George Gipp

George Gipp ( born February 18, 1895 in Laurium, Michigan, † December 14, 1920 in South Bend, Indiana ) was an American football player. He played from 1917 to 1920 for the college football team of University of Notre Dame, and was elected in 1920 for the first All-American in the history of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. Because of his early death and a reported by his coach Knute Rockne legend of the supposedly expressed as a last wish words "win just one for the Gipper " is the memory of George Gipp to the present part of the sports traditions at the University of Notre Dame.

Life

George Gipp was born in 1895 in Laurium in the U.S. state of Michigan and began in 1917 to study at the University of Notre Dame. After he had planned to play baseball at the University, he moved under the influence Knute Rocknes, the football coach at the University of Notre Dame, the football team of Notre Dame Fighting Irish. He played in the subsequent period at various positions, including as a halfback, quarterback and punter, and applies to the present as one of the most versatile players in the history of college football.

George Gipp reached during his career total of 21 touchdowns and 2,341 yards in the running game trains and 1,789 yards through mountain passes, and was in the years 1918, 1919 and 1920 in both categories the best player of the team. He died in 1920 at the age of 25 years in a hospital in South Bend with pneumonia following a streptococcal infection that could not be effectively dealt with at the time, because effective antibiotics were not yet known.

Legend

Eight years after the death of George Gipp motivated Knute Rockne the crew of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish during a game against the team from the United States Military Academy on 10 November 1928 at half time by pointing out that had asked lying about dying it Gipp in a very serious game align the players that they should win this game for him. However, it is not sure whether he had before his death actually expressed such a request. The Notre Dame Fighting Irish won the game 12:6.

The surviving by Knute Rockne words of George Gipp - "win just one for the Gipper " - were among others in 1988 used by the then U.S. President Ronald Reagan during the Republican National Convention in order to motivate his successors George HW Bush for the election campaign. The background is that Ronald Reagan worked as an actor before his political career and was in the 1940 erschienenem film Knute Rockne, All American assumed the role of George Gipp.

Awards

George Gipp was elected two weeks before his death from the football coach and sports journalist Walter Camp for the first All-American in sports history from the University of Notre Dame. In December 1951, he was inducted posthumously into the College Football Hall of Fame. The ESPN set him in 2008 at number 22 a list of the 25 best college football players of all time.