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Knute Rockne Quotes

Knute Kenneth Rockne was an American football player and coach at the University of Notre Dame. Leading Notre Dame for 13 seasons, Rockne accumulated over 100 wins and three national championships.

Rockne is regarded as one of the greatest coaches in college football history. His biography at the College Football Hall of Fame, where he was inducted in 1951, 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.

In 1931, at the age of 43, Rockne died in a plane crash. Wikipedia  

✵ 4. March 1888 – 31. March 1931
Knute Rockne photo
Knute Rockne: 6   quotes 0   likes

Famous Knute Rockne Quotes

“Show me a good and gracious loser, and I'll show you a failure.”

Knute Rockne

Attribution to Rockne sometime in the 1920s mentioned in Safire's Political Dictionary (2008) by William Safire, p. 401, but there is no definite mention of this yet located prior to the 1980s; in The Yale Book of Quotations by Fred R. Shapiro, a similar remark is credited to Arnold "Red" Auerbach, based on a 1965 citation in the Mansfield News Journal [Ohio]: "Show me a good loser, and I'll show you a loser."
Disputed

“Football is a game played with arms, legs and shoulders but mostly from the neck up.”

Knute Rockne

Great Quotes from Great Sports Heroes (1997) by Peggy Anderson, p. 35

“The secret is to work less as individuals and more as a team. As a coach, I play not my eleven best, but my best eleven.”

Knute Rockne

As quoted in Coaching Champions: The Privilege of Mentoring (1994) by Jess Gibson, p. 160

“One man practicing sportsmanship is far better than 50 preaching it.”

Knute Rockne

As quoted in The Reader's Digest Vol. 135 (1989), p. 34
Variant: One man practicing sportsmanship is better than a hundred teaching it.

“Win or lose, do it fairly.”

Knute Rockne

As quoted in Swimming World and Junior Swimmer Vol. 20 (1979), p. 57

“Build up your weaknesses until they become your strong points.”

Knute Rockne

As quoted in Knute Rockne: Man Builder (1940) by Harry Augustus Stuhldreher, p. 53

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