‘An opportunity to show how grateful I am’: How Jerome Bettis found great reward in his delayed senior year at Notre Dame

Jerome Bettis’ latest celebrity appearance around Notre Dame’s campus this spring might be the starkest contrast to his initial plan for the final semester of college he deferred 29 years.

One late April morning, Bettis donned a “Ghostbusters” costume with Peyton and Eli Manning as part of a scene for an upcoming “Peyton’s Places” episode. The three NFL legends with a combined five Super Bowl rings drew a student crowd several rows deep as they shot the scenes on Notre Dame’s campus. Eli tweeted a picture of all three in full “Ghostbusters” garb with no context except a promise to explain it later.

What a wonderfully absurd chapter to add to a senior year for the ages. Bettis has wrung every ounce of enjoyment out of a four-month stop in South Bend to finish the degree in business he paused in 1993 to pursue an NFL career.

It is, though, decidedly not what Bettis envisioned when he resumed courses Jan. 10, nearly three decades after the last time he squeezed himself into a desk in a Notre Dame classroom. He did not come back to school to make up for the victory lap he never took as an Irish football player.

Instead, the Hall of Fame running back and former Notre Dame star wanted to go as incognito as possible.

I’ll explain later! pic.twitter.com/dFSQxPeSu7

— Eli Manning (@EliManning) April 29, 2022

Wishful thinking for a 50-year-old student with a widely known name who still closely resembles the 255-pound bowling ball he was on the field? Absolutely. But it was Bettis’ goal nonetheless.

His very first class blew it up.

“It’s so funny because when I first got here, I said to myself I’m going to stay out of the way, take classes, hopefully just blend in,” Bettis said last month. “That was the plan. The first class I go to, I sat in the front row, nobody could see me, everybody’s looking at the professor and I’m in the corner thinking, ‘Perfect.’ Hat down, I’m good.

“The first professor in the first class says, ‘We’re going to go around, tell me your name, where you’re from and a little bit about you.’ I’m like, ‘S—, I’m not going to get by.’”

Bettis reluctantly stated his name. He revealed he played in the NFL and came back to finish his degree. Word of his presence leaked out and reached Marcus Freeman’s office within hours.

“The same day, Coach Freeman texts me and says, ‘I heard you’re on campus,’” Bettis said. “‘Give me a call. Come by.’

“I knew from the first day I was done.”

That evening, Bettis tweeted a video letting the world know he was back. In the months since, he has become a sounding board for Freeman and Notre Dame players, a visible student body presence and a willing helping hand.

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Three weeks into the semester, he was riling up the basketball student section before a Jan. 31 game against Duke. He attended the Bengal Bouts. He crashed a press conference and spoke to advanced MBA students. He emceed the Blue-Gold Game draft, posing for a picture with every player who was selected. He took a spring break trip to Cabo San Lucas. All while juggling 400-level business classes.

Bettis is not here to form transactional relationships, go through the motions to fulfill a promise and burn rubber out of town after he walks at graduation this month. Why spend nearly four months apart from his family and cram for exams if so? He owns several businesses and earned about $35 million in his NFL career. He doesn’t need one more semester of college.

The impetus for coming back was a promise to his mother when he declared for the 1993 NFL Draft. By leaning into his identity, his platform and student life, though, his second stint as a Notre Dame student has rewarded him in ways just as powerful as the first. All he had to do was recognize the moment and his potential impact.

“My thing was, ‘I’ll never do it again, so let me provide all the access as much as I can,’” Bettis said. “If I can pay it forward and provide information that’s going to help, that’s what I want to do. This is a program I love. It’s responsible for giving me the opportunity to get to where I wanted to get to.

“Coming back here, I’m grateful and have an opportunity to show how grateful I am.”

A willing resource

Freeman and Bettis meet weekly, sometimes for 20 minutes and sometimes for two hours. For Bettis, it’s a relationship with his former team he couldn’t form at his home in Atlanta. For Freeman — an apparent learning addict as he navigates his new job — it’s a chance to bounce ideas off a proven winner who knows strong culture when he sees it. He invited Bettis to speak to the team after one winter workout and heard Bettis echo the same themes he has emphasized, namely a culture of player accountability.

“When you hear him say those things, it’s confirmation we’re saying the right things,” Freeman said.

Naturally, Notre Dame’s running backs have gravitated toward Bettis. He met all of them in a chance encounter at Ruth’s Chris Steak House one evening when position coach Deland McCullough took them out for a group dinner. Sophomore-to-be Logan Diggs has confided in him and can call him anytime.

“Seeing what these guys are doing, hearing some of the coaching points, it’s important for me he feels these guys are headed in the right direction,” McCullough said.

To Bettis, senior linebacker JD Bertrand is more than one of the countless football players and recruits he has met this spring. He’s a classmate with a voracious appetite for improving his football craft to the point where he has pulled Bettis aside after class to ask if they can watch film together.

“We’ll duck into a classroom, he’ll pull out his computer, we’ll look at plays and I’ll tell him my take on certain things,” Bettis said. “I’m helping him from the perspective of a running back to a linebacker so he understands what that guy is thinking on the other side.”

This level of connection with the program that helped shape him doesn’t happen if Bettis plays it coy in his introduction and camps out in the corner of his classes all semester. He later learned that group assignments would squash that goal anyway.

Serious studies

Bettis, quite literally the biggest personality in every classroom he occupies, felt alone. Making friends has been no challenge this year. It was probably never too hard. But here he was in class, looking for takers to include him in their group for a project, a 50-year-old trying to infiltrate cliques of college seniors.

“I’m thinking, ‘How in the hell am I going to get in a group without knowing anyone?’” Bettis said. “I’m sitting there like I’m at the ballpark saying, ‘Pick me, pick me!’”

Every class Bettis enrolled in has included a group project. He found a home for all of them and pulled his weight. Turns out, this last semester can be more than sentimental. His classes have more power than merely earning him a piece of paper to hang on a wall in a home already filled with memorabilia.

Among Bettis’ business ventures is a riverfront development in his hometown of Detroit that will take two decades to complete. He has found his Business Foresight class is directly applicable to such long-term projects.

“When you look at it, it’s going to be a 20-year build because it’s three phases,” Bettis said of the project. “That’s one where foresight factors in significantly. When you’re trying to build and developing something and the end development is 15 or 20 years from now, what is the landscape going to look like? This foresight class has given me things to look at and some of the particular issues I could be faced with in 15, 20 years — governmental, societal.”

Maybe that acknowledgement of long-term benefit gave him the energy to stay up past 3 a.m. the night before the class’ midterm in a classic college test-cramming move. Even while bouncing around campus events and posting up at The Gug, Bettis hasn’t strayed from the reason he returned in the first place. He will put a bow on it May 15 at graduation, held at Notre Dame Stadium of all places.

There’s no hiding in the front corner when Bettis strolls across that stage. He will be visible for all to see.

And wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I’m a resource here,” Bettis said. “I’m on campus. Take advantage of that. I tell everyone to do that. They have.”