Old Independent Rivals: The Notre Dame - Penn State Football Rivalry
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I was at the '81 thru '87 contest, the 89 game, the 91 and92
snow bowl game and 2006 game
PA is 26% ethnic Catholic. Scranton-WilkesBarre is 48% Catholic. PSU feared losing a big percent of
their fandom if they played ND. And they were soooo correct! Moose Krause ND and Joe Paterno PSU pushed for the matchup in the 70's. Thus a HUGE rivalry was born...
JOPA visited Ned Bolcar's home in P-burg NJ hoping to close the deal for PSU. He noticed a statue
of Our Lady in the living room. He reached into a pocket on his sport coat and "accidently" dropped a set of rosary beads on the floor. Ned said the he considered going to Penn State. But then "I woke up." Ned tells people that Jerry Sandusky was the main recruiter of him at PSU. He said that at the time he through that Sandusky was a nice guy. He said that Sandusky had the ability to really shit people up...
So glad he picked ND!
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NEPA gave ND Joe Perkowski, Ed Rutkowski, Ron Dushney, 🚀 Ishmail,.
Tim Ruddy...
Timmy was 1 smart dude.
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He was. He was taking insane tough classes while playing football.
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Mechanical engineering
He even had a 4.0 during several semesters. Really nice guy, and I'd even argue that his memory was close to being eidetic.
He would have been a starter in 1991 if Gene McGuire weren't already entrenched at the C position. If it weren't for that blown out knee during the Hawaii game, McGuire would probably have gone in Rd 1 or Rd 2.
Yep, Ruddy was a unicorn; benched pressed 540 lbs, 1500 SATs and a beast on the field!
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Those unicorns are more common than you think
One of my roommates was a Chem Eng major, walked onto tne team, started at Guard, Academic AA, and became an orthopedic surgeon. Another went to ND Law school
And became a successful attorney.
And stupid me, forgot to include 4-Horseman Jim Crowley from Scranton
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Interestingly “Sleepy Jim” wasn’t originally a Scranton native. He did settle there and lived a long
time in that area after leaving football. Got a chance to meet him back in the day.
Bonus points to anyone who can say where he was originally from before going to ND without looking it up. A renowned football town.
He was originally from my little town of Chicago. I did know that w/o looking it up, btw
He grew up in Green Bay, however, and I believe he played HS ball for Curly Lambeau. My grandfather used to tell me stories of his ND heroes.