Penn Charter grad and Notre Dame walk-on Jerry Rullo is more than just a ‘Rudy’ story

A dense plume of white smoke engulfed everything around him, creating an almost dreamlike movie sequence.

Improbable Notre Dame linebacker Generoso “Jerry” Rullo — standing inside the tunnel he once admired as a boy — prepared to take the field with his new teammates ahead of the Blue-Gold game on a frigid April day in South Bend, Ind.

“So I run out of all this smoke and I can’t see anything,” Rullo said last week as he stood inside the weight room at Penn Charter, where he graduated in 2022.

“I felt like I was going to trip over someone and face-plant,” he continued. “But then I come out of the smoke and I look up and I’m in the stadium and there’s people all around.”

“It was the first time I was like, ‘What did I get myself into? I’m on the Notre Dame football team and I’m running out of the tunnel!’”

A wide-eyed walk-on taking the field for the Fighting Irish conjures memories of a classic movie, but it might not be the one you’re thinking about.

Jerry Rullo’s Excellent Adventure is about a resilient 19-year-old working tirelessly during a 10-month journey that ended with the Army ROTC cadet becoming an amateur boxing champion, learning Swahili while trekking across Africa, and earning a spot on the football team he has been watching since he was 9 months old.

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“This last year, I don’t think I could’ve asked for anything better,” Rullo said.

“Hopefully going forward, I’ll have similar experiences and the things I do will keep me out of my comfort zone. You know, hopefully the sort of stress that makes you change.”

Rullo comes from championship stock.

His grandmother, Eileen Rullo (née Rafferty), won three Catholic League girls’ basketball championships at now-closed John W. Hallahan Catholic.

His grandfather, Jerry Rullo, played basketball at Bartram and later at Temple. He also was a member of the 1947 Philadelphia Warriors, the first NBA champions.

His grandfather’s brother, Amato Rullo, also was a professional boxer nicknamed “Bomber,” whose record as a middleweight and light heavyweight was reportedly 22-3.

Bomber Rullo also served in the Army, landed in France on Normandy Beach days after D-Day, and was eventually captured by Nazi forces during World War II, spending nine months as a prisoner of war.

Rullo was aware of his family’s history when he arrived in South Bend as a freshman. By then he was already walking in familiar footsteps.

In fact, Rullo was at Notre Dame because of a full scholarship through the Army’s ROTC program. His parents, Jerry and Peggy, actually met at Notre Dame while both were Army ROTC cadets.

Rullo’s fascination with his Uncle Bomber made it a no-brainer when an upperclassman came looking for recruits to join Bengal Bouts in October.

Legendary football coach Knute Rockne first organized the Notre Dame boxing club in 1920. In the 1930s, Bengal Bouts began raising money for Holy Cross missions in Bangladesh, which it still benefits today.

“‘Man, I’d love to go out there and punch someone in the face for a good cause,’” Rullo joked.

Truthfully, he missed competing on a team. He played intramural football for his Knott Hall dorm on campus, but was still looking for more.

He had no idea, however, that an opportunity to join the Notre Dame football team would be nearly more than he could handle.

Rullo was brand new to boxing when he started in October.

Each morning, grueling ROTC training withered his resolve before he hit the ring, where burpees, push-ups, and planks battered his body.

The goal was to compete in the 92nd annual Bengal Bouts championship tournament in February.

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In addition to the physical demands, Rullo also juggled a pre-med course load and still attended Fighting Irish football games in the student section.

After all, Notre Dame football had been a family tradition.

His father was 9 years old when his mother first surprised Jerry Sr. on a Thursday afternoon one November and said, “Pack your bags and make sure you have warm clothes.”

They piled in a car — no tickets, no plans for a place to stay — and drove to South Bend.

Jerry Sr., now 52, says his mother, Eileen, had no ties to Notre Dame other than living in the Grays Ferry section of South Philly as an Irish-Catholic American with a fondness for the Fighting Irish.

It took one game for Jerry Sr., a 1988 Penn Charter graduate, to fall in love. He has since passed that love to his children, whom he takes to at least one game every season.

Rullo was 9 months old the first time Jerry Sr. took him to a game. It was in Provo, Utah, where the Irish played Brigham Young. This year, Rullo’s first game in uniform will take place in Ireland, where Jerry Sr. and another son, Charlie, had previously bought tickets to attend before Rullo even thought about joining the team.

Last year, Rullo was a freshman at Notre Dame, watching games in the student section. Still, something was missing.

So, he called Mike McGlinchey, the Penn Charter and Notre Dame grad who now plays for the Denver Broncos. Rullo, who was a second-team all-Inter-Ac player in 2021, played with McGlinchey’s younger brother Matt at Penn Charter.

Rullo had heard rumors that the ND football team would eventually hold an open tryout. Through McGlinchey, Rullo later learned that the tryout would be a few days after the boxing tournament.

Already months into training, Rullo wasn’t willing to pass on pugilism for the unlikely chance of making the football team.

So he pressed forward, training for the boxing tournament, keeping up with his ROTC training, studying pre-med, and readying for football.

“It kind of felt like drinking from a fire hose,” Rullo said, “trying to adjust yourself to all of these new things and keeping your sanity. … I believe I really grew as a person. It really forced me into spots that I’ve never been in.”

Rullo had three sparring sessions before the boxing tournament began in February. The last one, he said, did not go well.

Rullo had just turned 19, but Bengal Bouts, he explained, had no age limit. Competitors just needed to be enrolled at Notre Dame.

That meant fighting retired military men, Marines, and others in grad school.

Jesse Salazar, now 22, had height and reach advantages against Rullo and peppered him with punches as a result.

When it was finished, Rullo asked Salazar for tips, though both were new to boxing. The two became fast friends.

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“I kind of thought he was messing me up, so when he asked me that, I thought, ‘it seemed like I was the one who needed work,’” Salazar joked in a phone interview.

Eventually, they met again in the championship match of the tournament, which Rullo won by split decision. It was his third victory of the tournament, which crowned nine champions.

After his hand was raised, Rullo told Salazar he wished they could share the title.

“It’s just the kind of guy he is,” Salazar said. “It bummed me out when I heard he made the football team because I knew I wouldn’t be able to box with him anymore. But that is the most awesome excuse. I’m super excited for him.”

Rullo’s father attended the championship match. Afterward he took his son to dinner and filled his dorm room with Gatorade.

“I had a football tryout in three days,” Rullo said with a laugh, “and my nose was kind of sore …”

Months before he considered football, Rullo had committed to Project Go, an ROTC program designed for “future military officers to develop linguistic and cross-cultural communication skills.”

He chose to learn Swahili while trekking across Eastern Africa.

Rullo said his ROTC leaders have been supportive of his desire to play football and his football coaches allowed him to miss summer workouts to study in Africa.

So, he and about 30 students from schools around the United States traveled from the coast of Tanzania to the islands of Zanzibar, then inland through the Serengeti to Lake Victoria and Kenya.

Rullo lived with three host families, learned their customs, and says he became conversational in Swahili despite starting with little more vocabulary than “hujambo,” which he said means “hello.”

The experience, he added, humbled him.

What humbles his father is the appreciation his son has for the friends, teammates, coaches, and teachers who helped him along the way.

“There’s only one man in the world who wants you to be better than him and that’s your father,” Jerry Sr. said in a phone interview.

“He’s a better man than me,” he continued. “He makes me a better father. That’s how I feel. As long as he continues to be true to himself, be humble, be a good person, and surround himself with good people, good things will happen.”

At times, during his 10-month adventure, Rullo says he often felt uncomfortable, questioning if he belonged in a boxing ring with older men or on a college football field with five-star recruits.

No amount of discomfort, though, ever stopped him. Instead, he seemed to thrive in its face.

Kismet? Good fortune? Relentless determination? Whatever it is, Rullo says he knows how to earn what hangs in his locker every day.

Shimmering next to his No. 46 jersey, Rullo’s golden helmet nearly made him gasp when he first saw it.

“The talent that has gotten me to this point was just being relentless and not quitting,” he said. “If that’s something I can continue to do in the weight room or on the practice field, maybe there’s something in there that will help the team.”

Even if it’s just tossing a pair of gloves to a young fan the way a player once did for him when he was a boy.

“Definitely it hits me sometimes because I don’t know how many times I’ve been in the stadium around the tunnel watching the guys come out,” he said. “After the spring game, I walked out and there were kids lined up. One of the managers gave me a pair of extra gloves and said, ‘Hey, why don’t you give these to some kids.’ There were some kids right there … and they wanted to take pictures and I’m like, ‘Man, I just got here a month ago, but I’d love to take a picture with you.’”