Knute Rockne (1888–1931,) fully Knute Kenneth Rockne, was a Norwegian-born American college football coach. Intercollegiate sport’s first true celebrity coach, he coached the Notre Dame “Fighting Irish” 1918–31 to six national titles and achieved a winning percentage of .881.
Born in Voss, Norway, Rockne came to the U.S. as a child. He graduated from Notre Dame in 1914 and became head football coach shortly after World War I. He dominated U.S. college football, having markedly changed the emphasis from sheer physical brawn to pace, elusiveness, and ball handling.
Rockne was famous for his rousing appeals to players and built Notre Dame into a national collegiate football power, compiling a record of 105 wins, 12 losses, and five draws.
Rockne was killed in a plane crash in Kansas, resulting in an outpouring of grief, and the biopic Knute Rockne, All American (1940.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Knute Rockne
I don’t like to lose, and that isn’t so much because it is just a football game, but because defeat means the failure to reach your objective. I don’t want a football player who doesn’t take defeat to heart, who laughs it off with the thought, Oh, well, there’s another Saturday.” The trouble in American life today, in business as well as in sports, is that too many people are afraid of competition. The result is that in some circles people have come to sneer at success if it costs hard work and training and sacrifice.”
—Knute Rockne
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