Bettis follows in dad’s footsteps, commits to Irish
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Tom VanHaaren, ESPN Staff Writer
It has been nearly 32 years since Jerome Bettis played football for Notre Dame, but come 2025, a new Bettis will don the Fighting Irish uniform.
The Pro Football Hall of Famer’s son, Jerome Bettis Jr., announced his commitment to Notre Dame on Sunday and will follow in his father’s footsteps.
Bettis is a 6-foot-2, 195-pound prospect from Woodward Academy in Georgia, and he chose the Irish over Texas A&M, Duke and Ole Miss. He understands that playing for Notre Dame will naturally bring comparisons to his father, which he embraces, but he said he also wants to forge his own path.
That journey started in youth football as a running back wearing the same No. 36 his father wore. He said he changed positions to wide receiver in seventh grade and switched to No. 4 in eighth grade to make a name for himself on his own merit.
“One of the biggest things was changing my number, and so me really getting my number away from his, that was a big step for me realizing that at the end of the day, I’m my own man,” Bettis told ESPN. “I love my dad and I love everything that I guess comes with him being my father, but at the same time, I create my own legacy and my own journey.”
Bettis said he still has a lot of respect for what his father accomplished in his NFL career, playing for 12 years with the St. Louis Rams and Pittsburgh Steelers. He said he has taken that knowledge and experience his father brings and used it to his advantage to grow and learn.
During the recruiting process, Bettis said he wanted to make sure coaches understood that they were recruiting a different person and that they weren’t just recruiting him because of the last name on his jersey. That was something that immediately drew him to Notre Dame.
“They made sure super early on that it was known they recruited me for me and not my father,” Bettis said. “They wanted me to know that they want Jerome Bettis Jr. at Notre Dame because of what he can bring, not just because of what comes along with me and my name. That’s something that was really important to me, because I wasn’t sure how they viewed me and my dad and the entire situation, so for them to reassure me was great.”
Bettis Sr. was involved in the process, but Bettis Jr. said he made his own choice. Bettis Sr. was excited, however, when his son told him that he would continue the family legacy at Notre Dame.
“I viewed the pros and cons and took it to my father and asked him what he thought about it and his thoughts on me making the decision,” Bettis said. “First, he wanted to make sure I was completely certain and after that, he was super happy. Just the initial reaction from him and the joy I could see on his face, that was something super special for me to witness.”
The comparisons will be there because of the name and the uniform, but Bettis will line up at receiver and will play a completely different role within the Irish offense. He is looking forward to the opportunity to bring his skill set to the Notre Dame offense.
“They’re getting a larger target that can make plays down the field,” Bettis said. “I can catch any ball that’s thrown my way. That, with the new offense we’re going to see this year with Coach [Mike] Denbrock, is going to be exciting.”
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Tim Keown
TOKYO — Shohei Ohtani seems impervious to a variety of conditions that afflict most humans — nerves, anxiety, distraction — but it took playing a regular-season big-league game in his home country to change all of that.
After the Los Angeles Dodgers‘ Opening Day 4-1 win over the Chicago Cubs in the Tokyo Dome, Ohtani made a surprising admission. “It’s been a while since I felt this nervous playing a game,” he said. “It took me four or five innings.”
Ohtani had two hits and scored twice, and one of his outs was a hard liner that left his bat at more than 96 mph, so the nerves weren’t obvious from the outside. But clearly the moment, and its weeklong buildup, altered his usually stoic demeanor.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen Shohei nervous,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “But one thing I did notice was how emotional he got during the Japanese national anthem. I thought that was telling.”
As the Dodgers began the defense of last year’s World Series win, it became a night to showcase the five Japanese players on the two teams. For the first time in league history, two Japanese pitchers — the Dodgers’ Yoshinobu Yamamoto and the Cubs’ Shota Imanaga — faced each other on Opening Day. Both pitched well, with Imanaga throwing four hitless innings before being removed after 69 pitches.
“Seventy was kind of the number we had for Shota,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said. “It was the right time to take him out.”
The Dodgers agreed, scoring three in the fifth inning off reliever Ben Brown. Imanaga kept the Dodgers off balance, but his career-high four walks created two stressful innings that ran up his pitch count.
Yamamoto rode the adrenaline of pitching in his home country, routinely hitting 98 with his fastball and vexing the Cubs with a diving splitter over the course of five three-hit innings. He threw with a kind of abandon, finding a freedom that often eluded him last year in his first year in America.
“I think last year to this year, the confidence and conviction he has throwing the fastball in the strike zone is night and day,” Roberts said. “If he can continue to do that, I see no reason he won’t be in the Cy Young conversation this season.”
Cubs right fielder Seiya Suzuki went hitless in four at bats — the Cubs had only three hits, none in the final four innings against four relievers out of the Dodgers’ loaded bullpen — and rookie Roki Sasaki will make his first start of his Dodger career in the second and final game of the series Wednesday.
“I don’t think there was a Japanese baseball player in this country who wasn’t watching tonight,” Roberts said.
The Dodgers were without Mookie Betts, who left Japan on Monday after it was decided his illness would not allow him to play in this series. And less than an hour before game time, first baseman Freddie Freeman was scratched with what the team termed “left rib discomfort,” a recurrence of an injury he first sustained during last year’s playoffs.
The night started with a pregame celebration that felt like an Olympic opening ceremony in a lesser key. There were Pikachus on the field and a vaguely threatening video depicting the Dodgers and Cubs as Monster vs. Monster. World home-run king Saduharu Oh was on the field before the game, and Roberts called meeting Oh “a dream come true.”
For the most part, the crowd was subdued, as if it couldn’t decide who or what to root for, other than Ohtani. It was admittedly confounding: throughout the first five innings, if fans rooted for the Dodgers they were rooting against Imanaga, but rooting for the Cubs meant rooting against Yamamoto. Ohtani, whose every movement is treated with a rare sense of wonder, presented no such conflict.
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