GIPP, GEORGE

born Feb. 18, 1895, Laurium, Mich., U.S. died Dec. 14, 1920, South Bend, Ind. byname The Gipper American football player at the University of Notre Dame (South Bend, Ind.; 191720), who became a school legend. Gipp entered Notre Dame on a baseball scholarship, but he was recruited for football by the coach Knute Rockne, who saw Gipp drop-kicking and passing a football on a field adjacent to the practice field. Gipp played 32 consecutive games for Notre Dame and scored 83 touchdowns. In one 1917 game he was apparently going to punt but instead drop-kicked a 62-yard field goal. In 1920 he led Notre Dame, down 147 at the half, to a 2717 victory over Army, gaining a total of 324 yards. Gipp was named captain of the team for 1920, but he was expelled from the university for cutting too many classes and frequenting off-limit establishments. He was an assistant to Rockne before being reinstated as a student. In his last season he played injured, and a persistent cold developed into the pneumonia from which he died. At halftime during a scoreless game with Army in 1928, Rockne asked the team to win one for the Gipper, keeping a promise that he said he had made to Gipp on his death bed, a plea that reinforced the Gipp legend. (Notre Dame won.) Ronald Reagan (the future U.S. president) played the role of Gipp in the film Knute RockneAll American (1940).