Following his playing career, Rote was the Giants backfield coach and was a sports broadcaster for WNEW radio, NBC, and WNBC New York.

Rote attended Thomas Jefferson High School in San Antonio, where he earned All-State honors in both football and basketball, while also being considered one of the region's brightest pro-baseball prospects.

[1] After graduating from high school in 1947, Rote accepted an athletic scholarship to Southern Methodist University in Dallas, where he became one of the most celebrated collegiate football players in the country.

[2] In his senior year at SMU in 1950, Rote was runner-up for the Heisman Trophy, won by Vic Janowicz of Ohio State.

Immediately after graduation at SMU, Rote signed a contract with the Corpus Christi Aces of the Class B Gulf Coast Baseball League.

During his career, Rote made a guest appearance as an imposter for an undercover police officer on the May 13, 1958 episode of the CBS game show To Tell the Truth.

He fooled the panel into thinking he was the officer, garnering three of the four possible votes from Polly Bergen, Jim Backus, and Joan Fontaine.

[4] Rote retired in April 1962,[5] then was the Giants' backfield coach for two seasons; in both those years, New York captured the NFL's Eastern Division championship, a third consecutive in 1963, but fell in each of the title games.

In the 1960s and early 1970s, like his former Giant teammates Frank Gifford, Pat Summerall, and Dick Lynch, he enjoyed a second career as a sportscaster, working at NBC and WNBC New York on radio and television.

He also published two volumes of poetry, was an ASCAP songwriter, accomplished pianist, and oil painter having a number of his works shown at museums throughout the United States.