Rockne Had to Be Sold on the Idea : Football: A Trojan graduate manager and his wife persuaded coach to play USC.

Gwynn Wilson has a unique place in the history of the USC-Notre Dame series, which started in 1926 and has developed into the greatest intersectional rivalry in college football.

It was his idea.

As USC’s graduate manager, sort of a forerunner to a modern-day athletic director, Wilson proposed a home-and-home series between the schools to Notre Dame’s legendary coach, Knute Rockne.

Rockne agreed to play USC and a monster was created.

But it wasn’t that simple. Had it not been for the persuasiveness of Wilson’s late wife, Marion, the series might never have come to pass.

As Wilson, 93, recalled recently at his home in Rancho Palos Verdes, the idea came to him on the Monday before Thanksgiving in 1925.

Wilson was acquainted with Rockne, who only a year earlier had conducted a two-week coaching clinic at USC.

“As a matter of fact, we were looking for a new coach (after the 1924 season) and he agreed to come out to coach at USC on condition that he would be released from Notre Dame,” Wilson said. “Well, of course, he wasn’t released and it didn’t happen.

“But, as it turned out, it was better for us that he didn’t come. If we had signed him, we’d have lost our rival.”

Wilson’s thoughts were of Rockne as he drove to work on that Monday morning 65 years ago. Wilson had recently received word that Notre Dame planned to drop Nebraska from its schedule after the final game between the schools on Thanksgiving Day, 1925, in Lincoln.

It occurred to Wilson that maybe USC could replace Nebraska.

“At that time, no team had crossed the Rocky Mountains to play an eastern team,” Wilson said. “They’d only come west for the Rose Bowl.”

Wilson suggested to USC officials that he board the next train to Lincoln to meet with Rockne and propose a series.

A university vice president, Harold Stonier, said to Wilson: “The first time a western team plays in the East, it’s going to be one of the biggest games ever played.”

Stonier approved Wilson’s trip, but was reluctant to grant Wilson’s request that he take along his wife.

“I’d only been married about a year and wanted to take her along,” Wilson said.

So Stonier phoned another vice president, Warren Bovard, who approved of Marion’s making the trip. Wilson called his wife and asked her to meet him at noon at Santa Fe Station.

As it turned out, Bovard’s decision was a critical one.

The Wilsons pulled into Lincoln the night before the game.

“The town was just humming--’Beat Notre Dame! Beat Notre Dame!’ ” Gwynn said. “You could see why they were going to discontinue this thing because it was just wild--to the point where the game had taken over the town.”

On the morning of the game, in the lobby of the Lincoln Hotel, Wilson ran into a startled Rockne, who asked him: “What the hell are you doing here?”

Wilson made his pitch, but Rockne told him he was too busy to talk. He told Wilson that the Irish would leave Lincoln on a midnight train for Chicago after the game, and suggested that Wilson and his wife book reservations. They would talk, he said, during the 17-hour trip.

It wasn’t until the next afternoon, though, after Notre Dame had suffered a 17-0 setback, that Wilson could get Rockne alone. After a stream of visitors had continually disrupted their discussions, the two men retreated to an observation car.

Rockne regaled Wilson with stories of Irish football.

“I never had such an afternoon in my life,” Wilson said. “It was just a wonderful afternoon. He was a wonderful guy.”

But when talk turned to a USC-Notre Dame series, Rockne said that he wasn’t interested. Los Angeles, he said, was too far from South Bend, Ind. The players would have to be out of school for too many days. The trip would be too expensive.

The press, Rockne said, had started chiding his teams, calling them “The Ramblers” because they traveled so much, and he didn’t like it. He told Wilson that he was more interested in playing games against teams from the Western Conference, which later changed its name to the Big Ten.

“We shook hands and he was very final about it,” Wilson said.

But when Wilson returned to his seat and told his wife the disappointing news, she was surprised. She had spent the afternoon with Rockne’s wife, Bonnie, telling her that California was magnificent.

She told Bonnie how well the Trojans treated their visitors, getting them great rates at the Huntington Hotel or the Beverly Hills Hotel, which were among the nation’s best. She told her that when the teams departed, they were given baskets of fruit for their trip home.

“Mrs. Rockne wants the game,” Marion told her husband.

About 20 minutes later, Wilson said, Rockne showed up at the Wilson’s compartment and tapped on the door.

“Now, we’re about 15 minutes outside of Chicago,” Wilson said. “He sat down across from me. He had a silly, embarrassed grin on his face, but he had a gleam in his eye and he said to me: ‘Gwynn, what was this you were saying about scheduling some football games?’ ”

A series was born.

The first game, played on Dec. 4, 1926, drew a crowd of 74,378 to the Coliseum, which at the time was capacity. Notre Dame won, 13-12. The second, played on Nov. 26, 1927, drew a crowd of 120,000 to Chicago’s Soldier Field. The Irish prevailed again, 7-6.

Ten times in the series, one team or the other has entered the game ranked No. 1 in the Associated Press poll.

“But if it hadn’t been for those two women talking in a train on an autumn afternoon in 1925, this great series never would have been played,” Wilson said.

Wilson spent nine years at USC, where the student union is named for him, before taking a job as associate general manager of the 1932 Olympics. He retired in 1960 from Santa Anita, where he served as general manager of the race track, and has lived since 1987 in a retirement home in Rancho Palos Verdes.

Marion died in January and, because he has a hard time getting around these days, Gwynn no longer attends USC games, but he still follows the Trojans.

He takes great pride in the USC-Notre Dame series, which he described as probably the premier competition in the country.

“It’s been a very constructive thing for the university all these years,” he said. “In fact, we’re probably as well known nationally as any other school in the nation because of that series.”

For that, USC can thank Gwynn and Marion Wilson.