OFD Book Club: “Shake Down the Thunder” #5

Graphic by Brendan McAlinden / @verypirateyWelcome back to the One Foot Down Book Club, where we are reading Murray Sperber’s “Shake Down the Thunder” (Amazon, B&N, IU Press, eBay). This is the fifth meeting of the club, and we’ll cover Chapters 15-17 today.

Long before Brian Bosworth or Johnny Manziel, there was George Gipp.

The Upper Peninsula native was “unusual greatness,” which means Coach Knute Rockne “increasingly ignored his star’s life-style, rationalized his transgressions, and fought to keep him in school and eligible for football.” (p. 106)

“Gipp showed very little interest in academics,” Sperber writes, a disposition that proceeded his tenure in South Bend. The extraordinary…