Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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Mission Accomplished Linebacker Joe Schmidt earns a scholarship and starts a charity I By Dan Murphy t was 5:30 a.m. on the first Friday morning of June at his parents' home in Southern California when Joe Schmidt made his $100,000 phone call. It was a message he had been hoping to deliver for more than a decade. "Hey Dad. What would you say if I could save you this amount of money over the next two years?" Schmidt said to the groggy father he just pulled out of bed. "Well, that's great, but how are you gonna do that?" Dad replied. "Well, they have these things called scholarships …" Earlier that morning, back in the eastern time zone, the junior walk-on linebacker was getting ready for a team meeting during the first week of summer training in the Irish football locker room. He got a tap on the shoulder and was told to report to head coach Brian Kelly's office. Schmidt immediately tried to figure out what he could have done wrong. Kelly was waiting to give him news. After two years of Schmidt paying his own way, Notre Dame re- warded him with a full scholarship. "I just dropped my head and emotion came over me," he said. "It was a dream." Many people at home in Orange, Calif., wondered why Schmidt ever went to Notre Dame. Why didn't he accept one of the scholarship offers he had from schools like Arizona, Air Force and Cincinnati when he graduated from high school? Why didn't he stay close to home and his friends and accept the preferred walk-on spot head coach Lane Kiffin reserved for him at USC? Going to South Bend, for Schmidt, gave him a chance to fulfill a promise he made to himself and his father when he was 9 years old. When his father asked him to think about some of his goals for life, Schmidt ripped an index card in half, filled it with all of his future accomplishments and then crammed it inside his wallet to keep as a reminder. On it, he wrote: Get good grades in school. Be the fastest kid in eighth grade track. Get a scholarship to play football at Notre Dame. "I honestly still remember writing it down," Schmidt said. "I keep thinking I'm going to wake up and it's not going