‘Rudy’ brings his story to Valley

Ruettiger is the man the movie was all about at Notre Dame.

By PETE MOLLICA

VINDICATOR SPORTS STAFF

YOUNGSTOWN — He was 5-feet-nothing and 100-and-nothing and he hung in there with the best football players in the land for two seasons.

Rudy Ruettiger, who’s story inspired the movie “Rudy,” visited the area this weekend and took part in the Edward J. DeBartolo Sr. Memorial Scholarship Foundation dinner and golf outing.

Ruettiger is still 5-feet nothing, but weighs a little more than that famed 100-and-nothing,

Back in the 1970s, Ruettiger walked on to the football team at the University of Notre Dame, made the roster and spent two years on the practice squad until finally getting into a game, the last game of the season his senior year, which was the highlight of the actual movie.

Tough time at first

As successful as the movie was — it is still running on HBO — it took some persistence from Ruettiger to get it off the ground.

“In 1986 I actually made a contact in Hollywood to introduce the concept of the movie,” he said.

“Their first impression was that sports movies just don’t make it, but you have a very good story,” he added. “I thought that Rocky was a sports movie and it did pretty good so I just kept talking to different people.

“Finally I met and talked with somebody who was interested and in 1992 the movie was finally shot and put into distribution in 1993.”

Ruettiger said the movie was pretty accurate, for the most part.

“When you make a movie a lot of things have to be shortened so that it can be produced, but the journey of the movie was very true; we kept that very close,” he said.

What he’s doing now

Ruettiger, who now lives in Las Vegas, owns a beverage company and a mortgage company, does speaking engagements and also dabbles in real estate.

He said that the experience at Notre Dame was a great one, but he enjoys it now more than he did then.

“It’s a great experience now, because I’m not dealing with the practices and the books,” he said. “I love it now, but it was still a great experience.”

Ruettiger says that he still goes back to Notre Dame at least a couple times a year.

“I go back and meet some old friends and relive some old memories.”