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1888 – 1931 · in South Bend 1910 – 1931
The fame: Knute Rockne is the most famous football coach in American history — the man who, as Notre Dame's head coach from 1918 to 1930, compiled a record of 105 wins, 12 losses, and 5 ties, won three national championships (1924, 1929, 1930), fielded the Four Horsemen, and turned a small Catholic school in Indiana into the country's most famous football program. "Win one for the Gipper" entered the national language from his locker room. His coaching record, game by game, stands in the Notre Dame Football record of this history, and his life as a South Bend resident stands in the People record; this entry exists to fix his place in this section and the exact shape of his tie.
The tie, exactly: Rockne was not a South Bend native. He was born in Voss, Norway, on March 4, 1888, and was brought to Chicago as a small child; Chicago raised him. He came to South Bend in 1910 as a student — working his way through Notre Dame, starring as an end on the football team (including the 1913 game at Army that made the forward pass famous) — stayed on as an assistant coach in 1914, and never left. He lived in South Bend for the rest of his life, became a Catholic convert here (he was baptized in Notre Dame's Log Chapel on November 20, 1925), and when he died in a plane crash near Bazaar, Kansas, on March 31, 1931, he was brought home and buried in Highland Cemetery, South Bend. The tie is seventeen years of adult life and work, and a grave: formed as a coach here, famous from here, and the fame is inseparable from the institution across the city line — which is why his full record stands with the institution's.
Sources:
- Notre Dame Football record of this history — the coaching record, 1918–1930, the championships, the 1913 Army game.
- University of Notre Dame — the Log Chapel baptism, November 20, 1925; the 1931 crash and the Highland Cemetery burial.