“Famous Notre Dame football walk-on ‘Rudy’ joins LDS Church”

Some of you may recall the 1993 movie Rudy.  It was written by Angelo Pizzo and directed by David Anspaugh, who had previously worked together on the 1986 film Hoosiers, and it starred Sean Astin, who subsequently went on to play (along with many other roles) Sam Gamgee in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

According to the Wikipedia article about it, Rudy was the first movie that the administration of the University of Notre Dame allowed to be shot on their campus since Knut Rockne, All American (starring, among others, Ronald Reagan) in 1940.  In two 2005 ESPN polls, Rudy was named one of the best 25 sports movies of the previous quarter century.  (A panel of sports experts put it at #24, while ESPN.com users put it at #4.)  And it was ranked as the 54th-most inspiring film of all time in the American Film Institute’s “AFI 100 Years” series.

All of which makes this story especially fun:

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865671699/Famous-Notre-Dame-football-walk-on-joins-LDS-Church.html

Thanks to Tyler Oakes for calling it to my attention.