The Real Hero of the Rudy Game Wasn't Rudy

Fifty years later, it's time to celebrate Pat Sarb — the player who gave up his jersey, then spent his life quietly making the world better.

BY KEN BRADFORD // POSTED JANUARY 8, 2026

Is it safe to speak yet?

Some Notre Dame football fans tend to be thin-skinned. And with all the hubbub about the playoffs and bowl games, it won't help if I add another log to the fire.

But here goes: It's time we moved on without Rudy.

For those who aren't familiar, I'll be quick about this. The Hollywood version of the story follows Dan “Rudy” Ruettiger as he pursues his dream to become a football player at Notre Dame in the mid-1970s.

He's too small and too slow, but he's allowed to stay with the Fightin' Irish practice squad. He's got, as they used to say, pluck.

He works harder than anyone on the squad. As the final game approaches in his senior year, it's depressing when he realizes he'll never accomplish his dream of getting into a real game at Notre Dame stadium. But his teammates rally around him and threaten to turn in their jerseys, forcing Coach Dan Devine to include Rudy on the active roster that day.

In the final minute, Rudy is called in for the last three plays against Georgia Tech as fans in the student section chant his name. As fate would have it as the final seconds expire, Rudy rushes into the backfield, sacking the Georgia Tech quarterback. His teammates lift him on their shoulders and carry him off the field.

It's one of tears-in-your-eyes moments in cinema.

In real life, I was at that game, sitting among my fellow seniors in the student section. I never heard anyone chant. I never saw any player carried off the field on anyone's shoulders. It probably happened, as a sort of joke, but I just didn't notice it.

Years later, in 1993, I heard the movie was being made. It was a heart-warming story, embellished in the way that movies do. I would have been satisfied if Rudy had taken his bows and moved on. Good for him.

He didn't. He's clung to his fame. Most recently, I saw him beating a bass drum as snow fell before Notre Dame's game against Navy. It was time for us all to celebrate the 50th anniversary of that tackle we didn't see the first time.

Somehow, it's part of the required official Fightin' Irish lore. We must believe that Rudy's moment encapsulates what makes Notre Dame special.

I'll tell you in a minute why I totally disagree with that.

First, though, I need to introduce two other Notre Dame athletes I've actually met.

In 2018, with Notre Dame trailing UConn, 89-88, as time expired in overtime in the women's basketball NCAA semifinal game, Ariike Ugunbowale. sank an off-balance 3-point shot — BOOM — to send her team into the finals. Two nights later, in the tense finals against Mississippi State, tied 58-58, she hit another dramatic buzzer-beater – BOOM -- that gave the Irish a national championship.

Two winning plays in consecutive do-or-die games for a championship? No one else in any major sport has ever done that. It's beyond heroic. It's nearly divine.

When I interviewed Arike three months later for an article in the Notre Dame business school magazine, she wouldn't take the credit. Her 11 teammates, she said. Her coaches. The support staff. Friends. Family. Fans. So many people prepared her and then put her in that spot. She just was the one who had the ball in her hands.

I had written enough sports stories during my newspaper career to spot a phony aw-shucks act. This wasn't one. She was sincere.

The other athlete I met is a fellow 1976 graduate, Pat Sarb. His story is heroic for completely different reasons.

Pat had arrived at Notre Dame with a four-year football scholarship from Coach Ara Parseghian. For his sophomore year, he earned a spot as a second-string defensive back and played in all 11 games during that 1973 National Championship season.

But better athletes arrived, and Pat lost his spot on the varsity in 1974, Ara's final year. And he didn't play a single down after Devine replaced Ara as head coach in 1975. Pat spent most of his final two years on the practice squad, where he got to know Rudy very well.

This is part of Pat's account of the Rudy game, printed in a recent Notre Dame Senior Alumni newsletter.

“Like Rudy, I was checking the dress list before every home game. The Thursday before our ‘senior game' against Georgia Tech, my name finally appeared on the game-day list. Rudy and several other senior walk-ons were not on the list.

“As I was getting dressed for practice, Captains Ed Bauer and Jim Stock came up to me in the locker room. After a short discussion, they asked me if I would be willing to give up my spot so Rudy could dress.

“I immediately said yes because I truly felt that it would be an injustice if Rudy and some of the other senior walk-ons who had worked so hard were never able to experience the thrill of suiting up and running out of the tunnel on game day.”

Pat added: “I have never regretted my decision and can honestly say that I shared Rudy's joy as he was carried off the field. You may never know how a subtle act of kindness will impact others and may not learn until years later what influence that individual will have on those impacted by their life story. That is the case for many who are inspired by Rudy's story.”

I will say this: Pat's story moves me in a way that Rudy's does not. And his experience seems true of what I saw at Notre Dame in that era.

Plenty of my classmates arrived on campus with huge expectations. They weren't all high school football stars, like Pat, but many had been student celebrities back home — valedictorians, team captains, class officers, prom kings and all that.

On my first night on campus, eight of us freshmen gathered for a meet-and-greet in our resident assistant's room. We took turns introducing ourselves and discussing our academic intentions.

Me? I had no intentions. All seven of the others — the two Jacks, Bill, Mark, Ted, Schaefer and Dave — were pre-med. They planned to become doctors. No doubt about it.

None of the seven made it into medical school. Freshman chemistry was the first weed-out course. If you survived that, another brain-buster — organic chemistry — awaited for sophomores. The competition was brutal. Get one bad test score and you were finished.

I suppose it wasn't much different from what Pat Sarb saw on the practice field where one missed tackle could lead to a demotion. As one of my roommates moaned at the time, “Notre Dame is where you go so your dreams can die.”

I prefer to think about the university as being a place where dreams can change. My friends became lawyers, bankers and businessmen instead. They also became husbands and fathers, neighbors and volunteers, decent people contributing to the goodness of their communities in ways they didn't expect.

I didn't know Pat Sarb then, but I do now. Much of his post-Notre Dame life has been dedicated to raising funds and awareness for rare diseases, such as the NKH disorder that has affected his grandson Owen and the Niemann-Pick genetic anomaly that killed three of Ara's grandchildren.

He's generous and humble. He, like my old roommates, makes me proud to be a Notre Dame graduate.

I do not know Dan Ruettiger personally. I can't judge him. What I know is what he's come to represent and I know the lesson we are supposed to have learned from him. Don't let anyone or anything stand in your way.

The world seems top-heavy these days with people who have followed the Rudy formula. They've achieved their goals through dogged determination, which would be admirable, if their efforts weren't focused entirely on themselves.

One example is the entrepreneur who volunteered this year to help shred the federal programs that support America's most vulnerable citizens — and then, back in his corporate offices, raised his own salary so he'll become the world's first trillionaire.

Another is the billionaire politician who is apt to declare “nobody's ever seen these numbers before” as nominates himself for a Nobel Prize, insults the powerless people around him and wonders if his face would fit best on a gold coin or on Mount Rushmore.

In their world, everyone who can't serve them needs to get out of their way.

I prefer this other world — of Pats and Arikes — where people recognize that they are on this earth mainly so we can all celebrate together. If a disease is cured, everyone is safer. If a championship is won, the banner goes up in the rafters, not on anyone's personal bedroom wall.

I imagine an alternative version of the movie where Rudy receives Pat's jersey and is dumbstruck by the kindness his teammate has shown. Rudy returns the jersey to Pat, who gets in for the final play and tackles the quarterback. Rudy, watching in the stadium with his family, sheds a tear because he's so happy for Pat.

And maybe 50 years later, they sit in a snowstorm together as friends while Notre Dame beats Navy. I see them both there, and I'm misty-eyed too.