Notre Dame backers love former Fighting Irish quarterback Joe Montana almost as much as they love "Rudy," the 1993 biopic of scrappy underdog Rudy Ruettiger, who heroically played football at the school despite being small and bad at sports. But it seems Montana, who played on the 1975 team with the real-life Ruettiger, thinks Hollywood went overboard with the never-give-up-on-your-dreams shtick. Speaking to radio host Dan Patrick earlier this week, Montana addressed the film's famed final scene, in which Rudy registers a sack, is mobbed by teammates, and proceeds to invent representative democracy. The reality of that game against Georgia Tech, says Montana, was much more mundane:

"The crowd wasn't chanting. No one threw in their jerseys. He did get in the game...He did get a sack. And then the guys carried him off, just playing around. I won't say it was a joke, but it was playing around. He worked his butt off to get where he was and to do the things he did. But not any harder than anyone else."

(The part about Rudy curing polio was true, though.)

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Ray Gustini