The body of legendary Notre Dame football star, George Gipp, was exhumed last week and DNA was gathered. For what purpose, nobody has been told. We can only assume and at Silliman on Sports assumptions about exhumations happens to be our strong suit.
   
    A little history, in case a few of you can not remember George Gipp. Gipp was Notre Dame’s first real star. He passed, ran, kicked and scored like very few backs since. He also died young, at the age of 25 in the year 1920. Knute Rockne was said to be at the side of Mr. Gipp during his last days and George whispered to the famous coach “Win one for me, coach.” Now here’s the paradox. George Gipp is kind of a wussy name. Not to degrade him or his feats, but the name doesn’t conger up a manly tone, like the name Rock Hudson, but that’s another paradox. However, the coaches name – Knute Rockne – is an all-time manly name. Be apprised, his name was K-nute, not Newt, like the whiney Senator or the slimy salamander. If you have a name like Knute Rockne, you eat nails for lunch and buy your toilet paper at the hardware store. You are a man’s man. You’re a coaches coach but when lying-there-dying-of-pneumonia George Gipp says win one for me, you turn into a blubbering baboon. Your eyes go to mush and it’s the saddest thing you ever saw in black and white and it ends up, eventually, putting the guy who plays George Gipp in the movies into the White House.

     “Win one for the Gipper” became a rallying cry for Knute Rockne and for Notre Dame and they pretty well mowed down every team they played in the twenties and the thirties and since he played George Gipp in the movie, Ronald Reagan adopted this slogan for his own political gain. When news came that George Gipp’s corpse was being exhumed, many thought the exhumation was happening in California. Wrong, of course. Ronnie is still planted and the exhumation took place in the upper peninsula of Michigan. But why?

    Many Gipp descendents are asking the same thing. Has a love child come forth? If so, he or she would be pushing 87-88 years old. Is Ronald Reagan’s acting career buried in that crypt? Some say that was his best role and so much better than being second fiddle to chimp named Bonzo. After the Gipper role, Reagan’s acting career seemed like it fell off into a valley – a death valley. Why else would an exhumation be made? Has the Notre Dame football team under Charely Weis become so bad they are resorting to digging up old stars for cloning purposes?

    Now that’s a theory we, at Silliman on Sports, consider plausible. Next you dig up the Four Horsemen, swipe a little DNA, have Touchdown Jesus bless it and you secretly work your way back into contention. Let’s hope this doesn’t work in some sort of “Pushing Daisies” scenario. In that if you dig up an ex-star, grab his DNA, and successfully clone a football player then for kharmatic purposes a current or recent player has to drop dead to equalize the clone. We’ve heard Charlie Weis has been looking strangely in Rudy’s direction. We’ve also heard one of the quarterbacks from this year’s Notre Dame team caught wind of the plot and quickly transferred to another team.

    Are little pieces of Jimmy Hoffa buried in George Gipp’s coffin? That’s a theory being bandied. We realize George Gipp’s crypt would make a good hiding spot for dismembered Jimmy but, we suspect, that whoever chopped up Hoffa might be a Notre Dame fan and wouldn’t dare desecrate a former hero.

    That leaves only one other theory. Someone is writing a book about George Gipp’s life and for research purposes has him dug up. As it happens, Michael Bynum is writing a book and had ESPN film the exhumation. This theory I understand. I’m a writer and writers have people exhumed, for research purposes, all the time. In fact I have so many people exhumed, I can’t remember who I’m exhuming next week. When I remember, I’ll let you know.