February 3, 2026 • 33 mins
New Orleans Saints linebacker Demario Davis has spent 14 years in the NFL as one of its most respected leaders on and off the field. We could have talked with him about how he’s a two-time Pro-Bowler and his team’s nominee for the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year Award, but instead we celebrated his own Army of Normal Folks who’ve supported his greatness— a single mom who gave birth to him at 16, a grandmother who helped raise him, a chaplain who dared to ask him the hard questions, and a wife who has been his rock. His story will show you how your greatest impact just might be some radical love to those surrounding you!
Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/#join
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Listen
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's interesting that men try to tell women what to do,
and men have not burked any of the creatures. Every
man came from a woman. Yet the man a woman
what to do. But I think about the resilient internal
nature of the women's makeup. You think about all the
sacrifices and things that they're doing for you and have
done for you. At the same time, they're navigating their
(00:26):
own internal disappointments, shortcomings, heartache and pains that they've had
to go through and dear while holding up a family,
a loved one, a spouse, a child.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
We saw that in our moms and my grandma.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
I think there's no metal of achievement that you can
really place in a higher honor that and haven't seen that.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney.
I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, I'm a father,
I'm an entrepreneur, and I've been a football cut and
Inner City Memphis and the last part somehow well, it
led to an oscar for the film about one of
my teams.
Speaker 4 (01:08):
That movie is called Undefeated. Guys. I believe our country's.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Problems will never be solved by a bunch of fancy
people and nice suits talking big words that nobody ever
uses on Cinon in Fox, but rather by an army
of normal folks. That's us, just you and me deciding, Hey,
you know what, maybe I can help. And today we
have another edition of our special series Supporting Greatness, where
(01:37):
we interview not so normal folks like micro and Medal
of Honor recipients, but instead of blowing smoke up their
dairyers together, we celebrate their own army of normal folks
that supported them and shaped their life. This time it's
with New Orleans Saints linebacker de Mario Davis, who spent
(01:59):
fourteen years in the NFL as one of its most
respected leaders both on and off the field. He's been
selected for the Pro Bowl twice, is a longtime team captain,
and has been named his team's nominee for the Walter
Peyton NFL Man of the Year Award three different times.
I just can't wait for you to meet this guy
(02:20):
tomorrow is the truth, and we'll introduce them to you
right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. So,
(02:40):
your mom was a single mom and delivered you when
she was only sixteen years old, and she made the
heroic decision to have you, and your grandma made the
heroic decision to raise you while your mom finished school,
and neither of them got to have the normal mother
or grandmother relationship with you, did they.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
So imagine this grandmother that has two different dynamics, like
she's having to be the enforcer on one hand, but
then she's teaching us everything about life and growing us
in our faith. I mean, she would have us downstairs
reading the Bible. But the impact that it had on
me was I saw her in such a light, you know,
for me, she was like an angel. But seeing her
(03:25):
in such a high regard and then the way that
she looked at me changed everything. She called me John,
so she gave me a different name. She never called
me to Mario. She called me John, and she called
me John. It was so impressible that everybody in the
neighborhood called me John. And she would always say, John,
(03:46):
you're special. Like when I will get in trouble, she
would say, John, you can't do that, You're special. And
she would always remind me if I did something great
and I show her, she was like, John, I told
you you were special. And those were her just stuck
to me, and it made me realize that my life
was set apart, that no matter what was going on
(04:06):
in my environment, that I was set apart for something different,
that I was made for something higher. Those words marked me,
and it really marked our connection. It was I know
I'm special. Maybe it's because you told me that, or
maybe because I sensed it myself, but I know that
you see me. And that endeared me to her greatly
and probably shifted how I looked at her. I mean,
(04:29):
for me, in terms of people, she's in an edge
line that it would take a whole lot of work
for someone else to kind of get into how I
viewed her and how I looked at her, And so
she really marked my life, I mean. And then as
a kid, I lived with my grandmother until I was
in the third grade. So you would, you know, think
about a kid kind of getting out of bed and
going to her room as a place of confidence safety,
(04:52):
and I would always see her in her room and
she'd be either reading her Bible on her knees praying,
and so I had a very vivid picture of what
faith look like.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
At an early age. And you know, she marked me.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
And then there was a transition period where I went
to live with my mother. That took some getting used
to because my mother operated very different than my grandmother.
In fact, me and my mom kind of butted his
a lot when I first moved in with her, and
I would actually go to my grandmother, and my grandmother
would kind of kind of pull us to our corners
(05:24):
and talk to my mom about how to raise me
and talk to me like, you know, you got to
work with your mom in this situation, and you have
to look out for her.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
Now, my mom had me at an early age.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
She was sixteen, so she was still finished high school,
and then she went off to finish college. And so
when she came back to get me, you have to
think that she's just trying to figure out her own
life on top of raising, you know, a young boy.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
On her own.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
She was just a kid too. Yeah, yeah, so she's
figuring it out. And so I like to think that
we kind of grew up together. And I think that
I began to admire about my mom was as I
got older, was the amount of sacrifices that she was
making in her own life to make sure that I
had everything that I needed. And she was always working
(06:11):
two to three jobs and always making sure that I
was in a good setup, whether I was staying at
the house with the neighbors or you know, going and
staying with my cousins. She was doing all that she
could to make all the ends meet so that I,
you know, never went without a meal, I never went
without shelter over my head, I never went without.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Clothes for school. I never had a lack of anything.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
It was because she was She had set her life
to decide to make sure that I had everything that
I need, and I think that endeared me to her,
and that became so I kind of had this one
motivation for my grandmother, which was kind of like an
engine and motivating factor of like, man, I gotta go
do something big in life, or I'm supposed to do
something big in life. That's why Gorid created me. I'm special,
(06:55):
I'm set apart. And then it became this thing of man,
I've seen my mother make all these sacrifices and do these,
you know, put her life down so that I can
have what I need. And that kind of became a
motivational force of you know, as I built out my
dreams and what I wanted to do in.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Life, man, I want to do this for her.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
I want to be able to take care of her
and make sure that she's set up and doesn't have
to struggle like this for us for the rest of
her life. And so that became a motivational factor. And
so those two people became the most endeared people to
me in the world, and I think that set me
(07:36):
on a trajectory towards where I'm ultimately at today.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
My dad left on when I was young, and my
mom was married and divorced five times, And despite all
of the chaos that surrounded that and the trouble I
got myself into as a result of that, I always
watch my mom work every day, A cook dinner, I
(08:02):
played five different sports constantly, somehow trying to balance work
and getting me to school and get me fed and
get me in clothes and get me to practices and
picked up and everything. And so when I hear you
talk about your grandmother mother, I you know, I really
identify with that. I get it, and I mean I
(08:25):
hold her on a pedestal because I know how hard
she worked that despite everything surrounding her life that was chaotic,
she made sure I was good. And it sounds like
those ladies were the same for.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
You, absolutely, man, I connect with what you're sharing and
identify with that. You know, just the strong positions and
natures of the women that I played parts in our lives.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
You know.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
I heard somebody say it's interesting that men try to
tell women what to do, and men have birthed any
of the creatures.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Every man came from a woman. Yet the man a
woman what to do.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
But I think about the resilient internal nature of the
women's makeup because you think about all the sacrifices and
things that they're doing for you and have done for you.
At the same time, they're navigating their own internal disappointments,
you know, shortcomings, heartache and pains that they've had to
(09:27):
go through and deer while holding up a family, a
loved one, a spouse, a child. And you think about
that dynamic and you think about what we admire a
lot of times in men, especially like in sports, with
their internal makeup, their internal fortitude of how much they
can withstand and keep going and come out heroes on
(09:47):
the other side, where you just think about the roles
that ladies have to play in life. And I know,
you know, we saw that in our moms and my
grandma as well. So I think there's no metal of
achievement that you can really place in a higher honor
than having seen that and allowing that to shape you
(10:11):
and how you live and show up in society.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
No doubt.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
So first, folks along the way, grandmother and mom. We're
gonna get to a second question about that in a second.
But for our listeners, you grew up around Jackson, right, Jackson, Mississippi.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Yeah, Brandon, Mississippi, you know, right outside of Jackson, right.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
So the most important question I have for the entire
interview is did Old mis recruit you?
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Man?
Speaker 4 (10:39):
Because I don't I don't know. You didn't go to
Ole Miss right?
Speaker 1 (10:42):
What?
Speaker 2 (10:42):
What? What happened? Why?
Speaker 3 (10:44):
You're supposed to be an old miss rubble guy and
you can see my hats, you know while I'm asking.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Yeah, Interestingly enough, I didn't get recruited by Missisispi State
or Old Miss heavily. I think they inquire about me,
but ultimately the only one that pursued me heavy was
Southern miss.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
And now a few messages from our general sponsors. But first,
we've launched our first six local service clubs around the
country at a time when only thirty three percent of
Americans are contributing in their community at the level that
they want to. The mission of these clubs is to
make more service easier for everyone. The first sex are
(11:33):
in my hometown Memphis, Alex's hometown Oxford, Wichita, Atlanta, the
Milwaukee area and it's called Ozak County, and North Duchess County,
which is New York. If you live in one of
these areas, visit the service club section of our site
(11:54):
normal folks dot us and get plugged in. And if
you don't live there and you a service club in
your area, email Alex.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
Because these are the first six. These are the pilots,
but we're going to be.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Doing them more like other Army members that are launching
clubs in their communities later this year, including San Antonio, Lincoln, Nebraska, Huntsville, Alabama,
Lincoln County, Ohio, Lorraine County, Ohio. If you happen to
live in one of these following areas and are interested,
email Alex at Army at normal folks dot us and
(12:30):
he'll get you connected to them.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
This is going to be fun.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
I kind of got on a lot of people's radar
very late. Now this is there. I'm growing up, is
like really before you know, all.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
These camps are having and all these different things, and
you know, I didn't have access to a lot of
those things. And I do think that they were sending
invites to camps and stuff, but they were sending it
to my coaches, and it never it never made it
into my hands. But I kind of got into I
kind of got in my own way in high school.
You know, my sophomore season, I was the only sophomore
(13:14):
on the team that started and was underclassmen to watch
and had a really big year let our team in
receiving yards and return yards, and would have been my
junior year to kind of take off and kind of
be the man in between that my spring year of
my sophomore year, I ended up getting expelled from school,
and I was fortunate that my coach end up letting
(13:35):
me back on the team. But I think what I
did was kind of create hesitation around my coaches and
wanting to promote me as a top player on the
team or a leader that other guys would follow, being
that I had such a shaky past, and I think
that kind of got in my way so I moved
away from being a guy that they really featured, though
really talented. I was used much less in an offensive role,
(13:59):
and then my senior year I ended up going to defense.
And I don't think I had created enough buzz going
into my senior year.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
To really be able to be followed.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
And I think, you know, they got on my recruiting
trail late, and it was just other missing Arkansas State.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Kind of a tongue in cheek thing because anybody's played
ten years in the league I know could have helped
Old Miss and I'm a big old Miss fan Old
Miss Grid. But it really is a segue to what
you just shared with us about getting expelled, And the
question is given how much your mother and grandmother meant
to you and the sacrifices you saw and their tutelage.
(14:37):
You kind of broke their heart in high school a
little bit, which you know, we're not here to beat
anybody up, but it's germane to where you are now
and what you're doing now for people to understand that
just because you grew up getting drugg to the church
and your grandmother doing everything she could, your mother doing
(14:59):
everything she could, the path that led you to where
you are right now was not an easy one, and
some of it was self inflicted, and that happened I
think in high school and at Arkansas State, where you
ultimately went. So would you share with us kind of
how you bounced around between letting your mother's and your
(15:25):
grandmother's love of you per make your soul verse the streets.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
I think it became a real quest for identity of self.
And I think it's so important when you start to
create dreams that you don't just think about what you
want to become, you think about who you want to become.
Because I remember in the fourth grade when I first
kind of created a north star, my uncle asked me
(15:53):
what did I want to do in life? And I
was like, I want to go to the NFL. And
so that became my north star. It wasn't to be
this great person. It was just go to the NFL.
I feel like, if I get to the NFL and
I'm an NFL athlete, like that's everything that I want
to do in it. And though I knew what it
meant to be a good person and I knew who
(16:14):
God was, I never really had connected into a relationship
with that and so as I got older, I remember
the summer going into my ninth grade year, I'm hanging
with my older cousins, and you know, they're doing all
the things. They're you know, smoking weed, they're you know, drinking,
they're going to parties, going to clubs, chasing girls.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
And so for me being a young man with.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Or born away to becoming a young man, you know,
living with just my mom and no other male figures
to give me directions, all my older cousins were the
male figures that I looked to. They were above me.
They were that next step. It's like, okay, well what's
the next step in society. They are it, and they
all played play sports, and they're going in the direction
(17:02):
I feel like.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
I want to go.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
And all my cousins were extremely talented. So they were
really good football players, and so I'm like, okay, well,
whatever they do, I need to do. And so that
next step became all those extracurricular things. They didn't show
me that it was the extra work that you put in.
They showed me this is what we do when we're
(17:24):
not playing football, you know, we're hanging out. And so
that's what I started to do. And I started to
model it. And my mindset has always been whatever I'm doing,
I'm gonna be the best at it.
Speaker 4 (17:34):
So.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Which can go negative and positive positive, And so it's like,
if we drinking, I'm gonna drink the most to show
I got the highest tolerance. If we if we're chasing girls,
get the most girls. It's like, whatever we're doing, it's
a competition, and I'm gonna be the best at it.
And that's I think where I started to realize, like, man,
(17:56):
if you have influence, that influence can be used negatively
or positive. And I think my coaches recognized that. I
think my coaches saw that he has a lot of
influence and if we make him or promote him be
a leader of the team, it's gonna derail uh where
we're trying to go. And so I think that broke there.
That broke my mom and grandmother's heart. It was as
(18:21):
my grandmother kind of started to get sick, and you know,
I'm just my mom.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
I can see my mom still.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Have you rememberance of like my mom getting getting sicker,
She's getting gray hairs all of a sudden, She's coughing
all the time.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
And I think I was just worrying her sick.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
You know, even before I got expelled from school, I
had dropped drugs around her.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
She had drug testing me.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
I lied to her and failed the drug test, and
it was just like what am I good? I think
she was trying her best to hold on to me,
but she's like and probably afraid, like I'm going to
lose my son to these streets, and it was it
was happening, and it was nothing that she could do.
I think it's very hard for a mom to raise
the sun on her own, especially when her son is
(19:07):
seeing male role models who are exact opposite of everything
that she's trying to teach. And so literally I'm taking
her through the ringer. I think she's saying stuff, all
the right things and trying to reaffirm me and who.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
I am, and like why are you doing these things?
You are so much better than these things.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
She always had a very positive spin on everything that
she told, but I feel like it was kind of
going in one air and out the other. Later I
realized that she was really planting a lot of seas
down deep, but it just wasn't resonating. It wasn't resonating
with my reality. And so you know, my grades started
to slip, and it really it really wasn't until once
(19:45):
I got expelled from school my sophomore year. I continued
on one moment during that summer going into my junior year,
I was out and we were breaking in some abandoned
houses and I kind of cut my arm and I
ended up in the house hospital, and I remember going
and wake my mom up, and she just kind of
looked like, I couldn't sleep. I knew you were doing
something you didn't have no business. So that's the kind
(20:07):
of mindset that she was under at that time. So
we go to the hospital and they're stitching me up
and the doctor just tells me, he's like, son, you
are so lucky, and it's not even connecting with me.
My life is moving so fast at the time, and
he was, and I was just I didn't even respond
to him. But at the same time that he said that,
God started talking to me. For the first time, I
(20:29):
heard God's audible voice. I don't have a concept of
All I've heard is people talk about hearing from God.
I never heard from God. I always wondered, like, what
are people talking about God talking? Like, what does it
sound like? It was the first time I heard an
audible voice from God, and I didn't have a real
relationship with him at the time, but it was like
that strike too. And you know, I'm kind of a
(20:51):
smart alec or you know, I always feel justified to
put my opinion on my saying. So I'm like, well,
what was strike one? And he was like, strike one
was you getting expelled from school? Strike two was you
almost lost your life? And I'm like, what, I almost
lost my life? What do you mean? And literally I
looked down and I realized that the market is on
(21:12):
my forearm, on the inside of my forearm, and literally
six inches down from that is what my wrist is
and the depth that it cut. If it would have
been down six inches, I would have lost my life.
And that's what the doctor was referring to that I
was so lucky, and that hit me like a ton
of bricks, because it was almost as if God was
(21:32):
saying strike three.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
You're either going to be dead or in jail for
a long time.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
And that moment changed the trajectory of my life from
a high school standpoint or up to that point, because
it literally scared me straight. So from that point on,
I didn't get in any trouble. I stopped all of
hanging out that my cousins had graduated, so I was
in school solo. But it cleared my head up. I
(21:58):
stopped the smoking. I literally went back to being an
A and B student, you know. Literally, I would go
to practice and go home. And that's when I started
to train after practice, because I didn't have any other
thing to do is either.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
I went to football practice, I did extra workouts, and
then I went home.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
And I think that was the birth of when I
started to do all the extra work that it would
take to be where I'm at today. And I ended
up getting a scholarship and going to Arkansas State, and
that literally was the beginning of the transformation.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
We will be right back and your mom drops you
off at Darksas State.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
But it feels like even though you did straighten up
that last year and a half, she still had a
sense of concern when she dropped you off. And we
are only are at strike too. So was her concern founded?
And how'd that all go?
Speaker 2 (23:17):
I think she was rightfully concerned.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
I had just been under the biggest amount of behavior modification.
I didn't realize it at the time. But there really
was no heart transformation. I just was scared straight. And
I think when you're behavior doing behavior modifications, only amount
of time before the real come back out.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
And I found that out. So what switch was? I mean?
Speaker 1 (23:44):
When I was at the high school, everything was comfortable
at this point, Like I was having success on the field,
I had me a girlfriend, I was back making good grades.
I kind of had everything under control. Well when I
got to college, it's like starting all over. I'm fourth
string on the depth chart. No one knows me, I
have no one around me. I don't have that respecting
(24:05):
clout that I had achieved in high school.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
And so it's like a small fish.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
It's like a small fish in a big pond all
of a sudden, and it's like, okay, well I have
to kind of re announce myself or reintroduce myself, and.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
You know, I don't only know one way to kind
of do that.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
And the way that I did that was kind of
proving that I was tough, proving that I could get girls,
proven that I had a hot tolerance when it came
to drugs and alcohol, kind of proving to be this
this macho tough guy, proved yeah, yeah, it was that,
and so it was like, Okay, well I got to
prove myself all over again, and I fell back into
(24:48):
a lot of those same patterns, and I kind of
fell into it kind of quickly, back in the drugs,
back in the party and back in the chasing girls,
all those different things and where school wasn't as important,
and it was it was really trying to prove it
to those guys in the locker room, because it's mind you,
(25:08):
my north star is just going to the NFL, and
so it's like, okay, well I got to gain the
respect of these guys in the locker room.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
These are the people who I'm trying to prove myself to.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
And as I'm going about that, you know what what
could have been seeing as tragedy strikes at the end
of my freshman year. I read shirted my first year,
and then that summer we're on campus and and and
and me and one of my teammates, uh going and
they're stealing groceries out of Walmart, and it was something
(25:40):
that you know, other players on the team was doing
and kind of had. It was when self checkout had
just came on, and we thought it was a pretty
good little trick to go in and you know, get
one hundred dollars worth of groceries and only pay for
twenty dollars, and you know, kind of go back to
that same mindset, the way that I was wired. Whatever
I'm doing, I'm gonna be the best at And it's like, Okay,
(26:02):
you guys have figured out a scheme.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
I'm gonna show you how to master it.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
And as that happened, me and one of my teammates
got busted and literally the police pulled us over as
we were pulling back into our college dorms, and it
looked like a big drug bust, and they have us
in handcuffs and sitting on the sidewalk and literally they're
(26:26):
taking all of the grocery bags out of the car
and putting them in the back of the police car.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
And it was very embarrassing.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
But I as I look back, I just think about
like the disconnect that was there, you know, as the
police pulled us over and he's like or Or stopped
us and was like, you guys stole those groceries. You're
you're about to get arrested. My mindset is like, wait,
we'll just take the groceries back.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
Like it don't work like that, sir, And uh yeah,
so we had to go we had to go to court.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
And uh, I mean just again the disassociation and disconnect
me and my me and my teammate are just kind
of sitting there laughing, like what if we get time?
Like what if they really lock us up? Not thinking
that they would. We're thinking, you know, this is low
level of fence. They're gonna give us community service, and
you know, they lock us in jail, they give us
they sentenced us to three days in jail and kind
(27:32):
of go through this whole list of you know, penalties,
you know, uh you know the payment kind of the
pay for release is gonna be the length of the probation.
And the only thing that stuck with me was three
days in jail. And I'm like wait, you know, kind
of the court room, my heart sank, and my mom
is in there of course crying because and there was
like this big gap between me and her in the courtroom.
(27:54):
It was just like it was it was. It was
an insurmountable gap. There was nothing that she could do,
like I'm going into the system. Probably her worst fear,
one of my worst fears, and it's like, man, this
is happening, and you know, everything just kind of all
the air kind of came out of the balloon. You know,
it's just like, man, what in the world is happening?
Speaker 2 (28:17):
What what have you know? I've done?
Speaker 1 (28:20):
And I'll kind of come back to this, But now
I know all these things about the criminal justice system.
Had I not been in a college football player like
that could have caused me to get lost in the
system and my life be completely different. Right, People go
to jail and literally will be waiting six seven months
for their for their trial, like they haven't even been
(28:43):
found guilty yet. They just kind of get lost in
the system six seven months. What that could do to
you psychologically if you were able to survive. But even
after you come out of that, if you found not
guilty and they release you, you've been in jail for
six seven months, what that could do to you psychologically
change trubjectory of your life. If I had to miss,
you know, six seven months and wouln't even play football,
(29:04):
would have chance rejected in my life. So now I
just understand the grace of God so much more, how
much I was sparing for but my team essentially bailed me.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
Out.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
I didn't have to stay right away. I was able
to get my sentence and I was able to do
my time. But while I was in there, God visited
me again. Remind you there was no real relationship with God.
So since that last, you know, scared straight moment, I
haven't heard from God or really talk to God. I
just was I would go to Bible study and do
(29:33):
all the things I thought were right, but it was real.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
No, no, no real connection.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
And so God visited me again, and you know, I'm
sitting there and scared for my life all these different things.
You're in a room with fifty beds. It's cold, the
blanket don't don't fit, the bed is hard. You got
this little bitty pillow that has no fluff in it,
your your your barefoot, and you know you kind of.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
In this place where that filled the magic.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Fifty people, only seven showers, the showers out in the open,
and they bring you three meals a day, and they
want to let you outside for one hour. That was
what I was confined in and never had been around
anything like that, or you know, knew what to do
in that situation, and you're just thinking you could be bait,
you know, I'm a college student.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
He's grown men in here.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
So I'm sitting there and I'm just kind of trying
to go through different scenarios of survival in my mind.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
If something was to take place and God visited.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Me again, I think on you know, after I've been
in there about twenty four hours, and he reminds me.
He was like, you remember our conversation. I told you
the next time that you got in trouble, you would
be in jail or dead. And go back to my
smartlan response, it was like, well, God, you said I'd
(30:52):
be in jail for a long time. And that was
the first time I really heard the term grace, and
he said, that's my grace.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
And I know it was him.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
I know it was the Holy Spirit because I don't
have a concept of what grace was, which is this
unmerited favor of God giving us what we don't deserve.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
And he gave me. He gave me a shorter sentence, and.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
I kind of came out of that that that was
wrestling geting my spirit, and so I started to have
these questions to really understand what was God's grace and
really having this understanding of and I have this goal
of where I want to get in life, which is
the NFL. But every time I take, you know, a
step forward, it's like three steps back. And this is
(31:36):
the first time where I'm starting to realize that it's
me taking the steps back. I'm not blaming like I
did in high school, my coach or you know, trying
to blame you know, somebody else for my shortcomings.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Just the first time I'm really looking at me.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
And then I think that's what made way for my
chaplain to be situated where he was with where I
was in life, that that created space or the transformation
of oh we happened.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
It's interesting that the sentence of three days on two levels.
One it's enough to scare the hell out of you,
but it's not long enough to ruin your life, So
that feels about right. The other thing that's interesting about
three days is I just think about the story of
(32:23):
the Crucifixion and the importance of those three days. Come on, man,
And that concludes part one of our conversation with the
Mario Davis. Trust me, don't miss part two. It's now
available to listen to. Together. Guys, we can change this country,
(32:45):
but it starts with you.
Speaker 4 (32:46):
I'll see in Part two,
It's interesting that men try to tell women what to do,
and men have not burked any of the creatures. Every
man came from a woman. Yet the man a woman
what to do. But I think about the resilient internal
nature of the women's makeup. You think about all the
sacrifices and things that they're doing for you and have
done for you. At the same time, they're navigating their
(00:26):
own internal disappointments, shortcomings, heartache and pains that they've had
to go through and dear while holding up a family,
a loved one, a spouse, a child.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
We saw that in our moms and my grandma.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
I think there's no metal of achievement that you can
really place in a higher honor that and haven't seen that.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney.
I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, I'm a father,
I'm an entrepreneur, and I've been a football cut and
Inner City Memphis and the last part somehow well, it
led to an oscar for the film about one of
my teams.
Speaker 4 (01:08):
That movie is called Undefeated. Guys. I believe our country's.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Problems will never be solved by a bunch of fancy
people and nice suits talking big words that nobody ever
uses on Cinon in Fox, but rather by an army
of normal folks. That's us, just you and me deciding, Hey,
you know what, maybe I can help. And today we
have another edition of our special series Supporting Greatness, where
(01:37):
we interview not so normal folks like micro and Medal
of Honor recipients, but instead of blowing smoke up their
dairyers together, we celebrate their own army of normal folks
that supported them and shaped their life. This time it's
with New Orleans Saints linebacker de Mario Davis, who spent
(01:59):
fourteen years in the NFL as one of its most
respected leaders both on and off the field. He's been
selected for the Pro Bowl twice, is a longtime team captain,
and has been named his team's nominee for the Walter
Peyton NFL Man of the Year Award three different times.
I just can't wait for you to meet this guy
(02:20):
tomorrow is the truth, and we'll introduce them to you
right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. So,
(02:40):
your mom was a single mom and delivered you when
she was only sixteen years old, and she made the
heroic decision to have you, and your grandma made the
heroic decision to raise you while your mom finished school,
and neither of them got to have the normal mother
or grandmother relationship with you, did they.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
So imagine this grandmother that has two different dynamics, like
she's having to be the enforcer on one hand, but
then she's teaching us everything about life and growing us
in our faith. I mean, she would have us downstairs
reading the Bible. But the impact that it had on
me was I saw her in such a light, you know,
for me, she was like an angel. But seeing her
(03:25):
in such a high regard and then the way that
she looked at me changed everything. She called me John,
so she gave me a different name. She never called
me to Mario. She called me John, and she called
me John. It was so impressible that everybody in the
neighborhood called me John. And she would always say, John,
(03:46):
you're special. Like when I will get in trouble, she
would say, John, you can't do that, You're special. And
she would always remind me if I did something great
and I show her, she was like, John, I told
you you were special. And those were her just stuck
to me, and it made me realize that my life
was set apart, that no matter what was going on
(04:06):
in my environment, that I was set apart for something different,
that I was made for something higher. Those words marked me,
and it really marked our connection. It was I know
I'm special. Maybe it's because you told me that, or
maybe because I sensed it myself, but I know that
you see me. And that endeared me to her greatly
and probably shifted how I looked at her. I mean,
(04:29):
for me, in terms of people, she's in an edge
line that it would take a whole lot of work
for someone else to kind of get into how I
viewed her and how I looked at her, And so
she really marked my life, I mean. And then as
a kid, I lived with my grandmother until I was
in the third grade. So you would, you know, think
about a kid kind of getting out of bed and
going to her room as a place of confidence safety,
(04:52):
and I would always see her in her room and
she'd be either reading her Bible on her knees praying,
and so I had a very vivid picture of what
faith look like.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
At an early age. And you know, she marked me.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
And then there was a transition period where I went
to live with my mother. That took some getting used
to because my mother operated very different than my grandmother.
In fact, me and my mom kind of butted his
a lot when I first moved in with her, and
I would actually go to my grandmother, and my grandmother
would kind of kind of pull us to our corners
(05:24):
and talk to my mom about how to raise me
and talk to me like, you know, you got to
work with your mom in this situation, and you have
to look out for her.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
Now, my mom had me at an early age.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
She was sixteen, so she was still finished high school,
and then she went off to finish college. And so
when she came back to get me, you have to
think that she's just trying to figure out her own
life on top of raising, you know, a young boy.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
On her own.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
She was just a kid too. Yeah, yeah, so she's
figuring it out. And so I like to think that
we kind of grew up together. And I think that
I began to admire about my mom was as I
got older, was the amount of sacrifices that she was
making in her own life to make sure that I
had everything that I needed. And she was always working
(06:11):
two to three jobs and always making sure that I
was in a good setup, whether I was staying at
the house with the neighbors or you know, going and
staying with my cousins. She was doing all that she
could to make all the ends meet so that I,
you know, never went without a meal, I never went
without shelter over my head, I never went without.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Clothes for school. I never had a lack of anything.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
It was because she was She had set her life
to decide to make sure that I had everything that
I need, and I think that endeared me to her,
and that became so I kind of had this one
motivation for my grandmother, which was kind of like an
engine and motivating factor of like, man, I gotta go
do something big in life, or I'm supposed to do
something big in life. That's why Gorid created me. I'm special,
(06:55):
I'm set apart. And then it became this thing of man,
I've seen my mother make all these sacrifices and do these,
you know, put her life down so that I can
have what I need. And that kind of became a
motivational force of you know, as I built out my
dreams and what I wanted to do in.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Life, man, I want to do this for her.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
I want to be able to take care of her
and make sure that she's set up and doesn't have
to struggle like this for us for the rest of
her life. And so that became a motivational factor. And
so those two people became the most endeared people to
me in the world, and I think that set me
(07:36):
on a trajectory towards where I'm ultimately at today.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
My dad left on when I was young, and my
mom was married and divorced five times, And despite all
of the chaos that surrounded that and the trouble I
got myself into as a result of that, I always
watch my mom work every day, A cook dinner, I
(08:02):
played five different sports constantly, somehow trying to balance work
and getting me to school and get me fed and
get me in clothes and get me to practices and
picked up and everything. And so when I hear you
talk about your grandmother mother, I you know, I really
identify with that. I get it, and I mean I
(08:25):
hold her on a pedestal because I know how hard
she worked that despite everything surrounding her life that was chaotic,
she made sure I was good. And it sounds like
those ladies were the same for.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
You, absolutely, man, I connect with what you're sharing and
identify with that. You know, just the strong positions and
natures of the women that I played parts in our lives.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
You know.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
I heard somebody say it's interesting that men try to
tell women what to do, and men have birthed any
of the creatures.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Every man came from a woman. Yet the man a
woman what to do.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
But I think about the resilient internal nature of the
women's makeup because you think about all the sacrifices and
things that they're doing for you and have done for you.
At the same time, they're navigating their own internal disappointments,
you know, shortcomings, heartache and pains that they've had to
(09:27):
go through and deer while holding up a family, a
loved one, a spouse, a child. And you think about
that dynamic and you think about what we admire a
lot of times in men, especially like in sports, with
their internal makeup, their internal fortitude of how much they
can withstand and keep going and come out heroes on
(09:47):
the other side, where you just think about the roles
that ladies have to play in life. And I know,
you know, we saw that in our moms and my
grandma as well. So I think there's no metal of
achievement that you can really place in a higher honor
than having seen that and allowing that to shape you
(10:11):
and how you live and show up in society.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
No doubt.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
So first, folks along the way, grandmother and mom. We're
gonna get to a second question about that in a second.
But for our listeners, you grew up around Jackson, right, Jackson, Mississippi.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Yeah, Brandon, Mississippi, you know, right outside of Jackson, right.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
So the most important question I have for the entire
interview is did Old mis recruit you?
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Man?
Speaker 4 (10:39):
Because I don't I don't know. You didn't go to
Ole Miss right?
Speaker 1 (10:42):
What?
Speaker 2 (10:42):
What? What happened? Why?
Speaker 3 (10:44):
You're supposed to be an old miss rubble guy and
you can see my hats, you know while I'm asking.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Yeah, Interestingly enough, I didn't get recruited by Missisispi State
or Old Miss heavily. I think they inquire about me,
but ultimately the only one that pursued me heavy was
Southern miss.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
And now a few messages from our general sponsors. But first,
we've launched our first six local service clubs around the
country at a time when only thirty three percent of
Americans are contributing in their community at the level that
they want to. The mission of these clubs is to
make more service easier for everyone. The first sex are
(11:33):
in my hometown Memphis, Alex's hometown Oxford, Wichita, Atlanta, the
Milwaukee area and it's called Ozak County, and North Duchess County,
which is New York. If you live in one of
these areas, visit the service club section of our site
(11:54):
normal folks dot us and get plugged in. And if
you don't live there and you a service club in
your area, email Alex.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
Because these are the first six. These are the pilots,
but we're going to be.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Doing them more like other Army members that are launching
clubs in their communities later this year, including San Antonio, Lincoln, Nebraska, Huntsville, Alabama,
Lincoln County, Ohio, Lorraine County, Ohio. If you happen to
live in one of these following areas and are interested,
email Alex at Army at normal folks dot us and
(12:30):
he'll get you connected to them.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
This is going to be fun.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
I kind of got on a lot of people's radar
very late. Now this is there. I'm growing up, is
like really before you know, all.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
These camps are having and all these different things, and
you know, I didn't have access to a lot of
those things. And I do think that they were sending
invites to camps and stuff, but they were sending it
to my coaches, and it never it never made it
into my hands. But I kind of got into I
kind of got in my own way in high school.
You know, my sophomore season, I was the only sophomore
(13:14):
on the team that started and was underclassmen to watch
and had a really big year let our team in
receiving yards and return yards, and would have been my
junior year to kind of take off and kind of
be the man in between that my spring year of
my sophomore year, I ended up getting expelled from school,
and I was fortunate that my coach end up letting
(13:35):
me back on the team. But I think what I
did was kind of create hesitation around my coaches and
wanting to promote me as a top player on the
team or a leader that other guys would follow, being
that I had such a shaky past, and I think
that kind of got in my way so I moved
away from being a guy that they really featured, though
really talented. I was used much less in an offensive role,
(13:59):
and then my senior year I ended up going to defense.
And I don't think I had created enough buzz going
into my senior year.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
To really be able to be followed.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
And I think, you know, they got on my recruiting
trail late, and it was just other missing Arkansas State.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Kind of a tongue in cheek thing because anybody's played
ten years in the league I know could have helped
Old Miss and I'm a big old Miss fan Old
Miss Grid. But it really is a segue to what
you just shared with us about getting expelled, And the
question is given how much your mother and grandmother meant
to you and the sacrifices you saw and their tutelage.
(14:37):
You kind of broke their heart in high school a
little bit, which you know, we're not here to beat
anybody up, but it's germane to where you are now
and what you're doing now for people to understand that
just because you grew up getting drugg to the church
and your grandmother doing everything she could, your mother doing
(14:59):
everything she could, the path that led you to where
you are right now was not an easy one, and
some of it was self inflicted, and that happened I
think in high school and at Arkansas State, where you
ultimately went. So would you share with us kind of
how you bounced around between letting your mother's and your
(15:25):
grandmother's love of you per make your soul verse the streets.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
I think it became a real quest for identity of self.
And I think it's so important when you start to
create dreams that you don't just think about what you
want to become, you think about who you want to become.
Because I remember in the fourth grade when I first
kind of created a north star, my uncle asked me
(15:53):
what did I want to do in life? And I
was like, I want to go to the NFL. And
so that became my north star. It wasn't to be
this great person. It was just go to the NFL.
I feel like, if I get to the NFL and
I'm an NFL athlete, like that's everything that I want
to do in it. And though I knew what it
meant to be a good person and I knew who
(16:14):
God was, I never really had connected into a relationship
with that and so as I got older, I remember
the summer going into my ninth grade year, I'm hanging
with my older cousins, and you know, they're doing all
the things. They're you know, smoking weed, they're you know, drinking,
they're going to parties, going to clubs, chasing girls.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
And so for me being a young man with.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Or born away to becoming a young man, you know,
living with just my mom and no other male figures
to give me directions, all my older cousins were the
male figures that I looked to. They were above me.
They were that next step. It's like, okay, well what's
the next step in society. They are it, and they
all played play sports, and they're going in the direction
(17:02):
I feel like.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
I want to go.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
And all my cousins were extremely talented. So they were
really good football players, and so I'm like, okay, well,
whatever they do, I need to do. And so that
next step became all those extracurricular things. They didn't show
me that it was the extra work that you put in.
They showed me this is what we do when we're
(17:24):
not playing football, you know, we're hanging out. And so
that's what I started to do. And I started to
model it. And my mindset has always been whatever I'm doing,
I'm gonna be the best at it.
Speaker 4 (17:34):
So.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Which can go negative and positive positive, And so it's like,
if we drinking, I'm gonna drink the most to show
I got the highest tolerance. If we if we're chasing girls,
get the most girls. It's like, whatever we're doing, it's
a competition, and I'm gonna be the best at it.
And that's I think where I started to realize, like, man,
(17:56):
if you have influence, that influence can be used negatively
or positive. And I think my coaches recognized that. I
think my coaches saw that he has a lot of
influence and if we make him or promote him be
a leader of the team, it's gonna derail uh where
we're trying to go. And so I think that broke there.
That broke my mom and grandmother's heart. It was as
(18:21):
my grandmother kind of started to get sick, and you know,
I'm just my mom.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
I can see my mom still.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Have you rememberance of like my mom getting getting sicker,
She's getting gray hairs all of a sudden, She's coughing
all the time.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
And I think I was just worrying her sick.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
You know, even before I got expelled from school, I
had dropped drugs around her.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
She had drug testing me.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
I lied to her and failed the drug test, and
it was just like what am I good? I think
she was trying her best to hold on to me,
but she's like and probably afraid, like I'm going to
lose my son to these streets, and it was it
was happening, and it was nothing that she could do.
I think it's very hard for a mom to raise
the sun on her own, especially when her son is
(19:07):
seeing male role models who are exact opposite of everything
that she's trying to teach. And so literally I'm taking
her through the ringer. I think she's saying stuff, all
the right things and trying to reaffirm me and who.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
I am, and like why are you doing these things?
You are so much better than these things.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
She always had a very positive spin on everything that
she told, but I feel like it was kind of
going in one air and out the other. Later I
realized that she was really planting a lot of seas
down deep, but it just wasn't resonating. It wasn't resonating
with my reality. And so you know, my grades started
to slip, and it really it really wasn't until once
(19:45):
I got expelled from school my sophomore year. I continued
on one moment during that summer going into my junior year,
I was out and we were breaking in some abandoned
houses and I kind of cut my arm and I
ended up in the house hospital, and I remember going
and wake my mom up, and she just kind of
looked like, I couldn't sleep. I knew you were doing
something you didn't have no business. So that's the kind
(20:07):
of mindset that she was under at that time. So
we go to the hospital and they're stitching me up
and the doctor just tells me, he's like, son, you
are so lucky, and it's not even connecting with me.
My life is moving so fast at the time, and
he was, and I was just I didn't even respond
to him. But at the same time that he said that,
God started talking to me. For the first time, I
(20:29):
heard God's audible voice. I don't have a concept of
All I've heard is people talk about hearing from God.
I never heard from God. I always wondered, like, what
are people talking about God talking? Like, what does it
sound like? It was the first time I heard an
audible voice from God, and I didn't have a real
relationship with him at the time, but it was like
that strike too. And you know, I'm kind of a
(20:51):
smart alec or you know, I always feel justified to
put my opinion on my saying. So I'm like, well,
what was strike one? And he was like, strike one
was you getting expelled from school? Strike two was you
almost lost your life? And I'm like, what, I almost
lost my life? What do you mean? And literally I
looked down and I realized that the market is on
(21:12):
my forearm, on the inside of my forearm, and literally
six inches down from that is what my wrist is
and the depth that it cut. If it would have
been down six inches, I would have lost my life.
And that's what the doctor was referring to that I
was so lucky, and that hit me like a ton
of bricks, because it was almost as if God was
(21:32):
saying strike three.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
You're either going to be dead or in jail for
a long time.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
And that moment changed the trajectory of my life from
a high school standpoint or up to that point, because
it literally scared me straight. So from that point on,
I didn't get in any trouble. I stopped all of
hanging out that my cousins had graduated, so I was
in school solo. But it cleared my head up. I
(21:58):
stopped the smoking. I literally went back to being an
A and B student, you know. Literally, I would go
to practice and go home. And that's when I started
to train after practice, because I didn't have any other
thing to do is either.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
I went to football practice, I did extra workouts, and
then I went home.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
And I think that was the birth of when I
started to do all the extra work that it would
take to be where I'm at today. And I ended
up getting a scholarship and going to Arkansas State, and
that literally was the beginning of the transformation.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
We will be right back and your mom drops you
off at Darksas State.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
But it feels like even though you did straighten up
that last year and a half, she still had a
sense of concern when she dropped you off. And we
are only are at strike too. So was her concern founded?
And how'd that all go?
Speaker 2 (23:17):
I think she was rightfully concerned.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
I had just been under the biggest amount of behavior modification.
I didn't realize it at the time. But there really
was no heart transformation. I just was scared straight. And
I think when you're behavior doing behavior modifications, only amount
of time before the real come back out.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
And I found that out. So what switch was? I mean?
Speaker 1 (23:44):
When I was at the high school, everything was comfortable
at this point, Like I was having success on the field,
I had me a girlfriend, I was back making good grades.
I kind of had everything under control. Well when I
got to college, it's like starting all over. I'm fourth
string on the depth chart. No one knows me, I
have no one around me. I don't have that respecting
(24:05):
clout that I had achieved in high school.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
And so it's like a small fish.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
It's like a small fish in a big pond all
of a sudden, and it's like, okay, well I have
to kind of re announce myself or reintroduce myself, and.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
You know, I don't only know one way to kind
of do that.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
And the way that I did that was kind of
proving that I was tough, proving that I could get girls,
proven that I had a hot tolerance when it came
to drugs and alcohol, kind of proving to be this
this macho tough guy, proved yeah, yeah, it was that,
and so it was like, Okay, well I got to
prove myself all over again, and I fell back into
(24:48):
a lot of those same patterns, and I kind of
fell into it kind of quickly, back in the drugs,
back in the party and back in the chasing girls,
all those different things and where school wasn't as important,
and it was it was really trying to prove it
to those guys in the locker room, because it's mind you,
(25:08):
my north star is just going to the NFL, and
so it's like, okay, well I got to gain the
respect of these guys in the locker room.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
These are the people who I'm trying to prove myself to.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
And as I'm going about that, you know what what
could have been seeing as tragedy strikes at the end
of my freshman year. I read shirted my first year,
and then that summer we're on campus and and and
and me and one of my teammates, uh going and
they're stealing groceries out of Walmart, and it was something
(25:40):
that you know, other players on the team was doing
and kind of had. It was when self checkout had
just came on, and we thought it was a pretty
good little trick to go in and you know, get
one hundred dollars worth of groceries and only pay for
twenty dollars, and you know, kind of go back to
that same mindset, the way that I was wired. Whatever
I'm doing, I'm gonna be the best at And it's like, Okay,
(26:02):
you guys have figured out a scheme.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
I'm gonna show you how to master it.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
And as that happened, me and one of my teammates
got busted and literally the police pulled us over as
we were pulling back into our college dorms, and it
looked like a big drug bust, and they have us
in handcuffs and sitting on the sidewalk and literally they're
(26:26):
taking all of the grocery bags out of the car
and putting them in the back of the police car.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
And it was very embarrassing.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
But I as I look back, I just think about
like the disconnect that was there, you know, as the
police pulled us over and he's like or Or stopped
us and was like, you guys stole those groceries. You're
you're about to get arrested. My mindset is like, wait,
we'll just take the groceries back.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
Like it don't work like that, sir, And uh yeah,
so we had to go we had to go to court.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
And uh, I mean just again the disassociation and disconnect
me and my me and my teammate are just kind
of sitting there laughing, like what if we get time?
Like what if they really lock us up? Not thinking
that they would. We're thinking, you know, this is low
level of fence. They're gonna give us community service, and
you know, they lock us in jail, they give us
they sentenced us to three days in jail and kind
(27:32):
of go through this whole list of you know, penalties,
you know, uh you know the payment kind of the
pay for release is gonna be the length of the probation.
And the only thing that stuck with me was three
days in jail. And I'm like wait, you know, kind
of the court room, my heart sank, and my mom
is in there of course crying because and there was
like this big gap between me and her in the courtroom.
(27:54):
It was just like it was it was. It was
an insurmountable gap. There was nothing that she could do,
like I'm going into the system. Probably her worst fear,
one of my worst fears, and it's like, man, this
is happening, and you know, everything just kind of all
the air kind of came out of the balloon. You know,
it's just like, man, what in the world is happening?
Speaker 2 (28:17):
What what have you know? I've done?
Speaker 1 (28:20):
And I'll kind of come back to this, But now
I know all these things about the criminal justice system.
Had I not been in a college football player like
that could have caused me to get lost in the
system and my life be completely different. Right, People go
to jail and literally will be waiting six seven months
for their for their trial, like they haven't even been
(28:43):
found guilty yet. They just kind of get lost in
the system six seven months. What that could do to
you psychologically if you were able to survive. But even
after you come out of that, if you found not
guilty and they release you, you've been in jail for
six seven months, what that could do to you psychologically
change trubjectory of your life. If I had to miss,
you know, six seven months and wouln't even play football,
(29:04):
would have chance rejected in my life. So now I
just understand the grace of God so much more, how
much I was sparing for but my team essentially bailed me.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
Out.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
I didn't have to stay right away. I was able
to get my sentence and I was able to do
my time. But while I was in there, God visited
me again. Remind you there was no real relationship with God.
So since that last, you know, scared straight moment, I
haven't heard from God or really talk to God. I
just was I would go to Bible study and do
(29:33):
all the things I thought were right, but it was real.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
No, no, no real connection.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
And so God visited me again, and you know, I'm
sitting there and scared for my life all these different things.
You're in a room with fifty beds. It's cold, the
blanket don't don't fit, the bed is hard. You got
this little bitty pillow that has no fluff in it,
your your your barefoot, and you know you kind of.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
In this place where that filled the magic.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Fifty people, only seven showers, the showers out in the open,
and they bring you three meals a day, and they
want to let you outside for one hour. That was
what I was confined in and never had been around
anything like that, or you know, knew what to do
in that situation, and you're just thinking you could be bait,
you know, I'm a college student.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
He's grown men in here.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
So I'm sitting there and I'm just kind of trying
to go through different scenarios of survival in my mind.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
If something was to take place and God visited.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Me again, I think on you know, after I've been
in there about twenty four hours, and he reminds me.
He was like, you remember our conversation. I told you
the next time that you got in trouble, you would
be in jail or dead. And go back to my
smartlan response, it was like, well, God, you said I'd
(30:52):
be in jail for a long time. And that was
the first time I really heard the term grace, and
he said, that's my grace.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
And I know it was him.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
I know it was the Holy Spirit because I don't
have a concept of what grace was, which is this
unmerited favor of God giving us what we don't deserve.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
And he gave me. He gave me a shorter sentence, and.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
I kind of came out of that that that was
wrestling geting my spirit, and so I started to have
these questions to really understand what was God's grace and
really having this understanding of and I have this goal
of where I want to get in life, which is
the NFL. But every time I take, you know, a
step forward, it's like three steps back. And this is
(31:36):
the first time where I'm starting to realize that it's
me taking the steps back. I'm not blaming like I
did in high school, my coach or you know, trying
to blame you know, somebody else for my shortcomings.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Just the first time I'm really looking at me.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
And then I think that's what made way for my
chaplain to be situated where he was with where I
was in life, that that created space or the transformation
of oh we happened.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
It's interesting that the sentence of three days on two levels.
One it's enough to scare the hell out of you,
but it's not long enough to ruin your life, So
that feels about right. The other thing that's interesting about
three days is I just think about the story of
(32:23):
the Crucifixion and the importance of those three days. Come on, man,
And that concludes part one of our conversation with the
Mario Davis. Trust me, don't miss part two. It's now
available to listen to. Together. Guys, we can change this country,
(32:45):
but it starts with you.
Speaker 4 (32:46):
I'll see in Part two,
Host
Bill Courtney
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by Audiochuck Media Company.
Betrayal Season 5
Saskia Inwood woke up one morning, knowing her life would never be the same. The night before, she learned the unimaginable – that the husband she knew in the light of day was a different person after dark. This season unpacks Saskia’s discovery of her husband’s secret life and her fight to bring him to justice. Along the way, we expose a crime that is just coming to light. This is also a story about the myth of the “perfect victim:” who gets believed, who gets doubted, and why. We follow Saskia as she works to reclaim her body, her voice, and her life. If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal Team, email us at betrayalpod@gmail.com. Follow us on Instagram @betrayalpod and @glasspodcasts. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations, and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience, and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack.