 It's time for yours truly, Jimmy Powers, with another Grantland Rice story. Blow again. This is Jimmy Powers transcribed with another chapter from Granny Rice's life story, The Tumul and the Shouting. Today's chapter gives us another penetrating look at Newt Rockney, who made Notre Dame a byword for the best in college football throughout America. So, with a nod to the every young spirit of Grantland Rice, I take up his narrative once again in First Person. Newt Rockney was a great man of force, deep charm, and an amazing personality. Whenever there was a gathering of coaches in any city, there was usually just one question. Where's Rockstain? That's where they all gathered. There have been so many fine coaches, such great inventors as Pop Warner, Lonnie Stagg, and Bob Zupke, that no one can pick the greatest. But Rockney had the greatest of all in the way of human appeal. It was in 1928 that Rock brought perhaps his least successful Irish team to New York to meet a splendid Army 11 that featured Red Cagle, a great runner who could handle a half-back slot on anybody's all-time team. Friday night before the game, Rock called me at our flat. Grant, he said, the boys are tucked in for the night. How about coming down to the hotel? We need a crying towel. Better still, I replied, hop in a cab and come up here. We can warm our sides by an open fire, have a spot of Tennessee milk, and watch the rest of the world go hang. That evening, sitting by the fire, Rock said that he expected to be up against it but good next day. You recall my greatest back, George Gip, said Rock, well, he died practically in my arms eight years ago next month. He's been gone a long time, but I may have to use him again tomorrow. You saw Gip on one of his better days against Army in 1920, continued Rock in a quiet, hushed tone. Gip fell sick later that same season. In our final against Northwestern at Evanston, he climbed out of bed to make the trip. I used him very little that day. We were away and winging. The final was 33 to 7. But in the last quarter, the stands chanted Gip's name so loud and long that I finally sent him in for a few plays on that ice-covered field with the wind off Lake Michigan cutting us all to the bone. I got him out of there quick, but after returning to school with a raging fever, Gip went back to his sick bed. He never got up. Nemonia had him back to his own goal line. He lived barely two weeks. Shortly before he went, Father Pat Haggerty baptized him into the church. After the little ceremony, I sat with him on his bed. Gip's face seemed thinner than the communion wafer he had just taken and just as white. But his forehead was strangely cool. Gip looked up at me and after a moment he said, Rock, I know I'm going, but I'd like one last request. Some day Rock, some time when the going isn't so easy, when the odds are against us, ask an Notre Dame team to win a game for me, for the gipper. I don't know where I'll be then, Rock, but I'll know about it and I'll be happy. A moment later, Gip was gone. Then Rock added, I've never asked the boys to pull one out for Gip. Tomorrow I might have to. The following day that 28 Army Notre Dame game was played, as always, to an overflow sellout. At the half it was nothing to nothing. The rest is history. A sobbing band of fighting Irish raced out for the third quarter. When Notre Dame lined up for the kickoff, I knew they were playing with a 12th man, George Gip. But Red Cagle didn't see any ghost as he circled deep behind his own line, reversed his field and galloped for great chunks of turf. Cagle's runs and passes carried Army to Notre Dame's two. There I recall a cadet named Mural plunged over. Bud Sprague, Army's burly tackle, missed the conversion. Notre Dame fired back, smashing and clawing 80 yards, and Jack Chavigny rammed into the end zone, crying, here's one of them, gipper. Next, the Irish end, Johnny O'Brien, a pass-catching one-play demon, snared a long pass and fell into the end zone for another touchdown to put Notre Dame ahead 12 to 6. From there on in, Red Cagle put on another one-man stampede, but the gods were riding with Notre Dame that afternoon as the final gun went off with Notre Dame on top, 12 to 6. Somewhere, George Gip must have been very happy. Now this is Jimmy Powers once again. My friend Jack Lavelle, one-time Notre Dame guard, recalls his freshman year at South Bend, and with us today is the very personable Lavelle, number one scout for the New York football giants and bon vivant of the world at large. Jack, I got a big kick out of your thoughts in Granny's book, but I'd like you to tell us in your own words about the sugar-coated treatment accorded the pea green freshman at Notre Dame, at least during Rockney's day. Jimmy, under Rockney there was a saying, freshman get nothing but abuse and plenty of that. Some of us waited in line for three days just to get a uniform. We were very interested in a matter of shoes, and no matter how beat up they were, Mr. Candy always told you, there you are, freshman, Gip wore these, and it was a toss-up as to who wore more cleats that slept in the most ends, Gip or George Washington. Jack Lavelle, Granny Rice called Rockney football's greatest salesman, and from the description of those freshman cleats he must have been, what about his whole over high school coaches? After all, all of Rock's boys came from high schools around the country. Well, Jimmy, you had to experience one of Rock's summer football clinics to appreciate the influence he had over high school coaches. They swarmed in the South Bend or any other place that Rock happened to be at from all over the map, thirsting for some gleaning from the Rockney Table of Wisdom, and twirling the baton of blowing the tube of Rockney was the whole show. Jack, what else do you recall about Rockney or any profile or character study of him? What was the secret of his success, would you say? Jimmy, I would say the secret of his success was the fact that he was the greatest teacher, Father Newland, who found a very, very ominous poison gas during World War I and who later found synthetic rubber formula, which Notre Dame has benefited greatly by. He told us many times that Rockney was the greatest organic chemistry you'd ever known. Jack, what do you do now that you're no longer at Notre Dame wearing the South Bend Times for inner souls? Well, the South Bend Times is a happy memory, Jimmy. I'm with the baseball giants doing a lot of promotion work for them and making a lot of novenas. Well, that's very good. Tell me, would you like to hazard a look into the, say, the next 10 years we've had platoons coming and going, pro football and college football. What's going to be ahead of us? What the rules committee will do with football, I don't know, but the two platoon system was put in to help the small school. Now a year ago, the two platoon was rescinded to help the small school. The only thing that will help the small school, Jimmy, is to get big. Now, what the ultimate in the rules will be in the next 10 years, as you asked me, I wouldn't know except that if they don't quit monkeying with the rules, they may not have any game because of the fact that they're trying to legislate football. And football is a game to be played by young kids for their college to the best of their ability. And it can't be put through as a matter of law or process law or anything else. Isn't that true of all sports? Basketball, they got that 24-second foul shot in the pro basketball. They've been changing the scoring methods of prize fights in 48 different states and everybody is in a whirl. Well, I was thinking the other day, if they put any more clocks into basketball, Jimmy, that the commissioner will be an inspector of watches. I mean, there will be nine watches around a place and the guy will only have to know if they're in work and order. Talk about a fast track. Have you got an accurate watch? That's right. And who does it? Which company? Jack, how about track? That seems to be coming on. Santee and Bannister and whatnot. They were quite a starter and still are. Don't you think that sport is coming on? Tremendous. Sports are dying off a little. They've left it alone, Jimmy. All you have to do is be faster than the guy and to get there first. And now they've got a thing to help the judges find out who's their first. The tele-timer. Yeah. And then they'll find out pretty soon how to clock them along with it. But if they leave a sport alone long enough, Jimmy, for the coaches and the players to get used to what they're doing, it'll be tremendous. Now everyone asked this question too, getting back to Rockney. If he were alive today, what do you think he would do? He would be against these changes or what? Certainly he'd be against the changes, Jimmy. He'd be against the changes that took anything out of the boys' hands. I mean, if a coach is given a responsibility of coaching a team, that's his. Nobody can fault him. If he cannot do the things that a coach is supposed to be able to do, if the boys are not able to play with complete freedom under a normal set of rules, then the game can't be too important. They haven't changed baseball, they haven't monkeyed him around with baseball, and baseball's a terrific game. They ought to leave it alone, Jimmy, for a while to let everybody get used to it, particularly the spectators. I mean, you're commenting on a lot of games, and the spectators, I know we sit home and listen, and the spectators that come out of the house say, what is this? What's this? Last year was like this. Well, that's all right. Last year it was. But unfortunately, you and I've got neither the time nor the amount of script that you need to tell the people to complete changes. That's right. And it is bewildering. Well, Jack, thanks a lot for this little chat. And fans, that closes the cover of the tumult and shouting for today. This is Jimmy Powers transcribe saying, so long.