I should have known better than to even think such a thing. There were nearly a hundred full scholarship football players attending Notre Dame University, and some of them didn’t even get to dress for home games. We were told that from the outset. They made it clear from the moment we showed up for walk-ons that we would never wear that golden helmet, never once have a shot to run out of that tunnel with the big boys. I didn’t care. That crazy idea sunk into the back of my brain somewhere and I just couldn’t let it go. I had a feeling I could make it happen if I worked hard enough. Why not? Why not? I had heard about walk-on players who had gone on to professional football careers. I knew I would never go pro. I simply wasn’t that gifted. But I could certainly get to the point where they’d let me put on a uniform and get out on the field, right?
I thought about it all night as I fell asleep in my windowless room, more exhausted and battered and better than I’d ever felt in my life.
9
Living the Dream
Waking up every morning as a Notre Dame student was a dream come true. Walking into the South Dining Hall, knowing I belonged there, was uplifting and powerful. Strolling along those paths and across those lawns with my book bag, knowing I was now one of those students I admired and marveled at way back in 1966, left me in awe. I appreciated every second of it. I ate up every class. I savored every moment.
There were plenty of other students who didn’t feel the way I did. Lots of kids took it for granted, blew classes off, and complained about this or that, and it didn’t make any sense to me. I had worked so hard to get here. It had taken so long. Maybe there’s something to the whole idea of taking some time off after high school to live a little before going to school. Maybe it makes you appreciate the experience just a little bit more. I’ve heard professors and administrators talk about the fact that their “older” students are some of their favorites. I can’t say whether or not the path I took would be right for anyone but me, of course, but it sure felt good to know that I was in the midst of accomplishing my dream—and that my dream had a ripple effect on other people.
My parents came out to visit toward the start of that fall semester, and the glow on their faces as they walked around said it all. They were so proud. The campus was so beautiful. I could tell it made an impression on them. In fact, my parents finally took a big step on the road to fulfilling their own dreams just as I was fulfilling mine: they bought a little cabin on a beautiful lake up in Wisconsin. It felt as if all of us were breaking free of the expectations and limitations that life had set upon us in Joliet. I loved that feeling! It made me want to keep going. It made me want to do everything I could to make them even more proud than they were already.
Thanks to Freddy and the education I’d gained at Holy Cross, the academic side of Notre Dame was fun and exciting. For a guy who struggled all through school, I know that seems like a stretch. But it isn’t. Classes at Notre Dame might have been tougher than classes at Holy Cross, but they were fun because I had a routine and good study habits. Plus, the pressure was off. I didn’t have to get all As and Bs. I was already in! I picked sociology as my major. I figured, why not? I was fascinated by the way people interact, the way society influences our lives, and the way people influence society. I was fascinated by my time in the navy, my travels through Europe and Boston, witnessing the cultural differences and similarities. The idea that I could earn a degree by studying the very things that fascinated me, fascinated me! The best part was that I managed to complete all of my general-education prerequisites—the math, science, and so on—while at Holy Cross. So my time at Notre Dame was spent knee-deep in my chosen field, working toward my degree. That concentrated approach made sense to me. The clutter was gone. The classes I didn’t care about were over. Honestly, it felt kind of easy!
That was a big lesson for me too. At schools like Notre Dame, or at big businesses or private clubs, they build up this wall of elitism. They hold themselves on a certain pedestal, protecting what they have. For people on the outside, it can feel unattainable. There’s a false sense that the people who are a part of whatever institution it happens to be are “better than you” or “smarter than you.” The thing is, once you get inside that institution, you realize real quick that they’re not any smarter than you, or better than you, at all! It’s all an illusion. It takes a certain amount of strength and determination to break through that illusion, but once you do, you find out we’re all human beings. We’re all in this same adventure together. We all have strengths to share and weaknesses that need strengthening. Once you’re in it, you look back and wonder, Why did I ever think this would be too hard for me to handle?
I’m not saying Notre Dame was a breeze. It wasn’t. If I didn’t pay attention, if I hadn’t improved my study habits, I might not have made it. But it wasn’t nearly as difficult or unattainable or impossible as I had once allowed myself to believe. Getting through my junior and senior years would be entirely manageable academically. I knew that within the first few weeks of starting classes. So I didn’t worry about it any longer.
That freed me up to concentrate on two really big goals: giving my all on the football team in order to earn a chance to dress for a game, and going home with a Bengal Bouts jacket on my back.
There were 130 players on the Notre Dame varsity team. Since only two of us made it through walk-ons, that made me so far down the depth chart that I wasn’t even on it! Literally, my name did not appear on the list outside the locker room.
That bothered me.
If there was one thing I learned in the navy, it’s that everyone on a team plays a part. No one is above or below anyone else when the chips are down. When it’s time for a team to get the job done, as it was during refueling, the whole team does it. It’s the only way a ship can function, and the only way an athletic team can truly function, as far as I’m concerned.
Unfortunately, just as there was a sense of elitism that permeated Notre Dame, there was a sense of elitism in pockets of the football team. Not every player showed it, but the sense was there: us versus them, the big guys and the little guys, the elite players and the third- and fourth-string guys. Part of it was systemic. Guys like me didn’t get our names on our locker like the top players. We never got jerseys with our names on them either. Just numbers. We weren’t even supposed to eat with the first-and second-team guys. The rest of it was implied; people just have a way of making you feel lower than them. They pound their chest differently. Even though I was suiting up for practice just like everyone else, I felt like an outsider—at first. Everybody wants to be accepted in life. I just wanted to be accepted as a member of that team, and I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to create this feeling of division—as if the walk-ons weren’t good enough to be around those guys. Even the walk-on scholarship players treated us non-scholarship walk-ons differently. Granted, we were just human tackle dummies, but tackle dummies are important. The offensive line couldn’t improve their game without us. Did we deserve to be made to feel lower than anyone else? We were contributing members of the team!
Part of me wonders why I continued to put up with that attitude. In the early days, no one would have cared if I walked away—except me. But the fact that I faced it put a chip on my shoulder: an “I’ll show them” mentality that burned like fuel for me.
To say my days were full at Notre Dame would be a major understatement. Football practices stretched on for hours, every day. We never let up. And when the fall season was over, spring ball arrived in what seemed like no time at all. Rain, shine, mud, snow, whatever the weather could throw at us, we practiced through it. Hard. Balancing practice alone with my classes would have been a lot of work, but I also continued my work with the grounds and maintenance crew at the stadium. It was the only way I could earn money. And I worked at the ACC, patrolling every night, working with the cleaning crew, setting up and breaking down chairs, and staging for various events. That’s how I earned my room and board. Yet, somehow, none of it se
emed like a burden. Sure, I’d get upset at just how much garbage the spectators could leave behind after a football game. And once in a while I’d get a little ticked that I was picking up garbage at this stadium when I didn’t even get to play in it. But most of the time, I just appreciated the amazing opportunity to be a part of it all.
Those work arrangements gave me some awesome access to events at the ACC, which I was able to share with my friends. It was the mid-1970s, and the ACC was a major stop on the concert circuit. I wound up working security for Elton John, the Doobie Brothers, Kiss, Neil Diamond, and Kenny Rogers. What a thrill to get to hear that great music up close, and for free. Of course, they always needed extra security for those gigs, and who better to hire than some big, strong football players? The fact that I was able to get some of those guys jobs so they could see the concerts for free certainly made them look at me in a slightly different light. I was more than a human tackle dummy at that point, and I wound up truly befriending some of those guys who were intimidating to be around at first.
The biggest concert moment was definitely Elvis Presley. It was one of Elvis’s very last tours. The arena was packed, and Elvis was nowhere to be found. It was well past eight thirty, when the concert was slated to begin, and my football buddies on the security team were working hard to keep everyone under control. I was standing right outside my room near Gate 8 when I saw Elvis’s Cadillac finally pull up just in front of the double doors. We made sure no one got near it, and we made sure the pathway to the stage was totally clear, just like his team had ordered, but Elvis just kept sitting there in the car. I asked a guy who had stepped out of the car what was going on. “He’s afraid to go on stage,” the guy said, “’cause of his weight.”
Elvis at that point was looking a little pudgy. It apparently took everything he had to gather the courage to perform. Elvis! One of the greatest performers in the history of music. It seemed crazy to me. I guess everybody has their issues to overcome, even the biggest stars on the planet.
After a few minutes, he got one step closer to emerging: he opened the car door, then just sat there with the door open. I’m not sure why I felt compelled to do this, but I ducked inside my room and came out with one of my Notre Dame boxing shirts. I thought maybe Elvis would like a souvenir. Maybe it would break the ice for him. So I went over as close to the car as I could get and tossed it to him. Elvis picked it up and looked to see who threw it. “Hold on, buddy,” he said to me. It was so cool to hear that that deep, familiar drawl of his. He leaned back into the car for a moment and then tossed a little stuffed hound dog out to me. A hound dog from Elvis! It was awesome. I wound up giving that dog to my oldest sister, Jean Anne, who was just about the biggest Elvis fan in the world. She was already inside the arena, waiting and waiting for that concert of a lifetime to begin. It was awesome to be in a position where I could help her get tickets—and even cooler to hand her that toy from Elvis after the show.
Elvis finally did get out of that Cadillac a few minutes after our shirt-to-dog exchange. He beelined it to the stage, where the lights came up and he completely transformed into the astounding performer that he was. I remember thinking that performing must be like boxing, in a way: once you get in that ring or on that stage, your instinct just takes over and you go with it. Takes some courage to get up there and do it, but then all the preparation and a lifetime’s worth of experience just kicks in. It certainly kicked in for him. The concert blew the audience away. I read afterward that his South Bend performances were some of the best of the entire tour.
A couple of years later, just before Elvis died, I heard that he had worn that Notre Dame boxing shirt I gave him when he was relaxing at Graceland. I don’t know with 100 percent certainty whether it’s true or not, but still, it was staggering to think I had shared something with a singer of that stature, of that massive level of fame, through the simple gesture of throwing him a shirt. In a strange way, none of us are too far from greatness. Simply chasing my dreams and pursuing my goals allowed me to get up a little closer to that great musician than most people could even dream. I chalked it up as one more unexpected benefit, one more little bonus that came as a result of my efforts to make my dreams come true.
10
Still Fighting
I never got hurt on the football field. Bruised, battered, beat-up, swollen, and bloodied, sure. But never injured. I played smart. I stayed low. Other guys got hurt because they didn’t play hard all the time. I went hard every practice, every play. I was all-in, all-focused, no room for mistakes. I knew one mistake could get me killed. (Well, maybe not killed, but broken for sure. Those players were huge!)
Walking up to the training table to get iced after a practice, there were times when they didn’t have my name on the list of players. “What’s your name?” the trainer would say, looking at his checklist. I always managed to keep my composure, but I remember thinking to myself, I just got the crap kicked out of me for this team. Didn’t they see that? Why am I being treated this way? That lack of recognition, that built-in lack of respect for the scout team never seemed to let up, no matter how many people on campus knew me from the Bengal Bouts or my work at the ACC. Sometimes just the fact that they didn’t care if I got injured put a chip on my shoulder. I understood my role; don’t get me wrong. Yet I thought about the navy, how they took care of us seamen, all of us, because they recognized that every member of the team was important and needed to feel valued and critical when the chips were down. As I turned the corner into the latter half of my junior year at Notre Dame, I got the sinking feeling that I would have a hard time finding that kind of value and respect anywhere else in life, and that realization made me truly appreciate the times when that value and respect was showed to me in full.
Coach Yonto did that. He treated every one of his defensive players the same. He reminded me of a navy guy, actually. A true leader. He’d show those little moments of caring after I’d take a hard hit. “You alright, Rudy?”
Greg Blache, the junior varsity coach, was great too. Those guys seemed to value all 130 of the players who were out there working together to make Notre Dame great.
Of course, the greatest of the greats was Ara Parseghian. He just had a way about him. He commanded respect because he got results. He pushed every player, big or small, to fight hard and to be their best at every practice, every game. There was no feeling like getting a pat on the back from Parseghian. An acknowledgment from him really meant something, because he didn’t give out compliments that weren’t deserved. But he also fostered a camaraderie on the team. At the end of each week, he’d bring us all together, offense and defense, training and first-string varsity alike, and challenge some of the guys to come up with skits to lighten the mood. Someone would get up and imitate one of the coaches’ mannerisms or tell a few jokes or reenact a botched play to rib the quarterback. It was a simple way to relax everybody at the end of a hard week, and the sense of togetherness and true teamwork that it fostered was important. The walk-on players like me didn’t even get to dress in the varsity locker room. We were relegated to the baseball locker room next door, where our laundry sacks full of socks, pants, T-shirts, and shorts that were supposed to get washed every night would sometimes be forgotten. Without Parseghian’s efforts to bring us together, in my opinion, that literal wall between us could have hurt the team. It would have hurt morale. It would have left us feeling like second-class citizens. He managed to overcome that, at least to some degree. Fact was, I wanted to do everything I could to get out of that baseball locker room and go dress with the rest of the team. I wanted to wear clean shorts like everyone else! Those little things became huge goals to me, and I promised myself I would work hard to somehow achieve them.
Of course, no one worked harder than Parseghian. I remember leaving my room in the ACC every morning for 6:00 a.m. security rounds and seeing Coach already in, at the desk in his office, almost every day. More nights than not he’d be in there at ten o’clock at night too. Th
at inspired me to work harder. If he saw me, he’d nod hello, and I’d nod back. It was all the acknowledgment I needed. I knew he recognized me, and that was something. Heck, there were plenty of times out on the field during practice when I’d take a hard hit and stay down for a few seconds, and I’d hear Parseghian yell, “Is that kid okay?” If he didn’t care, if he didn’t see me as a real contributor to the team, I don’t think he would have asked that question. And he certainly wouldn’t have asked it loud enough for other players to hear. I think it was his way of making sure everyone acknowledged the little guys who were working so hard to help make the big guys great. I liked that. It felt like light-years of accomplishment to me in the three years since I first stepped foot into his office unannounced to share my dream of playing for him. Three years since he uttered those words: “I bet you will.”
Of course, in my opinion, the greatest motivator Parseghian gave to any of us to show up to practice and work hard was his promise, at any number of practices, that as long as we kept showing up to practice, he would let all of the graduating seniors—even the walk-ons—dress for the final home game of the season. The fact that he would give all of his players, all the way down to the bottom rung of the ladder, that dignity to fulfill their dreams of running out of that tunnel onto the field was about the most impressive thing I’d ever heard.
I was a junior. I’d have a whole year to wait for my shot. But the thought that I might actually get to dress for a game—that my wild, unrealistic, over-the-top, impossible-to-reach dream was now on its way to becoming true—felt awesome!
Rudy: My Story Page 14
