by Jason Plautz, Northwestern

Tommy De Carlo

Boston, the rock band behind “More Than a Feeling” and four multi-platinum albums, is one of the biggest acts in music history. Tommy De Carlo, meanwhile, was just a store manager at Home Depot and was a hit singing at his grandparents’ anniversary party. Now De Carlo is singing lead for Boston, filling the role of the late Brad Delp. After hearing about Delp’s suicide in 2007, De Carlo offered a humble tribute – a website with recordings of him singing Boston hits with a karaoke machine. A visitor gave him contact information for the band’s management and everything fell into place. Now De Carlo is touring with the band and his bandmates say that sometimes they can’t even tell the difference between him and Delp.

Daniel Ruettiger

Most famous for being played by Sean Astin, Daniel Ruettiger is the classic underdog story. Ruettiger, a relative shrimp at 5’7” and 165 pounds had always dreamed of playing for the Notre Dame football team, so he embraced the opportunity to walk on. He got a spot on the scout team, which helps the varsity team practice. He stayed on the practice squad until his final game, when coach Dan Devine encouraged him to dress for the game. Ruettiger was put on the field at defensive end and sacked the Georgia Tech quarterback. Legend has it that he was carried off the field by his teammates, which made translating the story into a classic movie all the easier.

Bob Burns

The other people on this list gained fame because of something extraordinary, but Bob Burns stepped up because he’s just so darn average. He was the star of Kevin O’Keefe’s 2005 book “The Average American: The Extraordinary Search for the Nation’s Most Ordinary Citizen.” O’Keefe identified 140 criteria from the 2000 census that would define the quintessentially average American and embarked on a 2-year search before finding Burns. Burns has three children, is 54 years old, works 40 hours a week, lives in Connecticut (the same state where he was born) and attends church. He also likes football, is charitable and has pets. In short, he’s just an average Joe who didn’t have to do anything to become the poster child of regular guys everywhere.

Arnel Pineda

Like all great stars should be, Arnel Pineda was born on YouTube. A 40-year-old from the Philippines, Pineda had been in and out of small bands, trying to live the rock star life. He had posted videos of his band Zoo performing a variety of songs, including Journey’s “Faithfully.” Meanwhile, Journey lead guitarist Neal Schon was looking for a new lead singer to replace Steve Perry and turned to YouTube and stumbled upon the Zoo videos. He thought Pineda did a perfect Perry and the band tried Pineda out. Now they’re playing together and response has been positive, even if people still look for Perry every so often.

Joe Pennacchio

Jersey Joe Pennacchio feels that the normal people should be running the country, so he’s built his campaign for New Jersey’s Senate seat on his role as just an average guy. After all, he’s the son of two Italian immigrants that worked at a pizza shop to work his way through dental school. Since his inauspicious beginnings, he’s dabbled in politics, serving on the state assembly and in the state senate. But he’s trying to remove himself from that experience and appeal to voters as the one candidate that’s not from the “country club set.” He’s gotten a good deal of support, so soon this average Joe may become a real life Mr. Smith.

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