Shake Down the Thunder: The Creation of Notre Dame Football :: essays research papers fc

  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  For as long as I can remember I have been a Notre Dame football fan. My father is to credit for getting me into it. He brought us to South Bend a couple of time for some games and I was just amazed by the campus and the history of the football program, so it was no surprise that I chose this particular book. Shake Down The Thunder: The Creation of Notre Dame Football was written by a man named Murray Sperber who was a sports writer interested on why fans were so into college football. Because of his interest Sperber decided to go around the country to certain college campuses to do research on this. He started with the University of Notre Dame because he was aware of the history and the passion of their football program, he was also aware of the appreciation Notre Dame had from their fans. This book deals with they history of Notre Dame football including the nation championships, the players, the coaches, and the program itself. It explains exactly what happened thought out its history, the reality behind the myths so to speak. Notre Dame was very kind to Murray Sperber in that he was given many privileges that other authors of books regarding Notre Dame football were deprived of. These privileges allowed Sperber to do research on Notre Dame from a different point of view and in his research he found documents that jumpstarted his interest to actually write this fantastic book. Sperber found the actual letters that Knute Rockne wrote to different people, which contained a lot of unknown information about Notre Dame football. These letters were found in the basement of the library and were unopened; apparently they had been hidden there since his death. Theses letter gave Sperber a side of Notre Dame football that no one has ever seen. As I said before, this book deals with the beginning of Notre Dame football and in a time of anti-Catholicism, helped people become more accustom to this religion. It reveals the real personalities of some of the most well known people affiliated with Notre Dame, including Jesse Harper, George Gipp, Father John O'Hara, Elmer Layden, Frank Leahy, and Grantland Rice, but most of all Kute Rockne was at the center of everything. The book gave Knute Rockne all of the credit for making Notre Dame football what it is today.