I started reading Gus Dorais by Joe Niese with Bob Dorais. Gus Dorais and Knute Rockne were roommates all four years that they attended the University of Notre Dame. There's no doubt about that. There appears to be a lot of doubt about the particulars of their college lives. In Rockne's autobiography, he said that he lived in Brownson Hall as a freshman. In an interview, Dorais recalled that they lived in Sorin Hall basement. According to Niese, Hall directories and the Notre Dame yearbook, The Dome, corroborate this account. I like this account as it falls in line with this recollection by Dorais of his first meeting with Rockne. It was written by Dorais for Street & Smith's Sport Story Magazine:
I knocked on the door, and a voice shouted, "Come on in!"
So I opened the door, and saw about as tough-looking a guy as I had ever seen in my life.
He was wearing a faded blue jersey and an old pair of corduroy pants, and he had a shapeless cap pulled down over one eye. Somehow, his nose had been mashed sort of flat, and he was walking up and down the room like a lion in a cage.
"My name's Dorais," I said. "I've been assigned to this room."
"Mine's Rockne," he told me. He took another turn and walked away from me.
"Better have 'em send up your trunk," he said, with his back to me.
I pushed my suitcase into the room and closed the door. "Haven't got a trunk, "Everything I own is in the suitcase."
He turned around again by that time, and was coming toward me. He gave me a grin that was to become known to, and be loved by, a million or so football fans all over America.
"I haven't got a trunk, either," he said. "We're starting even."
This meeting just makes me smile.
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