I remember telling my parents and my brothers and sisters all about it. What a thrill it would be for my younger siblings to see me wearing that uniform. To see their oldest brother get out there and play for Notre Dame? It felt big. It felt like the sort of thing that would change their whole worldview, you know? I loved that feeling.
For some reason, as December rolled around that excited feeling was replaced by something bittersweet. Maybe it’s because the season was almost over. The thought of not playing got me down. Football was the reason I got up in the morning. For many reasons, I didn’t want to see 1974 come to an end, even as I dreamed of what the following year would bring. But it couldn’t have been more than a week or two into that month when I picked up a copy of The Observer and just about fell over, completely sucker-punched by the top story: Coach Ara Parseghian was retiring.
I thought about what it meant for the team. I thought about what it meant for morale. I thought about what it meant for the legacy of Notre Dame football. In his decade in South Bend, which would become known as “the Era of Ara,” he amassed ninety-five wins, only seventeen losses, and four ties. That’s an .836 average! Unheard of in the modern era! He was kind. He was fair. He was tough. He was everything a coach should be.
I was devastated.
And I couldn’t help but think about the one thing that suddenly felt selfish to worry over: What would this mean for my chances of actually dressing for a game? Would a new coach think of that? What if a new coach didn’t like me? I’ d have to prove myself all over again to whoever took over next year.
To say I had a little frustration built up as that football season came to a close would be quite the understatement. Lucky for me, I’d have a place to throw all of that energy: January meant the start of training season for the Bengal Bouts.
Six weeks of training; three days of fights. The Bengal Bouts are like an entire football or baseball or basketball season compressed into a single weekend. The energy on campus is intense. To be one of those fighters and to have a shot at the top, you have to be 100 percent in the game, in the zone, fixated on the task in front of you, which amounts to pummeling the other guy with as many hits as possible to score points, move ahead, and make it to the championship.
I didn’t care about winning the Bengal Bouts. I just wanted to make it to the final round so I could get one of those championship jackets. I’d only have to survive through three rounds of fights. I was stronger than ever. Still scrappy as ever. That goal seemed entirely attainable to me.
Pulling those gloves on, stepping out into the roar of that capacity crowd in the basketball arena, climbing into the ring under those lights, hearing my name announced over the loudspeaker—“And in this corner . . . Rudyyyyy Rueeetigger!”—it was all a bit surreal. The funny thing about working hard toward any goal, preparing for weeks on end, focusing so intently on something, is that once you’re in the actual game, there’s almost no room for thought anymore. It all comes down to instinct. It all comes down to preparation. I found the sound of the crowd disappearing as I focused on my opponent. It was just a wash of noise in the background. I didn’t think about my hands or my stance or protecting my face or protecting my body. I just did it. “Ding!” I stepped into the center of that ring and just went for it. Boom! Boom! Took a couple of hits, then Wham! I knocked him hard, following up with a right, right, right, left! I just kept going, thinking about that jacket, thinking about making it through, not falling behind. Keep punching, Rudy! Don’t let him in!
The first fight flew by. The bell rang and I couldn’t believe it was over. I closed my eyes, just praying I’d done enough. Judge’s decision: “Ruuudyyy Rueeetigger!”
All right. All right. Phew! I caught my breath. I went back to the locker room and wound myself down. Two more to go. Two more to go. It’s all I thought about.
The next round, I was up against a well-known opponent in the same weight class who was a varsity football player—a halfback. I thought his fame as a Fighting Irish star would put the crowd firmly in his corner. But as we came face-to-face to touch gloves in the ring, something happened in that arena. In the greatest tradition of Notre Dame sports, the students immediately picked me as the underdog . . . and started rooting for me. Loudly.
After taking a few hits in the opening moment, I came back strong and started landing body blows just like I wanted. Suddenly I felt the crowd behind me. It felt like a surge. Like I was carrying their energy. It was all a rush of noise in the background as I focused on that opponent, anticipating his every move from the look in his eyes and counter-striking on pure gut reaction. When the bell rang, I finally heard what that crowd had been chanting: “Ru-dy! Ru-dy! Ru-dy!” They were chanting my name! And they didn’t stop. They kept chanting until the judge’s decision came in: “Ruuudyyy Rueeeettiger!”
The place went wild. It was awesome. As if the whole student body suddenly knew my name. Me! The fact that I defeated a football player was huge.
Stepping into the ring for the championship fight is nothing but a blur to me now. I know I was up against a bigger opponent again, a varsity football player named Mike McGuire, and after what I’d done in the last fight, the crowd was looking for an epic battle. I know the crowd started chanting my name. I also know I didn’t give it my all. I lost focus. I had already won! I wanted to make the championship round so I could earn that jacket—and I did. So I let my guard down. I fought, but not to win. And guess what happens when you don’t fight to win? You don’t win. No surprise there. I lost in a split decision. It didn’t matter to me. Walking out of that arena, hearing hundreds of students and coaches and professors say, “Great fight, Rudy!” “Way to go, man!” All those hands patting me on the back of that Bengal Bouts jacket was the greatest win I could have imagined at that point.
The next day, life was different. Notre Dame knew my name. Complete strangers said, “Hey, man! . . . Hi, Rudy! . . . Nice fights, man!” as I walked through the quad. I’d never felt that kind of recognition before. I’d never felt that sort of admiration. What was really strange about it was I didn’t feel like I had worked all that hard to get it. It came easier than I would have thought. Just like the academics. I was tapping into something. I was starting to understand something here and there, in little glimpses: focusing on an achievable, accomplishable goal can turn a far-fetched fantasy into an attainable dream. A dream that can become real with a little hard work and perseverance.
There was something more to it than that, as well. I started to realize that accomplishing that goal, achieving that one dream, made a whole bunch of other dreams come true too. I had seen it in my quest to get into Notre Dame and in my quest to land a spot on the football team. When spring football practice came around, I would see it on the team.
Not long after those fights were over, I wore that Bengal Bouts jacket into the locker room on my way to suit up for our very first football practice under new head coach Dan Devine. Devine was a great coach who had been considered by Notre Dame way back in 1964, when Parseghian was first hired. He had spent the previous couple of years with the NFL coaching the Green Bay Packers. Not exactly chump change! I was excited to get to work for the man, even though the depression over Parseghian’s departure seemed to permeate the entire football program.
On that very first day of practice, I noticed a whole bunch of my teammates looked at me a little differently. A couple of the first-team players made a point to say, “Nice fights, Rudy.” These were guys who had never spoken to me before. My performance in the Bengal Bouts helped change the attitude I faced on the football team. It didn’t change everyone’s attitude, of course. There are some people who are never willing to let go of that us-versus-them mentality as they cling to their elite status. But it made a difference. It made a difference in the way I felt in that locker room. And the more comfortable I felt, the more included I felt, the harder I wanted to work to become the best football player I could be.
Oddly enough, just as I had predi
cted in my mind when I heard that Coach Parseghian was leaving, Coach Devine had a very different attitude about team camaraderie. He actually separated the teams, divided the teams, never brought us together at the end of the week for any kind of common exercises, let alone some fun skits. In fact, it was his official policy that the prep teams weren’t even allowed to sit and eat with the regular players! That made a lot of us upset, and in fact, there were many times when I flat-out ignored the order. I was friendly with some of those guys, and there was no way I was gonna sit like an outsider and not eat with them. No one could really blame Devine. He came from the NFL. It was a different mentality, and there was definitely a method to his madness. The fact that the prep team was off by itself meant we bonded in our own way, on a smaller scale, like never before. Even so, as the year progressed, Coach Devine would see the differences in the Notre Dame traditions and start to embrace them.
Spring practices were divided up into two shifts so the team members would have plenty of time to study for their final exams. That apparently bugged Devine, but he would learn to deal with it. Academics never took a backseat to football at Notre Dame, yet I understood where Coach was coming from. I was glad I had time to study, but if I could have been out there on the football field both shifts I would have been. I had begun to make a name for myself on that team. I had established a reputation for never giving up, never backing down, always playing my hardest. There were certain players who didn’t appreciate that. They thought it made them look bad. I didn’t understand how it was my fault if they wanted to rest on their talents and not strive for the best every practice, but that’s how they treated it. Even so, there were other players, the guys I became friendly with, who would knock me on the helmet or say, “Great practice, man,” as we walked off the field. “Man, you come out here and work your tail off! I appreciate that!” Players like Gerry DiNardo, Willie Fry Jr., Ross Browner, Luther Bradley, and Ken MacAfee lived up to the Notre Dame name in every way. There were times when I’d invite some of those guys to ride back to Joliet with me to have dinner with my family. My mom loved it. Now that a few of her flock had flown the coop, she was thrilled to have a big, full table with lots of big eaters. And those guys liked nothing more than a good home-cooked meal.
D-Bob and I designed custom Notre Dame jackets for those players, with their names on ’em. It turned into a lucrative little side business for the both of us, and the players appreciated having unique keepsakes, so it was a win-win. The camaraderie of all of it grew stronger every week.
As the days grew warmer, the idea of making a name for myself on that team became more and more important to me. I’m not sure why. I guess we all want recognition for the hard work we do in life. But at some point, I also realized that my dream of dressing for a game, of allowing my friends and family to see me play, had a whole other level of depth behind it that I wasn’t aware of in the beginning: unless I dressed, and unless I stepped foot on that field during a game, my name wouldn’t appear in the history books. My name wouldn’t appear alongside the rest of the Notre Dame players in the yearbook. My name wouldn’t appear on the bronze plaques filled with player names that lined the walls in the ACC. As far as history was concerned, it would look as if I had never been a part of that team at all. That didn’t sit well with me. I don’t care who you are or how gracious you are, that’s a hard thing to take. Sure, I would know in my heart that I was a part of that team, an important part of that team, forever. That’s important. But if a tree falls in the forest and no one’s there to hear it . . . I dunno. It just bothered me that no one would know.
During the spring season, Coach Devine never, ever mentioned the notion that seniors would get to dress for a home game. That worried me. I also became aware of a whole new set of NCAA rules that were put into effect that year, rules dictating that no team would be allowed to dress more than sixty players for any single home game. Coach Parseghian had the option to suit up 110 players if he wanted. The NCAA cut it by almost half! At a place as flush with great players as Notre Dame, where there were nearly one hundred scholarship players on the team, that meant there weren’t nearly enough dress slots for even the scholarship players to suit up. How would I ever have a shot now?
The only solution I could think of was to work hard and try to make an impression. I played as hard as I ever had. I gave my all, over and over again, no matter how tired I was or how much it hurt. I reminded myself, every day, what a privilege it was to be a part of that team. I seemed to make an impression on offensive coordinator Merv Johnson. He would throw out little comments like, “Great effort! . . . Nice job!” I loved that stuff. He seemed to love how hard I made his guys work, which only made me want to work even harder. Heck, I thought, if these new coaches really notice, maybe I’ ll see my name move up the depth chart and I’ ll finally get to play!
I said good-bye to my great friend Freddy at the end of that year. Just as he dreamed, he was heading off to law school in Florida. He was one of the few people in the entire Notre Dame community with whom I had shared my dream of dressing for a game. I was smart enough to know that most people would tell me it was impossible, so I kept my mouth shut, just as I did back in Joliet when I finally made up my mind to quit my job at the power plant and go find a way into Notre Dame. I didn’t want to hear all that negative talk. Lucky for me, Freddy—just like D-Bob—never tried to dissuade me. They were both convinced I could do it. And even though he’d be thousands of miles away, Freddy said he’d do everything he could to come back and see me play if I ever got suited up. That meant a lot to me. I was so proud that he was accomplishing his dreams and so happy to have met a guy like him, purely by chance, on my very first day at St. Joseph Hall. I believe certain people come into your life for a reason, and I knew I had better pay attention to make sure I didn’t miss another “Freddy” if he or she ever came along.
That summer I moved back home to Joliet and took a construction job as a plasterer. I wasn’t qualified to do the detail work, so I took on all the low-level jobs: setting up scaffolding, mixing mud, carrying stuff back and forth to the truck. I liked to do the heavy lifting because it kept me in shape for football, and doing all that grunt work made the other guys happy, simply because they didn’t have to do it! All those plasterers chewed tobacco. I had never tried it, and one day I said, “I want to chew some.” They said I wasn’t man enough, but I fought back, saying I’d been in the navy. Give me a shot. So I tried it, and man, I got so sick! I vomited everywhere, and those guys just laughed and laughed. “Oh yeah, the tough Notre Dame football player!” they said. I never did that again.
The highlight of that summer came in the mailbox. I wasn’t expecting it. I wasn’t anticipating it. But there in the mail, one afternoon, I spotted a letter with the Notre Dame insignia on it—only this one wasn’t from the admissions office. It was from the football team.
Inside was a letter inviting me to come back early to join the varsity team for fall training. I couldn’t believe it! It was so out of the blue. I had hoped to make an impression, but this felt as big as my acceptance letter to Notre Dame: it meant I was a full-fledged member of the football team now. Not a walk-on player, but a true member of the team.
Showing that letter to my dad was just as exciting as sharing the news when I first got in. He got really excited too. There were certain guys at work who still ribbed him about his son not showing up anywhere on their TVs and radios during the Notre Dame games. They refused to admit that a Ruettiger was part of the Notre Dame legacy, and they ribbed him about it. My dad wasn’t the kind of guy who’d go running into work with that letter in hand to shout over a loudspeaker and let everyone know that his son was a full-fledged member of the football team now, but I knew that he’d carry that confidence with him the next time he stepped foot into that refinery.
That made me proud.
11
Never Quit
The scout team doesn’t travel to away games. The only shot I’d have at dress
ing for a game in the fall of 1975 was at home, and that shot was most definitely a long one. Despite my dreams, I hadn’t moved up the depth chart. Not one bit. I’d walk by the list outside of the locker room every day and not see my name on it. No scout team players were listed. So there was no indication that I was even a part of the team, despite my new “official” status. It frustrated me so much that I started writing my name on the bottom of the depth chart just so I could see it. One day, one of the team managers caught me doing it. Luckily, I knew those guys. The managers were sort of the business managers of the team. They took care of all of the logistical details, and I was always friendly with them, just hanging around and talking to them outside the locker room from time to time. Because I lived in the ACC, I could always make sure they had whatever they needed on short notice. Little stuff like that. They liked me, and I liked them. A couple of weeks later, when the new chart came out, my name was on it. It was still way down the bottom, but at least it was something. I still don’t know who was responsible for doing that, or if it was a mistake. Either way, it made me happy. At least it was an acknowledgment that I was part of the team.
I think being friendly with the people who worked with the team, not just “on” the team, paid off in a lot of ways. As I entered that second year, I noticed that my laundry bag was never left behind. I had clean shorts for every day’s practice. I wasn’t forgotten, and that’s a good feeling.
Because they invited me back early for fall practice, I wasn’t treated as “just a walk-on” anymore, even though I was still only a member of the scout team. They gave me a locker in the varsity locker room . . . with my name on it. That was huge!
Oddly enough, my name was showing up in lots of other places too. For some reason, the story of my journey through Holy Cross and Notre Dame caught on as a human-interest story around campus. A reporter put together a big article on me that was printed in the basketball brochures they handed out with tickets at the ACC. It talked about my journey through the navy and Holy Cross, to playing on the scout team and coming very close to winning the title in the Bengal Bouts the previous spring. I guess I was such a fixture around the ACC that I seemed like someone worthy of profiling in the press, because The Observer did a similar article profiling my Notre Dame experience in its pages later that fall. There was one difference with that Observer piece, though: In that piece, they quoted me talking about my ultimate dream—to suit up for a Notre Dame home game, to come running out of that tunnel with my parents watching in the stands, to go down in the history books, and to prove to everyone back in Joliet that I did it. I really did it.
Rudy: My Story Page 15