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KNUTE ROCKNE’S FOOT BALL WIT BY DEIS IS IS O'NEILL. ■« '▼O one has ever been foolhardy f\ f enough to accuse Knute Rockne to /\/ his face of being a wise-cracker. I V • The energetic little general of w Notre Dame’s famed gridiron armies is not the type that people carelessly accuse of being anything until they are quite sure that he doesn’t object. And Rockne most decidedly does object to getting a reputation for punting puns and other forms of alleged humor around on the field of conversation. Nor is he any more fond of being on the receiving end of smart cracks passed in his direction. It would be fatal, for instance, to observe within his hearing that “the Big Ten isn’t the only pebble on the foot ball beach, for there’s a little Rock at Notre Dame. He would object to a crack like that even faster than most people. But, in spite of this aversion, Rockne is known wherever foot ball stove leagues exist as the country's most prolific author of gridiron humor. Usually the whole season passes with out a new Rockne yarn putting in an appear ance. Then about the time when all-America teams start breaking out like a rash all over the country, his stories come into circulation. They are beginning to constitute something of an annual all-America selection of foot ball humor. TJOCKNE prefers tefling his yarns to trusting them to cold type. In telling them ha goes about the job in much the same manner as an efficient but somewhat hurried quarter back calling signals. Every third or fourth word is clipped off sharply and given added emphasis, like the end numbers in a quarter back’s string. You know that something unexpected is going to develop when he finishes. And if you hap pen to be seated across his desk at the time, you half expect the mounted foot ball which is a prominent part of the desk’s decoration to be snapped at you. One of Rockne’s new stories features Jimmy Crowley, sensational halfback and one of Notra Dame’s famous “Four Horsemen” of a few years ago. “Jimmy came back to Notre Dame recently,” Rockne relates, “and told me that there was another boy coming to Notre Dame this Fall from Green Bay. Wis., Jimmy’s home town. •He’s awfully good,’ Crowley added. “ ‘You’re sure he’s good?’ I asked. “ ‘Yes, awfully good,’ he assured me em phatically. “ ‘That’s fine,’ I said, ‘but just how good is he, Jimmy? As good as you?’ “ ‘No —o,’ Jimmy drawled, ‘but he’s awfully good.’ ’’ Not all of Rockne's stories are about his star performers. One concerns a lowly third-string end of a few seasons ago. “Mulcahey, which isn’t the chap's name, but which will do as well as any other,” says Rockne, “made three Eastern trips with the squad, but didn’t get into a single game for even one down. “Notre Dame wound up the season that year at St. Louis on Thanksgiving day. It had rained alt morning, and a half hour before game time it was raining harder than ever. So I took the old bag of rosin out of the trunk, emptied it on the concrete floor in the dressing room and made a few remarks to the team. “ ‘We are going out there and punt, punt, punt,’ I said. ‘Let the opponents carry the ball and do the fumbling—we will recover then, and we must not fumble. Now, to protect against this, I want every player to get plenty ' of' rosin over his pants and jersey.’ “Th.' men lined up and followed instruc tions, but the last man to rosin-up, as I recall it, was this third-string sub end. To the amazement of his teammates, instead of going about it in the usual manner, he sat down in the rosin and started wriggling around. •‘Finally Capt. Harvey Brown walked over and asict-d: ‘Mulcahey, what’s the idea?’ “ ’Gee.i captain,’ was the doleful reply, ‘didn’t you hear,what the.coach said? What do you want me to do. tb*is afternoon, slip off the bench?’" •» THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, OCTOBER 27, I9g». Notre Dame's Famous Coach Is Not Anxious to Have a “ Wisecracker ” Reputation, but His Gridiron Humor Makes the Best of Fuel for College Stove Leagues. COMETIMES it is a great and serious lnter- sectional gridiron struggle that provides the material for Rockne’s yarn. The colorful Army-Notre Dame games of the past have each yielded at least one good story, and this year’s game can be expected to carry on the tradition. One of Rockne’s favorite Army game yarns was two years in the making. “In 1926 Notre Dame’s defense against West Point was impregnable,” he recalls. “As far as any one could tell, it was simply a case of superb defensive foot ball. But the reason for this ability to stop the Army—and particularly ~ MR|k v Ik Bi Kjjjjji^^^p *4 -J2SS «^p \ Baißklifr V JHHI» \ jfl r _JB v *. 4 ' ■ \ / - > 4 ‘^ c Notre Dame's JKtiUte Rocknc .. . His foot ball stories travel as far as the winning Mams he builds. Harry Wilson, their all-America back —was be cause every time the quarterback called Wil son's number his face got red. The result was that every time Wilson blushed the Notre Dame team concentrated on him and smothered him. “After the game I foolishly told Coach Biff Jones about this and thought no more of it. “But what happened the next year? Notre Dame received the surprise of its Hfe, and the Army backs had a field day. “Evidently during the year some psychiatrist had worked on the Army backfleld, because on that Pall day in 1927 every time the Army quarterback barked out some numbers the faces of all four Army backfield men turned red, and. of course, the Notre Dame defense was thrown into confusion. “Incidentally, this is the first foot ball con test on record where the game was won by four flushing." Septembers delay the start of earnest foot ball practice, and every coach in the country would give a lot for away to condition a team when faced with this handicap. Rockne tells the story of a coach who thought he had such a system and how it all but laid up his squad, at least until after the opening games. “This coach had seen a soccer game,” Rockne relates, “and all the running around it in volved gave him the idea that the game would be a great conditioner for his team, before the cooler days came along, when he could settle down to serious work. So he went down to a sporting goods store and bought a round soccer ball. “Bringing it out to the squad he told them what he had in mind. ‘Now I haven’t time to go into the technical rules of the game of soc cer, so for this afternoon’s contest we will just bear two things in mind, either kick the ball or kick your opponent in the shins.’ . “After dividing the squad into two equal sides, the coach asked, ’What’s become of that soccer ball I bought?’ And one of the Irish lads on the squad answered, ‘To Hades with the ball, let’s start the game!’” ITNCOMFORTABLY warm weather is also a foot ball factor in the South, but it isn't the point of this story about two Negro foot ball teams who were battling each other under blazing Southern skies. “This game was being played down in Bir mingham.” says Rockne, “and although neither team received any money for their alleged ef forts, both called themselves professionals for prestige. “The quarterback of the All-Collegians had been an old teammate of the fullback on the ap posing side. The game hadn’t gone over 10 or 15 minutes before this defensive fullback noticed that the All-Collegians’ quarterback was using the same old signals that both had used back at I Will Arise Normal, where they had been class mates. , “As soon as the fullback had made sure, he said to himself, ‘Well, I’m sure going to fix ’em.’ At this particular moment the All-Collegians had the ball in midfield, and the quarterback, looking them over, began to call his signals slowly and in single digits, ‘6 —4 —B—2.’ and so on. “The signal system consisted merely in add ing the first two digits, so the fullback held up his fingers and added, six and four is ten; that’s an end run.’ “Shuffling out to the end, he waited and when the ball carrier arrived there the knowing full back promptly threw him for no gain. Unper« turbed by this the quarterback of the All-Colle gians stood up, looked the defensive fullback full in and called: ‘6—2 —4—B.’ The full back added the first two figures again and learned that a reverse play was about to be attempted. Again he mixed up the compli cated play and threw the perplexed ball carrier for no gam. “The quarterback was sorely perplexed for a second, but composing himself, began again: Tl— 3—6—4.’ The full back took a little longer time to add this. Then “11 and 3is 14— that’s a forward pass.’ Then he called out. ‘look out for a pass, boys, look out!’ “The quarterback, when he saw that the op posing team was hep, stood in a quandary for a second or two and then a look of recognition came to his face. ‘Oh, I remember you now,* he said, and signaled to his team. “looking the defensive fullback square in the eye, he called out confidently, ‘9 times 7, you square head, I know you don’t remember your multiplication tables!”’ DOCKNE’S belief that American college men are becoming more and more effeminate each year is well known. No foot ball season would be complete that did not include among • ’< ■ v/ Continued on Seventh Page 3