Notre Dame Football: Knute Rockne

... And that inner strength is what Notre Dame and the legend of Rockne are all about. You know, so much is said about Rockne's influence on his ballplayers, but actually he liked to talk about their influence on him. In his autobiography, he described his inability to sleep one night before a big game. So, he was up early in the lobby and saw 2 of his boys come down the stairs and go out, and then others came and followed them. And though he had a pretty good idea of what was going on, he decided to follow along. ``They didn't realize it,'' he said in his diary, ``but these youngsters were making a powerful impression on me.'' And he said, ``When I saw them walking up to the Communion rail to receive and realized the hours of sleep they had sacrificed, I understood what a powerful ally their religion was to them in their work on the football field.''

And after Rockne found -- here at Notre Dame -- his own religious faith, a friend of his at the University of Maryland asked him if he minded telling him about it. ``Why should I mind telling you?'' he said. ``You know all this hurry and battling we're going through is just an expression of our inner selves striving for something else. The way I look at it is that we're all here to try and find, each in his own way, the best road to our ultimate goal. I believe I've found my way, and I shall travel it to the end.'' And travel it to the end he did. And when they found him in the Kansas cornfield where the plane had gone down, they also found next to him a prayer book and at his fingertips the rosary of Notre Dame, the rosary of Our Lady. Someone put it so well at the time: Knute Rockne did more spiritual good than a thousand preachers. His career was a sermon in right living. Link

I got this information from the Blog Pro Familia

Here is his famous Locker Room Speech



How is this related to Catholic Apologetics?

This post gives a personal answer to how God comes to us and opens greater meaning in our lives. See Avery Cardinal Dulles quote on testimony.