The son of a Pittsburgh Steelers legend begins his own college-level journey. Jerome Bettis Jr., a wide receiver in the 2025 recruiting class at Woodward Academy in Atlanta, Georgia, was in attendance at the Alabama Crimson Tide Junior Day Saturday afternoon.
Junior Day is an event that Alabama hosts around this time every off-season to attract some of the best underclassmen talent from around the country to be on the program’s radar. Bettis, Jr. does not yet have a star rating but has offers from Massachusetts, Connecticut, Boston College, Georgia Tech, Missouri, and Arkansas. With each offering from stronger programs, Bettis, Jr. is on track to capture the attention of the top Power 5 programs in the country.
Bettis, Jr. told BamaOnLine “it would mean a lot” to receive a scholarship offer from Nick Saban and the Crimson Tide. The second recipient added that his favorite moments of the Tuscaloosa visit were meeting with coaches, including Nick Saban.
“It was great. It was a great experience,” said Bettis, Jr. “I had a great time there.”
Bettis, Jr. may play a skill position just like his father, but his build is certainly very different at 6’2, 175lbs. That height and genetics should help him get through two more years of high school.
Of course, Bettis Sr. played his college ball for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, where The Bus still holds the program’s single-season scrimmage touchdown record at 20 in 1991. Of course, as Bettis we know the rest of the story, he went via the Los Angeles Rams to a Hall of Famer career with the Pittsburgh Steelers and capped his legendary career with a final stop in Detroit at Super Bowl XL.
Having a father who went through the recruiting process at the highest level is a definite advantage for the younger Bettis, even as the landscape has changed dramatically with variables like NIL. Bettis, Jr. passed on the influence his father gave in the early stages of his college recruitment.
“I was just talking to him about the visit,” said the younger Bettis. “He guides me as best he can. But he said the recruiting world has changed a lot since his time. So he says make sure we take everything with a grain of salt. They didn’t even really have unofficial visitors back then. So this is kind of new territory for both of us. So we’re both just getting used to it. He helps me as best he can.”
While we’ll have to wait a while before Bettis Jr. snaps his first snaps on a collegiate grate, he’ll no doubt have the interested eyes of Steelers fans watching closely which path he takes down the road of his car – like dad paved for him.