SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Had Lou Holtz advised Jerome Bettis after his junior season in 1992 to come back and play football for the Irish in ’93, the NFL Hall of Famer is convinced he would have taken that advice.
But the now 50-year-old former star running back/current Notre Dame senior business major would have missed out on one of the most compelling chapters of finishing unfinished business imaginable.
With a little more than three weeks to go until its culmination.
“I think it's going to be great for me, my family, obviously, and everyone involved — Bettis said Wednesday of the graduation ceremony on May 15, more than three decades in the making.
That in itself, makes it great for Notre Dame.
Of the 21 three-and-out juniors to wade into the NFL Draft pool as early entries since the NFL made that a reality in 1989, Bettis will become the ninth ND player overall to come back and get his degree and the fifth since 2019. Current Pittsburgh Steeler Stephon Tuitt, also taking classes this semester, is working on becoming the sixth soon.
What elevates the Bettis experience for Notre Dame, especially its football program, is a change of heart on Bettis’ part to become visible and accessible.
“It's so funny, because when I first got here, I said to myself, ‘I'm going to stay out of the way. I'm just going to be here. I'm going to take these classes. Hopefully, I'm just going to kind of blend in and nobody's going to know this.’ That was a plan.
“And so, the first class I sat in the front row. I’m thinking, ‘Nobody can see me. I'm right up front. Everybody's looking at the professor. I'm on the corner. Perfect. Hat down. I'm good.’
“And the first professor in the first class says, ‘OK, we're going to go around. Everybody, I want you to tell me your name, where are you from? And tell me a little bit about you.’
“I'm like, ‘(Shoot). I’m not going to get by.’ The same day, coach (Marcus) Freeman texts me, ‘Hey, I heard you’re on campus. Give me a call. I want to talk. Come by.’
“I was like, ‘(Shoot), here we go. Here we go.’”
Here we go, indeed.
From meeting once a week with Freeman to impressing football recruits and their parents on campus visits to texting and calling junior running back Logan Diggs to watching practice and game film after class with senior linebacker JD Bertrand to leading cheers at a Duke-Notre Dame men’s basketball game to all kinds of non-football commitments, including speaking to those in the advanced MBA program.
Wednesday Bettis served as the commissioner/emcee for Notre Dame’s first (at least in recent memory) Blue-Gold Game player draft. Saturday, he’ll be one of roughly 300 former Notre Dame football players attending the actual Blue-Gold Game itself (1 p.m. EDT; Peacock streaming).
Typically, 20 come back, according to Notre Dame football director of player development Hunter Bivin, who collaborated with Freeman to make the people who comprise ND’s rich football history feel welcome about becoming part of its present.
Bettis did it all without ignoring the central mission — going to class, studying and passing. He confessed he stayed up as late as 3:30 a.m. to study for a midterm in his Business Foresight class, one of two subjects he described as kicking his butt this semester.
“I was on my way to bed and I'm saying, ‘What the hell are you doing? You’ve got to be crazy.’” Bettis said.
“I didn't do great. It was a monster. I think I'm going to pass, but it won't be pretty.”
His golf game suddenly isn’t pretty, either. And until this weekend the only times he saw his family this semester was during a spring break trip to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, and last week when daughter Jada — a junior at The Westminster School in Atlanta — came up to try on Notre Dame for size herself.
That included going to classes with her father.
“I made her read some of the class material,” Bettis said. “She didn't like that at all. I said, ‘If I’ve got to do it, you’ve got to do it.’ But it was a great experience, and she really got a lot out of it.”
Looking back at the senior year that DIDN’T happen in 1993-94, replaced by a rookie NFL season as first-round draft pick and Offensive Rookie of the Year honors, Bettis admitted he was blown away when Holtz nudged him off the fence toward leaving ND early.
“I didn’t have juniors come out very often,” Holtz, ND’s head coach from 1986-96, said back in 2014. “I had a lot of them have the opportunity, but I kept reminding them from their freshman year on, ‘Remember when I was in your home recruiting you, and the one question you had was, ‘Are you going to be there my four years?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, are you going to be there my four years?’
“They gave me their commitment, plus it’s not just that they don’t get their degree. They don’t provide the leadership to the younger players that they should. Your seniors have an obligation to teach the younger players. Unless there’s a hardship, you should not leave early.”
And yet Bettis made the dream deferred work just the way Holtz intended — getting the degree and leading all the way.
That is, once he eventually made up his mind that it was the way he wanted to experience being a senior at Notre Dame.
“I think people were probably surprised at the amount of accessibility that there has been,” he said, “But my thing was, I'll never do it again. So let me provide all of the access as much as I can. Because if I can pay it forward and provide any kind of information that's going to help, that's what I want to do.
“This is a program that I love. So, it's responsible for giving me the opportunity to get to where I was able to get. Had I not played here, had not had the success here, I wouldn't be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
“So, when I look at this experience, it was an incredible experience, and it's one that I'm thankful for. So coming back here, I'm grateful, you know, and I have an opportunity to show how grateful I have been.”
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