[From Wikipedia:] “Rudy is a 1993 American  film directed by David Anspaugh. It is an account of the life of Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger, who harbored dreams of playing football at the University of Notre Dame despite significant obstacles. It was the first film that the Notre Dame administration allowed to be shot on campus since Knute Rockne, All American in 1940.”

I happened to catch the climatic end to the ultimate underdog story this morning. You can’t help but get a lump in your throat when the first teamers walk into Coach Devine’s office to give up their jersey so Rudy can dress for Saturday’s game. Rudy makes the call to his friend when he finds out he going to “dress” for the game, “I’ve never asked anything of you, but I want you to be there Saturday!” His parents and brother show up to the stadium, his best friend, the embittered groundskeeper.

The game clock is winding down and there is little time left for Rudy to get in the game (so that his name will show up in the record books). The slow chant builds up and soon the entire stadium is chanting, “Rudy! Rudy!” The quarterback goes against the coach’s orders and calls a trick play so the offense can score and defensive Rudy can be put on the field. Rudy runs down the field on the ensuing kickoff, his name forever sealed now in Notre Dame records. He yells to the sidelines, “What do I do? What do I do?” The defensive coordinator tells him to stay in for the last play, when he sacks the Georgia Tech quarterback on the last play!

The final gun sounds and the crowd goes crazy! The final credits say no player has ever been carried off the hallowed Notre Dame field since that great moment in 1975. What a film. The photo I used is of the real Rudy. I contemplated using a glossy Hollywood eye catcher from the film, when I realized that would miss the whole point. Sean Astin who played Rudy looks to be a great guy. But as the son of celebrities Patty Duke and John Astin, he was born on 3rd base. The story of triumph is Ruettiger.

What the real Ruettiger accomplished was incredible. Humble roots, dyslexia, small, slow, the only thing he did have was heart. Its also an incredibly sad film. The reality is much of what he did then would be impossible now for a young person to accomplish. In those day you actually could “work your way through college”. Kids today would have a hard time believing that. College costs today are a “life debt” that affect the graduate’s decisions for decades. Athletics has now dropped all pretense of being anything other than a business. Recent rulings now allow the athlete to at least profit off of his “name and image“. Universities and armies of coaches have done that for years.

A coach today making $4 million a year would never go out on a limb for a kid. The selfish nature of people today would look at exalting someone by carrying them off the field as unthinkable. But that $4 million dollars? That’s not BS. A very, very, mediocre coach at Iowa has been making that going back at least 15 years. “March Madness”, the college basketball extravaganza? Guess what that contract is worth to CBS? In its most recent contract CBS paid the NCAA $10.8 billion dollars.

And we’re supposed to believe in the sanctity of “student athletics”? I was getting ready to post this when I realized I couldn’t “bring it home”. I was having a hard time figuring out what my major point was. Everything in America has been turned into such big business. The odds have been so stacked against the individual. Horatio Alger is dead and buried. The ‘American dream’ is now a nightmare. I think an outgrowth of that is the traction flat-out socialists are having in the 2020 presidential race. I don’t think people could explain it, but they know something is wrong in America.

Corporatism. That’s the word they’re looking for. Life is a series of pendulum swings. It has swung too long in favor of business (perhaps always). I think people realize this even if they couldn’t explain it. What Bernie and Elizabeth Warren are saying resonates with them. Socialism is of course Fool’s Gold, its a shiny lure with a hook in it they won’t feel until they bite down. At least we have a “dream”. Mexicans don’t, they have to come here for one. Brit’s don’t. Read their classics sometime. In the 1800s when old Horatio was writing his tales of rags to riches, British literature was consistently filled with the poor, deserving heroine who makes out when a rich relative assumes room temperature.

In the 1980’s and 1990’s there was a series of chess matches between the titans of the day and versions of IBM’s “Big Blue” supercomputer. For the longest time humans always proved master of the machine. Sometime around 2000 that was no longer the case. We no longer are in charge of our own destiny, we are simply along for the ride.