WATCH: Jerome Bettis gives fiery speech to Notre Dame football team
Former Notre Dame running back Jerome Bettis is back in South Bend to finish his degree, and in between his studies the NFL Hall of Famer stopped by to visit with the Irish football team on Tuesday.
“You gotta want it, and you gotta want the guy next to you to want it, and if he doesn’t, you gotta push him,” Bettis told the players. “That’s who we are. That’s why it’s called a teammate. That’s your teammate, so you want the best for him just like you want the best for yourself. So you gotta push him, and this is when it happens, guys.
“This is when you come together, when nobody’s watching and when nobody sees the effort that you’re putting in. When you decide to do it here, that’s when it will show up on the scoreboard.”
Bettis finished his Notre Dame career with 337 carries for 1,912 yards (5.7 yards per rush) and 27 rushing touchdowns, plus had 32 receptions for 429 yards and six scores. He was the No. 10 overall pick in the 1993 NFL Draft.
His NFL career was split between two franchises and was even more impressive. The Detroit native spent 1993-95 with the then-St. Louis Rams and moved to the Pittsburgh Steelers from 1996-2005.
While in Pittsburgh the Detroit native won a Super Bowl, was named into the Steelers’ Hall of Honor, and won the Walter Peyton Man of the Year Award in 2001.
Bettis’ son diving into recruiting
Bettis has a son, Jerome Jr., who is a member of the class of 2025 and a very promising athlete. Since he is just a freshman at Atlanta Westmister, he is just starting to get into recruiting.
The wide receiver and safety is 6-foot-2 and 175 pounds according to his newly made Twitter account. On Tuesday, the younger Bettis announced he would be visiting LSU on April 16.
The younger Bettis has a notable good friend out of the Atlanta area in 2023 Notre Dame running back target Justice Haynes. Haynes attends Atlanta Blessed Trinity Catholic, and is the No. 4 running back and No. 45 player nationally. He is a heavy Georgia lean according to On3’s Recruiting Prediction Machine. Haynes and Bettis visited Notre Dame together last fall.
There is obviously a long way to go in Bettis’ recruitment, but it is certainly an interesting storyline set to play out over the next few years.
