Dreams Do Come True: Just Ask Rudy

By Alex Cohen-Smith Archive

Steiner Sports isn’t your typical sales company that gets ready for the 4th quarter with your motvational emails from the CEO. We also aren’t quite out there enough to have Dick Butkus stand in front of our desks and give speeches or have Terry Tate Office Linebacker lay down the law on insubordinate employees. However we did get to have Rudy Ruettiger, the inspiration for the movie Rudy, speak to our company at the Lowes movie theater in New Rochelle today and deliver a motivational speech on how to stay positive during the final quarter of the year. 

For those of you who don’t know about the movie Rudy, it isn’t just your run of the mill sports movie. Rudy is the kind of movie which drives grown men to tears every time they watch it because of its inspirational message of hope. I don’t want to give too much away, but if you haven’t seen it, you’re doing yourself an injustice. I could even make it more (or less?) appealing by telling you it was the first film for Vince Vaughn and John Favreau.

Back to the real Rudy, who stood before our company and inspired us with his story. If you ever want to give up, I encourage to listen to the words of the “5 foot nothing” kid from Holy Cross Junior College who got into Notre Dame, made the football team as a walk-on and made a tackle on his only play for the team in the final game of the season.

Almost as intriguing as the story from the movie, is the story of how the movie was made. Rudy was inspired after he saw the movie Rocky to push for a film to be created based on his story. But it took him ten years just to get his script in front of the right people and that was only because he started a random conversation with a mailman in LA who brought him to the house of the guy who produced Hoosiers (trust me, it only gets crazier, but I’ll avoid rambling on).

Let’s just say I left the speech rejuvenated and ready to make some sales! However, I don’t make sales….so I felt rejuvenated and ready to write a blog!  

I was lucky enough to be able to spend some time with Rudy outside of his speech when he came back to our office to sign everything from Notre Dame minihelmets to Play Like A Champion Today posters. Such a nice guy, easy to talk to you, and always ready to offer a word advice. Rudy told us how Vaughn and Favreau followed him all around the set asking how he got his movie produced and low and behold a few years later, they wrote their own movie, Swingers, which they ended up selling for $5 million. It’s hard to believe that coming from a school that produced football legends Tim Brown, Paul Hornung and Joe Theismann, Rudy Reuttiger might be the most recognizable name of them all.

Rudy was more than happy to answer a few questions from our Facebook fans before he finished up via video. Here are his responses: