Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM JUNE/JULY 2022 9 UNDER THE DOME press conference and spoke to MBA stu- dents. 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 did not come back to form trans- actional relationships, go through the motions to fulfill a promise and burn rub- ber out of town after he walked at gradua- tion. 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 didn'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 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 grate- ful I am." A WILLING RESOURCE Freeman and Bettis met weekly, some- times for 20 minutes and sometimes for two hours. For Bettis, it was 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 was a chance to bounce ideas off a proven winner who knows strong team 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 po- sition coach Deland McCullough took them out for a group dinner. Sopho- more-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 Ber- trand was more than one of the count- less football players and recruits he met this spring. He was 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 com- puter, 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 con- nection with the program that helped shape him doesn't happen if Bettis plays it coy in his intro- duction and camps out in the corner of his classes all semester. He later learned that wasn't feasible anyway. SERIOUS STUDIES Bettis, quite literally the biggest per- sonality in every classroom he occupies, felt alone. Making friends was no chal- lenge this year. It was probably never too hard for him. 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 in- cluded 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 home- town of Detroit that will take two de- cades to complete. He found that his Business Foresight class was 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 p h a s e s ," B e t t i s said of the project. "That's one where foresight factors in significantly. When yo u 're t ry i n g 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 fore- sight class has given me things to look at and some of the par- ticular issues I could be faced with in 15, 20 years — govern- mental, 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 put a bow on it May 15 at graduation, held at Notre Dame Stadium of all places. There was no hiding in the front corner when Bettis strolled across that stage and stood behind a podium to give a five-min- ute speech. He was visible for all to see. And he wouldn't have had 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." ✦