Doug is joined by former Bears Director of Player Personnel Josh Lucas to discuss his often chaotic home life as a kid in Canton, Ohio, how he escaped the instability through sports, how he earned a football scholarship to Harvard, the ups and downs of his college experience and how a series of injuries derailed his college football career.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey, welcome in.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
I'm Doug Golly.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
This is All Ball.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
We'll take a step aside for the next three All
Ball podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
We're going to drop.
Speaker 4 (00:14):
These in kind of consecutive days, give a little bit
of gap in between. But I just think it's a
personal story that is so good, and so many of
you are like man, when I'm driving, I'm recruiting, when
I'm driving to a high school game, wherever I am,
I love to listen to stories.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Beach told. Well, I'll have a dear friend. His name
is Josh Lucas.
Speaker 4 (00:33):
Josh was the director of player personnel for the Chicago Bears.
How he got there after being a student athlete at Harvard,
but the mercurial path that took to getting there, and
the time he took and why he stepped aside at
times from his job. This is a story that has
not been publicly told. Josh is a rising star in
(00:53):
the media. He still is a very very well respected
player personnel potential GM in the future.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Here's his story.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
The thing I love about my job is when I
was a kid, my dad was an old basketball coach. Right.
I always felt like my dad was an old basketball coach,
even when I wasn't old like they've been doing it
since he got out of college.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
He was a high school coach and then became a
college coach.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
And there's a lot of reasons I put together this
pod the way I do. I mean, really, I was
I was driving one night between Murphysboro, Tennessee and Bowling Green, Kentucky,
and it was pouring rain and actually there was a
(01:42):
I didn't know this at the time until like midway
through the drive that I was driving through like an
active tornado area, and I was listening to Sirius XM
and to the Howard to Howard Stern interview Megan Trainer,
and Megan told the story of how she kind of
(02:05):
made it her breakthrough, which was he went into La
Reid's office and she had written songs for lots of people,
and she had this I'm Gonna love you like I'm.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Gonna lose you, and.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
She only had I think, like one verse that she
could sing and play on a ukulele. You know. Again,
like the details is a little fuzzy now because it
was actually it's like an amazing interview. He let her
just kind of talk her way through it. But she
talked about how she was there the whole day, and
he wanted her to play the whole song, and anyway,
(02:42):
she ended up figuring out how to play the whole
and thought it was, you know, for somebody else.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
He's like, no, I want you to record that.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
But it was a storytelling element of it that I
just I remember, I'm driving through this incredibly shitty.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Weather, and I'm like the power of audio.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
And I've said this on radio before, is when you
get a really really good story, where you get a
really really good conversation, you don't want to turn off.
The greatest compliment you can give to a radio host
is I pulled into my driveway and I could not
get out of the car until you were done. The
second greatest one, or maybe the one B is I
(03:21):
listened through a commercial break because I wanted to hear
how the conversation ended or something like that. Then I
factor in. When I was a kid, my dad would
take me to the final four. We go up to
the Nike and in the Nike suite that would be
Jim Balbano and Dick by tal and Digger Phelps and
John Thompson would be there. All these kind of famous
old time coaches or my dad was great friends with
(03:43):
Dale Brown.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
And the thing about all those coaches were they're.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Amazing storytellers, you know, amazing storytellers, And so I thought,
why not have a pod about storytelling and basketball?
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Tell people the story their best.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
And there have been times in which we veered off
of that, lots of really really good ones. And so
now with the holiday season, a couple of my friends
who I think have amazing stories, I'm offered up to
join me. One of those is a guy, and again,
this is kind of part of what makes my job cool.
Then it was Josh Lucas. So here's kind of the backstory.
(04:22):
I came to work at Fox in twenty seventeen. And
truth being told, when I came to work at Fox,
I had still had time on my CBS contract left.
But I don't know, I don't know if I at
the time fit what they were looking for with just
with one certain element of it, and so I didn't
(04:46):
really we didn't negotiate. We just said, hey, like, can
we get out of the deal. Because a bunch of
my friends had left to go to Fox. I like CBS.
I learned a lot of CBS. I thought there's really
good people on CBS. I had a lot of trepidation
when I took the job leaving ESPN, because like CBS,
I loved ESPN. It was awesome, so there was no
(05:08):
negatives who I left CBS, but I went to Fox.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
And when I went there, the gentleman who.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Was running the daytime TV element of it had promised
me like, hey, take your deal with the radio and
we're going to find a TV show for it. And
then of course I do like college basketball games. So
three months into that, I was actually overseas as coaching
in Israel and I got to call it.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
He'd been fired.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
He's a good friend of mine, and it sucked because
you learn that in business a lot of it's who
you're connected. So Fox, I don't know, trying to do
be a solid or I don't know, maybe they were
looking for new talent to do different things. But I
got to do sideline for one NFL game on Fox,
(05:59):
and by the way, it's should be pointing out, they.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Did a thorough review of it.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
I actually had John Madden's old producer did a review
and it was a sterling review. He called me afterwards
and I never forget driving on the four to five
stuck in trap and he was like, do you want
to do this for the next twenty years. I was
like yes, He's like, well, you're really good at it, Like, well,
it's fun. I never did it, by the way, I
think I pissed the Dolphins off, and we'll talk about
(06:24):
what I mistakenly did or I didn't mistakenly did it.
I did it, but they knew it was a bad
thing at the time. So to do an NFL game,
the games on Sunday, it was Broncos versus the Bears.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
This is back when the Bears were really good.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
They had great defense, they traded for Khalil Mack, and
the Dolphins had to kind of spot start brock Osweiler.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
I think the Prayers.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Were undefeated at the time too, I'm not mistaken. And
it was like mid season. So you go to practice
at the facility and you meet with all the coaches.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
You spend the entire day there, and then.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
You go back to the hotel and I think it
might have been on a Saturday, when, like Saturday, there
is nothing going on. You're literally getting paid hang out
in Miami at the beach or at the hotel. You
have a production meeting which is interminable, but it's like
in the afternoon. So to watch college football, I go
downstairs and I'm not sitting at the hotel bar, and
a guy settles up next to me, and he knows
(07:21):
a lot about.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Football, like a crazy amount about football. The names Josh Lucas.
He joins me.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Now, he was director of player personnel for the Chicago
Bears at the time, and I didn't actually know that
until probably an hour into our conversation when we're just
watching and you know, like anybody looking at the screen
and commenting. And we've been kind of friends ever since.
(07:46):
So Josh joins me now on the All Ball Pod, Josh,
how are you.
Speaker 5 (07:50):
I'm doing well. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
So I want to get to that point from that
point forward in a second.
Speaker 5 (07:59):
But you grew up where North Canton, Ohio.
Speaker 6 (08:04):
I mean, you can't get more football nope, Ohio right,
Like it's just impossible to get paint the picture of
what it's like to grew up in North.
Speaker 7 (08:15):
Camp about what you think, you know, obviously with the
Hall of Fame the center of Canton, Ohio, you know,
and I grew up in a house with with with
all boys. So sports for everything, and obviously football was
kind of the the lifeblood of the state still is
(08:36):
and so you know, with with my dad and my brothers,
it was very similar to when I met you that Saturday,
you know, watching all those games. You know, I went
down to watch the Ohio State game. That's why I
went down to that bar uh in that Saturday afternoon.
Speaker 5 (08:54):
And uh so, you know we're that That's what That's
what it's all about, you know, trying to play as
a kid.
Speaker 7 (09:00):
And then obviously you know, majority of the people are
high to State fans, and you know, that's how I
was born and raised and just you know, football has
been part of my life, you know, as long as
I can. You know, you know, think back to my
earliest memories.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
You you went to Harvard to play football, although right,
not not the Harvard of the Big Ten.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
You went to actual Harvard.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
So let's let's just start with like again outside looking in,
academics must have been a huge part of your life
as well. What was what was like, give me give
me the what was it like growing up in terms
of the balance of football, How your parents were with academics,
what pushed you to be such not only an impressive student,
(09:46):
but impressive athlete as well.
Speaker 7 (09:47):
Yeah, it's actually you know, it's not a it's not
the prettiest, you know, decorative story as far as you know,
my passion is exceed in school. You know, I grew
up in a you know what what America calls a
dysfunctional home. It was just my dad and two half
(10:09):
brothers and my real brother. And you know, I to
get into my story, you know, there was a lot
of trauma. There was there was a lot of chaos
in my house. And for me, academics and athletics became
my outlet, became my perfectionism. That's kind of how I
(10:32):
escaped not feeling so well at home, how I escaped
being scared all the time, and that kind of doing
well in sports and doing well and school kind of
became my identity. And that's what I kind of hid behind.
And fortunately I was able to come. I was just
(10:53):
good enough in football and I was just good enough
as a student to combine that into you know, being
able to be recruited by those Ivy League schools. But
you know, to be honest with you, like, the what
I know now is a major you know, anxiety disorder
was very prevalent at a young age for me, and
(11:16):
I never knew that there was anything wrong. I just
felt that that's how most people must feel, and that
anxiety really began to take a toll on me physically
and mentally. You know, well before I ever stepped foot
on the campus at Harvard, and the way I coped
with everything was this identity that I was this great student,
(11:39):
I was this great athlete, and that's kind of what
shaped me and got me to the position, you know,
just to get recruited and to be able to go
to a school like Harvard and.
Speaker 5 (11:50):
Attempt to play football. But you know, I've told you
just before I was I didn't feel right when I
got there, mentally and physically.
Speaker 7 (11:57):
I ended up having several shoulder surgeries my first few
years I was there. Never really got the full college
experience of being a college athlete.
Speaker 5 (12:07):
Okay, So that that's how I got there.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
I mean, you can share as much as you want
to share, but I like, when you you throw some
chum out there in the water, get they're going like, wait,
hold on, where was your mom in this escuession?
Speaker 5 (12:25):
Yeah?
Speaker 7 (12:26):
So my parents were divorced when I was two years
old and my dad took off all four kids, you know,
to to two of my mom's kids from her her
first marriage, and then my you know, my full brother
and myself, and she was basically out of the picture.
(12:46):
You know, my dad raised us, working the night shift
at the phone company, coaching all of our sports. The
most selfless human being that that there is.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
To get custody of her kids.
Speaker 5 (13:03):
That's a great question. You know, I think when I
was two, they.
Speaker 7 (13:09):
Were divorced, and I think she was just pretty much
unfit to raise kids, and you know, had some instability
in her life obviously. You know, I don't know too
many of the details of why he ended up taking
off four, but you can imagine, you know, my oldest
two half brothers, you know, they didn't have their biological
(13:32):
dad or their or their mom around, and there was
there was a lot of there's a lot of stuff
going on in my house. You know, my dad wasn't there,
and you know, it was it was a pretty chaotic
scene for for.
Speaker 5 (13:45):
My brother and I.
Speaker 7 (13:46):
And my earliest memories are all doug They're all self soothing, hiding, scared, rocking,
just waiting for my dad to.
Speaker 5 (13:57):
Get home to feel comforted. You know, to feel comforted.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
It was who was who was caused? Who was causing
the chaos? What wasn't you and your brother?
Speaker 7 (14:06):
So my my oldest half brother, Mike is is you know,
now a firefighter in Beachwood, Ohio, and he he was
graduated from high school and off into the military. You know,
when I was kind of just getting into like I
(14:26):
remember like grade school maybe, but the the what was
causing most of the problem was my brother Mark. You know,
I don't have a relationship. You know, he himself got
into a lot of trouble in high school and and
was kind of out of the scene as soon as
he turned eighteen. And you know, like I said, my
(14:49):
dad worked night shift my whole life. So as soon
as my dad was out of the house, it was
just it was it was a free it was a
free run for for my you know, a high school kid,
and and you know he was you know, drugs party
and you know, people at the house all the time.
It just was a wild scene. And I remember a
(15:09):
lot of nights hiding under you know, hiding under the
bed and and just waiting for my dad to get
home in the morning.
Speaker 5 (15:15):
And that was kind of you know what we knew,
so I didn't know it was anything different.
Speaker 7 (15:21):
I lived in a normal neighborhood. I didn't know I
didn't live in you know, it wasn't like I grew
up in, you know, a place that you know, we
weren't poor, we weren't rich by any means, but it
was just a regular middle class neighborhood.
Speaker 5 (15:34):
And it was it was all I knew.
Speaker 7 (15:37):
And uh, you know, I think once my brother left
the house, things started to settle in a little bit.
And then we would see my mom twice a week,
my brother, Matt and I, and it got to a
point where, you know, we were seeing her less often
and less often. And you know, when I was tenure
(16:00):
years old, we were over at her house and she
was in a physically abusive relationship and it happened in
front of us, and she was able to get us
in the car and drive us back to my dad's
house and drop us off. And that was the last
time I ever saw my mom or spoke to my
(16:22):
mom my entire life. And what I remember about that, Doug,
was I was relieved. I hated going over there. I
did not like having to go over to this house
twice a week. And be around the person she was
married to. And for me and my brother Matt, who
(16:44):
was just eighteen months older than me, it's kind of
the defining point in our lives. This is kind of
when I took off and became this academic athlete, and
it's kind of when my brother met started having some
problems and kind of became the under compensator. That's how
he was, you know, responded to the trauma and we
(17:04):
went completely different paths, you know, through our through middle
school and high school. So you know, for me, it
was more of a relief now. But it was just
my dad and my brother Matt in the house, and
it was kind of my time where there.
Speaker 5 (17:24):
It didn't seem there were as many distractions.
Speaker 7 (17:26):
I wasn't quite as afraid and and for me that's
kind of like where I started to do really well
in school and do really well.
Speaker 5 (17:36):
On the athletic field.
Speaker 8 (17:38):
Fox Sports Radio has the best sports talk lineup in
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listen live.
Speaker 5 (17:51):
We show up at Harvard well year I got to
Harvard in nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Show up at Harvard night ninety seven, North Campton, Ohio.
What do you remember about stepping on campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Speaker 7 (18:09):
I remember the one thing I remembered is I felt
I felt, I like escaped.
Speaker 5 (18:19):
Being back home. And I really felt a lot of
relief when I got there immediately, and then just the
the just the it's hard to pre to describe, you know.
Speaker 7 (18:31):
We got there two weeks early for football camps, so
campus was empty. I remember feeling very proud of myself, like,
oh my god, I can't believe I'm here, you know,
that type of feeling. And I thought that geographical relocation
was gonna allow me to start to feel better mentally physically,
(18:55):
and yeah, initially I did. Initially I kind of had
this this you know, as if we were in camp,
we were playing, and there was that initial you know,
relief and kind of dissipation of some of my anxiety
and some of the emotional just kind of stress that
I always felt when I was in high school. But
(19:20):
we all know they all the trauma and all the
underlying factors were still there. I wasn't working on it
at all.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
And so well, it was also it's also before the
time when we need to work on it, you know, like,
let's just kind of be honest, right, Like I I
didn't come from what I would I would consider an
abusive home. You know, there was obviously, uh that generation
of parents, even the ones that were still married like mine,
(19:48):
there was a.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Different way of treating you. You know. It's like.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
It's like you did your dad ever sit down and
do homework. Were like, no, we just don'd you to
get that shit done. Do it well, you know, get
your grades, or you don't play basketball. It was really
that simple, right, But there's definitely I I escaped southern California,
no question to go to Notre Dame, and I remember
showing up and having many of the same feelings. Now,
(20:16):
I would tell you that, you know, like we're obviously
both bright. We wouldn't have made it to where we
made it if we weren't. On the other hand, I
will tell you that I remember by Notre Dame, I
got to be in a class. There's one class a semester.
I was taught by Father Malloy. Mark Malloy was the
(20:37):
president of Notre Dame at the time, and he was
an English professor, and so I was one of the
twelve advisors to each select one person to get to
be in a special class.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
The class is actually taught in the Golden Dome. About that, and.
Speaker 3 (20:53):
The first class that thought the class was only on
a Sunday night and he get downe do a mass,
and then he come in and he'd do a class.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
And it was a very simple format. We read a.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
Novel book every week and then you had to write
a paper that was more than a page less than two.
But the first week we went around the room, we
kind of told our stories in the like I don't know,
like twelve of us.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
I mean, say you had like Tennis, tell your story or.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
And I just remember, like I mean my story. The
headlines were good Jewish kids, Southern California. Mom went to Syracuse,
Dad to Ohio State. You know, basketball player, et cetera,
et cetera. But it wasn't really a lot of granular details.
Right like they recruited me. I thought I could start.
(21:40):
I love the idea of Notre Dame, what it could
do for me when I was done playing. And then
I hear all these stories of these people and things
they've accomplished, the places they came from, and I'm like,
oh my god, I'm the dumbest, least accomplished person in
this room. I like, I just basketball player. That's how
I felt at that point, And I don't did what
(22:06):
was that? Like you when you you're around campus and like, look,
not everybody at Harvard is some some genius, but there's
much a much higher percentage of people who are really
really intellectually elite.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
What was it? What was that element of a love?
Speaker 7 (22:22):
Yeah, that's a you know, to be one hundred percent honest,
I was never I was so self involved and so
concerned with just surviving day to day. I never got
too overwhelmed by the elites and the money and the
prestige of the place.
Speaker 5 (22:44):
You know, to be honest, Doug like that the that
feeling like a fraud and feeling like do I really belong?
I had? I had that.
Speaker 7 (22:53):
I started having that in high school. You know, you know,
are people going to find out? You know that that
was kind of you know, the gist of my story
was and you just said it on the on the ledger,
like my ledger all ranked high in my class, perfect grades,
captain of the basketball team, football team.
Speaker 5 (23:11):
Like on paper, it was as pretty as it could get.
Speaker 7 (23:15):
And you know, I knew, and I've shared this in
some and some talks I've given, Like the summer going
into my freshman year of college, I.
Speaker 5 (23:23):
Knew something was wrong. I knew something was off.
Speaker 7 (23:26):
I knew there was no way other people felt like this,
you know, inside between their ears, and you know, like
I said, when I got to Harvard, for those first
few weeks, it kind of dissipated, and I think, maybe
this is what I needed, Maybe this is what I'm
just I just needed to get away. But really soon
it all started to seep back in. And are they
(23:49):
going to find out that, you know, how bad I'm
hurting physically and they just wasted this recruiting spot, you know,
not that it's that big of a deal at Harvard,
but you know, the coaches take this uff seriously. And
are people going to realize that I'm not that smart?
Speaker 5 (24:03):
You know?
Speaker 7 (24:03):
And I just studied my butt off every night, and
you know, I was really good at memorizing stuff. So
like that feeling that like I'm going to get found out,
and what that had me to do was really start
to isolate that that that's what that's what ies were.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
So when when did you hurt your shoulder?
Speaker 5 (24:23):
I had my first surgery right after my freshman season.
So that that that winter of nine.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Did you actually do you remember when you heard it,
Remember the moment you heard it?
Speaker 5 (24:33):
Oh back in high school? You know what I mean.
Speaker 7 (24:35):
It was one of those deals where you know, it
just kept it kept grinding on me, and they got
to that point.
Speaker 5 (24:40):
Where you know, I needed to get it cleaned up.
Speaker 7 (24:42):
And you know, I ended up having three surgeries within
eighteen months, you know, and and never have gotten physically
well enough where you know, I still feel like my
shoulders great or anything. It's uh, it's it's hard to describe,
and I think very few people can understand unless they
have dealt with debility, debilitating anxiety, just what it can
(25:06):
do to you physically and how it throws your whole
body off a whack. And I think for me, it
all started with a back injury back in like eighth grade,
and it just kind of got the mechanism of my
body just completely out of whack. And that's where you know,
I started having issues with my shoulder and my hip
and everything else. So, like I said, I was I
felt like I was falling apart before I was even
(25:28):
a senior in high school.
Speaker 5 (25:29):
To be honest with you, So, you.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Have shoulder surgery. Did you take pain pills?
Speaker 7 (25:36):
In yes, I remember that feeling the first time I
ever took a pain pill, of that immediate relief, the
world slowed down. But through all those surgeries and the
amount of medication I took, never did it become a habit.
(26:02):
Never did it become something that, you know, once the
prescriptions would have run out, that I would be seeking
more of it. I'd always get kind of get back
into my routine and and and get back into, you know,
just the regular riggors of college. So that that was
my first exposure to paying medication. Obviously not the last
(26:25):
part of my connection and my story to paying medication,
but that was my first time, you know, being exposed
to it when I was nineteen years old.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
You so, did you stay with the football team after
these three surgeries?
Speaker 2 (26:39):
You not stay with How does it work?
Speaker 7 (26:42):
So basically, after after my sophomore sophomore spring football I
had the third surgery, I went home to Canton, Ohio
and took a whole year off of school, you know,
because in the IVY League they don't really red shirt,
so I wanted to. I wanted to get healthy and play,
so I want to take an entire year off of school.
(27:02):
I went home, try to do everything I could to
get healthy, and that year ended up just being a
waste of a year because I couldn't get healthy physically,
I was just getting worse mentally. And then returned to
Harvard my final two years just as a regular student,
not not a part of the football.
Speaker 5 (27:20):
Team, just as a just as a regular, you know
student at Harvard.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
When you were at home, What was it like that.
Speaker 5 (27:28):
Ended up becoming.
Speaker 7 (27:31):
More, you know, once I realized that I wasn't playing,
it just it just became a lot of socialization, going
to visit friends at different colleges, taking a lot.
Speaker 5 (27:40):
Of trips, you know. At that point, you know, my brother.
Speaker 7 (27:48):
Was really struggling at home and has continued to struggle
to this day. So I remember that year specifically. I
didn't like being at home. So as soon as i'd
be home and I finally kind of felt this pain
and a lot of the sadness that was inside that home,
I didn't want to be I didn't want to be there,
so I would look for another trip to go on.
(28:10):
I'd go visit my friend at Florida, state, I'd go
visit my friend. I spent a lot of time.
Speaker 5 (28:14):
Working at a sporting good store as.
Speaker 7 (28:16):
Much as I could do, just to stay out of
the house. And that's kind of been the repeating theme,
you know, with my relationship with North Campton, Ohio and
my home to this very day.
Speaker 4 (28:32):
All right, that's it for part one of Josh Lucas
from humble beginnings and of course understanding now all the things.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
That you probably should have processed back then. Right, we
all kind of feel that way. Remember.
Speaker 4 (28:48):
The Doug Goley Show is daily three to five eastern
TULB two Pacific. You can also download and podcasts form
this podcast only our just type in Doug Gotley. Please
review this download, subscribe, rate it. All that stuff helps
and I truly appreciate Josh for telling his story.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Part two. Oh, it's fascinating. That's next time on All
Ball
Hey, welcome in.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
I'm Doug Golly.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
This is All Ball.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
We'll take a step aside for the next three All
Ball podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
We're going to drop.
Speaker 4 (00:14):
These in kind of consecutive days, give a little bit
of gap in between. But I just think it's a
personal story that is so good, and so many of
you are like man, when I'm driving, I'm recruiting, when
I'm driving to a high school game, wherever I am,
I love to listen to stories.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Beach told. Well, I'll have a dear friend. His name
is Josh Lucas.
Speaker 4 (00:33):
Josh was the director of player personnel for the Chicago Bears.
How he got there after being a student athlete at Harvard,
but the mercurial path that took to getting there, and
the time he took and why he stepped aside at
times from his job. This is a story that has
not been publicly told. Josh is a rising star in
(00:53):
the media. He still is a very very well respected
player personnel potential GM in the future.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Here's his story.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
The thing I love about my job is when I
was a kid, my dad was an old basketball coach. Right.
I always felt like my dad was an old basketball coach,
even when I wasn't old like they've been doing it
since he got out of college.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
He was a high school coach and then became a
college coach.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
And there's a lot of reasons I put together this
pod the way I do. I mean, really, I was
I was driving one night between Murphysboro, Tennessee and Bowling Green, Kentucky,
and it was pouring rain and actually there was a
(01:42):
I didn't know this at the time until like midway
through the drive that I was driving through like an
active tornado area, and I was listening to Sirius XM
and to the Howard to Howard Stern interview Megan Trainer,
and Megan told the story of how she kind of
(02:05):
made it her breakthrough, which was he went into La
Reid's office and she had written songs for lots of people,
and she had this I'm Gonna love you like I'm.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Gonna lose you, and.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
She only had I think, like one verse that she
could sing and play on a ukulele. You know. Again,
like the details is a little fuzzy now because it
was actually it's like an amazing interview. He let her
just kind of talk her way through it. But she
talked about how she was there the whole day, and
he wanted her to play the whole song, and anyway,
(02:42):
she ended up figuring out how to play the whole
and thought it was, you know, for somebody else.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
He's like, no, I want you to record that.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
But it was a storytelling element of it that I
just I remember, I'm driving through this incredibly shitty.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Weather, and I'm like the power of audio.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
And I've said this on radio before, is when you
get a really really good story, where you get a
really really good conversation, you don't want to turn off.
The greatest compliment you can give to a radio host
is I pulled into my driveway and I could not
get out of the car until you were done. The
second greatest one, or maybe the one B is I
(03:21):
listened through a commercial break because I wanted to hear
how the conversation ended or something like that. Then I
factor in. When I was a kid, my dad would
take me to the final four. We go up to
the Nike and in the Nike suite that would be
Jim Balbano and Dick by tal and Digger Phelps and
John Thompson would be there. All these kind of famous
old time coaches or my dad was great friends with
(03:43):
Dale Brown.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
And the thing about all those coaches were they're.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Amazing storytellers, you know, amazing storytellers, And so I thought,
why not have a pod about storytelling and basketball?
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Tell people the story their best.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
And there have been times in which we veered off
of that, lots of really really good ones. And so
now with the holiday season, a couple of my friends
who I think have amazing stories, I'm offered up to
join me. One of those is a guy, and again,
this is kind of part of what makes my job cool.
Then it was Josh Lucas. So here's kind of the backstory.
(04:22):
I came to work at Fox in twenty seventeen. And
truth being told, when I came to work at Fox,
I had still had time on my CBS contract left.
But I don't know, I don't know if I at
the time fit what they were looking for with just
with one certain element of it, and so I didn't
(04:46):
really we didn't negotiate. We just said, hey, like, can
we get out of the deal. Because a bunch of
my friends had left to go to Fox. I like CBS.
I learned a lot of CBS. I thought there's really
good people on CBS. I had a lot of trepidation
when I took the job leaving ESPN, because like CBS,
I loved ESPN. It was awesome, so there was no
(05:08):
negatives who I left CBS, but I went to Fox.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
And when I went there, the gentleman who.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Was running the daytime TV element of it had promised
me like, hey, take your deal with the radio and
we're going to find a TV show for it. And
then of course I do like college basketball games. So
three months into that, I was actually overseas as coaching
in Israel and I got to call it.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
He'd been fired.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
He's a good friend of mine, and it sucked because
you learn that in business a lot of it's who
you're connected. So Fox, I don't know, trying to do
be a solid or I don't know, maybe they were
looking for new talent to do different things. But I
got to do sideline for one NFL game on Fox,
(05:59):
and by the way, it's should be pointing out, they.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Did a thorough review of it.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
I actually had John Madden's old producer did a review
and it was a sterling review. He called me afterwards
and I never forget driving on the four to five
stuck in trap and he was like, do you want
to do this for the next twenty years. I was
like yes, He's like, well, you're really good at it, Like, well,
it's fun. I never did it, by the way, I
think I pissed the Dolphins off, and we'll talk about
(06:24):
what I mistakenly did or I didn't mistakenly did it.
I did it, but they knew it was a bad
thing at the time. So to do an NFL game,
the games on Sunday, it was Broncos versus the Bears.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
This is back when the Bears were really good.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
They had great defense, they traded for Khalil Mack, and
the Dolphins had to kind of spot start brock Osweiler.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
I think the Prayers.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Were undefeated at the time too, I'm not mistaken. And
it was like mid season. So you go to practice
at the facility and you meet with all the coaches.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
You spend the entire day there, and then.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
You go back to the hotel and I think it
might have been on a Saturday, when, like Saturday, there
is nothing going on. You're literally getting paid hang out
in Miami at the beach or at the hotel. You
have a production meeting which is interminable, but it's like
in the afternoon. So to watch college football, I go
downstairs and I'm not sitting at the hotel bar, and
a guy settles up next to me, and he knows
(07:21):
a lot about.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Football, like a crazy amount about football. The names Josh Lucas.
He joins me.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Now, he was director of player personnel for the Chicago
Bears at the time, and I didn't actually know that
until probably an hour into our conversation when we're just
watching and you know, like anybody looking at the screen
and commenting. And we've been kind of friends ever since.
(07:46):
So Josh joins me now on the All Ball Pod, Josh,
how are you.
Speaker 5 (07:50):
I'm doing well. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
So I want to get to that point from that
point forward in a second.
Speaker 5 (07:59):
But you grew up where North Canton, Ohio.
Speaker 6 (08:04):
I mean, you can't get more football nope, Ohio right,
Like it's just impossible to get paint the picture of
what it's like to grew up in North.
Speaker 7 (08:15):
Camp about what you think, you know, obviously with the
Hall of Fame the center of Canton, Ohio, you know,
and I grew up in a house with with with
all boys. So sports for everything, and obviously football was
kind of the the lifeblood of the state still is
(08:36):
and so you know, with with my dad and my brothers,
it was very similar to when I met you that Saturday,
you know, watching all those games. You know, I went
down to watch the Ohio State game. That's why I
went down to that bar uh in that Saturday afternoon.
Speaker 5 (08:54):
And uh so, you know we're that That's what That's
what it's all about, you know, trying to play as
a kid.
Speaker 7 (09:00):
And then obviously you know, majority of the people are
high to State fans, and you know, that's how I
was born and raised and just you know, football has
been part of my life, you know, as long as
I can. You know, you know, think back to my
earliest memories.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
You you went to Harvard to play football, although right,
not not the Harvard of the Big Ten.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
You went to actual Harvard.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
So let's let's just start with like again outside looking in,
academics must have been a huge part of your life
as well. What was what was like, give me give
me the what was it like growing up in terms
of the balance of football, How your parents were with academics,
what pushed you to be such not only an impressive student,
(09:46):
but impressive athlete as well.
Speaker 7 (09:47):
Yeah, it's actually you know, it's not a it's not
the prettiest, you know, decorative story as far as you know,
my passion is exceed in school. You know, I grew
up in a you know what what America calls a
dysfunctional home. It was just my dad and two half
(10:09):
brothers and my real brother. And you know, I to
get into my story, you know, there was a lot
of trauma. There was there was a lot of chaos
in my house. And for me, academics and athletics became
my outlet, became my perfectionism. That's kind of how I
(10:32):
escaped not feeling so well at home, how I escaped
being scared all the time, and that kind of doing
well in sports and doing well and school kind of
became my identity. And that's what I kind of hid behind.
And fortunately I was able to come. I was just
(10:53):
good enough in football and I was just good enough
as a student to combine that into you know, being
able to be recruited by those Ivy League schools. But
you know, to be honest with you, like, the what
I know now is a major you know, anxiety disorder
was very prevalent at a young age for me, and
(11:16):
I never knew that there was anything wrong. I just
felt that that's how most people must feel, and that
anxiety really began to take a toll on me physically
and mentally. You know, well before I ever stepped foot
on the campus at Harvard, and the way I coped
with everything was this identity that I was this great student,
(11:39):
I was this great athlete, and that's kind of what
shaped me and got me to the position, you know,
just to get recruited and to be able to go
to a school like Harvard and.
Speaker 5 (11:50):
Attempt to play football. But you know, I've told you
just before I was I didn't feel right when I
got there, mentally and physically.
Speaker 7 (11:57):
I ended up having several shoulder surgeries my first few
years I was there. Never really got the full college
experience of being a college athlete.
Speaker 5 (12:07):
Okay, So that that's how I got there.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
I mean, you can share as much as you want
to share, but I like, when you you throw some
chum out there in the water, get they're going like, wait,
hold on, where was your mom in this escuession?
Speaker 5 (12:25):
Yeah?
Speaker 7 (12:26):
So my parents were divorced when I was two years
old and my dad took off all four kids, you know,
to to two of my mom's kids from her her
first marriage, and then my you know, my full brother
and myself, and she was basically out of the picture.
(12:46):
You know, my dad raised us, working the night shift
at the phone company, coaching all of our sports. The
most selfless human being that that there is.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
To get custody of her kids.
Speaker 5 (13:03):
That's a great question. You know, I think when I
was two, they.
Speaker 7 (13:09):
Were divorced, and I think she was just pretty much
unfit to raise kids, and you know, had some instability
in her life obviously. You know, I don't know too
many of the details of why he ended up taking
off four, but you can imagine, you know, my oldest
two half brothers, you know, they didn't have their biological
(13:32):
dad or their or their mom around, and there was
there was a lot of there's a lot of stuff
going on in my house. You know, my dad wasn't there,
and you know, it was it was a pretty chaotic
scene for for.
Speaker 5 (13:45):
My brother and I.
Speaker 7 (13:46):
And my earliest memories are all doug They're all self soothing, hiding, scared, rocking,
just waiting for my dad to.
Speaker 5 (13:57):
Get home to feel comforted. You know, to feel comforted.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
It was who was who was caused? Who was causing
the chaos? What wasn't you and your brother?
Speaker 7 (14:06):
So my my oldest half brother, Mike is is you know,
now a firefighter in Beachwood, Ohio, and he he was
graduated from high school and off into the military. You know,
when I was kind of just getting into like I
(14:26):
remember like grade school maybe, but the the what was
causing most of the problem was my brother Mark. You know,
I don't have a relationship. You know, he himself got
into a lot of trouble in high school and and
was kind of out of the scene as soon as
he turned eighteen. And you know, like I said, my
(14:49):
dad worked night shift my whole life. So as soon
as my dad was out of the house, it was
just it was it was a free it was a
free run for for my you know, a high school kid,
and and you know he was you know, drugs party
and you know, people at the house all the time.
It just was a wild scene. And I remember a
(15:09):
lot of nights hiding under you know, hiding under the
bed and and just waiting for my dad to get
home in the morning.
Speaker 5 (15:15):
And that was kind of you know what we knew,
so I didn't know it was anything different.
Speaker 7 (15:21):
I lived in a normal neighborhood. I didn't know I
didn't live in you know, it wasn't like I grew
up in, you know, a place that you know, we
weren't poor, we weren't rich by any means, but it
was just a regular middle class neighborhood.
Speaker 5 (15:34):
And it was it was all I knew.
Speaker 7 (15:37):
And uh, you know, I think once my brother left
the house, things started to settle in a little bit.
And then we would see my mom twice a week,
my brother, Matt and I, and it got to a
point where, you know, we were seeing her less often
and less often. And you know, when I was tenure
(16:00):
years old, we were over at her house and she
was in a physically abusive relationship and it happened in
front of us, and she was able to get us
in the car and drive us back to my dad's
house and drop us off. And that was the last
time I ever saw my mom or spoke to my
(16:22):
mom my entire life. And what I remember about that, Doug,
was I was relieved. I hated going over there. I
did not like having to go over to this house
twice a week. And be around the person she was
married to. And for me and my brother Matt, who
(16:44):
was just eighteen months older than me, it's kind of
the defining point in our lives. This is kind of
when I took off and became this academic athlete, and
it's kind of when my brother met started having some
problems and kind of became the under compensator. That's how
he was, you know, responded to the trauma and we
(17:04):
went completely different paths, you know, through our through middle
school and high school. So you know, for me, it
was more of a relief now. But it was just
my dad and my brother Matt in the house, and
it was kind of my time where there.
Speaker 5 (17:24):
It didn't seem there were as many distractions.
Speaker 7 (17:26):
I wasn't quite as afraid and and for me that's
kind of like where I started to do really well
in school and do really well.
Speaker 5 (17:36):
On the athletic field.
Speaker 8 (17:38):
Fox Sports Radio has the best sports talk lineup in
the nation. Catch all of our shows at Foxsports Radio
dot com and within the iHeartRadio app search FSR to
listen live.
Speaker 5 (17:51):
We show up at Harvard well year I got to
Harvard in nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Show up at Harvard night ninety seven, North Campton, Ohio.
What do you remember about stepping on campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Speaker 7 (18:09):
I remember the one thing I remembered is I felt
I felt, I like escaped.
Speaker 5 (18:19):
Being back home. And I really felt a lot of
relief when I got there immediately, and then just the
the just the it's hard to pre to describe, you know.
Speaker 7 (18:31):
We got there two weeks early for football camps, so
campus was empty. I remember feeling very proud of myself, like,
oh my god, I can't believe I'm here, you know,
that type of feeling. And I thought that geographical relocation
was gonna allow me to start to feel better mentally physically,
(18:55):
and yeah, initially I did. Initially I kind of had
this this you know, as if we were in camp,
we were playing, and there was that initial you know,
relief and kind of dissipation of some of my anxiety
and some of the emotional just kind of stress that
I always felt when I was in high school. But
(19:20):
we all know they all the trauma and all the
underlying factors were still there. I wasn't working on it
at all.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
And so well, it was also it's also before the
time when we need to work on it, you know, like,
let's just kind of be honest, right, Like I I
didn't come from what I would I would consider an
abusive home. You know, there was obviously, uh that generation
of parents, even the ones that were still married like mine,
(19:48):
there was a.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Different way of treating you. You know. It's like.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
It's like you did your dad ever sit down and
do homework. Were like, no, we just don'd you to
get that shit done. Do it well, you know, get
your grades, or you don't play basketball. It was really
that simple, right, But there's definitely I I escaped southern California,
no question to go to Notre Dame, and I remember
showing up and having many of the same feelings. Now,
(20:16):
I would tell you that, you know, like we're obviously
both bright. We wouldn't have made it to where we
made it if we weren't. On the other hand, I
will tell you that I remember by Notre Dame, I
got to be in a class. There's one class a semester.
I was taught by Father Malloy. Mark Malloy was the
(20:37):
president of Notre Dame at the time, and he was
an English professor, and so I was one of the
twelve advisors to each select one person to get to
be in a special class.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
The class is actually taught in the Golden Dome. About that, and.
Speaker 3 (20:53):
The first class that thought the class was only on
a Sunday night and he get downe do a mass,
and then he come in and he'd do a class.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
And it was a very simple format. We read a.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
Novel book every week and then you had to write
a paper that was more than a page less than two.
But the first week we went around the room, we
kind of told our stories in the like I don't know,
like twelve of us.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
I mean, say you had like Tennis, tell your story or.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
And I just remember, like I mean my story. The
headlines were good Jewish kids, Southern California. Mom went to Syracuse,
Dad to Ohio State. You know, basketball player, et cetera,
et cetera. But it wasn't really a lot of granular details.
Right like they recruited me. I thought I could start.
(21:40):
I love the idea of Notre Dame, what it could
do for me when I was done playing. And then
I hear all these stories of these people and things
they've accomplished, the places they came from, and I'm like,
oh my god, I'm the dumbest, least accomplished person in
this room. I like, I just basketball player. That's how
I felt at that point, And I don't did what
(22:06):
was that? Like you when you you're around campus and like, look,
not everybody at Harvard is some some genius, but there's
much a much higher percentage of people who are really
really intellectually elite.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
What was it? What was that element of a love?
Speaker 7 (22:22):
Yeah, that's a you know, to be one hundred percent honest,
I was never I was so self involved and so
concerned with just surviving day to day. I never got
too overwhelmed by the elites and the money and the
prestige of the place.
Speaker 5 (22:44):
You know, to be honest, Doug like that the that
feeling like a fraud and feeling like do I really belong?
I had? I had that.
Speaker 7 (22:53):
I started having that in high school. You know, you know,
are people going to find out? You know that that
was kind of you know, the gist of my story
was and you just said it on the on the ledger,
like my ledger all ranked high in my class, perfect grades,
captain of the basketball team, football team.
Speaker 5 (23:11):
Like on paper, it was as pretty as it could get.
Speaker 7 (23:15):
And you know, I knew, and I've shared this in
some and some talks I've given, Like the summer going
into my freshman year of college, I.
Speaker 5 (23:23):
Knew something was wrong. I knew something was off.
Speaker 7 (23:26):
I knew there was no way other people felt like this,
you know, inside between their ears, and you know, like
I said, when I got to Harvard, for those first
few weeks, it kind of dissipated, and I think, maybe
this is what I needed, Maybe this is what I'm
just I just needed to get away. But really soon
it all started to seep back in. And are they
(23:49):
going to find out that, you know, how bad I'm
hurting physically and they just wasted this recruiting spot, you know,
not that it's that big of a deal at Harvard,
but you know, the coaches take this uff seriously. And
are people going to realize that I'm not that smart?
Speaker 5 (24:03):
You know?
Speaker 7 (24:03):
And I just studied my butt off every night, and
you know, I was really good at memorizing stuff. So
like that feeling that like I'm going to get found out,
and what that had me to do was really start
to isolate that that that's what that's what ies were.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
So when when did you hurt your shoulder?
Speaker 5 (24:23):
I had my first surgery right after my freshman season.
So that that that winter of nine.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Did you actually do you remember when you heard it,
Remember the moment you heard it?
Speaker 5 (24:33):
Oh back in high school? You know what I mean.
Speaker 7 (24:35):
It was one of those deals where you know, it
just kept it kept grinding on me, and they got
to that point.
Speaker 5 (24:40):
Where you know, I needed to get it cleaned up.
Speaker 7 (24:42):
And you know, I ended up having three surgeries within
eighteen months, you know, and and never have gotten physically
well enough where you know, I still feel like my
shoulders great or anything. It's uh, it's it's hard to describe,
and I think very few people can understand unless they
have dealt with debility, debilitating anxiety, just what it can
(25:06):
do to you physically and how it throws your whole
body off a whack. And I think for me, it
all started with a back injury back in like eighth grade,
and it just kind of got the mechanism of my
body just completely out of whack. And that's where you know,
I started having issues with my shoulder and my hip
and everything else. So, like I said, I was I
felt like I was falling apart before I was even
(25:28):
a senior in high school.
Speaker 5 (25:29):
To be honest with you, So, you.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Have shoulder surgery. Did you take pain pills?
Speaker 7 (25:36):
In yes, I remember that feeling the first time I
ever took a pain pill, of that immediate relief, the
world slowed down. But through all those surgeries and the
amount of medication I took, never did it become a habit.
(26:02):
Never did it become something that, you know, once the
prescriptions would have run out, that I would be seeking
more of it. I'd always get kind of get back
into my routine and and and get back into, you know,
just the regular riggors of college. So that that was
my first exposure to paying medication. Obviously not the last
(26:25):
part of my connection and my story to paying medication,
but that was my first time, you know, being exposed
to it when I was nineteen years old.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
You so, did you stay with the football team after
these three surgeries?
Speaker 2 (26:39):
You not stay with How does it work?
Speaker 7 (26:42):
So basically, after after my sophomore sophomore spring football I
had the third surgery, I went home to Canton, Ohio
and took a whole year off of school, you know,
because in the IVY League they don't really red shirt,
so I wanted to. I wanted to get healthy and play,
so I want to take an entire year off of school.
(27:02):
I went home, try to do everything I could to
get healthy, and that year ended up just being a
waste of a year because I couldn't get healthy physically,
I was just getting worse mentally. And then returned to
Harvard my final two years just as a regular student,
not not a part of the football.
Speaker 5 (27:20):
Team, just as a just as a regular, you know
student at Harvard.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
When you were at home, What was it like that.
Speaker 5 (27:28):
Ended up becoming.
Speaker 7 (27:31):
More, you know, once I realized that I wasn't playing,
it just it just became a lot of socialization, going
to visit friends at different colleges, taking a lot.
Speaker 5 (27:40):
Of trips, you know. At that point, you know, my brother.
Speaker 7 (27:48):
Was really struggling at home and has continued to struggle
to this day. So I remember that year specifically. I
didn't like being at home. So as soon as i'd
be home and I finally kind of felt this pain
and a lot of the sadness that was inside that home,
I didn't want to be I didn't want to be there,
so I would look for another trip to go on.
(28:10):
I'd go visit my friend at Florida, state, I'd go
visit my friend. I spent a lot of time.
Speaker 5 (28:14):
Working at a sporting good store as.
Speaker 7 (28:16):
Much as I could do, just to stay out of
the house. And that's kind of been the repeating theme,
you know, with my relationship with North Campton, Ohio and
my home to this very day.
Speaker 4 (28:32):
All right, that's it for part one of Josh Lucas
from humble beginnings and of course understanding now all the things.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
That you probably should have processed back then. Right, we
all kind of feel that way. Remember.
Speaker 4 (28:48):
The Doug Goley Show is daily three to five eastern
TULB two Pacific. You can also download and podcasts form
this podcast only our just type in Doug Gotley. Please
review this download, subscribe, rate it. All that stuff helps
and I truly appreciate Josh for telling his story.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Part two. Oh, it's fascinating. That's next time on All
Ball
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