In 1925, Knute Rockne of Notre Dame was to college football what Babe Ruth was to big league baseball, what Jack Dempsey was to boxing. Fresh from molding (with the help of Grantland Rice's poetic imagery) the legendary Four Horsemen backfield, Rockne also had been the Svengali behind the development of George Gipp, who died tragically in 1920, leaving a legacy of his romanticized "Win it for the Gipper" death-bed utterance.

As the coach of three unbeaten and untied Notre Dame teams (1919, 1920, 1924), since taking over the reins of the Fighting Irish in 1919, Rockne, an immigrant from Voss, Norway, had become a hero to millions of "subway alumni" throughout the United States.

Then, suddenly, a strange thing happened on the way to immortality: Rockne almost left South Bend for South Field.

Knute Rockne nearly became head coach of Columbia's football team.

Behind the headlines and the canonization of Rockne in the press, there was another story, one of the coach's annoyance with his yearly Notre Dame salary (about $10,000) and his constant struggles with school administration over his alleged overemphasis of the gridiron game. Paul Gallico '19, a sportswriter for the New York Daily News and a Columbia crewman, had charged Rockne with "cant, humbug and hypocrisy" and many priests at Notre Dame agreed with him.

Such accusations hurt Rockne, for he knew he could name his price virtually anywhere else. Southern Cal had already flirted with him. Another possibility was West Point, an arch-rival of Notre Dame. General Douglas MacArthur, once the Superintendent of West Point and serving in Manila in 1924, had written a letter to future Army coach Earl Blaik stating, "If I had stayed at West Point I would have introduced new blood -- Rockne was the man I had in mind."

Columbia, eager for its football team to be competitive with its elite brethren in the East, also had been casting its eyes on Rockne. Columbia had dropped the sport from 1906 through 1914, in protest against the game's violence. When it was restored, the Lions had little to talk about other than a wonderful back named Wally Koppisch '25 and another fellow, Lou Gehrig '25, who turned out to be better at hitting a baseball.

One of the formidable disciplinarian coaches of the era, Percy Haughton, had been lured to Columbia from Harvard in 1923. No less a lockerroom Cicero than Rockne, Haughton was expected to lead the Lions out of the wilderness. According to legend, Haughton had once exhorted his Harvard players before the traditional game against Yale by dragging out a bulldog and strangling the pop-eyed animal in front of his astonished players. Later, George Plimpton, Harvard man and author, assured all animal-lovers that such cruelty had never taken place because, "after all, a bulldog has no neck."

Haughton had a .500 season with Columbia in 1923, including victories over NYU, Middlebury and Wesleyan. The next year the Lions rolled up big scores against Haverford, St. Lawrence and Wesleyan, lost by a field goal to Penn, then beat Williams. Things seemed to be on the rise. But a few days before Columbia's game against Cornell in late October, Haughton collapsed and died following a practice session. He was only 48 years old.

This numbing event left Columbia without a coach; Paul Withington filled in for the final four games of the season. A permanent coach was soon found in the person of Charlie Crowley, who had played under Rockne at Notre Dame after World War I. But the man Columbia truly wanted was Rockne himself.

From time to time, Rockne had met with representatives of Columbia. It didn't take much to convince him that coaching at Columbia would yield him much more money. Columbia was prepared to hire Rockne for $25,000 per year for three years, not much less than its famous President, Nicholas Murray Butler, was being paid. In addition, Rockne could boast that he was the highest paid coach in the land. He knew, too, that by moving to Morningside Heights he would be close to those members of the New York press, including Rice, Damon Runyon, Heywood Broun, Ring Lardner, Westbrook Pegler and others, who had been chirping his praises for years.

Although he was under a long-term contract with Notre Dame, Rockne seemed involved in a "get-even" scenario with his school. Columbia's football committee, headed by Director of Athletics Bobby Watt, who had brought Gehrig to the campus, and a well-to-do alumnus, James Knapp 1900, actually believed that it had lassoed Rockne's services. And for a few days, maybe Rockne did, too. However, the over-zealous Knapp jumped the gun on Rockne's "signing" with Columbia by prematurely leaking the news to the press. It had been Rockne's understanding that the matter would remain secret until he could return to Notre Dame to negotiate a release from his contract.

When the news hit the New York newspapers, Rockne felt a terrible sense of embarrassment. His superiors at Notre Dame insisted that they had been betrayed, much of their criticism thick with sarcasm. It was clear that Notre Dame was in no placatory mood to match or top Columbia's offer. School leaders were furious that Rockne might be using the situation as a wedge to bargain for more money.

After several heated days of accusations and indecision, Rockne, caught with his stubby fingers in the Columbia cookie jar, tried to explain that having failed to get his release from his Notre Dame contract, he was not in a position to move to Morningside Heights. At the same time he feared that Notre Dame might refuse to take him back. "I don't know whether I'll have a job left when I get back home," he said, wearily.

When the dust finally settled, Notre Dame got back its celebrated coach and Columbia was forced to proceed with Crowley. Nobody emerged from the brouhaha with much dignity. If Rockne had been chastened, he also preferred to blame Columbia for his difficulties, which, of course, wasn't quite the case. There were also those at Notre Dame who were convinced Rockne might still be pried away by another college. Many in the press, who had previously been admiring of everything Rockne did, now suggested that he'd been in over his head dealing with the big-city slickers. The specious argument was that Rockne was just an unsophisticated man, an unfortunate hick, who had been taken in by the evil men of Morningside. This was, indeed, a laughable proposition, and the last time Rockne ever suffered such disparagement. In his petulance, Rockne may have misjudged the matter, from beginning to end. But a fool he wasn't.

In the next five years Rockne solidified his reputation. Notre Dame enjoyed two more unbeaten seasons in 1929 and 1930. At the height of his career, Rockne was on his way to California, presumably to discuss a cinematic treatment of his life, when his airplane went down over Bazaar, Kansas, in March 1931. He was 43 years old. The eulogies poured in from all over the world, from President Herbert Hoover to the king of Norway to Will Rogers.

By that time, a new football regime had started at Columbia under Lou Little, who had succeeded Crowley in 1930 and would coach the Lions for 27 seasons.

Ray Robinson '41 is the author of numerous books including Rockne of Notre Dame: The Making of a Football Legend, to be published this fall by Oxford University Press.