Knute Rockne

Knute Kenneth Rockne (/kəˈnuːt/ kə-NOOT; March 4, 1888 – March 31, 1931) was a Norwegian-American football player and coach, at the University of Notre Dame.

Rockne is regarded as one of the greatest coaches in college football history. His biography at the College Football Hall of Fame identifies him as "without question, American football's most-renowned coach." Rockne helped to popularize the forward pass and made the Notre Dame Fighting Irish a major factor in college football.

Early life

Knute Rockne was born Knut Larsen Rokne in Voss, Norway, to smith and wagonmaker Lars Knutson Rokne (1858–1912) and his wife, Martha Pedersdatter Gjermo (1859–1944). He emigrated with his parents at 5 years old to Chicago. He grew up in the Logan Square area of Chicago, on the northwest side of the city. Rockne learned to play football in his neighborhood and later played end in a local group called the Logan Square Tigers. He attended North West Division High School in Chicago, playing football and also running track.

All-America

An All-America team is a hypothetical team, from a given American college sport, composed of outstanding amateur players—those players broadly considered by media and other relevant commentators as the best players, of a specific season, for each team position.

Such college athletes are given the honorific "All-America" and typically referred to as "All-American athletes" or simply "All-Americans".

Term usage

As of 2009, the term is used in U.S. team sports to refer to players who are selected by members of the national media. The term is used primarily with regard to college and, occasionally, to high school players.

Note that similar terms exist for non-amateur athletes: outstanding professional players usually are referred to as "All-Stars", or, in the case of professional American football, "All-Pros": (as opposed to Pro Bowlers, who are selected by players, coaches, and fans to compete in Pro Bowl games).

Selection to an All-America team for collegiate (or high-school) players, however, is honorary in nature. "All-America teams" do not typically play any games as a unit, unlike many of the all-star teams.

Notre Dame

Notre Dame commonly refers to:

It may also refer to:

Christianity

Churches and cathedrals

Algeria

Cambodia

Canada

France

Mystery meat navigation

Mystery meat navigation (also known as MMN) is a disparaging term coined in 1998 by Vincent Flanders, author and designer of the website Web Pages That Suck, to describe a web page where the destination of the link is not visible until the user points their cursor at it. Such interfaces lack a user-centered design, emphasizing aesthetic appearance, white space, and the concealment of relevant information over basic practicality and functionality.

The epithet "mystery meat" refers to the meat products often served in American public school cafeterias whose forms have been so thoroughly reprocessed that their exact types can no longer be identified by their appearances: like them, the methods of MMN are clear to the producer but baffling to the consumer.

Flanders originally and temporarily described the phenomenon as Saturnic navigation in reference to the Saturn Corporation, whose company website epitomized this phenomenon. Flanders writes, "The typical form of MMN is represented by menus composed of unrevealing icons that are replaced with explicative text only when the mouse cursor hovers over them".

George Gipp

George "The Gipper" Gipp (February 18, 1895 – December 14, 1920) was a college football player who played for the University of Notre Dame. Gipp was selected as Notre Dame's first Walter Camp All-American and is Notre Dame's second consensus All-American (of 79), after Gus Dorais. Gipp played multiple positions, most notably halfback, quarterback, and punter. He is still considered today to be one of the most versatile athletes to play the game of football and is the subject of Knute Rockne's famous "Win just one for the Gipper" speech. Gipp died at the age of 25 of a streptococcal throat infection, days after leading Notre Dame to a win over Northwestern in his senior season.

College career

Born in Laurium, Michigan, he entered Notre Dame intending to play baseball for the Fighting Irish, but was recruited by Knute Rockne for the football team, despite having no experience in organized football.

During his Notre Dame career, Gipp led the Irish in rushing and passing each of his last three seasons (1918, 1919 and 1920). His career mark of 2,341 rushing yards lasted more than 50 years until Jerome Heavens broke it in 1978. Gipp was also an ideal handler of the forward pass, and threw for 1,789 yards. He scored 21 career touchdowns, averaged 38 yards a punt, and gathered five interceptions as well as 14 yards per punt return and 22 yards per kick return in four seasons of play for the Fighting Irish. Gipp is still Notre Dame's all-time leader in average yards per rush for a season (8.1), career average yards per play of total offense (9.37), and career average yards per game of total offense (128.4).