George Gipp: The Gipper from Laurium

One of the most famous lines in American sports — “win one for the Gipper” — traces back to a young man from Laurium, a small town on the Keweenaw Peninsula in the Upper Peninsula. George Gipp grew up there a gifted all-around athlete who loved baseball most of all. He went to Notre Dame intending to play it, until coach Knute Rockne reportedly spotted him casually kicking a football and pulled him onto the gridiron.

Gipp became Notre Dame’s first All-American, leading the team in both rushing and passing in each of his final three seasons. Then tragedy: shortly after his last game in 1920, a throat infection turned into pneumonia, and Gipp died at just 25. The legend says that on his deathbed he asked Rockne to someday tell the team to “win one for the Gipper” — though historians note Rockne didn’t repeat the line publicly until a famous 1928 pep talk eight years later, so whether Gipp ever said it is genuinely uncertain. Either way, the phrase became immortal, helped along by the 1940 film in which a future U.S. president, Ronald Reagan, played Gipp.