LEMONT, Ill. — Before there was Rudy, there was Peter.

And even something as simple as the circumstances that led to how he got his first name hint at how compelling his life narrative would have been in movie form had Peter Schivarelli not elected to push the idea away roughly five years before Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger said yes.

Michael “Ike” Schivarelli was in jail when the now 80-year-old longtime manager of the band Chicago came bounding into the world. So, Peter’s grandma suggested the baby be named after an uncle, Peter, who went missing while serving in the military and was feared dead at the time, and who just happened to love Notre Dame football.

Which Ike Schivarelli, the more natural namesake, decidedly did not. Or ever tolerate. Or the education his already street-savvy son eventually got with it. Or the dreams that seemed to be baked into the Notre Dame football walk-on experience.

For Peter Schivarelli, for Ruettiger. For seemingly every player who walked in those shoes since. Like former walk-on Luke Talich, a junior from Wyoming who’s competing for a starting spot at safety this spring and the leading tackler in last Saturday’s 94th Blue-Gold Game.

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“My father’s reaction when I applied to Notre Dame as a 21-year-old, ’cause Ara Parseghian wouldn’t give up on me or that idea?” Peter mused. “‘You know, there's something a matter with you.’ But you know, he came up the real hard way. He was in an orphanage. So, everything with him was related to the bare minimum.

“And when I did get notified that I was in, in the summer [of 1967], I was making all the plans and he said, ‘Well, I'm going to tell you right now, don't depend on me. I wouldn't send 10 cents.’ And when I moved away, he said, ‘Don’t come home, because you don’t have one no more.’

“He had no vision.”

And today Peter Schivarelli has no regrets, because the Chicago native did have vision. And because he did, everything changed — for him and for so many lives that he’s touched since he took his leap of faith.

Despite an incredibly persistent, “Pay It Forward” lifestyle in his decades since graduating from Notre Dame in 1971, Schivarelli’s initial decision to keep his life from being turned into a script and his perpetual humility since that time has kept his story, his message, his legacy more muted than mainstream.

And yet suddenly, it’s more relevant than ever.

As the college sports model evolves — some would use a verb suggesting the opposite — at seismic and dizzying pace and proportions, the college football walk-on may become an endangered species.

Or non-existent all together.

The concept, and those willing to pay their own way to bet on themselves, have been living in a gray area since federal court judge Claudia Wilken last October preliminarily approved a settlement in the landmark case House v. NCAA.

On April 7 — in an Oakland, Calif., courtroom — the 75-year-old Wilken had the opportunity to finalize that initial OK or reverse herself on a case that will certainly lead to more litigation but, nonetheless, provides a green light for revenue sharing and roster limits among the other parts of the college sports model that seemed surreal just a few years ago.

She listened to hours of testimony that day, a good chunk of which were from those advocating to keep roster limits off the table and keep the walk-on concept alive.

And maybe it worked and maybe it did not. Wilken agreed she would give her final approval to the settlement — but ONLY if changes were made in two areas, one of which was providing a phase-in period for implementing new roster limits or “grandfathering in” current athletes already on rosters.

Attorneys were to report back to Wilken on Monday, April 14, to determine if the changes could eventually be made, but the judge granted them more time if needed. And in the interim, both sides’ resistance to complying with the ordered change grew. And hope flailed.

Which almost sounds like a new best-case scenario being more like a delay to the obsolescence or, minimally, a severe reduction of the college football walk-on rather than a reversal. Perhaps.

Schivarelli was back in South Bend last week, and took in the Blue-Gold Game at Notre Dame Stadium on Saturday, watching walk-ons and scholarship players alike put on a vanilla-schemed preview of what the national runners-up in 2024 might look like in 2025.

“That would be wrong if they went away,” Schivarelli said of the ND walk-on tradition a few weeks ago, back home between legs of a Chicago band tour when he first learned of the new tenuous status for football walk-ons. “Notre Dame changed my whole life. And without the walk-on football thing — which I didn’t even know what it was at first — there was no Notre Dame for me. No Ara. None of the so many people who changed me.

“I mean, the neighborhood I came from in Chicago. Did you ever see the movie Casino? In Casino, every guy that was in there, I grew up with. And we used to sleep at each other's houses. We were all buddies. Their lifestyle, in some ways, was way out there. In some ways it was all we knew. But it was just a thing where I didn't see any kind of future.

“And then suddenly I had one.”

Roughly six decades after enrolling at Notre Dame — almost being dragged on rather than walking on — Schivarelli is sitting in a favorite restaurant of his, Rosebud in Lemont, Ill., when he’s asked how his life would be different if the college football walk-on WOULDN’T have existed when he joined the 1967 Irish team, the fall after they won their first of two titles under the late coach Ara Parseghian, whom he calls his second father.

As he gropes for the right words to ponder that hypothetical, it’s clear it’s not just his life trajectory that would have been different. In the moment and over time.

The more tangible proof of that has been the giving back Schivarelli has done in his years since graduation, and still does. But the more nuanced and most compelling part of it is how the walk-on experience itself unfolded for the undersized/overdelivering defensive tackle and how that set the template for what would have been missed had he taken an easier path.

Schivarelli’s recounting of key moments in the journey best shine the light on both what he and the world around him gained by the Notre Dame walk-on experience.

Caught in the aperture intermittently along the way is the seismic impact Ara Parseghian had even in the most subtle moments.

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Schivarelli’s transition to Notre Dame had its awkward “culture shock” moments early on for both himself and the people he encountered, but nothing they couldn’t navigate and laugh about later.

All-American defensive lineman Mike McCoy, who became best friends with Schivarelli over the span of their careers and beyond, was initially taken aback by Schivarelli’s choice of clothes, for instance.

“So, I wore, like, what would be good dress clothes in the neighborhood, like Italian knit sweaters,” Schivarelli said. “I had a black thing going on — with black pants. McCoy said, ‘and here's this guy, everything, black — black shoes, black socks.’ He said. ‘I didn't ask him, but I bet he even had black underwear.’”

Perhaps the most seamless transition was in the classroom — until it wasn’t. And it was a struggle Schivarelli didn’t see coming. That’s largely because he believed his high school — Chicago St. Ignatius — was more academically challenging than Notre Dame.

And yes, Ike Schivarelli, Peter’s father, didn’t see the value of that experience either, so Peter paid his own way there too, with the part-time jobs he worked around school.

At Notre Dame, Schivarelli paid his tuition in person and in cash — much to the shock of those expecting a check from his parents. Some of the $1,250 a semester he presented for payment — as a wad of bills with a rubber band wrapped around it — came from jobs he worked between terms and his successful hot dog stand business, and some came from money he earned selling merchandise out of the trunk of his car.

So, a business major?

“Communications Arts,” he said proudly. “That major was basically advertising and public relations. But the one thing that attracted me to it, they had special speech courses. And I had a phobia. I couldn't talk. Like, if there was, say, three people, I'd be sitting there. I wouldn't say anything.

“And I took it to kind of learn how to become, maybe a little bit of — to be able to talk or become a speaker. And I remember the first day of class, the professor's up there explaining what we're going to do. And he said, ‘The last five minutes of every class, I'm going to call on several students to come up for a few minutes and give a talk.’

“So, now it's near the end. He looks at his watch, and he was going to pick someone, so I put my head down. First thing he did when he saw me, he picked me. And I said, ‘Well, no, I'm not quite ready.’

“He said, ‘That's OK. Just come up.’ And I stood there. I didn't know what to say. I was like frozen. He goes, ‘Well, just say your name, where you're from.’

“And I talked just a little bit, but I was like, I mean, I was sweating. I was like a nervous wreck. So, now we leave after that class, and I'm saying, ‘I gotta get out of here. I can't, I can't do this.’ And so, then I said, ‘Well, there's 30 kids in the room. By the time they go around, half the semester will be over.’ So I said, ‘OK, I'm just going to stay.’

“The next class, he said, ‘OK, we're going to give a speech at the end.’ He goes,’ Peter, you get —’ I said, ‘No, sir. I spoke last time.’ And he says, ‘No, no, that's OK. Come up.’ So, I got up, and the same thing. I was a nervous wreck. And I said, ‘I don't know what to talk about.’ He goes, well you’re on the football team, aren't you?’ I said, ‘Yes.’

“He goes, ‘Talk about what you did at practice.’ And so, that kind of started how that week [went], we're [practicing] playing for Southern Cal, and here's what we're doing.’ And it made it easy for me to talk about something I [was familiar with].

“I felt like maybe they wanted something, like, from some kind of scientist or something. But he just wanted you to get in the thing [habit] of speaking. And it was a great help for me.”

And eventually tie in to perhaps the biggest of several full-circle moments with Parseghian later in life.

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Without Parsghian’s persistence, there wouldn’t have been a walk-on experience for Schivarelli. And maybe if there’s no Schivarelli, Notre Dame might not have ever ended its self-imposed 45-year bowl ban at the end of the 1969 regular season, either.

Or at least perpetuated it another year or so.

Notre Dame president Theodore M. Hesburgh approved the end of the bowl ban, incentivized by a long list of considerations that included an altered academic calendar, a $340,000 bowl payout and the Associated Press changing its timeline in awarding national titles until after the bowls, and not before them.

Notre Dame was invited in November of 1969 to play Texas in the Cotton Bowl in Dallas on Jan. 1, 1970 — at the end of Schivarell’s junior season. The Irish went into the game ranked ninth with a 7-1-1 record. The Longhorns were unbeaten and No. 1.

And yet …

“A lot of people didn't want to go,” Schivarelli recalled. “A lot of the kids on the team that weren't going to play. Like, say, for me, for example, I couldn't wait. The thought of going to a bowl game, like the Cotton Bowl, was like a lifetime dream come true.

“But there were a lot of guys who weren't going to play. They didn't want to be gone for that three weeks, practicing and be away from home and everything. So, somehow it got started where they were complaining, and then someone brought up, we should have a vote.

“And so, this thing started, and it was getting more and more serious. And I think Ara was a little concerned. I remember one day after a practice, we're walking out, and he's walking with me. And he goes, ‘I got to talk to you. There's going to be a vote about going to the bowl game, because it'll be the first time they were going back in 45 years, or whatever it was, from the last time they went.’ And he goes, ‘How do you feel about that?’

“I go, ‘Coach, I really want to go to the bowl game.’ And he goes, ‘Well, so do I. What I'm going to do is I'm going to let the players vote. I want to be fair with them. However, I'm going to make sure YOU count the votes.’ And I said, ‘Well, OK.’

“And he goes, ‘Just remember, count them like you do in Chicago.’”

And did he?

“Well, put it this way, I didn't really count them,” Schivarelli said. “I just said there was more who wanted to go to the game. I didn't open up every vote and get the names, because, you know. And then the funny part was, they cut down how many people could go to that first bowl game.

“And it turned out I was one of the guys cut, and I couldn't go to the game. But they wanted to take me. They paid for your hotel and your airfare and everything, but they can only put so many guys on the field, and several had to go sit in the stands. I said, ‘Forget it. I'll stay home and watch on TV.’”

Not bitter, but hopeful another opportunity would present itself. The Longhorns eked out a 24-17 victory late to win the national championship. And the Irish, in losing to a team that seemed invincible, moved up four spots in the final AP poll to No. 5.

Beyond a thank-you letter Schivarelli received from Parseghian long after their playing/coaching days had passed, Schivarelli’s favorite Notre Dame memento is a picture of Schivarelli helping carry Ara off the field following one of the great big-game upsets in college football history.

Yes, back in the Cotton Bowl. Yes, against the Texas team that had beaten them the year before to win the national title, now sporting a 30-game win streak and the No. 1 ranking.

Final score on Jan. 1, 1971: No. 6 Notre Dame 24, No. 1 Texas 11.

That picture would later be made into a statue dedicated in 2007 and placed outside Notre Dame Stadium’s Gate B, that after seven years of Schivarelli battling policy, politics and pettiness to get the OK to put the concept and the resources to bring it to life in the hands of sculptor Jerry McKenna.

And it took just one week for the men who played for and coached with Parseghian to raise the roughly $400,000 to foot the bill for it.

“Ara said, ‘Peter, don't waste your time,’” Schivarelli recalled during the seven-year tug-of-war with administrators. “I said, ‘Coach, you know what? You did more than be a great coach. You're saving kids’ lives.”

And if he didn’t outright save Schivarelli’s, Parseghian certainly enhanced it — even when things didn’t seem, in the moment, to go according to plan.

After being cut from the travel squad for ND’s first bowl game in 45 years, Schivarelli had a strategy to not let it happen again. It wasn’t exactly a new formula, but the continuation of one he had concocted since walking on in the fall of 1967.

“They could only dress so many players for any game,” Schivarelli said. “And so for me to get to dress for the games, I had to really work hard in practice. So, the left side of our line were two All-Americans — Jim Reilly, who was the strongest guy on the team at tackle, and Larry DiNardo, the guard. And so, I would play against them every practice.

“In fact, there were times in practice Ara would say, ‘What the hell? Why isn't someone else ever playing against these guys? Why is it always Pete?’ And Ara asked me afterwards, he goes, ‘What the hell?’ And I go, ‘Coach, I want to do it. I want to make sure. I want to be able to dress every weekend.

“If I'm not in there practicing hard when the guys who handle what they call the prep team, that’s not going to happen. And it turns out I got to dress just about every week.”

And this time he got to for the Cotton Bowl at the end of the 1970 season.

Notre Dame actually had touched the No. 1 spot in the AP poll in November of that year, but the Irish slid to No. 4 after back-to-back close calls against Georgia Tech and LSU, and then a tumble to No. 6 after losing 38-28 to USC in the regular-season finale.

Yet thanks in large part to Parseghian’s “mirror defense” concept on that side of the ball and quarterback Joe Theismann’s first-half offensive pyrotechnics, the ND-Texas game on Jan. 1 was a blowout by halftime, leading the coach to have an opportunity to work even his deepest reserves into the lineup late in the game.

“During the regular season, Ara always liked me to stand next to him,” Schivarelli said.

And that’s where Schivarelli was in the Cotton Bowl as the fourth quarter wound down, with no sign that Texas had the octane for a late comeback.

With a couple of minutes left, assistant coach George Kelly got Parseghian’s attention and pointed at Schivarelli as a reminder to let No. 68 have his moment.

“So, now I'm all excited,” Schivarelli said. “And Ara said, ‘OK, they haven't lost for over three years. I don't want to look like I'm just throwing everyone in the game. As soon as there's a timeout, you go in.’

“So now I'm hoping there's a timeout, and the clock is running and it's down to just about right around a minute, and the referee wanted to move the ball to the hashmark. I thought it was a timeout, and I went to run.

“Ara had his play sheet in his hand, but he had his other hand on my shoulder pad. He pulled me back. He said, ‘No, they're just moving the ball. It's not a timeout.’ And I remember the clock started running, and I said, ‘I'm never going to get in.’

And he was right. And devastated.

But not forever.

“Now, if I would have gotten in that game for the last 50 seconds or so. I would have never been in the statue,” Schivarelli said. “I mean, that picture turned out to be because we picked him up at the end of the game. And I always use that to say, ‘Everything happens for the best.’ Yeah, I would have got in, I would have played the 50 seconds in the game. And believe me, that picture became like, I just couldn't believe how famous.

“Being in the game would have been fun, but it was 50 seconds. What happened instead will last forever.”

Notre Dame, meanwhile, jumped to No. 2 in the final AP poll, garnering 8 first-place votes, with Nebraska winning the national title, jumping to the top spot from No. 3.

The walk-on experience ended that day in Dallas for Schivarelli, but his association with Parseghian only grew stronger, and his love affair with Irish football continues today.

Five decades after his last game in uniform, Schivarelli became fascinated with a defensive coordinator hire that head coach Brian Kelly made in January of 2021 named Marcus Freeman.

And the more he got to know Freeman, the more the young coach reminded him of Parseghian.

Not from a résumé standpoint, but from a leadership standpoint, from an authenticity standpoint.

“I often wonder if Ara coached today, like he kept his whole staff together and maybe I’m being naive,” Schivarelli said. “But I just don’t see players wanting to leave the way they do now. The reason I’ve got to believe that is because Marcus is the same kind of guy. And I just thought he had all the potential in the world if someone gave him a chance to be a head coach.”

At the end of November in 2021, Kelly was eating deviled eggs, barbecue shrimp and burnt ends at the home of then-wide receiver commit Tobias Merriweather in Vancouver, Wash., when he excused himself to take a 15-minute phone call outside and clandestinely agreed to take the head coaching job at LSU.

Then went back in and finished his supper — and seconds and thirds on the burnt ends — with his poker face intact. And let those sitting at the table with him — the Merriweather family as well as Irish assistant coaches Brian Polian, Tommy Rees and Del Alexander — to find out later via social media posts.

As Notre Dame later sifted through its successor options, Schivarelli suggested the right guy to follow the school’s new all-time leader in coaching wins was a guy who didn’t have any wins — Freeman. And he told then-president Rev. John I. Jenkins so.

“I was on Father Jenkins’ advisory board for athletics, too,” Schivarelli said. “Not that he was going to listen to me entirely, but I just wanted him to know I felt really good about Marcus. He didn’t say, ‘Oh yeah, I’m going to take your advice,’ but he said, ‘OK, we’ll see how everything goes.’ And then ultimately, they did pick him.”

And three seasons later, Freeman had Notre Dame playing for a national championship, and knocking off Indiana and bluebloods Georgia and Penn State on the road to the title game on Jan. 20.

The Irish came up short in Atlanta, 34-23, to Freeman’s alma mater, Ohio State. But Jenkins, now the president emeritus, made a point to run into Schivarelli at the game.

“He wanted to tell me he remembered our conversation,” Schivarelli said. “And he wanted to tell me, ‘You were right.’”

Roughly five decades after Peter Schivarelli pondered walking away from the Notre Dame walk-on experience over a speech class that required him to stride through a wall of fear, came another request for a speech.

This one came from Parseghian before he passed away at the age of 94 on Aug. 2, 2017. The coaching icon and father figure wanted Schivarelli to be one of the speakers when the time came to celebrate his life, backed up by the surviving members of his family.

The hour-long tribute a few days later was staged at Purcell Pavilion on campus, across the street from Notre Dame Stadium, with Shivarelli’s allotted window to summarize who Parseghian was, through the former walk-on’s eyes, all of six minutes.

The ND speech teacher had given Schivarelli the gift to get beyond his phobia so many years before, but didn’t include instructions on how to deliver it with an aching heart.

“I had to practice it a thousand times,” Schivarelli said, “because I was trying to say it, and I almost broke down over and over.”

And that was actually easier than the time constraint. How do you boil down a life so profoundly lived into roughly the same time frame it takes for Schivarelli’s Chicago band to belt out their hit “Beginnings”?

And speaking of beginnings, where would you even start?

Schivarelli, after thanking the members of the Parseghian family for letting him be a part of the tribute, started by launching into how he became a walk-on at Ara’s insistence and persistence.

Schivarelli had graduated from St. Ignatius High in 1963 and started visiting childhood friend and Irish offensive guard Joe Marsico of Fenwick High at Notre Dame regularly in the fall of 1964 on home game weekends at Notre Dame. And he’d routinely sleep on the floor in the same room with Marsico and his roommate, eventual All-American Alan Page.

And even that had to be boiled down for the speech. The following is a fuller version of how it came to be:

“I used to come early and go to practices,” Schivarelli said. “And in the beginning, Ara, a couple of times I saw Ara look at me. Never said nothing. And after about the fourth time that he saw me, he asked, you know, ‘Who is this guy?’ And Joe and Alan said, ‘Oh, he's a friend of ours from Chicago.’

“So, the next time I was there, he stops and he comes over. Now, Ara never stopped to talk. He’s just all business. So, everyone's wondering, ‘Who the hell is this guy that Ara’s going over to talk to?’ And he came up and he goes, ‘You're Peter.’ I said, ‘Yes’

“‘How come you're not in school? I said, ‘Well, coach, you know, I’ve got a real good job with the city.’ And now I'm civil service. And I had my first hot dog stand. I said, ‘And I’ve got a business.’ And he said, ‘Never mind. Get yourself a degree.’

“And I said, ‘OK.’ I didn't know what to say. I was so surprised that he came up. So, later in the year he'd be walking in, and I'd be at a practice on a Friday afternoon, and he'd shake his head, you know. Then the next year, he came up to me and said, ‘You're not going to go to college?’

“I said, ‘Coach, honestly, you know, I’m doing good. I'm happy.’ And so, the third year, he comes up, and he goes, ‘You know, Peter, really, it bothers me. You really have got to get yourself a degree.’ And I said, ‘Coach, I'll be honest, the only place I ever wanted to come was here.’ I said, ‘I never even went to Purdue or Indiana or any of those places that had some questionnaires and invited me to come and all that.’

“And he goes, ‘Well, then if you want to come here so bad, go register.’ And he said, ‘You went to a good high school.’ He said, ‘If you get in, you could come in and be a walk-on.’ And I said, ‘Coach, I'm sorry, what? I don't know. What's a walk-on?’ I never even heard the term.

“So what wound up happening when I said, ‘Coach, I don't understand. What’s a walk-on do?’ He says, ‘You try out for the team, and [if] you make it, you're with us. And I said, ‘On the Notre Dame team?’ He said, ‘Yeah.’

“And I said, ‘You'd be the coach? He goes, ‘Yes, of course.’ And I said, ‘Oh OK.’ So, I went home, and the first thing I did was apply. I got all the information, and I applied to come to Notre Dame.”

And what followed would have made for a great movie, and the reason why Schivarelli pushed that notion away was he was afraid some of the details of where he came from would hurt Notre Dame in such a bright light and in such detail.

“Between my father, problems that he had, my uncle, and then all these guys I grew up with,” Schivarelli reflected. “So, I kind of backed out of it. And then several years later — I mean, I loved the Rudy movie, but, my thing was there was just too much that I felt would hurt Notre Dame, especially with the guys that I was close with.”

But Peter Schivarelli himself wasn’t a contradiction. Notre Dame just brought out the best in what was already there.

The man whose checks have revived and/or brought others’ dreams to life, including Parseghian’s most cherished cause — fighting Niemann-Pick Type C disease — used to buy bottles of milk in grammar school for his friends who couldn’t afford it, using money he made with his paper routes.

“But growing up there were people all around you, and a lot of them who had made bad choices,” Schivarelli said. “My dad knew that and wanted to make sure I got the message. The guys that were around, were notorious kind of guys. And he said, ‘One day, lock yourself in the bathroom for about three years.’

“I said, ‘For what?’ He goes, ‘Because it's way nicer than what prison is.’ He said, ‘So, you want to be around those kinds of guys? Just picture living in that bathroom for about three years.’ Even though I never did nothing wrong, it really sunk into my head.”

Ike Schivarelli was locked up for trying to steal gas-rationing stamps at the Standard Oil Building in Chicago during World War II. A security guard intercepted Ike as he was trying to leave the building and began questioning him.

“The guy said, ‘What's in your briefcase?’” Peter related. “So, my dad opened it. And when the guy looked down, my dad hit him. The guy spun around, went down. My dad picked it up and was running.

“The guy shot him, hit him twice, right in the same arm, in the left arm, both bullets. One was right by the elbow, one, whatever. And actually, his left arm didn't have a lot of movement, but it was more powerful than his right.

“Between my uncle, my dad, my mother, my grandmother, it was just just basic experiences that you encountered and you just kind of learned. And actually, in a lot of ways, there's no better way to learn than to be on the street, because there's no rules. There's no nothing.

“I remember walking to grammar school. And as I went by the first corner, I saw legs sticking up out of the sewer. And I went over to look, and there's a guy in the sewer. Well, he was a guy that came in the neighborhood to sell drugs, and they killed him.

“So, you learned. You knew what you should do or what you shouldn’t. No one came around and lectured. But you knew what was right and what was wrong.”

And what Ike Schivarelli never acknowledged — coming to one game and being miserable, coming to Peter’s graduation because Peter’s mom, Mary Ann, made him come — Parseghian reinforced over and over.

“He had a bigger influence on me than even my own father,” Schivarelli said in wrapping up his six-minute tribute. “And I believe no one will miss him more than I do.”

Peter, though, does miss his father, Ike, despite his imperfections.

There was one Christmas where Ike took some time away from his job with the city’s asphalt department to do a favor for a man who needed some patchwork done.

“He told my father, ‘Come in. I'll give you some stuff for your kid or something,’” Peter recounted. “So, you know, usually my father was looking more for money than a gift for me. But anyway, he went and he patched it.

“The guy brought him in, and he gave him a set of trains, one just big enough to go around the Christmas tree, right? And I remember, that's the only thing I remember actually doing with my dad, was putting that little train thing together.”

And today, in the basement of the house Schiavelli owns on Angela Boulevard near Notre Dame Avenue near campus is a sprawling train set with remarkably elaborate functionality and detail that still brings a smile to his face.

Even now.

Peter Schivarelli isn’t moved to ponder whether Ike is looking on from some ethereal place and finally proud of him — or not.

That’s not what drives him. Causes do. And the prized memento from Parseghian is all about the work Schivarelli did for the Ara Parseghian Medical Research Fund over the years, with a significant breakthrough coming last fall.

In September the FDA announced the first approved treatment for Niemann-Pick Type C Disease, which claimed the lives of three of Parseghian’s grandchildren, at ages 10, 10 and 16, and all of whom were diagnosed with NPC in 1994.

“We’re hoping in about two years we’ll have this in clinical trials,” Cindy Parseghian, the children’s mother, said in an October interview. “And from then on, it’ll move toward a cure.”

Schivarelli pledges to be right in the thick of that fight.

But he also has a new passion, fighting for the football walk-on.

Ever since he learned two months ago how college sports’ monumental changes might unintentionally but decisively cannibalize one of the aspects of college athletics that make us stay in love with it despite a cultural shift, he’s been engaged.

And enraged and heartbroken and looking for answers and trying to find out how he can help.

Again, Judge Claudia Wilken would minimally like to see the current walk-ons grandfathered into a gradual move toward achieving the new scholarship limits, but neither side in the House v. NCAA settlement seems to be willing to go along with that.

Schivarelli last week met with Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua to voice his concerns in hopes that the Irish administrator could bring some clout to the conversation.

“It’s bad enough they want to phase out the walk-ons,” Schivarelli said from the house near the ND campus, just ahead of the Blue-Gold Game. “But to do it cold turkey, you can’t do that. For those players that have been working for three years, and then to take it away in their last year?

“If that had happened to me, I’d rather be dead. I’m serious, I’d rather be dead. That’s how much that experience meant to me and still does.”

Schivarelli, though, knows that the walk-on experience doesn’t guarantee a happily-ever-after. What it does is open the mind and the soul to what’s possible. Schivarelli just happened to maximize it.

And leave a legacy, not just from the many causes and projects that have his generosity lathered all over them, but more from the message he lives his life by.

Dream Big.

He’s not about to let this dream die without a fight.

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