Rudy: My Story

by Rudy Ruettiger

  People call it the Great Recession. I think a more accurate term is the Great Reset.

  The thing is, hitting the reset button in life can be incredibly positive. How many times did I fail and hit the reset button in my own life during my journey to Notre Dame and beyond? Many! But my life improved after every failure. My attitude improved. My focus improved. And that’s a lesson that America, as a whole, needs to remember. We’ve been through world wars. We’ve been through the Great Depression. We’ve always come back stronger, and I believe we’ll come back stronger again. But we’ve got to get focused in order to do that. We have to honor our great soldiers of inspiration and empowerment. They gave us the ability to do and think and be, and to have and to use our freedom of speech. Are we mad? Are we angry? Of course! But it’s time now to churn that anger into positive things instead of being destructive and tearing people down. We must focus on what we really want to stand up for.

  For years, as the banks were handing out home loans and equity lines and credit cards with $100,000 limits, we simply bought into it as if it were free money. It wasn’t. Now we’re paying for it. And we’ll be paying for a long time to come. We bought into the illusion of status, building bigger homes, bigger buildings, bigger stadiums. We’re caught up in the need to be bigger and richer, at the cost of tradition and values. It’s an empty shell. Where’s the feeling? Where’s the dream? Where’s the passion that’s driving us?

  I’m not just flailing out wildly at America here. I’m no politician and I’m not blaming a party or a president, or taking a political stance, believe me. I’m angry about all of this and bothered by it deeply, because it happened to me, personally.

  In the hullabaloo of the late 2000s, I took my eye off the ball. After so many years on the road, making a wonderful living giving speeches and feeding off of the energy that those audiences provided my spirit, I got a little lazy. Maybe I was just tired. Even rock stars will tell you the constant blur of airports and hotels starts to get to you after a while. And I’m no rock star! The long and short of it is, I found myself searching for quick fixes, for easy money, for ways to set myself up for retirement and a life of luxury that wouldn’t require so many countless hours of nonstop effort and travel.

  I had gotten married. I had two kids. There was a part of me that wanted to settle down with them. But there was also a part that saw lots and lots of people all around me getting very rich, very fast, by dabbling in the real estate market in our seemingly endless boomtown of Las Vegas— as well as lots of other crazy ventures in all kinds of start-ups and risky businesses—and the temptation of that big, easy money seemed too good to pass up. I used what equity I had to start expanding into those ventures myself.

  Real estate came first. I had bought and sold condos back in South Bend, and I owned a nice house in one of the finest neighborhoods just outside Las Vegas at the time. So I took out some loans against that house, and I sunk some big money into building projects that I thought were “sure things.” (There’s a phrase to be wary of, always!) Well, guess what? I was just as foolish as everyone else in America who falsely assumed everything was a “sure thing” because the boom times had lasted for so long. It’s amazing how quickly we forget about history. It’s amazing how quickly we all forget that there are cycles to every economy. My timing was all wrong; the real estate bubble burst, and those sure things suddenly became burdensome debts instead of the wonderful, overflowing assets I had expected. The debts were so large that I couldn’t keep up. Suddenly I was under water. All that money I had saved up from all those hours on the road went “poof”—just like the stock market, and all of those other markets in America.

  It was around this same time when I started to hear people talk about tremendous profits being made all over the place in the sports drink and energy drink markets. So my ears perked up when a business idea came my way: a plan to create a first-class sports drink that would use the brand of “Rudy” and my inspirational message to grab the attention of sports enthusiasts everywhere. The plan would be to create this beverage, market it like crazy, and then sell it to a big conglomerate. After all, a little company called Vitamin Water had sold to Coca-Cola in 2007 for $4.1 billion. That’s billion with a B!

  “Sounds good to me!” I said.

  It didn’t go well. The company was floundering after a few months and desperately needed an infusion of cash. How do you raise money, and fast? With the addition of some new business partners, we went after an idea to make a public stock offering.

  Again it didn’t go well. My mind kept thinking of that capital B, and an easy-street life of living off those beverage profits.

  At one point, I was named CEO of the company. I’ll spare you the finer details of what happened behind the scenes, but the Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC) eventually came knocking on my door. They filed a complaint against me and my company. I told the SEC everything I knew. I was an open book.

  I fell into the same obvious trap that the rest of the country had fallen into in all of those boom years: I shouldn’t have been chasing the money. I should have been chasing the dream. I’m especially sorry that my chasing the money affected other people who believed in me as well. It was one of the most profound, simple, important lessons I would ever learn—and the consequences of that lesson would haunt me for years.

  I’ve thought long and hard about this, and I think it’s an important lesson for America. It stems from my personal journey and the power of the Rudy message. (Funny that I would learn a lesson from my own story, and my own movie, this late in life.)

  Back when I had the dreams of going to Notre Dame, playing for the Fighting Irish, and making a movie about my life, those dreams led to great things. I found myself surrounded with great people who shared those dreams and helped me reach those dreams. When I dreamed of becoming a great public speaker, that developed into a very lucrative career for me. The money was a secondary effect of all those great dreams. Only now, when I dove into the realms of real estate and beverage companies, when all I was doing was dreaming about making money, did I find myself in real trouble.

  When the SEC filed a civil complaint against me and my company, I fully accepted responsibility for what I had done. I was the CEO. It would take a couple of years to sort it all out, but finally, in 2011, we settled the case and I paid a hefty fine.

  I also paid a hefty price in the press: headlines stating “SEC Sacks Rudy!” I had never really suffered any negative press attention before. This was a first. And a last. There wasn’t much I could say, but this I know: I never, ever should have focused on the money.

  We’ve got to stay focused on the correct dreams in life. Good dreams. Meaningful dreams. It’s the only way forward. I was shocked and hurt to have to relearn that lesson so late in life. And yet, I’m glad to have learned it. It’s a message I can now share with others, in my speeches, in my TV appearances, and even here, in this book. Perhaps God sees me as a messenger for that lesson, the same way I’ve been an unlikely messenger for so many powerful lessons in my life.

  If that’s the case, and if I can help even one other person in the world avoid getting into a similar bad situation, then I’m happy to have gone through that struggle. I’m happy to be that messenger.

  The year 2011 was not an easy one for me.

  Remember my sister Carol? The one who was left behind at the grocery store when she was eight years old? The one my mom panicked over, throwing us all back in the car so she could race back to the store to find her? Well, Carol was now caring for my father pretty much full-time. He was aging, and my mom couldn’t take care of him alone. There was something fitting and beautiful about that. I’m so thankful, all the time, for her service to my parents. They sacrificed everything for us, and I was encouraged to know they were surrounded with love.

  But at the same time, I was suffering under the financial weight of the ever-struggling economy, dealing with some issues in my marriage, and still juggling a nonstop speak
ing-engagement schedule at a time in our country when I seriously questioned whether the Rudy message of hope and perseverance was even getting through anymore; it all seemed like too much.

  And then my dad died.

  I can honestly say that he died a happy man. As I’ve already mentioned, he was living his dream. He had his wife by his side at their dream cabin by the lake, and he was surrounded, constantly, by the love and admiration of the massive family that he and my mom had created.

  But that doesn’t make it any easier.

  He was my greatest inspiration. He was the guy I wanted to make proud. He was the guy I so desperately wanted a hug from and who gave me the most meaningful hug in the world on one of the proudest days of his life. I loved him. And though he wasn’t the type who would say it out loud, he loved me too. I knew that. Always.

  I got some one-on-one time with him just a few days before he passed away. We hugged each other. We told each other, “I love you.” I managed to say good-bye in my own way, and felt blessed to see him smile one last time. I loved seeing that smile on his face. That smile he worked so hard, for so long, to find.

  It’s interesting that even at the end, some of the old feelings from back in Joliet were still lingering inside of him. He asked one of my sisters one day, as he lay in his bed, “How many big shots we got?” My sister knew exactly what he meant by that. He was thinking of all those people at work who used to put his family down. The same ones who dismissed the notion that a Ruettiger could get into Notre Dame, let alone play for the Fighting Irish. She answered swiftly: “They’re all big shots, Dad.”

  He smiled and replied, “Good.”

  In the last picture ever taken of him, as he lay there in his bedroom, I swear you can see an angel hovering above his bed. It’s right there, clear as day to every one of us kids and all of his grandkids who have stared at that picture and marveled at it. Believe what you will. But my dad was a good man. And I fully believe that angel was there to take him up to heaven. I know that’s where he is right now.

  21

  Hope

  Things in life are never all bad. While there were plenty of tough times that year, there were some highlights. I was invited to a high school in the Bronx where Regis Philbin had gone to school. On the same day, Yankees Magazine, the official magazine of the New York Yankees, sent a reporter over to interview me for a feature. I happened to mention to that reporter that I had always wanted to go to Yankee Stadium. Imagine my surprise when he took me right over and introduced me to members of the Steinbrenner family and the groundskeepers, and let me walk down on that field for a picture; he basically opened the whole place up to me for a personal tour! It was like living a childhood dream, and I even got the chance to tell them of my wish to throw out a first pitch at a Yankees game someday. We’ll see if that happens. Nevertheless, to this day they still play a clip from Rudy on the JumboTron during every seventh-inning stretch at that glorious ballpark. That was one inspiring day!

  In between the bad times, I got invited to speak at major corporations all over this country. Everywhere I went, the sales teams were as fired up as ever to hear me speak, and they were eager to take my message and apply it to their business practices.

  But with dad gone and the country still mired in this state of joblessness and hopelessness, I was definitely in a funk. That’s a weird thing to be when you’re “Rudy.” People expect to see the fire and energy and excitement that goes with the symbolic nature of that name.

  I think I just needed some kind of a sign. I needed a message. Some sort of inspiration to get me back on track. I hoped and prayed that inspiration might be found back where it all began: on the Notre Dame campus. I was invited back to South Bend to sign autographs and attend a couple of dinners and special events for the College Football Hall of Fame that summer, and I jumped at the chance. Sure. Why not? I thought. Maybe a walk around campus, a visit to the Grotto, a walk into the locker room, or the chance to step foot again in that tunnel and take a walk out onto the field at Notre Dame Stadium would do me some good.

  I even set myself up with a room at St. Joe Hall. St. Joe’s isn’t a dormitory for Holy Cross students and seminarians now. It’s the Parish House. But the rooms and the overall feel of the place are remarkably the same as they were back in 1972. Except for the fact that they gave me a room with a private bathroom, it was the same little space with a simple wooden desk, a lamp in the corner, that military-style metal-framed bed, a closet with a rickety old bureau stuffed in it, and no air-conditioning! I opened up the window and caught a breeze off of the lake. The trees had grown so tall that I could no longer look across the water to the Golden Dome. For that, I’d have to step outside and hop on one of those paths I used to travel every day.

  The sound of my feet crunching on that gravel walk was so familiar in my ears, it took me right back to my youth. I headed west at first. I just wanted to get beyond the tree line to catch a view of the dome, and where I wound up standing was the very spot where I had taken Freddy to share my acceptance letter from Notre Dame. The very same spot where Sean Astin sat on a bench in my movie and opened his acceptance letter, bursting into tears of joy and relief when he finally realizes his goal of getting into the school of his dreams after four semesters of trying and failing.

  We had moved a bench there temporarily just for the movie. But today, there’s a stone bench permanently affixed to that spot. And there’s something remarkable that I noticed as I took a seat there to gaze across the water. Staring straight ahead at the Golden Dome, noticing how beautifully its image was reflected in the water below, I caught a glimpse of another reflection off to the left. It was a reflection of the local power plant. I looked up at the dome and then turned my head just a few degrees left and noticed the smoke stacks and hulking presence of that concrete building rising into the sky. It blew me away. I had never noticed how close those two buildings were to each other. From that vantage point, the difference between the Golden Dome of Notre Dame and that power plant couldn’t have been more than ten degrees apart. The simple turn of a head. The symbolism of it sunk in hard. The difference between my predestined life in a power plant and the glorious life I was so blessed to be living was only a few degrees apart. A matter of turning my head and grabbing a different perspective. I could look straight ahead and see both of those worlds represented in those two buildings, and I was so grateful in that moment for knowing that I had made that shift. I had changed my thoughts; I had changed my direction in life and chosen the Golden Dome.

  It was a pretty good start to my days on campus, recapturing that sense of awe and wonder, the magic I always felt in that setting.

  I found a part of it pretty quickly the first time I walked over to the Grotto too. The beauty of that spot and those glowing candles lit my soul for a moment. Then I walked up the steps and made my way into the Basilica, where I basked in the glow of the stained glass for a few moments before wandering over to climb the steps under the Golden Dome.

  Inside, I couldn’t believe who I ran into: LeShane Saddler. The former Notre Dame football player used to hang out at my condo, met his wife at our Thursday night hang-outs, and always participated in chalk talks with lots of enthusiasm and gusto. I couldn’t believe it. He was happy to see me, and I was surprised to run into him in that setting. It turns out he works for the admissions department now. He took me back to his office and we wound up talking with some of the admissions folks, who were really glad to meet me. And they told me something that no one had told me before: that a vast number of applications and essays they receive from high school seniors all over America today mention Rudy as one of the reasons they’re applying to Notre Dame. I couldn’t believe it! I knew the Rudy Awards were going strong, of course, and that at least some students out there were getting the Rudy message, but were high school students really still watching that film in a way that was influencing their college decisions?

  That’s when LeShane revealed something really cool as w
ell. After graduation, he had spent thirteen years as a high school teacher, teaching US history. And for each of those thirteen years, he had shown Rudy in his classroom. Sometimes, before he would screen it, his students would pipe up and say, “What does this football movie have to do with US history?”

  He would tell them, “This movie isn’t about football. This movie’s about dreams, it’s about perseverance, it’s about heart, it’s about endurance, it’s about overcoming the odds, and that’s a story that you’re going to see repeated throughout the history of this country.”

  Man! That really fired me up.

  At one point I made my way across campus and headed to the brand-new football facilities—an entire building dedicated to the football team’s training and locker room that didn’t exist when I was in school. It was kind of funny as I walked up toward the entrance. There were a few football players standing outside the door in their street clothes. Practice had just ended a short while ago, apparently, and they were hanging out chitchatting before heading wherever they had to go. As I approached the door, one of the bigger guys who completely towered over me said, “Can I help you? You can’t go in there.” I smiled at him and introduced myself, and in an instant his whole attitude changed. Clearly my legacy was still strong here. All of those other players standing around asked if they could take pictures with me, and they pulled out their cell phones. I asked if anyone would mind if I took a look around. I just wanted to see what they had done to the place, and that big guy who stopped me suddenly became my tour guide.

  Lo and behold, just inside the doorway, in a spot that every one of those players would pass on the way in and out of that locker room every single day, there was a plaque on the wall commemorating Rudy.