Jerome Bettis jokes about returning to school at Notre Dame: ‘The idea was much greater than the reality’
Like he had done for his entire football career, Jerome Bettis was dreaming big.
The former Notre Dame running back and Pro Football Hall of Famer returned to his stomping grounds this semester, nearly 30 years after heading to the NFL, to complete his degree.
It wasn’t exactly what he expected.
Earlier this week, Bettis joined the Inside the Garage podcast, which was hosted this week by Irish players Kyle Hamilton, Cam Hart and Conor Ratigan, to detail what it’s like to go back to school. His takes were nothing short of hilarious.
“The idea was much greater than the reality,” Bettis said. “The idea (was) ‘Oh yeah, you come back, it’ll be quick, you’ll get your degree and bam! It’s over.’ But in reality, coming back to the class load, I’m looking at the classes and I’m like ‘What?!’ You look at the syllabus, and you’re like ‘Ohhhhhh!’
“This wasn’t part of the deal!”
Bettis said he sits in the front corner of classes, attempting to be inconspicuous. It was a great plan, until the professors did the typical first-day-of-class-go-around-the-room-and-introduce-yourself exercise.
“Each class they (started with) ‘Tell us your name and something about you!'” Bettis said. “I’m just trying to be under the radar! I was not expecting any of that!”
Cover blown.
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From there, Bettis just leaned into it. It’s not like he couldn’t.
“My fun fact was I’m returning to get my degree after over 25 years being gone and playing in the NFL,” Bettis added. “But what happened was some of the kids started doing some research and then they’re like ‘Oh! Hey!'”
Typically, it’s still his teachers that want the pictures, though.
Why return?
Bettis is enrolled in the Mendoza School of Business at Notre Dame, one of the nation’s top business programs.
The former Irish great already owns a couple of businesses. Bettis Brothers Sand & Gravel is headquartered in Pittsburgh and, according to their website, it became a multi-million dollar corporation within a year of its founding. Bettis is also the director of the Jerome Bettis Bus Stops Here Foundation, a non-profit organization in Western Pennsylvania founded in 1997. Its stated purpose is “to provide inner-city youth with opportunities and resources to become healthy, confident and productive individuals of the society.”
Additionally, Bettis has served as a football studio host, acted, and opened a restaurant, among other ventures. In other words, Bettis has some business experience. So why return to school?
“I know business, but the book philosophy is different,” Bettis said. “For me, it’s been learning terminology, equations. I understand the real-life product, but this (has forced me to) take a step back and learn it in a totally different way.”
Notre Dame then versus Notre Dame now
Bettis played for the Irish from 1990-92, and he was selected by the then-St. Louis Rams with the No. 10 overall selection in the 1993 NFL Draft.
So as you might imagine, the famed Notre Dame campus looks a little different than when Bettis donned a gold helmet and played under the shadow of Touchdown Jesus. What’s the biggest difference he has noticed thus far?
“You didn’t have as many places where you could just hang out,” Bettis said. “LaFortune (Student Center) was there, but you went in and out, grabbed something to eat. It wasn’t a place where you went to hang out.”
There wasn’t much of an athlete-specific or football-specific area either. The Guglielmino Athletics Complex, or “The Gug,” did not open until 2005, and what little space the football team did have was largely in the Joyce Center, per Bettis. Life outside of football largely revolved around the dorms.
“It was locker room, training room, go home,” Bettis said. “School here was much different because you didn’t see a lot of your teammates outside of practice. Everybody was spread out with where they were living.”
The running back also added the scooters lying around campus are a weird change, since he was so used to bikes. His podcast hosts got a kick out of that.
