Tom Brady recounts the time he was locked in Notre Dame Stadium

Tom Brady will never forget his first trip to Notre Dame Stadium. Back when the future NFL Hall of Famer was still playing at Michigan, he made an impromptu trip to South Bend on his way back from a wedding in Chicago.

In a 2002 interview with Steve Sabol that was recently released as part of NFL Films’ “Tales from the Vault” series, Brady told the hilarious story of how he nearly ended up trapped there that night.

“It was probably right around when ‘Rudy’ came out, so there was ‘Touchdown Jesus’ and kind of just this aura around Notre Dame,” he said. “I had never been in the stadium. There was a wedding in Chicago that I was a part of, so on the way back from Chicago to Ann Arbor, I drive by and see signs for South Bend. It’s about a month before playing them. I’m thinking, ‘OK, yeah. I’m just going to stop in. I’d love to see what it’s like so when I go down there and run onto the field for the first time, it’s not the first time I’m getting used to the environment.'”

To Tom Brady’s dismay, he arrived at Notre Dame Stadium only to find that the first gate was locked. Undeterred, he began to make his way around the building in search of another opening.

“So I walk around and, sure enough, halfway around there’s a gate that’s unlocked,” Brady said. “There’s a lock hanging off, but it’s not fastening the gate together. So I walk in and I lock the gate to itself thinking, ‘Wow, if someone walked by from the outside and saw it was unlocked, they might lock it and lock me in.’ No one’s in the stadium. I don’t see anything. I don’t hear anything. All I see is a bunch of no trespassing signs. So I’m kind of creeping my way through the stadium.”

Brady said he carefully made his way around the stadium, from the top of the stands all the way down to the sidelines. He even darted across the field, making sure to hurry so that nobody would see him. The young quarterback took a few moments to soak it all in before finally deciding he had seen enough.

He made his way back to the gate he entered through, but it was now locked.

“So I’m thinking, ‘I’m locked in the freaking stadium. It’s 6 o’clock at night. My car is sitting out there in some illegally parked zone. I’m going to be on SportsCenter (for) breaking into the stadium,'” Brady said.

Brady began to search for alternative ways out. He eventually found a handicap ramp leading up to an open window about 20 feet from the ground. He settled on that as his escape plan, but was now faced with another problem.

“When I get up there and jump down, I’m thinking, ‘I’m gonna break my ankle,'” he said. “I don’t know what’s worse: going to jail or breaking my ankle. So I don’t know what to do. I didn’t have a phone on me. I get into this maintenance tent and I find a sledgehammer. So I take the sledgehammer, go outside and there’s an extension ladder bolted onto the wall. I just start beating the hell out of this extension ladder to knock it off the wall. I knocked the thing off the wall after I must’ve hit it 10 times. This ladder was so busted up. I took it and carried it halfway around the stadium and threw it over the top where I was gonna jump. I climbed down, got in that car and drove out of South Bend faster than I’ve ever driven in my life.”

Brady said he didn’t tell anyone about his adventure in South Bend, though he noticed some people recording him as he climbed down the ladder. The quarterback returned to Notre Dame Stadium on Sept. 5, 1998 as the Wolverines suffered a 36-20 victory. He finished the game 23-of-36 passing for 267 yards in the only game he played against the Fighting Irish during his college career.

But little did anyone watching the game that day know, it wasn’t his first time in the stadium.