Player of American football, born in Laurium, Michigan, USA. The son of a Congregational minister, he went to Notre Dame on a baseball scholarship and there discovered his great talent for playing football. He died early of pneumonia, and is said to have been cited in 1928 by Notre Dame coach Knute Rockne when he exhorted a losing team with Let's win one for the Gipper! Ronald Reagan starred as Gipp in the 1940 film Knute Rockne: All American.
George "The Gipper" Gipp (February 18, 1895 – December 14, 1920) was a famous college football player who played for the University of Notre Dame. During his Notre Dame career, Gipp rushed for 2,341 yards and threw for 1,789. A versatile player, Gipp scored 21 touchdowns, averaged 38 yards a punt, and gathered 5 interceptions as well as 14 yards per punt return and 22 yards per kick return in four seasons of play for the Irish.
Gipp died 14 December, 1920, two weeks after being elected Notre Dame's first All-American by Walter Camp. The apocryphal story of Gipp's death begins when he returned from a night out to Notre Dame's campus after curfew. It is more likely that Gipp contracted strep throat and pneumonia while giving punting lessons after his final game, on 20 November against Northwestern University. The full quotation from which the line is derived is:
Rockne used the story of George Gipp, along with this deathbed line that he attributed to Gipp, to rally his team to an underdog victory over the undefeated Army team of 1928.
He was voted into the College Football Hall of Fame on December 14th, 1951, at 3:27 AM, in memory of the time and date of Gipp's death. George Gipp Memorial Park was dedicated on August 3, 1935, in his home town.
The phrase "Win one for the Gipper" was later used as a political slogan by Ronald Reagan, who in 1940 portrayed Gipp in Knute Rockne, All American and was often referred to as "The Gipper". ISBN 0-89708-164-1
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