/ AP

This is a 1925 photo of Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne at an unknown location. Knute Rockne was one of the most prominent figures in America, let alone the famous coach at Notre Dame, when his plane crashed in a Kansas pasture 75 years ago Friday March 31, 2006.

“He figured out how to work the system,” he said. “You’ve got to admire the guy, coming into this very tough system and figuring out how to beat it — and beat it tremendously.”

In 1919, Rockne’s second year at the school, a total of 56,500 people saw the Irish play football. Ten years later, 551,112 people saw the Irish play.

“Notre Dame was really built on the money Rockne’s teams made in the 1920s,” Sperber said. “If it hadn’t been for Rockne and the football money, Notre Dame might still be this small Catholic school in northern Indiana.”

Bernie Kish, former executive director of the College Football Hall of Fame who has researched Rockne’s life, said the coach’s death in his prime added to his legacy. But he said Rockne was a larger-than-life figure when he was alive.

“He was the first coach who captured the imagination of the nation. Rockne was just absolutely adored and loved nationwide, not just by Notre Dame fans,” Kish said.

Kish said Rockne also was the first entrepreneurial head coach, establishing coaching camps, endorsing athletic equipment, and leading a celebrity contingent to the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam. He also was known for developing coaches.

“But he was also just a personality in his own right,” Kish said.

Pat Reis, a 1985 Notre Dame graduate from Minneapolis, will be among those commemorating Rockne’s life at the ceremony in Kansas. It will be his fourth trip to the site he first visited in college.

“If you’ve ever spent any time at Notre Dame, there’s still a strong presence of Rockne. So the road trip was a bit of a mission trip,” he said. “It was just one of those spiritual things.”

He received his tour of the site from Heathman, who estimates that over the years he’s shown it to thousands of people.

“They call and make an appointment. They stop here at the door,” he said. “Some of them are Notre Dame fans, some of them are not.”

While wanting to visit the site may sound odd to some, Reis said he thinks it makes sense to any Notre Dame fan.

“We try to keep it not too Elvis. But with the stature of Rockne and the hearts of so many Notre Dame fans, it tends to get a little toward Graceland and the thing that Elvis has going with his followers.”

But to Heathman, who is now a big Fighting Irish fan and has been to Notre Dame four times over the years, it’s more simple than that.

“It’s just a way to pay tribute,” he said.

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