The Gipper: George Gipp, Knute Rockne, and the Dramatic Rise of Notre Dame Football

by Jack Cavanaugh

Win one for The Gipper. Has there ever been a better-known and widely-used exhortative phrase in sports? Not likely. But who was the “Gipper,” this mythical-like sports figure whose nickname has aroused, in turn, awe, wonderment, curiosity, and amusement since the second decade of the twentieth century, and why is his story important? Answering those questions is the formidable task taken on here by veteran sportswriter Jack Cavanaugh, whose Pulitzer Prize-nominated biography of boxing legend Gene Tunney was referred to as “impressively researched and richly detailed” by Sports Illustrated .

More than eight decades after his death, George Gipp is still regarded by football historians as Notre Dame’s best all-around player. And it was Gipp and his legendary coach, Knute Rockne, who were largely responsible for putting the small Midwestern all-male school on the map.

Like Cavanaugh’s other critically acclaimed books, The Gipper is also a period piece, with a considerable focus on the era before, during, and immediately after WWI. It details the changes that the country underwent during that time, including the onset of Prohibition and the gangs that it spawned in the Midwest such as those active in the South Bend area and in nearby Chicago, headed by the notorious Al Capone.

Genres: Sports, History, Football, Biography, Nonfiction

304 pages, Hardcover

First published September 10, 2010

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Mike Kennedy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I listened to the audio version of this book. Solid book especially for Notre Dame fans. The title is a little misleading as the book dives into much more than the life of George Gipp.

It is really a book about George Gipp and his legendary coach, Knute Rockne. The book covers Gipp’s years at Notre Dame as well as moving forward and back to cover events surrounding Notre Dame and Knute Rockne.

Overall I enjoyed this listen and would recommend to all Notre Dame fans.

[Matthew Burgess · Rating 4 out of 5]

Was curious about all the mid-information about George’s untimely death. Author interviewed Gipp’s contemporaries later in life, as well as the granddaughter of his fiancé. Author noted some discrepancies in what was shared with him. This is understandable so many years after the fact, but get much closer to the truth from first hand accounts, even if recollections aren’t 100%. One thing I found distracting was several bits of information were repeated in different parts of the book.

[Jude · Rating 2 out of 5]

It turns out that George Gipp's life story isn't very remarkable. Jack Cavanaugh does a nice job with what he has, but there's not much meat here -- even with first-person recountings of Gipp's antics and exploits.

[Michael Powers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read. After hearing so much about Knute Rockne and George Gipp and the famous quote, "Win one for the Gipper" i thought it was about time I learned the whole story.

[Patrick Barry · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice story about George Gipp, Knute Rockne and Notre Dame becoming a national name in football. It is filled with lots of information, particularly about Gipp and his off field habits.

[Trevor · Rating 3 out of 5]

For my Red Dot Book I choose the “The Gipper” by Jack Cavanaugh. This book was an ok read but i had read another book pretty similar to this book and the other was more factual and went more in depth into the Gipper's life but this book taught me some things that i had never none about him but did have some errors and jumped to different times . Like he said that Gipper had played cornerback along the other positions he did play and the problem with that is that is that was not a position he played and correct me if I'm wrong but this position wasn’t used in that time or Era.
I would have liked to learn as much as i did about the Gipper himself as i did the history and coming up of NotreDame’s football team. And he could have tried harder to find interesting facts about the Gipper and not repeating and reusing old information. But if I did learn one thing i hadn’t know was that the Gipper had a huge gambling problem. And that was what he did when he wasn't playing sports.
I love sports hero's and learning about them and he did change the sport. And I love he told the legends surrounding the Gipper but just wished it wasn't all the same information you can just spend a little while on line searching for to find. So that is why I gave this book a 3 star for telling the past in a great way but just telling the same stuff over again if you haven't read very much about NotreDame football this book will teach you a lot about its history.

[Anup Sinha · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is certainly chock full of information and I learned much about George Gipp, Knute Rockne, and the era of college football they represent.

I have long been curious about the man behind the legend of The Gipper which was further fortified by a recent visit to his hometown in the upper peninsula of Michigan. He was certainly a blessed athlete, the greatest college football player of his era and very possibly a big league baseball player had he lived past 25. As Cavanaugh writes, however, he was quite flawed and I read him as the kind of person destined to die young.

I thought the writing itself broke down, especially the last 100 pages or so which were not as well-edited. Cavanaugh takes the “tell you” approach to the extreme over the “show you” method and repeats himself endlessly throughout the book. There’s only so many times you can tell us how handsome George Gipp was or that he was a “star”. I felt there was a lot of hyperbole about him and Rockne which was incongruent with what I perceived as the book’s objective to humanize and tell their real stories.

I still enjoyed it and I’m not sure you can find a more thorough work on George Gipp, at least. The narrative is rough but the information is great.

[Allie · Rating 2 out of 5]

My main complaint about this book (and the reason it got 2 stars instead of 3) was the timeline was too erratic. It jumped back and forth between events that happened in 1913 to events that happened in the 1920s and early 1930s without any real discernible organization. Much of the book was based on interviews with involved parties, who often had conflicting information. This is understandable - given that personal accounts rarely line up exactly, but I would have liked a little bit more synthesis and conclusion regarding the differing accounts. In addition, there were some errors which could have been avoided. In one instance the author relates an event with another that happened "6 years before," unfortunately the two events happened in 1920 and 1931. Now I wasn't a math major, but I am pretty sure that equals eleven years. I think some additional fine tuning and organization would have made this a much more enjoyable read.

However, it wasn't a total loss. There was some interesting information about the development of Notre Dame and football in general that I enjoyed. With some better editing, it would certainly have garnered 3 stars from me.

[M.E. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I usually recommend that people stop reading books if they are not enjoying them. I didn't really enjoy this book. It is infuriatingly repetitive, and its structure is haphazard at best. But I still kept reading. I bought this book as a souvenir from my trip to South Bend last year to watch my BYU Cougars take on the Fighting Irish. Like most other people, I'm vaguely familiar with the rallying cry, "Win one for the Gipper," but I didn't know exactly where it came from. I was hoping that this book would enlighten me. That's why I kept reading. And to this book's credit, it did enlighten me. I now know who George Gipp was and what he and Knute Rockne did to put Notre Dame football on the map. So, all in all, I got what I wanted out of this book, but I wish I could have enjoyed that process a bit more.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating Read! I consider myself pretty versed in Notre Dame history - but I learned a lot that I never knew. Though unimportant to many, one thing I learned that touched me most was that both Rockne and Gipp were Protestants when they arrived at ND - and by the end of their life, entered into full communion of the Catholic faith. A beautiful fact I never knew. Same goes for my other hero of the 1920's - Bobby Jones.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a lifelong fan of Notre Dame, Rockne and The Gipper have always fascinated me. While there were some interesting parts, the book was poorly organized. There is so much about both men that we likely will never know.

[Steve Schlutow · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was interesting in "The Gipper" after watch the Knute Rockne movie where Reagan played the character..

It was an okay read..

[Royce Aldridge · Rating 4 out of 5]

The information was well researched & informative. The trouble I had with it was the repetition. The section of Gipp really was overkill when he wrote about all of the gambling & whatnot.

[Justin Farley · Rating 3 out of 5]

http://justinfarley.blogspot.com/2014...

[Laurie · Rating 4 out of 5]

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