Roy Exum
It is probably the most hallowed story in all of sports, the “Win one for the Gipper.” But now we learn of a new arrival, of a newer version on the same theme, and to understand it allow me a moment of pleasure to take you back to the beginning.
George Gipp was a baseball player from up in Michigan somewhere who came to Notre Dame in the early 1900s. He had never played football before he got to Notre Dame because, at the time, the sport was relatively unknown, but Knute Rockne singled him out and talked him into playing football for the Fighting Irish from 1918 through 1920.
Well, Gipp immediately led the school in rushing and passing for three years. He was simply sensational. This was at a time when a player went “both ways” and Gipp’s record of 2,341 yards rushing on offense would stand for over 50 years while he never once allowed a single completed pass on defense.
According to well-documented legend, George was a first team All-American following his senior year, but, after a long night out a couple of weeks after the season ended, he got back to the dorm after curfew. He tried the front door – locked – and then went to the back of Washington Hall. He always knew that door was unlocked, but, on this night, it too was bolted shut so the well-oiled Gipp had no choice but to sleep in the cold.
That night, he contacted pneumonia, which led to a “strep” throat, and the “strep” infection killed him less than three weeks after he had made the All-American team. Gipp died on Dec. 14, 1920. But just before he went, an ever-battling George gave Rockne the most famous message in all of sports from his hospital bed.
“I've got to go, Rock. It's all right. I'm not afraid. Some time, Rock, when the team is up against it, when things are wrong and the breaks are beating the boys, ask them to go in there with all they've got and win just one for the Gipper. I don't know where I'll be then, Rock. But I'll know about it, and I'll be happy.”
Well, the record shows that Rockne delivered the very same speech to the Notre Dame team in 1928 when the Irish was playing an undefeated Army at New York’s Polo Grounds. “Win One for the Gipper.” Are you kidding me? When Hollywood made the movie, “Knute Rockne, All American,” none other than the future President of the United States, the actor Ronald Reagan, quoted those very lines.
Okay. So now we move to Gainesville, Fla., to the Gators’ Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, where just the other day a huge monument was placed on the outside wall with “The Promise.” If you love college football like I do, and cherish the wondrous aura that surrounds it, perhaps you’ll understand such significance.
Tim Tebow, the delightful Heisman Trophy winner who has led Florida to back-to-back national championships in the last two years, has been lionized many times, but his greatest moment may have come this past fall just after an upstart University of Mississippi shocked the Gators in Gainesville, 31-30.
After the game, which actually made the cover of Sports Illustrated the next week because it was so unfathomable, a tearful Tebow was brought before the media. He stood speechless for only a moment and then delivered what has since been hailed as “The Promise.”
“To the fans and everybody in Gator Nation, I’m sorry. I’m extremely sorry. We were hoping for an undefeated season. That was my goal, something Florida has never done here.
“I promise you one thing, a lot of good will come out of this. You will never see any player in the entire country play as hard as I will play the rest of the season. You will never see someone push the rest of the team as hard as I will push everybody the rest of the season.
“You will never see a team play harder than we will the rest of the season.
“God bless.”
Are you kidding me? It was not only magical; the University of Florida outscored their opponents 404-97 in the next eight games. Tebow, of course, was the highlight, wearing Philippians 4:13 on his eye-black which, from the Apostle Paul’s letter to those sinners from the riots in Jerusalem, reads simply, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
The University of Florida has taken “The Promise” and etched it in stone, mounting it outside of the football complex, which is housed in the stadium itself. “The Promise” is there for everyone to see, to touch, to remember, to hallow just as reverently as George Gipp’s greatest moment quite nearly 100 years before.
And you ask me why I love it, the game of college football? It just gets better and better.
So help me it does.
royexum@aol.com