George Gipp

George Gipp (18 February 1895 – 14 December 1920) came to Notre Dame meaning to play baseball and was recruited onto the football team by Knute Rockne with no organised experience in the sport. He played halfback, quarterback and punter, became the school’s first Walter Camp All-American, and died at twenty-five, weeks after his last game, of pneumonia and a related infection. Everything anyone knows about his last words comes from Rockne, who published them ten years later.