Rockne often went out on the practice field to physically demonstrate the proper way to block.

Because the Spanish Flu intensified in the Midwest, as it did across most of the United States that fall, the team did not play again until November 2, canceling all four scheduled games in October. Practices were also sharply curtailed, giving Gipp more time to sleep off his many all-night gambling sessions in downtown South Bend. The November 2 game was hastily arranged after Nebraska canceled out against Notre Dame just before the Ramblers were to board a train for Lincoln after the city’s city council banned all sporting events because of the flu pandemic. Somehow, Rockne managed that night to arrange a game with Wabash in Crawfordsville, Indiana, for the following afternoon, which required Notre Dame to board a train before daybreak for the 185-mile trip to Crawfordsville. Even lighter and with a smaller squad than that which had been crushed by Notre Dame, 60-0, two years before, Wabash lost by the same margin again, 67-7, even though Gipp spent most of the second half on the bench because of the one-sided score. Rockne was not about to risk injury to his best player when he wasn’t needed.

While Gipp was playing, though, Wabash had difficulty containing him. “I may have laid a hand on him once or twice, but that was all I could do,” said John Ott, a Wabash end. “He didn’t seem extra fast, but that was good enough, combined with his elusiveness and strength.” In its remaining three road games in the abbreviated season, Notre Dame lost to Michigan Agricultural in a game in which Gipp sustained a broken blood vessel in his face and missed most of the second half; beat in-state rival Purdue as Gipp accounted for almost 200 yards running and passing; and, in a make-up game, played a 0-0 tie against Nebraska. As against the future Michigan State, the Ramblers were without Gipp for most of the Nebraska game after he was forced to leave in the first half with a severe sore throat that hampered his breathing.

The team’s best effort came in its only home game, on November 9, against a strong Great Lakes Naval Training Station team comprised mainly of former college stars, including former All-American Paddy Driscoll and the later legendary George Halas, both of whom eventually played for and coached the Chicago Bears. Though outweighed by an average of ten pounds per man, Notre Dame scored first on a touchdown by Gipp in the first quarter, which was quickly matched by a touchdown run by Driscoll. Thereafter, Notre Dame played Great Lakes on even terms in a game that ended in a 7-7 tie. After the game, both Driscoll and Halas paid tribute to their much-younger and lighter opponents, especially Gipp and his fellow halfback, the 155-pound Pete Bahan.

Two days after the Great Lakes game, South Bend, like cities and towns across the United States, erupted with joy on the morning of November 11 when news of the war’s end—the armistice—was announced on radios throughout the country. As many as 15,000 people assembled in downtown South Bend, where a spontaneous parade began through the city’s streets and a huge bonfire was set in the courthouse square. Even George Gipp, never prone to showing emotion, exulted when Larson awakened him to tell him that the war was over. Gipp’s concerns about being drafted, after so many close calls, were now assuaged for good. On hearing the news, Rockne, never one to hide his inner feelings, was ecstatic, hugging his wife, Bonnie, before leaving for his office that morning. Rockne had another reason to be happy; the armistice meant that as many as a half dozen players with remaining eligibility would probably return from military service to resume playing football at Notre Dame in 1919.

That night, Larson and Anderson, anxious to celebrate the war’s end but unable to leave campus, found themselves stymied by Indiana’s premature prohibition law, which had taken effect earlier that year. “Then I realized that George might be able to help us,” Larson said. “So I got in touch with him downtown, and before we knew it he was back on campus with a bottle, which didn’t surprise us at all considering his connections downtown. But I also remember that he didn’t take a drink.”

Maybe Gipp was just hung over from the night before.

Because of the impact of the Spanish Flu on college football teams, the 1918 season did not count against a player’s eligibility, which meant that Gipp, among others, would have an extra season of eligibility, assuming, of course, that he would take advantage of it. Rockne was well aware that there was no guarantee Gipp would. Between the last game on November 28 and the Christmas break, Gipp again spent more time gambling in South Bend than he did on campus. “George made a lot of money during that period,” said Hunk Anderson, who, like Larson, tended to speak of Gipp in reverential terms. “I mean a lot—hundreds of dollars.” Because of the extra time the players had, Gipp and Pete Bahan, one of his closest friends on the team, bought a quantity of blue and gold pennants, buttons, pins, and campus calendars, which they sold on campus for a considerable profit.

Gipp invested much of his share of that profit, along with his gambling earnings, in a sizable quantity of bootleg liquor to take back to Calumet. Gipp’s intention was hardly altruistic nor was he smitten by the Christmas season. Shortly before Christmas, Gipp boarded a train for Calumet with Anderson and Larson, along with two suitcases of whiskey stashed below their seats. As Anderson recalled, somewhere along the way, the train was stopped for an inspection, not uncommon at the time, since it was illegal to carry liquor aboard trains in the Midwest.

“Spotting the suitcases, one of the inspectors asked us what was in the bags, which George had put under our seats,” Anderson recollected. “We were worried, to say the least, and we had to think fast. I finally said, ‘Our clothes are in the bags.’ The inspector looked at the bags again and thankfully he walked away. When we got back to Calumet, George sold the booze for about $500. It was a risk—arrest and confiscation of the liquor—he was willing to take. And, as usual, George came out ahead.”