Rudy, and My Lack of Philosophical Direction with Sports

Having heard of Rudy, but never actually have watched it until this week, I was kind of shocked by the plotline. Growing up with people chanting Rudy’s name similar to the ending scene, I had presumed that it was just another “based on a true story” film that some franchise decided to decimate with heartwarming moments of victory and all that jazz about some team or person who became undefeated and won everything. In Rudy, this was not the case by a long shot. He was a mediocre player at best, short, lower middle class with no fat chance of getting to live his dream as being a football player for Notre Dame. He did actually manage to finally get in after rejection for multiple semesters, and he did actually get to be on the football team, but he was no elite player. 

What I admired most about the film, was the fact that it was about an “average” guy not giving up, managing to still in some sense live his dream. Heather Reid’s “Sport, Education, and the Meaning of Victory” deals with the modern meaning of victory, as winning  is found more important than other ideals of sports and education. I thought this was interesting because Rudy isn’t about a team winning, nor is it about Rudy winning per se. He only made it to the field in uniform because his teammates saw that Rudy had spunk and willpower. Even in the educational aspect, it took Rudy practically three years of countless rejection to finally make it into Notre Dame because according to modern meaning of victory, he was a failure.  

Notre Dame is a catholic school, and Rudy plus his entire family is Catholic, which was part of the film’s plot. Rudy spoke to a catholic priest who worked with Notre Dame, got into a catholic college near Notre Dame, and even when Rudy wanted to give up, we see him sitting in the pews of the catholic church, praying and contemplating. 

In “Federer as Religious Experience”, Wallace speaks about how serious people get with sports, and how it can be similar to one’s religion. Rudy’s father was a die-hard fan of Notre Dame, and treated football as a religious experience, especially when his son got onto the field.  So it makes sense, that the family and Notre Dame’s undertones of Catholicism was put into the film, because it does affect the emotional aspect of the film and how it affects the viewers. Affecting the viewers, in the sense that the viewers have some personal ties to religion in a positive way.

Moral responsibility on the Shoulders of Athletes

In Rudy, we are told the true story about Rudy galalalakjfkajsdf who beats the odds and works his way to playing only two plays at the end of his last game at Notre Dame. He overcomes dyslexia, financial, physical, and family problems to play football at that single game. It seems a bit over the top but somehow football is the thing that kept him in one piece and gave him that project that we need in life to make us have a purpose.

What struck me as odd was that the way the first string players were treated was the equivalent of gods. They were not to be messed with or got what they needed. It is their grace that gets Rudy the time that he does play in the end. Grant it, he proved himself to them, but again, it was by their grace that they made a statement to the coach about how Rudy deserved to be played just once in his time at Notre Dame. They had power over the coach in numbers but even he was treated with the utmost respect. They just play football. Sure they risk physical harm but they are doing it for the most part willingly. If they feel they have to do it, it is one of those “Bad Faiths” we have discussed. But they got the same attention as if going into war. And this brings me to what David Wallace wrote about in his article. He spoke of Roger Federer with a degree of detail that is scary to me; being able to analyze video so closely that a fan can know his personal habits and not know each other. But this kind of attention and for that amount of time, it is almost like a religion to him, Federer is a god of tennis to him, seeing him come up with different angles on winning in a sport is his conviction on why this person demands the respect he has in tennis. But again, he just plays tennis. He is just a guy who is really good and devoted to tennis, and most likely does it for the love of it even though the money is a bonus. But is set on a level of observation for all that is excessive.

I know plenty of people like David Wallace, but its football that they really are into. If you really want to seem successful to the majority of people in Alabama (where I am from) you go to the University of Alabama and are on the football team but maybe about where Rudy was just as a stand-on or you join the military. Unfortunately, I learned that from people I went to High School with. The two are of the same respect to people and that is a fact from where I am from. We are in the South, so college football is king. I guess they appeal to the majority of people who are Christian and taking a sport they love for the rivalry and the physical side of these battles, they fill in the metaphors for these people. I can see the amount of drama that people can get out of the sport also. Like David Wallace wrote that we can look up just about anything on Google about a player, they are all put on a pedestal for observation and with that, they must exhibit good behavior, to get respect, but to go professional, or to receive awards. They are governed by multiple factors and must keep up the moral within the sports for their fans.  To me, it’s a bit ridiculous, but sports are that important to people where it stands in place as an activity and conveyer of morals and life lessons.