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Quotes of the Day for 4 March 2009 – Knute Rockne
Knute Rockne was born at Voss, Norway on this day in 1888, the family moved to Chicago five years later, where he became a star on his high school football team. He worked as a dispatcher at the Chicago Post Office for four years to save enough to attend Notre Dame, where he washed out of football in his first year, was back for his junior year, and as tight end and team captain in his senior year stunned Army by receiving several passes, a rare stratagem that had not been seen on the east coast. He hired on as a graduate assistant in chemistry on the condition that he could also work with the football team, taking over as head coach in 1917. In thirteen years under Rockne, the team won the national championship six times, without losing a single game in five of them. When he died in a wooden-framed Fokker aircraft, the investigation and national attention led to the rapid conversion to aluminum airframes from Boeing and Douglas.
The quotes:
Football is a game played with arms, legs and shoulders but mostly from the neck up.
Generalities don't count and won't help you in football.
It isn't necessary to see a good tackle. You can hear it.
On the road we're somebody else's guests - and we play in a way that they're not going to forget we visited them.
The secret is to work less as individuals and more as a team. As a coach, I play not my eleven best, but my best eleven.
Build up your weaknesses until they become your strong points.
I won't know why we lost the game until my barber tells me on Monday.
All from Knute Rockne, 1888 – 1931
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