Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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Tempting Fate, Staying Put In demand from coast to coast, Knute Rockne always returned to Notre Dame T By Jim Lefebvre he University of Notre Dame du Lac is said to hold a special sway over certain individuals once they have experienced the spirit of her location. Certainly, that was true for Father Edward Sorin, the university's founder. Shortly after arriving in 1842, Sorin wrote his superiors, noting "This college cannot fail to succeed … before long, it will develop on a large scale … it will be one of the most powerful means for good in this country." And Sorin, who was often away from campus, on trips to Montreal or Paris, always treasured his return to the place that felt most like home. Knute Rockne, in many ways, reflected Sorin's attachment to this place. He took his teams to play games before great crowds in distant locales — from Yankee Stadium in New York to the Los Angeles Coliseum. He spent his summers riding trains to present his football coaching schools to rapt audiences from Williamsburg, Virginia, to Superior, Wisconsin, to Cor- vallis, Oregon. But home remained at Notre Dame. On a few occasions while Irish head coach (1918 through 1930), Rockne was tempted mightily to take over as athletic director and football coach at another institution. At one point or another, numerous Big 10 schools — Ohio State, Wisconsin, Northwestern, Iowa — made overtures to attract Rockne. But it was schools on each coast that came closest to luring away the popular coach. *** On January 2, 1925, the day after his undefeated, national champion Irish defeated Stanford, 27-10 in the Rose Bowl, Rockne led his Notre Dame traveling party on a tour of Hollywood and the motion picture studios. The highlight was the meeting between the greatest of all movie stars, Rudolph Valentino, and Rockne, the newly crowned king of college football. That evening, no expense was spared as the Notre Dame Club of Los Angeles hosted an elaborate