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December 3, 2025 • 13 mins

Fran Tarkenton, founder and CEO of Tarkenton & NFL Hall of Famer, discusses his legendary football career and transition into entrepreneurial endeavors. Tarkenton spoke with Bloomberg's Tom Keene and Paul Sweeney.

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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Out of Georgia and the religion of his father. Fran
Tarkton changed football. He said, no, I'm not going to
stay in the pocket. This is a highlight of Bloomberg surveyance.
This goes back to Reggie Jackson and talking about his
father and Willie Mays in studio. Now, Fran Tarkton Paul
holding well at seventy nine years old.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
Solid, I mean solid. Thanks so much for joining us here.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
I am happy to be thank you.

Speaker 3 (00:34):
Born in Richmond, Virginia, I love that a big fan
of Richmond talk to us about the state of football today.
There's just it changes so much from when you were playing.
How do you view it?

Speaker 1 (00:45):
It's amazing how it's changed. Yeah, there's thirty two teams
in the lague and there's not much difference between them.
The quarterback position, which I happened to play. Everybody, well,
you got to have a good quarterback. Half the quarterbacks
or more this year have missed games. They don't stay healthy.
They'll stay well and everything is you know, and you

(01:09):
look at Kansas City, they're struggling and they're in the
super Bowl. The last couple of years and Philadelphia's struggling
quarterbacks run back and forth. It's not much difference between
the thirty second team and the first team. And injuries
have come up to be a part of it now
and it's just a free for all. Right now, Oh you.

Speaker 3 (01:28):
Played I think twelve.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
Games we played when I first came twelve games, then
we got to fourteen games.

Speaker 3 (01:34):
Now it's seventeen, going to eight. Keep the players.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
Healthy, well they don't. They don't, and so that makes
that brings everything back, and the quarterbacks are getting hurt
at a higher lean. Roger Staalp I played every game.
I played every game. Ya Title played every game. John
Uniteds played every game. We never missed games. I missed
five games in eighteen years.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
Friend, question I wanted to ask, And this is for
all the parents out there looking at football and saying,
do I really want my kid to do this? When
you played, players were tackled. Now they're hipped. Could you
play today? Oh?

Speaker 1 (02:13):
Yeah, I could play today. I could play to day
better than I did the other day. Because when I
came into football from high school to college to pro,
I scrambled. But I didn't know I scrambled.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
You scrambled as a Georgia bul though.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
As a Georgia boat in my college, in my high
school in Athens, Georgia, we won the state championship. I scrambled,
and I didn't know what that meant. I just ran
because I had that ability. But I came into pro football.
Nobody ran, Nobody scrambled, scrambled. So I was this crazy
different person that would never make it. And it really was.

(02:49):
I would beat the Baltimore coach by rookie year. They
had a goy named Geno Marquetti, the best defensive end
that's ever been. We later became great friends and after
the game we beat them and I was a first
and they were a great team. And he said, and
they said to him, hey, Gino, how about this targeting
they got? He he said, he won't last five years.
They'll run him out. Six years later, I had Gino

(03:12):
Marquetti introduced me as player of the year for one
of the magazines here in So So it was it
was a I didn't know it was different. It's just
how I played.

Speaker 3 (03:23):
If you were a quarterback today in the NFL, they'd
be paying you forty million dollars a year for ten years.
Generational wealth. I think about your talk to us about
your early days and what they paid you. Guys in all,
how did that compare with your friends that were well
graduated from Georgia.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
And nineteen sixty one, I was drafted by the Minnesota Vikings.
I made twelve five hundred dollars. Eighteen years later, I've
played three of the first eleven Super Bowls. I broke
every record there was. I obliterated all those. I was
the highest paid player in all of football and I
made one hundred and eighty three thousand dollars here. That

(04:01):
was big back then. Now they're making forty million, fifty
million a year and they paid Brady to do television
right dollars and they're paying him thirty five forty fifty
million to do that. It's crazy, but television has made
all that work, as.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
You know, with us across America today, what a treat
for the holidays. Friend Tarkenton is with us, he is
with pit by Q. That's what he's been working on recently.
Pip Iq, a full service B to B technology strategy
for small and medium sized businesses. But forever a Georgia bulldog. Forever.

(04:35):
I have to ask this in the Hall of fame.
Which jersey do you wear? Vikings bite skins?

Speaker 1 (04:40):
I'm a Viking, you're a Viking. I grew up in Washington, DC.
Until I was ten years old. I was a Redskin fan.
I was a Maryland football fan. I moved to Athens, Georgia,
and I became a Georgia Bulldog fan, and that's where
I played.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
What did Dallas Tarkenton, Reverend Tarkent, what did he do
to you? Because you came out of football and said
I'm not going to retire and do nothing. You're on
Saturday Night Live as the first athlete. You're like a
property as well. What did your father give you to
make you different than those giants who just meant?

Speaker 1 (05:11):
I don't know. I was a Pentecostal Holdness. He was
a Pentecostal Holdness preacher, and my mother was a preacher,
and we couldn't do anything any work on Sundays. Somehow
they allowed me to come to Minnesota to play for
the Vikings and we played on Sundays. In my very
first game, we played the Chicago Bears and the Musters

(05:34):
of the Midway. And George Hallis was the founder of
the National Football League. He was the coach of the Bears.
He owned the Bears and so forth. And we were
twenty eight point underdogs because we were a new expansion team.
And we beat them thirty seven fourteen, And I threw
for four touchdowns and ran for another. And my mother
rode a greyhound bus from Athens, Georgia to Minnesota to

(05:58):
be a surprise for me. And I come out of
the dressing room. I see my mom. I said, Mom,
how many great quarterbacks do you think there really are
in the world? She said, one lesson? Do you think,
my son?

Speaker 3 (06:10):
There you go, hey, Fred. We talked about the changes
in the professional game, but boy, the changes in the
college game are even more pronounced. With the name, image, likeness,
the transfer portal, they've got days of you staying in
Georgia for four years and not even thinking about transferring,
those are gone.

Speaker 1 (06:26):
They've got a real challenging college. They haven't figured it
out yet. They're paying these players three million to five
million now a year.

Speaker 2 (06:33):
There's Georgia Bulldogs making three million.

Speaker 1 (06:35):
Years Oh sure, oh yeah, they're paying them three and
maybe five and you and in those conferences they got
to and they're making a lot of money, no question
about it. But it's all it's all changed, and they
haven't got a grasp on it right now.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
Trend Turkinson with there's a special moment here for Bloomberg
surveillance well preserved at subject nine. Somebody emailed in on this.
What's the targeted secret to being of a vintage? I
mean you're doing beyond well.

Speaker 1 (07:02):
Well, you know, I have stayed active all my life.
I had a paper out in Washington, DC when I
was seven years old. When I was in college, I
had all season jobs, and I started an insurance company.

Speaker 2 (07:14):
When I was When you retire, you just keep going.

Speaker 1 (07:16):
I kept going and kept going, and I keep going.

Speaker 2 (07:20):
Now you're doing waitro tech call. I don't even understand this.
Pip IQ helping productivity, privacy and usability. Tell us about
your digital model.

Speaker 1 (07:30):
It's all about AI and AI. And I've helped small
business entrepreneurs for the last thirty years. We built programs
for them along and this is going to those people.
They can't pay a billion dollars to have an AI situation.
And so we have built our company, and we built

(07:52):
our pipki IQ, and we're making that available to small
businesses at a price they can afford and it's done extraordinary. Well.
I've started twenty four companies in my life, really yeah,
and I'm keeping active of it because the mission of
business is to help people. The mission of business is

(08:15):
not to sell. The mission of business is to be
able to help people do better. And we help the
small business entrepreneur do that is.

Speaker 3 (08:23):
How has business changed? I mean you've been going through
your twenty some on companies you mentioned, how is this changed?

Speaker 1 (08:28):
The technology has changed at all? This is the greatest
time I've ever had in business. You can do more
today than ever before, and you just got to go
do it. But it's changed for the better. Business is
doing good in America especially.

Speaker 2 (08:44):
I think we're going to finish up with two questions.
I want to get to the really important one. First,
let's do the secondary one. I said, okay, good, I
didn't know that. Thank you say so much. Can you
explain why the great city of New York one of
the world's metropolis. I watched seven minutes of the Jets
this week in mohammed Illyrium. I said, you got to

(09:05):
watch it. They did like a group off sides in
the fourth quarter with two minutes to go. And then
there's your new York Giants. What do you say to
the Mara family to straighten out the train wreck known
as the New York Football Giants.

Speaker 1 (09:19):
It's pretty bad. And even in my Minnesota Vikings now
it's pretty bad because we got rid of two really
good quarterbacks, one at fourteen eighty three, and we drafted
a guy from Michigan. Would go, he's going to be there.
He hadn't played an He did play last year as
a rookie. He played a little bit this year, not
playing well. It's a game that we all love to watch.

(09:43):
But I wouldn't want to be in pro football now
as a coach or an owner because it's very difficult
to win well.

Speaker 3 (09:51):
The New York Giants. A lot of people look at
Jackson Dart, the quarterback.

Speaker 1 (09:55):
Of the New York and they think of you because
this is.

Speaker 3 (09:57):
A kid who runs all over the place, not afraid
to take a hit, maybe to a fault because he's
had concussions and he had that crazy hit in the
football game last Sunday. If you're a football team in
the NFL, you have to have a great quarterback, don't you.

Speaker 1 (10:15):
Your quarterback today has to do more than a throw.
You cannot win today without a quarterback that can run.

Speaker 2 (10:24):
Well, let me rephrase that, you cannot win today without
being a quarterback that fran target to nobody.

Speaker 1 (10:30):
No, Patrick Mahomes is kind of coming to another level
that because he's mobile and the quarter But here's what happens.
If you're mobile, but you go down, you run out
of bounds, you fall down, and they protect you more
today than it did in my time. But I didn't
take many hits because I either ran out of bounds
or I fell down on the field and they couldn't

(10:52):
touch me. So I missed five games in eighteen years.

Speaker 2 (10:56):
So what about the officiating today? I'm the non football
guy here. I see massive clutchy grabby on the receivers
and I see the quarterbacks. You can't get near them.
If if you look at a quarterback, it's ten yards right.

Speaker 1 (11:09):
Yeah, I wish they'd have done that in my time.
They didn't do that in my time. Yeah, they protect
the quarterback from that, but they're injuries in pro football.
I've gotten out of the control and I can't tell
you how that happened. But these guys are bigger than
their bodies should be in my era. The offensive alignment

(11:31):
that were the big ones were two thirty to forty.
Today that three hundred and forty three point fifty. They're
bigger than they're supposed to be.

Speaker 3 (11:41):
So friend, success all throughout your life through athletics. Talk
to us about your dead Yeah, how you viewed your
post playing career getting into business?

Speaker 1 (11:51):
Well, I worked all my life. I worked in high school,
I worked in college. In pro football, I was the
only guy that had a job. And I started building
the buses at twenty five years old. And because I,
I don't know, I like to do that. It wasn't
just that it wasn't making any money playing football. I
wanted to go out and do something and make something
happen with the rest of my life, and I've been

(12:12):
able to do that.

Speaker 2 (12:13):
I want to get to sin for Lisa Matteo. I
want to get to sin for the hockey moms and
dads of Boston, the football moms and dads at Georgia,
in Texas. America's become a jockocracy. When you played, we
couldn't we could tell you weren't just another dumb jock.
Have we gone too far with the twenty four to
seven focus on sports.

Speaker 1 (12:35):
I don't know about it. It's popular. I watch it
like crazy, but it's gotten to be pretty pretty tough
right now. Football players especially get hit hard by big
guys that are bigger than I played against in my time.
It's a more dangerous game today than ever before. And
they've tried to fix the helmets and do this, but

(12:57):
it doesn't work. And what happened. You get so many
concussions and then you go back and play, and so
many of my teammates are gone because we didn't understand
that if you have a concussion, you got to make
him sit down for a week or two weeks. And
they're trying, but it's a tough deal right now, and

(13:17):
the injuries are like nothing I've ever seen in my life,
worse than ever.

Speaker 2 (13:22):
In support of Tarkenton Financial and pip Iq friend Tarkenton
with us, thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (13:28):
Thank you nice being here, Bloomberg.

Speaker 2 (13:30):
This is good. And on your way out, would you
leave me a message on the how you stay seventy
nine forever? I just love how you're doing that. Friand
Tarcatin forever with the Minnesota Vikings
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