(This is a humongous article I wrote a few months ago about Notre Dame football legend George “Gipper” Gipp, Ronald Reagan and the 2007 Fighting Irish.)

Channeling the Gipper One More Time… For the Gipper

In order to fully understand the effect of invoking “the Gipper,” you have to grasp exactly how badly the 1928 Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team stunk. A record of 5-4 is what the history books show as the record for the 1928 season. But when you put it into context, that one season was a catastrophic anomaly. If you were to imagine that George Lucas had created both the Star Wars and the Indiana Jones trilogies, but also made a movie called Howard the Duck somewhere in the middle of those masterpieces, then you would begin to understand the baffling travesty of Notre Dame’s 1928 season.

For a full decade before 1928 Knute Rockne coached Notre Dame’s football teams to near perfection. In fact, as a head coach Rockne had amassed an overall record of 81-8-5, good for a winning percentage of .888, in the years leading up to 1928. Rockne was and still is the winningest coach in American football history- both pro and college. In 1927 the Irish were considered national champions by at least one determining selector, and the same can be said of both 1929 and 1930. One would think that with a record of winning that established, and the fact that it was surrounded on all sides by national championship seasons, that 1928 would have been a decent season. However, one would be dead wrong.

While looking at the oddity of the 1928 season in terms of overall record might do the trick for some, a more accurate depiction of the disparity of the 1928 season amidst the rest of the Knute Rockne-coached Notre Dame seasons would be best depicted if you looked at the way that Notre Dame was playing that year. If you were to check out the scores for all of the other Knute Rockne seasons, you would see the Irish were not only winning at a rate of about 90%, but that they were also demolishing the competition. In the 1925, ’26, ’27, ’29, and ’30 seasons (the years that Knute was the coach and the same core players would have been playing for the Irish) Notre Dame’s average point differential was +14.6, meaning that the Irish were beating teams by over two touchdowns per game. Compare that to 1928, a year right in the center of that period, right in the peak of Irish domination. Although the Irish ended up with a winning record, technically, in ‘28, they actually had a negative point differential. They were outscored by their opponents over the course of the season 99-107 (-0.9). The losses in 1928 weren’t even close either, so it’s not as though the Irish could have easily been 7-2 if only the wind had been blowing a different direction. On the contrary, all four of the losses would have required at least two touchdowns to be changed to a win. Furthermore, three of Notre Dame’s five wins that year were within one score of being a tie or a loss, so it’s more likely that they would have ended up having a 3-6 year, or at worst 2-7. When you consider the fact that the 1928 “win one for the Gipper” game versus Army ended (some say prematurely whistled finished) with Navy on the one yard line, you have to conclude that the Irish were just one yard shy of having a losing season.

Amid such systematic and predictable supremacy, 1928 could have been like Mother Teresa waking up one day, stealing a bunch of heroin from a pimp, getting high and having an orgy, then freaking out and botching a suicide attempt, and then waking up the next day to complete a lifetime of sainthood. What happened that year?

There are those who would say that injuries could have accounted for the disaster of the 1928 season. However, it is widely known that Knute Rockne’s teams were highly successful because of his strategy, not his personnel. Rockne had practically invented the forward pass and the T-formation just years before. Even if his starters had all been inexplicably injured for the entirety of the ’28 season- because they were consistently bad all year long- Rockne’s coaching and outside-the-box approach probably could have won eight games for the Irish if Florence Nightingale had been the starting tailback.

There is simply no way that the Fighting Irish should have fallen from grace that hard for a whole year, and then immediately gone on to two consecutive undefeated, blowout-every-game seasons. You can see why, as legend would have it, Rockne had to cart out “the Gipper,” in 1920, to try to rally his team. He was staring meltdown in the face.

George “the Gipper” Gipp was probably the best athlete Knute Rockne had ever seen. Gipp played a combination of tailback, quarterback, defensive back, kicker and kick returner for the Irish, and was slated to play professional baseball for the Chicago Cubs upon his graduation from Notre Dame. His rushing records were in tact for about 50 years after his death, and he is still the current owner of a few Irish records to this day. Gipp led Rockne’s 1919 and 1920 teams to two back-to-back undefeated seasons, both considered to be national championship years. Tragically, Gipp caught a lethal case of pneumonia a few weeks after the 1920 football season was over. Notre Dame’s first All-American, Gipp passed away on December 14th, 1920 at the age of 25. Presumably, Rockne saw something in the 1928 season heading into the Army game that he had earlier seen in George Gipp’s pale, deathbed face during those final days. Whether Gipp said anything to Rockne about winning a game for him or not doesn’t really matter. That the image of a titan hero on the verge of irrational defeat was the same in Gipp at that moment as it was in the ’28 Fighting Irish team at halftime in the Army game, that Rockne saw it, recognized it, and avenged it, means everything.

Interestingly enough, Notre Dame had a problem with Army leading up to the 1928 season. They were probably the only team that, on any given year, would have made Rockne think twice about his chances. The year before, in 1927, the Irish’s only loss was an 18-0 beating by Army. The Irish won the 1926 Army game 7-0, but in 1925 they were throttled at the hands of Army, 27-0 (again that year’s sole loss). For a coach who had only lost eight games up to that point, two shut-out Army losses in the past three years would have shown up on the radar as a possible bogy. Army also came into the 1928 game with a perfect 6-0 record, an average point differential of +22.2, and the unmistakable smell of Irish blood in its nostrils.

With his unbeatable system inexplicably crashed, and his one match, his one foil poised to humiliate him in one of the last games at the old Yankee Stadium, Rockne knew he would have to come up with something big to get a win. He would have to reach way deep down… all the way to the grave, some say.

It was during halftime of that 1928 Army game that it’s said Rockne became the first in a long line of unlikely winners to cart out “win one for the Gipper.” Although the actual facts of the story have been entangled in myth, the common story is that coach Knute Rockne related to his team something that he claimed to have heard the late George Gipp say on his deathbed in 1920. The quote, depicted in the 1940 Ronald Regan movie, Knute Rockne, All-American, goes like this:

“I’ve got to go, Rock. It’s all right. I’m not afraid. Some time, Rock, when the team is up against it, when things are going wrong and the breaks are beating the boys, tell them to go in there with all they’ve got and win just one for the Gipper. I don’t know where I’ll be then, Rock. But I’ll know about it, and I’ll be happy.”

According to New York News’ Francis Wallace, Rockne said to his team, ”The day before he died, George Gipp asked me to wait until the situation seemed hopeless — then ask a Notre Dame team to go out and beat Army for him. This is the day, and you are the team.”

Notre Dame pulled off one of its biggest upsets about an hour later, beating Army 12-6 with two touchdowns in the second half. But that was not to be the last time that somebody dug up the Gipper.

Having been known affectionately as “The Gipper” after playing George Gipp in Knut Rockne: All-American, Ronald Regan has taken on the spirit of the Gipper in American conservative politics, and has been invoked for the good of the GOP ever since then. Before the 1988 presidential election, Reagan himself told Vise President George Herbert Walker Bush to “win one for the Gipper” during his speech at the Republican National Convention. Bush, of course, went on to beat Michael Dukakis soundly in that election.

In 1992 the Republican National Convention again prominently featured former President Ronald “the Gipper” Reagan, this time giving what would become his last major public address. But an astonishing thing happened during that speech. Reagan did not ask George H.W. Bush to “win one for the Gipper.” The “Gipper” line was one of Reagan’s trademark sayings, one that he had said numerous times while endorsing various candidates over the years and one that he had specifically used for his Vise President just four years earlier. Bush was trailing Bill Clinton at that point in the campaign, facing a huge deficit in the poll numbers, especially considering the prospect of Ross Perot running as an Independent. That Reagan seemed to deliberately refuse using that go-to phrase, in a moment so fitting for it, is remarkable. Without the Gipper pulling for him, incumbent George Herbert Walker Bush lost the presidential election soundly to Bill Clinton a few months later.

Ronald Reagan died of pneumonia, a common complication of Alzheimer’s, in June of 2004, just a few months before the Republican National Convention of that year. By this time, Ronald Regan had become George Gipp. In many ways, Reagan’s slow, painfully depressing surrender to Alzheimer’s was as tragic in its irony as the death of a 25-year old star football player. Once the most powerful man in the world, the figure known as “The Great Communicator” probably had no idea that Bob Dole had tried to invoke the Gipper’s blessing during his failed attempt at the presidency in 1996. Dole said in his Republican nomination acceptance speech’s opening remarks, “By the way, I spoke to President Reagan this afternoon and I made him a promise that we would win one more for the Gipper… And he appreciated it very much.” Notice how, even if the anecdote is true, it implies that Ronald “the Gipper” Reagan did not ask Senator Dole to win the election for him, but rather that Dole told Reagan that he was going to do it. At this point in Reagan’s life, he was frequently forgetting who some of his closest friends were.

In the 2000 RNC, George W. Bush did not mention the Gipper in his nomination acceptance speech, but in 2004, with Reagan’s recent death fresh in the mind of voters and the GOP facing a tough battle against Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, the Gipper was the word on everyone’s lips. Said incumbent President George W. Bush during his speech, “This year, we will win one for the Gipper, and they will lose one with the Flipper.” Despite the pre-election poll numbers, and regardless of the voting controversies, Bush wound up winning the 2004 election. The spirit of the Gipper could now be conjured at will.

This brings us to the 2007 Notre Dame football team, by many standards the worst Fighting Irish football team ever to play a game. By the time the Irish were set to face UCLA in the fifth week of the college football season, they had lost their first five games, none of which were even close. Notre Dame ranked either dead last or close to it in many major NCAA D-I statistical categories, including total yards, points scored and points allowed. 1928 was a bad Notre Dame season by comparison to Knute Rockne’s other years as head coach. 2007 could not have been worse, comparison or not. If 1928 was Howard the Duck, then 2007 was the Notre Dame equivalent of that guy in Jurassic Park who gets eaten by a T-Rex. You know the one I mean.

Notre Dame hasn’t been Knute Rockne-good in a very long time, but in 2005 they went 9-3, and in 2006 they finished 10-3. The 0-5 start was the worst for a Fighting Irish team in their history. There aren’t many ways you can make the situation seem better. In fact, the situation becomes even more drastic when you combine the dire Notre Dame condition to UCLA’s picture of health and virility. The Bruins came into the game with a record of 4-1, and although you could call them inconsistent, they were by no means a team you would pick to lose to Notre Dame. By game time, UCLA was favored to win by over three touchdowns.

Things looked grim for Notre Dame, but perhaps unbeknownst to Charlie Weis and the 2007 Irish, scientists had summoned The Gipper just two days earlier. A family member of the late Notre Dame football legend had asked to have the body of George Gipp exhumed from his Michigan grave site for the purpose of a DNA test, done in conjunction with a biography about Gipp that is currently being written. Some family members protested the grave tampering, but clearly others had their reasons for raising the Gipper one more time. The exact reason for the necessity of a Gipper DNA sample has not been revealed.

Notre Dame came out strong, especially defensively, and played UCLA tough in the first half of the game. It was one of their best defensive efforts all year long, as they put pressure on the UCLA quarterback and did not allow a touchdown in two quarters. Still, at halftime the Bruins led 6-3. But then something unpredictable happened. The Irish came out in the second half and played like a completely different team. First was a 48-yard field goal that bounced off the cross bar and in to tie the game. Then came more interceptions for the Irish, more forced fumbles, more offensive production. Just like the 1928 Army game, the Irish won the game by scoring two second half touchdowns. Notre Dame ended up winning 20-6, breaking a losing streak that had lasted seven games, including last season, by playing completely above themselves against an overwhelming favorite.

The eerie coincidence that the Gipper’s name and vessel are invoked precipitating monumental underdog victories for the Fighting Irish is indeed intriguing. But did the Gipper’s spirit transfer into the legend of Ronald Regan somewhere in there? George Gipp and Ronald Regan seem to have some parallels: the same nickname, double letters in their initials, both successful in two occupations (football/baseball and acting/politics), both died of pneumonia, and most importantly, both symbolize an ideal for their respective constituents.