What Happened to That Guy? Matt Birk

The former center was a key member of the Ravens team that won Super Bowl XLVII. Now Birk is spending time with his big family, and trying his hand at stand-up comedy.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to What Happened to That Guy? A podcast about
former Ravens and life after football. I'm your host, John Eisenberg.
I hope you don't mind if I ask for a
favor here at the start of episode number five. It's
not a big favor. I'm going to set a scene
and I want you to close your eyes try to
envision it. Not if you're driving, of course, if you're driving,

(00:26):
please don't close your eyes. Just pretend. The setting is
a bar in Saint Paul, Minnesota, a typical sports bar
kind of place. Brick walls, lots of TVs. It's a
weekday evening and the place is dark, but it's rock
and packed with enthusiastic customers. A small wooden stage it's
been erected up front. It's empty right now save for

(00:49):
a microphone stand. Then the house lights dim and the
do Good comedy show begins. It's a night of stand
up comics, performing one after the other. The crowd claps
and whoops. When the opening act takes the stage. He's
a big guy dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt,
his face vaguely familiar. He plucks the microphone off the

(01:10):
stand and he starts talking. I used to play in
the NFL, he says, in a flat Midwestern twang. I
didn't think there was any way I could be more
famous or more important. Then I retired and everyone forgot
about me. That draws some giggles from the audience. The
guy keeps going, I know some guys who are still

(01:32):
playing in the NFL, and I tell them, you think
you're such a big deal. Well, six months after you retire,
people are going to be standing around the water cooler saying,
you know, I'm never gonna forget. Oh what's his name?
The audience laughs, He's funny. The big guy on stage,

(01:53):
Matt Burke. He's funny. You remember him, right, Burke? Oh
what's his name? He played center in the NFL for
fourteen years, first with the Minnesota Vikings and then with
the Ravens from two thousand nine through two thousand and twelve.
When Joe Flacco led the Ravens to a Super Bowl title,
Burke was snapping the ball to him, protecting him, helping

(02:16):
make it all happen. He retired after that Super Bowl.
He was thirty six and had accomplished everything there was
to accomplish in football. What would he do with the
rest of his life. Now there's a question. Matt Burke
probably could have done just about anything. He earned an
economics degree from Harvard. He could have become an NFL executive,

(02:36):
maybe even commissioner one day. He could have run a
team as a general manager or a salary cap guru. Hey,
forget football. He could have gone to Wall Street and
started a hedge fund. Instead, he's doing stand up comedy.
I can't say I'm totally shocked that Matt Burke has

(02:57):
become a stand up comedian. I'll always remember one of
his interviews with the Baltimore media after an otherwise forgettable
Ravens training camp practice at the under Armor Performance Center.
It was a sweltering late summer afternoon. Burke had come
off the field and was standing at the podium in
full uniform, sweat cascading down. I'm sure he couldn't wait

(03:18):
to get to the air condition cool of the locker room,
but it was his turn to field some questions. Podium
interviews during training camp are not always shall we say,
super enlightening. Many disintegrate into cliches, especially on a sweltering day.
Just getting my work in, embracing the grind, looking forward
to a big year this time, though, A reporter asked

(03:41):
Burke an unusual question, Matt, what are you reading? Being
a Harvard guy, Burke invited that sort of thing, an
economics book, he replied. The follow up question was inevitable.
What's the book about, Matt, He paused, letting the mystery build. Oh,
Burke said, it's a book about how we're all totally screwed.

(04:05):
The media laughed. The guy at the podium the sweating center,
Matt Burke. He was funny. When I spoke to Burke
for this podcast, I recounted that scene and his punch line.
He didn't remember it, but he laughed. Yeah, I've got
a little bit of work. I'm a smart Alice get
a bit sarcastic, so yeah, yeah, and it tortured saw

(04:27):
when that's at all. You know, there's a famous show
business joke you may have heard. Dying is easy, Comedy
is hard, the point being it's pretty terrifying to get
up in front of people and try to make them laugh.
Burke had no intention of trying. What happened was a

(04:48):
friend dared him, and Burke, like many NFL players, is
so insanely competitive. That he couldn't stand to let the
challenge go unaccepted. So he got up on on stage
and it went well. He didn't crash and burn as
they say. The audience didn't sit there silently staring at
him with mounting disdain as his jokes fell flat. The

(05:12):
audience laughed. They thought he was funny. I have a
company where I do a fair amount of public speaking
and consulting, and I'm not horrible at it seems to work.
I don't mind you up on stage in front of people.
How To likes to be entertained and informative, and so
that comes to humor. To be clear, he isn't relying

(05:32):
on stand up to support his family. He's forty three
years old, married with eight kids and two dogs. He
knows better than to base his ability to support a
brood that large on whether he can make people laugh.
The truth is Burke signed some nice contracts when he
played for the Vikings and Ravens, and we didn't get
into his financial situation when we spoke, but I'm guessing

(05:55):
he's pretty smart with his money. He also has always
recognized that they're a world beyond football, a real world
where people have lots of problems. As hard as he
worked to make it in the NFL and last so long,
Burke believes he was lucky, unbelievably lucky. His perspective is
that you're lucky to make a living, a nice living,

(06:17):
playing a kid's game, as opposed to say, working in
a mill or cranking out sales reports. And with his
strong Catholic faith guiding him, he has always sought to
share some of his good fortune give back to those
not as fortunate. When he was playing, he had a
foundation that provided educational opportunities to at risk kids, the

(06:39):
Hike Foundation. It was called Hope Inspiration, Knowledge Education hik E.
That's also what Burke did on the field, of course,
hike the ball. When he played for the Ravens, he
frequently could be found in schools helping with literacy. These days,
he's involved with numerous charities. If it's a cause he

(07:01):
supports and they have a sound plan, he's in in
the midst of doing that, he was struck by a
thought one day. These charities, most of their fundraising events
tend to be well boring. You know, thanks for coming,
blah blah blah, here's what we do blah blah, blah,
leave your check on the table, blah blah blah. Burke thought,
why not put on a fundraising event that's actually fun.

(07:25):
Hire comedians, rent out a bar, give people a reason
to laugh as they write those checks. Goodness knows we
could all stand to laugh a little more these days.
So we put together the first edition of what he
calls the Do Good Comedy Show. Lined up some real comedians, professionals,
went on stage himself, and the event drew a big crowd,

(07:47):
raised a bunch of money. Now he's done it seven
or eight times, and there's more coming, and we've raised
about four than a million dollars for charities through these events.
He had long with raising money, and we're able to
do with it. I figure, what the heck? Everyone needs
to and wants to laugh a little bit more. How
does he come up with his jokes? Well, eight kids

(08:09):
and two dogs start right there. Most of my material
probably comes from from having eight kids. I don't need
to look very far as find material or to feel
humbled on a daily basis, And I think most people
can relate to that. You know, parenting is hard, and
kids have a way of making you feel like your
normal failure. Sometimes so I think I tapped into that

(08:30):
and most people can relate. He also riffs on being
a big dumb football lineman, not that anyone takes him
for that, and I'm being a guy whose time has
come and gone. He'll go. People ask me how I'm
doing in life after football? Well, here I am standing
in front of a room full of strangers, begging for
your acceptance. How do you think I'm doing. When he

(08:55):
played football, Burke didn't give too much thought to what
he might do after he retired. You get later out
of your career, probably from my year ten on. During
the season that was like, yeah, it's gonna be my
last year. Your body heard retired, hits the struggle, and
then the season ends, the rest a little bit, and
yet you kind of forget help, help, how bad it hurts,

(09:17):
he said, I himil year. The thing with Burke's final years,
which he spent in Baltimore, because he had never played
in the Super Bowl and the Ravens were close in
twenty eleven, Billy kind of missed the kick they kept
them from taking the AFC Championship game into overtime in
New England. Burke couldn't let that be his last act.

(09:37):
So we came back in twenty twelve. Good call. The
Ravens won the AFC North, rolled through the conference playoffs,
beating the Patriots in New England, and then they won
a thrilling Super Bowl over the San Francisco forty nine ers.
Even after that, though Burke had second thoughts about retiring,
the Super Bowl triumph provided him with the perfect opportunity

(09:58):
to take that dream ride into the sunset. You could
go out on top. But he fought it. There was
a big part of me that wanted to come back.
Idiom never went in on super Bowls, right, and we
knew that's why John Brady's still playing. But for me
it was like man to win. It was so hard
and then the repeat is even harder, and like let's go,
let's go try to accomplish. Back in my head to

(10:20):
the Senate, trying to Brewer be back a little bit.
It's been a ridiculously good run, way way way better
than I could have ever hoped to dream for just
seeming when it was it was the right time to
stop and be around for my family more and we're
r onto what's next. We're on the lights Without football.
He took a year off, wrote a book, and then

(10:41):
he took a job with the NFL. The league office
brought him in to be the appeals officer on player
fines for illegal hits. It became his job to step
in after a player had been fined for a hit
and the player had appealed to fine for being unfair
or excessive. Burke would listen to everyone one's version of
events and render a judgment, basically rule whether the fine

(11:04):
should be upheld, reduced, or erased. Entirely, you're standing on
a phone call and you've got the final say, and
on one side you've got this player who's making millions
of dollars, and you get to head coach, and you
get the general manager, and they're all leading the case
from the player. And then on the other side you've
got the union who's trying to support the player. And
I'm thinking to myself, you know, everybody on this call

(11:25):
is making millions and millions of dollars here, and the
guy that gets the final say is the woman had
to save his twelve dollars lunturret seats so he gets reimbursed.
He ruled on cases involving former teammates and former opponents guys.
He'd been on the field with a tricky business for sure.
He also was making decisions that could pretty much determine
how a team's season went. So there's some pretty high

(11:48):
pressure hearings. You know, there's a lot of stake, and
knowing that he suspend a star player for a game
or two, that might mean the difference in that teammates
in the playoffs, that might mean the difference in that
coach or that coach, the staff keeping their jobs. There's
a lot too. I for Ultimately, I was trying to
do what was speared the rules and how the rule
were written, and what was in the best interest of
the game. It was actually really interesting time because that

(12:10):
was the year that they drastically changed the rules and
the helmets sailts hit with the defenseless players, and so
there was a lot of adjustment going on by everybody.
It was difficult, you know, I don't think anybody was
out there trying to if receivers going across the fiddle.
There wasn't anybody trying to potentionally take somebody's head off.
But there was a lot of guys trying to retrain

(12:30):
themselves so they would be within the new rule. Even
as hard as they tried, sometimes it didn't work out
that way that guys were getting fine and guys were frustrated.
So it was pretty interesting. In the end, though the
job became somewhat monotonous. Burke only stayed a year. The
NFL gave him another job, actually, Roger Goodell did. The

(12:51):
commissioner wanted Burke to learn the business side of pro football.
It was flattering an opportunity he couldn't pass up. Who
knows what it might have led to, certainly a high
profile position down the line, But Burke was living on
the East Coast doing the long commute hustle here and
their thing, and he and his wife longed for the

(13:11):
slower pace of the Midwest, specifically Minneapolis and Saint Paul,
where they've both grown up. Burke quit working for the
NFL after two years of learning the business side. He
and his wife and their eight kids and their two
dogs all moved back to the Twin Cities. It sounds
like a sitcom, doesn't it, But this is real life.

(13:32):
The Burkes have been back for two years and they've
settled in nicely between his charity work, speaking business and
consulting opportunities. Burke has plenty going on. Now he's taken
on yet another new adventure, one he never could have
anticipated when he was playing football. He is co founding
a Catholic high school. Right now, you look at the

(13:52):
education system in the model, it's a little bit broken
that it needs to be tweets, it's very anequated. Has
that changed a lot over the years, even though if
you look at our world and how kids live, how
families live, things have changed drastically. And I thought, you
know what, am I going to sit around and complain
about it? Or am I going to do something about it?

(14:14):
So we're opening up a new high school in September
this year, Catholic High School. Our models a little bit different.
We're going to focus on, of course, traditional academics, but
also very much on leadership, character and entrepreneurship. But if
you look at the economy of the future, which means
ten years from now, what kind of skills are going
to be in demand? This leadership and character and entrepreneurship,

(14:37):
it's creativity, It's a lot of these things. It's start
being cultivated in the traditional academic environment. These are things
Burke has been thinking about since he stopped playing football.
He's funny, but as you may have noticed, he's also
serious about making the world a better place. I'm just
kind of an entrepreneur by by nature, and this is
something that saw it needs there they'll be doing. And

(15:00):
I thought, hey, I got to put a bunch of
kids through I school anyway, so I want them to
be educated the way that I want them to be educated.
That I think that's the sound and I think there
a show of the country that there's a better way
to do things. The response from the local Catholic school
community has staggered him. If you have a good mission
and a good vision, people stretch forward. They identify themselves

(15:23):
and they say, I want to help. So there's no
money in Catholic education, there's no money. See get people
that are driven like pure altruistic motives to believe in
what you're doing. And so yeah, there's no way anybody
can do this by themselves. I certainly can do about
by myself. But the people that have stepped forward, it's
just it's fantastic and it's really fun to watch it,

(15:45):
To watch it from to fruition, to watch it to
start to come together. I think that's a god thing.
When you're talking about great based education. I think it's
the best thing there is, I think for kids right
now these days, living in this crazy world I can
edge and growing up and trying to navigate and figure
out your value system and where you're sitting with how

(16:05):
it's the foundation of faith. So that's just grateful to
be a part of this. He'll sit on the school's
board of directors and help teach what they're calling real
World Wednesdays, which will include leadership training and a service component.
It's a long way from playing in the Super Bowl.
I know I'm probably never going to have another job

(16:25):
as coolest playing in the NFL or whether that's gonna
pay like playing in the NFL. But I feel like, God,
you gotta plan for my life like he does for everybody.
I just have to try to figure out what that
is and calling that direction. I mean, that's just that's
just life. It turns out there's a Matt Burke expert
on the Ravens coaching staff, the current one. Yep, you

(16:48):
wouldn't expect it, but Andy Bishoff, the assistant tight ends coach,
goes way way back with Burke. They both grew up
in Saint Paul Minnesota, and although Bischoff is eight years older,
their paths have repeatedly crossed. I sat down with Andy
to talk about Burke and and wound up gaining great
insight into his past, present, and future. Here's Andy. I

(17:13):
was coaching youth baseball for a fourteen and under team,
and he was on the rival teams. So I was
at this inner city urban he was in a little
bit more of an affluent area, and we were very
good youth baseball teams, and he was on the other
team as the kind of the closer, the high profile picture, long,
lean kid and very confident and plenty of opinions. You know,

(17:37):
we're gonna win, We're gonna beat you guys, You're gonna
beat us, that kind of a thing. But that's when
we really met. Then he was a little older and
he was a caddy at a country club. I was
in college and decided to do some caddy. So we
got to know each other a little bit more there
here I was eight ten years older than him, but
he was the veteran caddy. I was the new guy,
So of course he wasn't gonna let that not be known.

(17:59):
You know that he was the veteran caddy. So he's
always had a great sense of humor. I was this
public school guy. Many of the caddies were private school kids.
I was a little bit of the outsoorder. I mean,
these caddies are all fourteen fifteen, sixteen, and I was
in college and somebody said, hey, you want to make
some easy money, go double baggot a town and country
golf course with long Behold. There's Matt Burke, who is

(18:21):
the half boss of the caddyshack. So I'm working for him,
you know. So he didn't let that go without being noticed.
You know, Hey, Bischoff, get to work, you know what
I mean. So it just goes on and on. Today
Bischoff is in his fifth year on John Harbaugh's staff.
Before that, he coached with the Chicago Bears and the

(18:41):
Montreal Alouettes of the Canadian Football League. His career began
with a coaching job at Creton Durhamhall High School in
Saint Paul, a Minnesota powerhouse. That's where Burke went to
high school. Bischoff started coaching there in nineteen ninety three,
the year after Burke graduated. He was a great player there.

(19:02):
He originally had a scholarship offer to the University of Minnesota.
Through a series of really odd events, they pulled the
scholarship late, that recruiting coach was banned from the building,
and how poorly he handled the Burke situation. He then
moved on when to Harvard did his thing? Was a
great player at Harvard. You mentioned the stand up comedy.
We ran a youth football camp at Creten Daham Hall.

(19:24):
That kind of began during his days at Harvard. Now
Here he is he's a you know, well known Now
he's going to start a school, and now he's a
comedian and all those things. But at our football camp,
he gave his first public speech to our players at
the camp, and I had always wanted to ask former players, hey,
could he give the guys a couple of words? And

(19:46):
he said, very clearly, this is my first public speaking
in front of guys like this. How do he did great?
He mixed a great balance of pointed seriousness and comedy.
I mean, Matt always has a way of slipping in humor.
His direction as a comedian doesn't surprise me. And really,
going back to youth baseball, he's smart, he's sharp, he's witty,

(20:11):
you know, and it comes quickly to him. So I
mean stand up is a fit because it's improv you know,
he can improv and he can roll, which is a
great quality of his. Bishoff and Burke continue to run
into each other after the Minnesota Vikings selected Burke in
the sixth round of the nineteen ninety eight NFL Draft.
Quite a faithful event actually, considering Burke's Minnesota roots. Burke

(20:35):
won a place on his hometown team's roster. He would
eventually develop into a perennial pro bowler. Meanwhile, Bischoff was
still coaching at Creton Durhamhall High School. In Burke's early
years with the Vikings, every Sunday morning we went to
a particular breakfast place called Keys Cafe, and every Sunday morning,

(20:55):
Matt was sitting in the corner, sitting eating breakfast by himself.
But we didn't realize at the time was that he
was scouting his future wife. Her family owned this restaurant
and she was one of the waitresses. Her name's Adriana.
As we all know, he's sitting eating breakfast by himself
every week working on her. We're working on our coaching

(21:15):
staff stuff. Of course, the rest his history and they're married,
all the kids and everything else. His family. I mean,
you want to talk about an assault to the earth family,
I mean his mom and dad, beautiful people, two brothers,
all three very good athletes. Mad'll tell you that Nick
and Ben, his brothers, were much better athletes than him.
He may not admit that, but he knows it. He

(21:36):
just found his way to the NFL. Really athletic family,
hard working, great people, core Saint Paul, Minnesota people. So
it doesn't surprise you. After football, you know, he worked
for the NFL for a while in the league office
and after a while sort of chucked it and he
was going down an interesting road in the NFL, but
he and his wife wanted to live in the Twin Cities.
That was more important to them. Does that surprise you, No,

(21:58):
not at all, and you have alluded to I mean,
this is a guy that can be a stand up
comedian or the commissioner of the NFL. Let's be honest.
I mean, the guy is a brilliantly educated man with
all kinds of experiences. But what brings him back to
Saint Paul, his family in the community, and what he
can give to that space. I mean, the guy has

(22:19):
loved in that community in terms of his years with
the Vikings, then the impact he made with his Hike
Foundation out here and there, and now the efforts that
he's making, you know, in creating a school, and I mean,
I don't even know the half of it, but what
I know is that he's giving back to his community.

(22:41):
At Bert's Twitter feed offers a nice picture of what
he's all about. There's a blend of observations about the NFL, news,
about his charitable works, a lot about Catholic education in
some comedy. His profile pictures him with his wife and
eight kids. Below it, he writes, Embrace the chaos. It's
called life. Last month, he exchanged tweets with a comedian

(23:05):
named Jen Follweiler, who was having some fun with the
fact that Burke would be opening for her. She tweeted,
should I use this picture to promote it, posting an
on field shot of Burke from his NFL days, his
helmet off, blood running down his nose. Yes, you should,
Burke tweeted right back, because it screams I'm funny. I

(23:26):
would love, dearly love to roll for you some audio
from one of his performances. I know you'd enjoy it.
But Burke has drawn a line in the sand. No money,
no funny. He says, you only get to hear him
if you pay to hear him at one of his events.
He want you to attend to do good comedy show

(23:47):
support one of his charities. As a result, there's no
audio of him on stage performing, and as he pointed
out to me when we spoke, the demand for bootleg
tapes of his act isn't exactly soaring, so you'll just
have to take it from me. He's getting more and
more comfortable on stage, less and less afraid of being

(24:07):
the stand up guy who bombs. I remember the headlighter.
I'm always the warm up back. But yeah, it's fun.
It's a challenge. There's probably nothing that can't be more
vulnerable than going up on stage and trying to get
people to laugh. You know, sometimes it's really good. Sometimes
it's okay. I have yet to crash and burns there,
so we'll just we'll just keep going. Yea, I failed

(24:28):
that a lot of things, and if I went out
there and bombed, and that doesn't really reflect on my character.
But you know, it's just me up there bombing. But
you know, football play but a lot harder. And if
you don't play well, you know, to your job, you
let your team. And so certainly I mean got she's
almost get to the point of worked up to the
point of vomiting before games. Sometimes I did. It's just

(24:50):
so so anxious and nervous or excited and comedy come
nowhere near to that, to that level of acre. Like
a lot of stage, this is a lot easier. You
can find out more about Burke and his career at
Baltimore Ravens dot Com slash What Happened to That Guy?

(25:13):
I'd like to thank him for speaking to me. I'd
also like to thank Andy Bishop. Another new episode of
What Happened To That Guy will drop in two weeks,
and they'll keep coming every other week for the rest
of the twenty nineteen season. Next up Chris Carr, a
defensive back who played nine years in the NFL three
with the Ravens early in the John Harbaugh era. A

(25:34):
fine player in his day, Car has really moved on
from football. He's now an immigration attorney with quite a
story to tell. I hope you keep listening. If you
like what you're hearing, don't hesitate to leave. A five
star rating and write a review. Also subscribe to the
podcast so you don't miss any episodes. This podcast and

(25:57):
The Lounge, the excellent weekly podcast from my colleagues Ryan
Meek and Garrett Downing, are part of the Baltimore Ravens
Podcast Network. You can tell people just search for that
wherever you get your podcasts, Baltimore Ravens Podcast Network and
everything will come up. This is John Eisenberg. I'll talk
to you in two weeks.