September 20, 2022 • 36 mins
On episode three of Off the Record, Dannie Rogers sits down with one of her first mentors in the sports broadcasting industry, Jeff Chadiha. The NFL.com senior writer and reporter is an Ypsilanti, Michigan native who grew up idolizing the 1991 Detroit Lions. Chadiha would become one of the state’s highly touted high school football players and would receive a scholarship to play football at Michigan State University. A torn ACL his senior year upended those plans and the Spartans rescinded his offer. Chadiha would head out west to the University of Wyoming before transferring home to the University of Michigan and starting his first job in writing with the Ann Arbor News. He would report on crimes and homicides in the city before the San Francisco Examiner called and his career would take off—with stops at Sports Illustrated and ESPN before landing at NFL Network.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Your scorpio. Correct, Yes, I think it might be the
most important thing we cover. Yeah, what is I'm very
proud of that. I'm a scorpio as well. Okay, so
it's very very important to me. What do you think
encompasses a scorpio as a whole. I think it's intensity.
I think it's focus. I think we're natural leaders. I'm
(00:20):
biased in that way. There's a little bit of charisma
in there, some charm, a lot of good energy, and
then also what's the right word, the stinger. There's a
little bit of that. If you someone burns you, you
don't forget that either. You get your revenge the best
(00:40):
you can. This is Off the Record with Danny Rogers,
a new Detroit Lions podcast airing online social media platforms
along with wherever you listen to podcast. I'm your host,
Danny Rodgers, and I'll be introducing you to some guests
with pretty amazing stories, to network reporters and writers, chefs,
and some of the Detroit Lions very own on how
they've gotten to where they are, the good and the
(01:01):
not so good. Tune into Off the Record, airing every Tuesday. Today,
I'm featuring NFL network reporter and NFL dot Com senior
writer Jeff Chittia, the Oppsolandi native and former Wyoming defensive back,
transferred back home and would graduate from the University of Michigan.
Jeff talks the start of his journalism career as a
reporter for the Niwar News, where the stories he encountered
(01:24):
will give you chills, and his journey from the San
Francisco Examiner to Sports Illustrated will sound like fate. Jeff
stopped by the studio this pass training camp while he
was reporting on his hometown at a FL team. Here
is his story. I mean, growing up in Oppslandy, down
the street from the Big House, and then he also
had the Lions thirty minutes down the road. Michigan fan,
(01:45):
Lions fan? What was it? Both? Yeah? Both? Yeah. I
mean I think anybody who grows up in this town.
What I love about Michigan, I love coming back here
is that I think fans are very authentic and very loyal.
And so I was thinking about this on the car
ride over here. Like anybody who's a Missigan, a Lions fan,
their favorite season has to be ninety one thumbs up.
(02:08):
Mike Utley, Wayne Fons, Eric Kramer, and Barry Sanders, and
that was the season of hope. That was what it
was all about. And it's funny because I run into
a lot of people in my line of work who
have played football a long time, and I always see
some guys who played with the Cowboys back then, and
they beat the Cowboys in the playoffs that year, and
(02:28):
the feeling back then was that the Cowboys and the
Lions were gonna be the teams of the nineties. And
so I see Michael Irvin or Dion Sanders, I always
say that they go, yeah, one team was so that,
But to me, it's I've always loved watching them play.
I've always loved watching Michigan play. Actually root form Michigan
State too. My twin brother went to school. But it's
(02:52):
not as heartily as I Tho's other playlists. But yeah,
I'm a Lions fan in heart, Lions, Tigers, Red Wings,
Pistons always they're through. We love that because you are
in Kansas City now, so you got the Chiefs over there,
you got some good teams over there, but you like
to cheer for the hometown teams. Oh yeah, And I've
gotten to know some of the guys that were who
(03:14):
I watched growing up, Like I saw Lomas Brown out here,
I've seen for years. I met Barry back in the day.
Actually Barry when I was in college at Wyoming. Barry
played against US at Oklahoma State. It was his last
college game and he ran wild before he came to
the Lions. And you know, you see people like that,
and again it's like the people who play here who
(03:34):
come through here there as real as the fans who
cheer for him. Okay, you played football for a pretty
long time. Yeah, and then of course we'll get to it.
Some injuries kind of just me just step step back
and be like, hey, do I really need to keep
doing this? So when did you know football sports was
kind of your thing? You know, it's I didn't play
(03:58):
organized sports I was eleven. Yeah, and I didn't play
football until I was a sophomore in high school. Okay,
and so was your choice? Say, yeah, my parents? You know,
just a quick background my parents. My mom grew up
in Alabama, real small town, the only person in her
family to go to college. She left home with a
(04:19):
foot locker full of used closing twenty five bucks in
her pocket. She wound up becoming a professor at Michigan.
My dad is a dentist, worked in Ipsilanti and Arbor
area for a long time, but he came from Uganda
to this country. Union was eighteen years old. I thought
he was going to go back to his hometown, to
a home country. Edie and men took it over so
(04:39):
we could never go back, and so he got his education.
So my parents were always thought education, and so that
was always a big thing. They liked us playing sports,
but I had to ask. I had to beg them
to play. I would take the permission slip and say
sign it please, so I can go do this. Really,
they'd take me to practice and they'd say, okay, you
do this, but make sure you're studying. And so I
didn't really get into sports until I was eleven. I
(05:02):
love basketball at first, and then a football coach at
my high school said, you know you're gonna do anything
in the fall, when'd you come out and play football
with us? And that changed things. And Albert Gabriel Chard, yep, okay,
where are the mascot? I forget the same as Notre Dame.
Fighting Irish? Okay, fighting Irish, it sounds about right. So
the fighting Irish at and Albert Gabriel Richard that Landage
you playing for them, Landage you at the University of Wyoming.
(05:26):
Had you been to Wyoming before you decided to go there? No? No,
And that's it's a long story, and I'm going to
condense it because it's a short podcast. I was. I
started playing football, and I was a sophomore in high school.
After my sophomore year, started getting letters, recruiting letters. By
the time I was scoring in my senior year, I
was a pretty highly recruited kid. I was one of
(05:47):
the best players in the state. And I remember going
to Michigan State University and George Pelis was a head
coach then, and he called me up, or he asked
my high school coach to call and had me come
up to meet him during football camp. So I drew
up with my brothers, my twin brother, my younger brother,
big summer football camp, all these kids out there trying
to showcase themselves. And I go to middle field meet
(06:09):
with George Perlis and he says, Hey, I want you
to know I've coached Andre Risen, I've coached Carl Banks,
I've coached all these great players. I think you're gonna
be this kind of player. You have a scholarship to
Michigan State no matter what happens in your senior year.
And so I was looking at Michigan State, Stanford, Indiana, Colorado,
all these different places, and I ended up tearing up
my knee. I tore my ACL partly part way through
(06:33):
my first game my senior year, and so by time
recruiting season came around, I played on this hobble knee.
Didn't play great. Play played on the al, which you
can do, but it's definitely not advised. Yeah you're not
gonna play well. Yeah, no cutting, no shifting directions quickly. Wow.
And so all these schools fell off on me, and
(06:54):
Wyoming came in late yea. The defensive coordinator from Michigan
State called the dB coach at Wyoming and said, we're
taking this kid, but you should take a look at him.
And so Greg Brown was a guy's name. He flew
me out in a blizzard. Um said you know, have
you want to come here? This would be great for you,
and I signed a lot of intent to go out there. Okay,
(07:15):
so as a Michigan alone, I have to harp on
the fact that Michigan State did not did not live
up to its word. They did not. They did not.
They renigged. They came through in the end where the
coach helped me out. Like, I think that was a
little bit of love there. But yeah, I always tell
people that story when I talk about just because you're
getting recruited doesn't mean it's gonna work out for you.
Interesting did the brothers. Okay, so you're the middle child,
(07:38):
you're a scorpio. We mirror each other a lot. One
of three girls were the brothers playing football as well.
Was an entire family affair. I was the only one.
My twin brother, he's about three inches taller than me,
three inches taller. Yea, how tall are you? I'm sixty three. Yeah,
he said, he's a pretty good baseball player. He ended
up playing baseball at Michigan State for a couple of
(07:59):
year years. He was an All state basketball player. My
younger brother didn't play anything, Okay, he just went to school.
The younger SIPs. They do what they want. Yeah, it's amazing.
Do you have a great twins story? I know your return. Yea. Well,
here's what I tell you about twins is that that
whole connection thing is real. Okay, because I have a
(08:23):
nephew and a niece in California, where my brothers lived,
and my nephew is now thirteen, and so when he
was about to be born, like, I was really nervous
because I live in Kansas City and I was hoping
everything would go all right. And I was asleep one
night and I woke up in the middle of the
night and I said, the kids here, and I told
(08:46):
my now ex wife the kid was born. I think
he's he's out. She's like, get out of here. And
then I kid you not like six hours later, they
called and said that he was born today. Yeah. So
I was like, I always tell people that that's a
real a real deal. Oh my gosh. And I've had
multiple things like that happened, yeah, you know, in my lifetime,
(09:08):
but that was probably the most profound because it was
the first kid my brother ever had. So you predicted
your your your nephew when he was going to be born. Yeah,
Did you text number call him be like hey, I'm
giving you a heads up? No, it was he was.
I felt like he's out, Like my my I felt
like my brother was reacting to it. Feel him reacting
(09:29):
to his son being born. Wow. Oh my gosh. Okay,
and so Twins will backed me up on that. He
Twins watching you know this is real, that's incredible. Okay.
So we're going back to the University of Wyoming. Did
you enjoy your your your time there? I know is
a little bit shorter than you probably anticipated. But how
(09:50):
what do you tell people about Wyoming when they ask, Well,
I tell him that one, it's a beautiful place. It's
it's very remote. I was a little bit jaded by
my experience. I made great friends, had a lot of fun,
but I wasn't ready to play football based on how
I went into college because I think I went there
because I wanted to prove to people like George Perlis
(10:12):
and other people who had stopped recruiting me that they
made a mistake and that wasn't the right way to
approach gorn to college because I ended up having a
second injury while I was there. My other ACL got torn,
and at that point it was you know, now you
have an ACL tear, and you know guys who joggle
on the sideline seven weeks seven days later in high school,
(10:33):
it's it's insane. It's nine months of rehab usually. Oh yeah, Well,
back then they put you in the cast for six weeks,
and so it was a very, very tumultuous rehab. And
so I happened a second time. You know, I was
I was a safety. I kind of feeling like, Okay,
I'm not kind to be a pro football player. What's
going to happen to me? And I started thinking about
(10:53):
life after school. But you know, one of the craziest
things that I've experienced was when I left Wyoming, I
was really down on myself and really upset about how
things had played out, and I felt like I was
a failure. And then about three years ago, I was
at the Super Bowl in Houston and a friend of
mine who I played with called me up and who
(11:14):
lived down there, and said, hey, I want to get
together with you and a couple of guys who you
played with, we want to see you, blah blah blah,
And I said, okay, let's go meet. I go to
this bar in Houston, this random bar, and about twenty
guys were there, and a couple other guys who played basketball,
and they were all like, man, we were sorry you left.
You know, we watched your career playout, and we're so
(11:37):
proud of you like we you know, you were studying
all the time, we were partying and having fun. It's
just like you were doing it the right way. And
I was like, really and so, and I was proud
of them because some of those guys were academic issues
and get in trouble with the law. So it just
made me feel like, when you are part of something
at that level, it's not just about playing and all
the highlights, it's about, you know, the connections you make
(11:59):
with people. Yeah, okay, so the connections then went on
to the University of Michigan. Was transferring to Michigan your
first choice kind of going back home? Well, it was
really more kind of like, uh, well, this is what
I know the best. It was a comfort zone there.
And what I didn't realize when I came back was
that one of my parents were getting divorced. So I
(12:20):
thought I was coming back to stability there that wasn't there.
And I didn't realize how much not playing sports was
going to affect me. And it was hard. It was
hard to not be a guy who was obviously playing sports,
somebody who was known, somebody who you know, My whole
identity was wrapped up in it. Yeah, and so I
had to go through a process of trying to figure out, Okay,
(12:41):
what do I do well? Now? What can I be
if it's not going to be an athlete? And it
took me like a couple of years of really going
through some depression and some difficulties and trying to figure
that out. Do you ever talk to athletes or kind
of get a sense from them that they're going through
those same things that you went through? It just the
adjustment after your life doesn't revolve around a sport all
(13:03):
the time. I see it with pro football players, I
see what college players, and I spend a lot of
time talking to athletes throughout the course of the year
I teach now, so I do it then as well,
and I can feel it. One thing I've always it's
always helped me in this job is understanding that, yeah,
these guys are big and strong and tough and all that,
but but they're also very vulnerable and they're also very
(13:24):
scared about losing the opportunity. You know, they're always trying
to impress people and show people they belong. And so
what I was done playing that was something I had
to realize was that, Okay, so you know when you're
in high school, you become a star athlete. Everything comes
your way, whether it's girls or you know, being celebrated
(13:45):
and adulation, all this stuff you want when you're a teenager.
But then when you're grown up, you're like, Okay, that's
that's not gonna last. And I got to like find
something that's real about me. And so that's what I
tell all these athletes is like, you know, you're gonna
find your way, but it's gonna be a process because
you're so used to everything being laid out for you,
even your stately schedule, and so you got to get
(14:07):
used to like doing a lot of things on your own.
We helped you find your way once you go out
to Michigan and now the new chapter of non football
was starting. Yeah, well there was a professor at Michigan,
and I tried a lot of different majors and a
lot of different avenues. What was your least favorite one business?
I took a tak a. I think it was a
(14:28):
economous class, and it was just it was so bad.
I think I left after like six weeks. I just
I couldn't do it. It was so painful, it was
so hard, and I was like I'm so out of
my depths here that this is not me. Okay. So
I actually went to the communication department and took a
journalism class because I could write pretty well when I
was in school, and I thought, at least I didn't
(14:48):
get an a out of something where I have to write. Yes,
And I met a teacher. His name is Don kubitt Man.
He was he changed my life because I want to
took his class and I want to talk about possibly
getting some scholarship money. He said, oh, yeah, I've seen
your stuff, like he said, you're you're pretty good. And
I think that was the first time somebody had said
(15:09):
that to me where I could hear it and it
didn't involve sports. And so from that point forward, we
just talked about, you know, what you could do as
a writer. I didn't know what. I don't know anything
about being a journalist, being a reporter. He just said, well,
if you do this and take some classes, let's see
where it goes. And so I put the next two
years just taking classes that he taught. There's like three classes,
(15:31):
and that was it. Yeah. Yeah, and then okay, so
how did that spiral into the journalism on air role? Well,
it got into a point where I was graduating and
because I didn't have any other real tangible experience, didn't
have any internships, didn't write for the Michigan Daily. I
talked to Don about it and I said, look, I
(15:51):
think I want to try a career in journalism, but
all I only have is your class work and maybe
a couple of stories that I wrote for the Wolverine,
you know, you know. And so he said, well, I'll
do this, Like, why don't you go to this career
conference is coming up, you know they have for seniors
and at Michigan. He said, yeah, they could do every
(16:11):
I think every school does some form of it. I
walked into this big conference and it's like General Motors
is in there, and Ford and Anderson consulting, and it's
a little table with the anniver to us there, and
there's just, you know, this kind of heavy set old
guy in there with a mustache named Dave Bishop. So
I go sit down and talk to him, and I said, look,
(16:32):
I'm from the area. I played football in college for
a little bit. I've gone in Michigan. Um, I think
I want to try being a writer. Uh, what do
I have to do? And so we talked for a
little bit, and he said, wyn't you come back tomorrow
and talk to our publisher, this guy at Petekevic. So
I come back the next day, same pitch, and he's like, look,
I can't give you a job because you're not prepared
(16:54):
for this, and I can't keep an internship because we've
already hired our interns. It was like April. He said,
But what I will, I'll let you cover high school
sports on a part time basis and we'll see where
that goes. And that's kind of in a real quick
story about that. When I walked in the first day
to the sports department, there there was this really big,
(17:14):
overweight black guy in her named Jason Whitlock, who would
finished playing football ball State. And he said, Hey, if
you do this, you will be fine because I'm going
down the same road you've gone down. I've gotten this far. Wow.
And that helped me kind of get going. Where's Jason Whitlock? Now?
He's doing some kind of crazy stuff. I don't know
why that name sounds so familiar. He's worked for, He's
(17:36):
worked for everybody. Was a Kansas City Star columnist, he
was at ESPN, he was at Yeah, who he's a
Fox He had a show on Fox is just a
couple of years ago. Okay that is, um, I figured
what it's called now. He was doing Marcellius Wiley. So
he's a pretty prominent dude. And he was there at
the n Armor News. Yeah, okay covering the fat Wow.
Yeah that blue Yeah, I know a lot. I took
(17:59):
a class image and on the Pad five teaching class
stuff that I was in school. I don't want to
say that you're learning about your your history yea, yeah, okay.
It's a very intriguing class. It's about half a semester
and they get into the whole yeah, the whole thing.
It's insane. Yeah yeah, I feel like the Fat Fives,
like Eli Whitney and the Cotton Gin or something like that.
(18:20):
Now it's like yeah, yeah, yeah, far back. Yes, I
don't want to date you, but yeah, that is. It
was a minute ago. Yeah. So our connection is head
coach John Paul, the former head coach at Michigan lacrosse,
had given me your contact info because he's like, what
do you want to do. I'm like, I want to
be a sports broadcaster. Like I'm young, I'm like nineteen
(18:41):
years old. Humbling myself with a lacrosse manager position which
I had never known about my entire life, and so
we gave year number. I still have the text messages
from twenty sixteen. I should probably delete them all. Well,
my mom flattered by that actually twenty fifteen. November sixteenth,
twenty fifteen, and I was like, is it okay for
(19:02):
me to call you? Are you busy? Your own date?
Crazy stuff? Wrote it all down in a red notebook.
I tried to find the red notebook our entire conversation,
couldn't find it. But coach Um Paul, I know you're
very good, good friends with in wedding in his wedding
and he said, you guys are roommates and you would
come home with crazy an Arbor news stories because you
(19:23):
used to cover the police too, and an arbor right,
So how humbling of an experience was that? Well it was.
It was humbling, and it was enlightening and it was
rewarding because I wanted to be a sportswriter when I
went there, and that internship, that that little reporting job
I had part time led to an internship which led
(19:43):
to a full time job. It was covering police. Well
that's when they told me that. I was like, Okay,
I don't know any think about police reporting. I know
what cops do, but aside from that, and they said,
you'll be fine. And the best thing that Antiberti's ever
did for me and some great people that I got
in Rick Fitzgerald now is UM. He worked for the
University of Michigan. He was an editor. They let me
(20:06):
go around with all the different reporters to learn what
they did in their beats, and so all these great
people taught me something about being a reporter. And then
my first, my first job, my first big story, came
right after I finished that whole process, and it was
a scanner went off in the newsroom and there was
some kind of shooting at Chelsea High School. And this
(20:30):
was before long before high school school shootings became you
know what they've become. And so lets just go out
there and see what happens. I get my car, drive
out there. There's police tape everywhere, there's chaos. You know,
I'm twenty two, twenty two years old, and so and
it turns out this UM teacher had gone in to
(20:53):
a meeting and shot the superintendent and his principal killed him.
Both and so I go being this kid who's just
like three years removed from trying to figure out how
to you know, deal with life after football. To all
of a sudden, now I'm like, okay, this is real
life stuff, and I'm trying to make sense of a
double homicide. And so that was my first case. A
(21:16):
month later, scanner goes off again. I had to go
out to I think Pittsfield township. There was a seven
eight year old girl had died, and so I had
to go find out what happened. So again, go out there,
got a knocked on the door. Hey, I'm Jeff Chidieff
and anamur news. I just heard something tragic happen. Talking
(21:37):
to the woman's the girl's mom, can you tell me
what's going on? And she's like, well, yeah, my daughter
was at school on the slide. That slide faced away
from the school. She was going down a recess or
the after school program, and it was February. She wearing
a heavy coat and her drawstring got stuck on the slide,
so basically she got stuck in a choking position and
(22:00):
ended up you know, choking it down. Eight year old girl. Yeah,
and I remember, Okay, now, I really feel like a
jerk coming in here having to talk to you about this,
and you said, no, no, no, come in, I'll talk
to you. I have some friends over talking about the girl. Now.
I always remember this because I sat down. I haven't
(22:21):
my notebook and my tape recorder, and I was ready
to be a really good journalist and I just sat
in the room table like this and just watch people
just talk and listen to them tell stories. The couple
couldn't have kids, so they had adopted the girl from
another country on top of that, and it was just
so powerful, and it just made me realize, you know,
when you do this job, you're really entering into people's lives,
(22:43):
and you're really playing a really influential role, and you
can screw it up in a second and destroy them,
and so you gotta take it seriously. And so you know,
when I walked out of there, I mean, I wrote
the story and all that, But every month after that
there was a story of that kind of magnitude, that
level of intensity, whether it was a serial rapist going on,
(23:05):
it was murders and um and it just kind of
I think after a year of that, I was like, man,
I gotta take a break. But I learned a lot
about life just going through that. I think of two
years on that beat, well yeah, how well it did
that set you up to tackle the next things. If
you're a Sports Illustrated fan, you know Jeff. If you're
(23:25):
an ESPN fan, you know they know you. Like so
what happened after that that would lead you down the
path of making it to the network? Well, um, after
about three years of that's about two years I have
covering police. Jason Wentlock left. That's so I started covering
Michigan's football and basketball team. And then in ninety six
(23:46):
I got a phone call from a guy in San
Francisco saying, Hey, do you want to come out here
and work for me? The LA Raiders just moved back
to Oakland and I'm looking for a young guy to
do this. And I thought, okay, that's interesting. And I
was at that point where I was not sure if
I wanted to stay in journalism or not, because an
editor once told me that journalism is what you do
(24:07):
when you're trying to find something else to do with
your life, and so always thought maybe I'm just doing
this because it's fun, it's interesting, but I should be like, so,
I was actually studying to go to law school. I
was taking it and I think the l sat and
I was going to try to get in the law
school and on top of this reporting. Yeah, so when
this guy called me and so I said, I'll come
out and take a look around. And I flew out
(24:28):
to San Francisco and fell in love with it. And
my editor, my sports editor back in ann Arborage, Jeff Larker,
said you know, hey, you seriously think about taking this job.
And I said really why. He's like, well, if you
had come to me and said, oh, you're gonna cover baseball,
Oh you're gonna cover the NBA, I would have been like,
well that's what they put young people because those are
(24:49):
really exhaustive beats and you travel a lot. But so
the NFL is a big deal. And I was twenty five,
and he said, if someone's coming to you saying you
can cover NFL team, you know you should do it. Yeah,
And so I went out there, and you know, I
was there for four years and I met a lot
of people, broke some stories and made a name for myself.
And then um in two thousand, a friend of mine,
(25:12):
Mike Silver, was working for Sports Illustrated and he said that,
you know, I read your stuff. I see you. He
lived in the Bay Area and he said, you should
like apply to our place. And I was like, what
it's like really like that was the dream back then.
It's it's not the same place now, but it was
a huge deal. And he said, no, just send your
stuff in and we'll see what happens. And I did that,
(25:32):
and about three months later, I was in Puerto Rico
on vacation and I was checking myself phone messages and
I got a message from a guy named Rob Flater
and Sports Illustrated and he said, hey, Jeff, this is
Rob Flater. I saw your stuff. I like it. Can
you give me a call? I want to talk about
a job. And so I called the guy back and said,
you know, you know at some like little Poe Dunk
(25:52):
like phone booth. Yeah exactly. I was in like a
remote part of the island, chickens running around and straight
dogs and talking to this guy about this job and
he says, uh yeah. I said, uh, I like your stuff.
I want you to come work for for Sports Illustrated
and um and that's really what launched me onto the
road that I'm to where I am now. Could you
(26:14):
imagine not getting that message from sports? Would they have
tracked you down down to me? Yeah, I think they
would have tracked me down. But it was a different
world in terms of like cell phones were just starting
to become a thing. It was two thousand and so, yeah,
it was a little bit. I still had to go
call remotely to get my messages, like I couldn't just
like do it on my phone at the time. But
I was I was humbled because it was it had
(26:36):
been seven years or I had been ten years since
I had left Wyoming and seven and I graduated from
school and had to talk with Anna Abernews. I didn't
know what was gonna happen with my career. But again,
I think the things I learned along the way and
some of those disappointments they helped me. They helped me
work at this in the way I never worked in sports,
(26:57):
Like I was always a pretty good athlete, and I
could get a way with not working as hard now
I tell people now I work harder at being a
journalist because I knew it could go away. Yeah, when
I was an athlete and think I thought it would
be there forever and it's not. It's not gonna work
that way. So you were you said, yeah, when you're
in college you realize you were going to turn pro.
Did you always want to be like an NFL player? Uh?
(27:21):
NFL or NBA? Okay, you know? And I laughed sometimes
with some of the guys who I work with now
we were Hall of famers, I said, man, there was
between me and you is that I got hurt? Exactly?
I thought I was gonna be exactly where you're sitting.
And we laugh about that. But um, so much of
this world, like being a pro athlete, you know, and
you have to be super talented, you have to be
(27:41):
super strong willed, you have to have immense perseverance and
resilience inside you. But luck plays rowing it too, you know,
just not getting hurt. Um being with the right coaches,
being in the right programs. M. I laugh. Now when
I people were asking me, hey, can you help me
(28:02):
get my son recruited? Or can you show my tape
to this guy or whatever? And I'll always ask people, well,
as your kid getting recruited, and they go yeah, I said,
well who's looking at him? Oh? You know, it's like
Tulsa or it's like Boise State or it's Bowling Green.
I said, well, then what's wrong with those places? Yeah,
well he wants to be at Oklahoma or Michigan or
USC and I always tell him go where they want you,
(28:25):
go where they know they're going to be developed, and
they'll be fine, you know. So I think with me again,
it was like when I was in college. Sometimes chasing
those kind of dreams can lead you into the wrong places,
and what you're getting those places you got to figure
out is this what you really want for your life.
As painful as it was for me to get hurt
(28:45):
when I was nineteen, it really helped me have to
look at myself and figure out what I wanted to
be and what I could be more importantly, and so
I'm grateful for it. Now, I know you're figuring out
if you wanted to keep going at this journalism thing.
So ESPN calls, what is your reaction? What was that like?
It was, Well, it wasn't so much a call because
(29:07):
I was living in New York City at the time
and the show is called First Take now used to
be called Cold Pizza, and so I would do stuff
with them. They would they actually call me up and
say they we're going to do a newsing notes segment,
and so you had to come in and you have
to do like three or four NFL notes with somebody else.
So I'd give a note, other guy would give a note,
(29:28):
and we do that for like two minutes. And so
I would do that in the studio. And then Jim
Rome had a TV show on ESPN and so I
could go out there and being part of that, I
got the guest hosted a few times. And so the
world was changing. This was like around two thousand and five,
two thousand and six, and so I started talking to
ESPN about, you know, what kind of roles could I
(29:48):
have over there? And then coincidentally, at the same time,
Sports Illustrated was starting to become more concerned about the
digital world, and ESPN dot com was getting bigger and
trying to figure out what should we do with our website,
and I just felt like PRENT was starting to really
fade away and the digital world and TV world was
(30:09):
where things were at. And so I just I ended
up talking to the producer of copets about auditioning, and
he said, why don't you come on up and we'll
do that, and they ended up hiring me, and it
was it was exciting. But my initial job was I
was on first take debating with Skip Bayliss. Yeah, I
was part of a rotation. It was myself and Jamal
(30:30):
Hill and Nick Steve and A Smith was still around
the first time he was there and some other people,
and they weren't getting the numbers they wanted to get
with that part of the program, and so they began
to find more bombastic personalities to come in and be
a part of the show, to really get into it
with Skip and I always you know, Skip gets a
lot of criticism, and I remember talking to him one
(30:54):
time because I was doing some stuff with these sixty
two and they weren't crazy about me doing that show
because it was kind I conflicted with what they wanted
to put out as far as branding. And so I
went to Skip and I said, Skip, you know, like
I see more like high profile, like big personalities coming
out here and they're more argumentative and just more bravado
and bombastic, and they're getting more room than I am.
(31:17):
And I said, do you think I should be more
like that? And what he told me is still something
I tell young people today. He said Jeff, it's like,
I gotta tell you, like, I respect you, I like you.
My girlfriend who's now his wife, she enjoys when I
do my segments with you. You bring a lot to this.
If you ever try to be something you're not in
(31:39):
this business, that camera will expose it ten times over.
Like you're just fine being you, Like, don't ever ever
think you gotta change. And again it was it was
a very important moment in my life because he just said,
you know, he reinforced what I had to learn along
the way at a younger age, like if you're yourself,
(32:01):
if you're authentic, you're going to succeed in life. And
so I ended up doing these sixty Um it was
a great run for me, and then I ended up
going to NFL Network because that gave me a lot
of exposure and storytelling, make him a bigger part of
this business. And you know it worked out in the end. Well,
how many Super Bowls have you covered since? Oh, since
(32:22):
I started covering NFL. Oh, It's it's like twenty twenty three,
twenty four. Now, Yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy. And for me,
the best part is that I've been able to take
my brother, my twin brother. My some good friends have
been able to go with me. Um, you know my
girlfriend now, she's been to a bunch and so it's
you get to a certain point where you're like, it's
(32:43):
just work, Yeah, but for them to experience it and
to be able to go to cool cities and go
to fun parties and all that stuff. Um, my contract
just I just resigned a new contract with NFL Network,
And I tell my girlfriend it's like, if I had
left this place, you would have been so angry with
super Bow rolled around because it'd be wouldn't be the
cool cars, the stub picking you up and taking you over,
(33:05):
the NFL honors anymore, and I'd have to hear about
that for the rest of my life. Yeah. I guess
we never ask enough men. I feel like how they
balance the work family life. So your nine year old son,
who we're looking at the basketball videos are coming, he's
extremely tall. Maybe he'll get to the height of your
twin brother six foot six one day. How do you
(33:27):
balance your job everything it demands and then having a
nine year old son at home too? Well, one thing
I did, I had a son late, so I didn't
have him until I was forty two, and a big
reason for that was when I was traveling so much
when I was younger. I didn't want to not, you know,
be able to be around a kid, to be able
to raise a kid. So you're super conscious about that,
(33:47):
oh super My dad always told me, don't ever have
a child to you're ready to raise him. And so
that's always been the forefront of my mind. And so
when I got to be in my forties and then
my son came around, I had a little more old
of my schedule, which was important to me. I do
a lot of gymnastics. I try to make sure I
get on playing at the right time, a lot of
(34:07):
early morning flights or red eyes to get back. And
then when I have him, I'm divorced, but when I
have him, I try to make sure I make the
most of it. You know, somebody gave me some great
advice once that it's not how much time you have
with your kids, what you do with it that matters.
And so I try to listen to him. I try
to make sure he's doing the right things. I try
(34:28):
not think because I'm older, I'm able to be more
patient and sit back as opposed to trying to always
fix stuff, and you know, get on him about things.
He's a great kid. And then the big thing for
me is that I just tried to make sure that
I also expose him to some of the things I do,
so he knows what I'm about. So try to take
(34:48):
him the training camps now, and I try to when
I'm out puts on the sideline. He wants pictures of
certain stuff. I try to do that stuff, and I
know it means a lot to him because when he does,
he's passed the where he does showing sharing school Now
he's going to the fourth grade. But you know, I
got a championship ringing for being in Wyomi. He loves
wearing that thing. I got a jersey from those days.
He loves putting that stuff on. He loves showing my
(35:10):
emmy off. He loves I wrote a book with Chris Carter.
He sees that stuff more now. And there was one
day over the summer when a neighbor came by and
he had the book that I'd written with Chris, and
he wanted me to sign it for his son. And
my kid was there watching TV. I thought he was
just watching YouTube or whatever and hanging out, and I
turned back after signing and walked back in and he
(35:32):
was looking at me like, wow, what was that? I said,
I said, what are you? What are you look at at?
He's like, I've never seen you sign an autograph before.
You know, you had a cool dad. Yeah, so's it
means something to him too. Now is he gonna go
to Wyoming or is he gonna go to Michigan? Oh?
He said he wants to go to Duke. I think
he wants to play basketball. Yeah, already figured it out
(35:53):
at nine where he wants to go. Okay, I think
you need to use your Michigan connections, get John Howard
on the phone and just let him talk. Ut. Yeah,
I'm gonna get him to a basketball camp, get him
on their radar pretty soon here. But we'll see. I
think it'll buy Jay. But the one thing I know
now that if he's lucky enough to be recruited and
have a chance to play at the next level that one.
(36:15):
Obviously I know how the process works, but I would
give him some advice about being able to make sure
you enjoy it as best you can, that you never
know when it's gonna go away. You just listen to
another episode of Off the Record with Danny Rogers. A
new episode drops every Tuesday,
Your scorpio. Correct, Yes, I think it might be the
most important thing we cover. Yeah, what is I'm very
proud of that. I'm a scorpio as well. Okay, so
it's very very important to me. What do you think
encompasses a scorpio as a whole. I think it's intensity.
I think it's focus. I think we're natural leaders. I'm
(00:20):
biased in that way. There's a little bit of charisma
in there, some charm, a lot of good energy, and
then also what's the right word, the stinger. There's a
little bit of that. If you someone burns you, you
don't forget that either. You get your revenge the best
(00:40):
you can. This is Off the Record with Danny Rogers,
a new Detroit Lions podcast airing online social media platforms
along with wherever you listen to podcast. I'm your host,
Danny Rodgers, and I'll be introducing you to some guests
with pretty amazing stories, to network reporters and writers, chefs,
and some of the Detroit Lions very own on how
they've gotten to where they are, the good and the
(01:01):
not so good. Tune into Off the Record, airing every Tuesday. Today,
I'm featuring NFL network reporter and NFL dot Com senior
writer Jeff Chittia, the Oppsolandi native and former Wyoming defensive back,
transferred back home and would graduate from the University of Michigan.
Jeff talks the start of his journalism career as a
reporter for the Niwar News, where the stories he encountered
(01:24):
will give you chills, and his journey from the San
Francisco Examiner to Sports Illustrated will sound like fate. Jeff
stopped by the studio this pass training camp while he
was reporting on his hometown at a FL team. Here
is his story. I mean, growing up in Oppslandy, down
the street from the Big House, and then he also
had the Lions thirty minutes down the road. Michigan fan,
(01:45):
Lions fan? What was it? Both? Yeah? Both? Yeah. I
mean I think anybody who grows up in this town.
What I love about Michigan, I love coming back here
is that I think fans are very authentic and very loyal.
And so I was thinking about this on the car
ride over here. Like anybody who's a Missigan, a Lions fan,
their favorite season has to be ninety one thumbs up.
(02:08):
Mike Utley, Wayne Fons, Eric Kramer, and Barry Sanders, and
that was the season of hope. That was what it
was all about. And it's funny because I run into
a lot of people in my line of work who
have played football a long time, and I always see
some guys who played with the Cowboys back then, and
they beat the Cowboys in the playoffs that year, and
(02:28):
the feeling back then was that the Cowboys and the
Lions were gonna be the teams of the nineties. And
so I see Michael Irvin or Dion Sanders, I always
say that they go, yeah, one team was so that,
But to me, it's I've always loved watching them play.
I've always loved watching Michigan play. Actually root form Michigan
State too. My twin brother went to school. But it's
(02:52):
not as heartily as I Tho's other playlists. But yeah,
I'm a Lions fan in heart, Lions, Tigers, Red Wings,
Pistons always they're through. We love that because you are
in Kansas City now, so you got the Chiefs over there,
you got some good teams over there, but you like
to cheer for the hometown teams. Oh yeah, And I've
gotten to know some of the guys that were who
(03:14):
I watched growing up, Like I saw Lomas Brown out here,
I've seen for years. I met Barry back in the day.
Actually Barry when I was in college at Wyoming. Barry
played against US at Oklahoma State. It was his last
college game and he ran wild before he came to
the Lions. And you know, you see people like that,
and again it's like the people who play here who
(03:34):
come through here there as real as the fans who
cheer for him. Okay, you played football for a pretty
long time. Yeah, and then of course we'll get to it.
Some injuries kind of just me just step step back
and be like, hey, do I really need to keep
doing this? So when did you know football sports was
kind of your thing? You know, it's I didn't play
(03:58):
organized sports I was eleven. Yeah, and I didn't play
football until I was a sophomore in high school. Okay,
and so was your choice? Say, yeah, my parents? You know,
just a quick background my parents. My mom grew up
in Alabama, real small town, the only person in her
family to go to college. She left home with a
(04:19):
foot locker full of used closing twenty five bucks in
her pocket. She wound up becoming a professor at Michigan.
My dad is a dentist, worked in Ipsilanti and Arbor
area for a long time, but he came from Uganda
to this country. Union was eighteen years old. I thought
he was going to go back to his hometown, to
a home country. Edie and men took it over so
(04:39):
we could never go back, and so he got his education.
So my parents were always thought education, and so that
was always a big thing. They liked us playing sports,
but I had to ask. I had to beg them
to play. I would take the permission slip and say
sign it please, so I can go do this. Really,
they'd take me to practice and they'd say, okay, you
do this, but make sure you're studying. And so I
didn't really get into sports until I was eleven. I
(05:02):
love basketball at first, and then a football coach at
my high school said, you know you're gonna do anything
in the fall, when'd you come out and play football
with us? And that changed things. And Albert Gabriel Chard, yep, okay,
where are the mascot? I forget the same as Notre Dame.
Fighting Irish? Okay, fighting Irish, it sounds about right. So
the fighting Irish at and Albert Gabriel Richard that Landage
you playing for them, Landage you at the University of Wyoming.
(05:26):
Had you been to Wyoming before you decided to go there? No? No,
And that's it's a long story, and I'm going to
condense it because it's a short podcast. I was. I
started playing football, and I was a sophomore in high school.
After my sophomore year, started getting letters, recruiting letters. By
the time I was scoring in my senior year, I
was a pretty highly recruited kid. I was one of
(05:47):
the best players in the state. And I remember going
to Michigan State University and George Pelis was a head
coach then, and he called me up, or he asked
my high school coach to call and had me come
up to meet him during football camp. So I drew
up with my brothers, my twin brother, my younger brother,
big summer football camp, all these kids out there trying
to showcase themselves. And I go to middle field meet
(06:09):
with George Perlis and he says, Hey, I want you
to know I've coached Andre Risen, I've coached Carl Banks,
I've coached all these great players. I think you're gonna
be this kind of player. You have a scholarship to
Michigan State no matter what happens in your senior year.
And so I was looking at Michigan State, Stanford, Indiana, Colorado,
all these different places, and I ended up tearing up
my knee. I tore my ACL partly part way through
(06:33):
my first game my senior year, and so by time
recruiting season came around, I played on this hobble knee.
Didn't play great. Play played on the al, which you
can do, but it's definitely not advised. Yeah you're not
gonna play well. Yeah, no cutting, no shifting directions quickly. Wow.
And so all these schools fell off on me, and
(06:54):
Wyoming came in late yea. The defensive coordinator from Michigan
State called the dB coach at Wyoming and said, we're
taking this kid, but you should take a look at him.
And so Greg Brown was a guy's name. He flew
me out in a blizzard. Um said you know, have
you want to come here? This would be great for you,
and I signed a lot of intent to go out there. Okay,
(07:15):
so as a Michigan alone, I have to harp on
the fact that Michigan State did not did not live
up to its word. They did not. They did not.
They renigged. They came through in the end where the
coach helped me out. Like, I think that was a
little bit of love there. But yeah, I always tell
people that story when I talk about just because you're
getting recruited doesn't mean it's gonna work out for you.
Interesting did the brothers. Okay, so you're the middle child,
(07:38):
you're a scorpio. We mirror each other a lot. One
of three girls were the brothers playing football as well.
Was an entire family affair. I was the only one.
My twin brother, he's about three inches taller than me,
three inches taller. Yea, how tall are you? I'm sixty three. Yeah,
he said, he's a pretty good baseball player. He ended
up playing baseball at Michigan State for a couple of
(07:59):
year years. He was an All state basketball player. My
younger brother didn't play anything, Okay, he just went to school.
The younger SIPs. They do what they want. Yeah, it's amazing.
Do you have a great twins story? I know your return. Yea. Well,
here's what I tell you about twins is that that
whole connection thing is real. Okay, because I have a
(08:23):
nephew and a niece in California, where my brothers lived,
and my nephew is now thirteen, and so when he
was about to be born, like, I was really nervous
because I live in Kansas City and I was hoping
everything would go all right. And I was asleep one
night and I woke up in the middle of the
night and I said, the kids here, and I told
(08:46):
my now ex wife the kid was born. I think
he's he's out. She's like, get out of here. And
then I kid you not like six hours later, they
called and said that he was born today. Yeah. So
I was like, I always tell people that that's a
real a real deal. Oh my gosh. And I've had
multiple things like that happened, yeah, you know, in my lifetime,
(09:08):
but that was probably the most profound because it was
the first kid my brother ever had. So you predicted
your your your nephew when he was going to be born. Yeah,
Did you text number call him be like hey, I'm
giving you a heads up? No, it was he was.
I felt like he's out, Like my my I felt
like my brother was reacting to it. Feel him reacting
(09:29):
to his son being born. Wow. Oh my gosh. Okay,
and so Twins will backed me up on that. He
Twins watching you know this is real, that's incredible. Okay.
So we're going back to the University of Wyoming. Did
you enjoy your your your time there? I know is
a little bit shorter than you probably anticipated. But how
(09:50):
what do you tell people about Wyoming when they ask, Well,
I tell him that one, it's a beautiful place. It's
it's very remote. I was a little bit jaded by
my experience. I made great friends, had a lot of fun,
but I wasn't ready to play football based on how
I went into college because I think I went there
because I wanted to prove to people like George Perlis
(10:12):
and other people who had stopped recruiting me that they
made a mistake and that wasn't the right way to
approach gorn to college because I ended up having a
second injury while I was there. My other ACL got torn,
and at that point it was you know, now you
have an ACL tear, and you know guys who joggle
on the sideline seven weeks seven days later in high school,
(10:33):
it's it's insane. It's nine months of rehab usually. Oh yeah, Well,
back then they put you in the cast for six weeks,
and so it was a very, very tumultuous rehab. And
so I happened a second time. You know, I was
I was a safety. I kind of feeling like, Okay,
I'm not kind to be a pro football player. What's
going to happen to me? And I started thinking about
(10:53):
life after school. But you know, one of the craziest
things that I've experienced was when I left Wyoming, I
was really down on myself and really upset about how
things had played out, and I felt like I was
a failure. And then about three years ago, I was
at the Super Bowl in Houston and a friend of
mine who I played with called me up and who
(11:14):
lived down there, and said, hey, I want to get
together with you and a couple of guys who you
played with, we want to see you, blah blah blah,
And I said, okay, let's go meet. I go to
this bar in Houston, this random bar, and about twenty
guys were there, and a couple other guys who played basketball,
and they were all like, man, we were sorry you left.
You know, we watched your career playout, and we're so
(11:37):
proud of you like we you know, you were studying
all the time, we were partying and having fun. It's
just like you were doing it the right way. And
I was like, really and so, and I was proud
of them because some of those guys were academic issues
and get in trouble with the law. So it just
made me feel like, when you are part of something
at that level, it's not just about playing and all
the highlights, it's about, you know, the connections you make
(11:59):
with people. Yeah, okay, so the connections then went on
to the University of Michigan. Was transferring to Michigan your
first choice kind of going back home? Well, it was
really more kind of like, uh, well, this is what
I know the best. It was a comfort zone there.
And what I didn't realize when I came back was
that one of my parents were getting divorced. So I
(12:20):
thought I was coming back to stability there that wasn't there.
And I didn't realize how much not playing sports was
going to affect me. And it was hard. It was
hard to not be a guy who was obviously playing sports,
somebody who was known, somebody who you know, My whole
identity was wrapped up in it. Yeah, and so I
had to go through a process of trying to figure out, Okay,
(12:41):
what do I do well? Now? What can I be
if it's not going to be an athlete? And it
took me like a couple of years of really going
through some depression and some difficulties and trying to figure
that out. Do you ever talk to athletes or kind
of get a sense from them that they're going through
those same things that you went through? It just the
adjustment after your life doesn't revolve around a sport all
(13:03):
the time. I see it with pro football players, I
see what college players, and I spend a lot of
time talking to athletes throughout the course of the year
I teach now, so I do it then as well,
and I can feel it. One thing I've always it's
always helped me in this job is understanding that, yeah,
these guys are big and strong and tough and all that,
but but they're also very vulnerable and they're also very
(13:24):
scared about losing the opportunity. You know, they're always trying
to impress people and show people they belong. And so
what I was done playing that was something I had
to realize was that, Okay, so you know when you're
in high school, you become a star athlete. Everything comes
your way, whether it's girls or you know, being celebrated
(13:45):
and adulation, all this stuff you want when you're a teenager.
But then when you're grown up, you're like, Okay, that's
that's not gonna last. And I got to like find
something that's real about me. And so that's what I
tell all these athletes is like, you know, you're gonna
find your way, but it's gonna be a process because
you're so used to everything being laid out for you,
even your stately schedule, and so you got to get
(14:07):
used to like doing a lot of things on your own.
We helped you find your way once you go out
to Michigan and now the new chapter of non football
was starting. Yeah, well there was a professor at Michigan,
and I tried a lot of different majors and a
lot of different avenues. What was your least favorite one business?
I took a tak a. I think it was a
(14:28):
economous class, and it was just it was so bad.
I think I left after like six weeks. I just
I couldn't do it. It was so painful, it was
so hard, and I was like I'm so out of
my depths here that this is not me. Okay. So
I actually went to the communication department and took a
journalism class because I could write pretty well when I
was in school, and I thought, at least I didn't
(14:48):
get an a out of something where I have to write. Yes,
And I met a teacher. His name is Don kubitt Man.
He was he changed my life because I want to
took his class and I want to talk about possibly
getting some scholarship money. He said, oh, yeah, I've seen
your stuff, like he said, you're you're pretty good. And
I think that was the first time somebody had said
(15:09):
that to me where I could hear it and it
didn't involve sports. And so from that point forward, we
just talked about, you know, what you could do as
a writer. I didn't know what. I don't know anything
about being a journalist, being a reporter. He just said, well,
if you do this and take some classes, let's see
where it goes. And so I put the next two
years just taking classes that he taught. There's like three classes,
(15:31):
and that was it. Yeah. Yeah, and then okay, so
how did that spiral into the journalism on air role? Well,
it got into a point where I was graduating and
because I didn't have any other real tangible experience, didn't
have any internships, didn't write for the Michigan Daily. I
talked to Don about it and I said, look, I
(15:51):
think I want to try a career in journalism, but
all I only have is your class work and maybe
a couple of stories that I wrote for the Wolverine,
you know, you know. And so he said, well, I'll
do this, Like, why don't you go to this career
conference is coming up, you know they have for seniors
and at Michigan. He said, yeah, they could do every
(16:11):
I think every school does some form of it. I
walked into this big conference and it's like General Motors
is in there, and Ford and Anderson consulting, and it's
a little table with the anniver to us there, and
there's just, you know, this kind of heavy set old
guy in there with a mustache named Dave Bishop. So
I go sit down and talk to him, and I said, look,
(16:32):
I'm from the area. I played football in college for
a little bit. I've gone in Michigan. Um, I think
I want to try being a writer. Uh, what do
I have to do? And so we talked for a
little bit, and he said, wyn't you come back tomorrow
and talk to our publisher, this guy at Petekevic. So
I come back the next day, same pitch, and he's like, look,
I can't give you a job because you're not prepared
(16:54):
for this, and I can't keep an internship because we've
already hired our interns. It was like April. He said,
But what I will, I'll let you cover high school
sports on a part time basis and we'll see where
that goes. And that's kind of in a real quick
story about that. When I walked in the first day
to the sports department, there there was this really big,
(17:14):
overweight black guy in her named Jason Whitlock, who would
finished playing football ball State. And he said, Hey, if
you do this, you will be fine because I'm going
down the same road you've gone down. I've gotten this far. Wow.
And that helped me kind of get going. Where's Jason Whitlock? Now?
He's doing some kind of crazy stuff. I don't know
why that name sounds so familiar. He's worked for, He's
(17:36):
worked for everybody. Was a Kansas City Star columnist, he
was at ESPN, he was at Yeah, who he's a
Fox He had a show on Fox is just a
couple of years ago. Okay that is, um, I figured
what it's called now. He was doing Marcellius Wiley. So
he's a pretty prominent dude. And he was there at
the n Armor News. Yeah, okay covering the fat Wow.
Yeah that blue Yeah, I know a lot. I took
(17:59):
a class image and on the Pad five teaching class
stuff that I was in school. I don't want to
say that you're learning about your your history yea, yeah, okay.
It's a very intriguing class. It's about half a semester
and they get into the whole yeah, the whole thing.
It's insane. Yeah yeah, I feel like the Fat Fives,
like Eli Whitney and the Cotton Gin or something like that.
(18:20):
Now it's like yeah, yeah, yeah, far back. Yes, I
don't want to date you, but yeah, that is. It
was a minute ago. Yeah. So our connection is head
coach John Paul, the former head coach at Michigan lacrosse,
had given me your contact info because he's like, what
do you want to do. I'm like, I want to
be a sports broadcaster. Like I'm young, I'm like nineteen
(18:41):
years old. Humbling myself with a lacrosse manager position which
I had never known about my entire life, and so
we gave year number. I still have the text messages
from twenty sixteen. I should probably delete them all. Well,
my mom flattered by that actually twenty fifteen. November sixteenth,
twenty fifteen, and I was like, is it okay for
(19:02):
me to call you? Are you busy? Your own date?
Crazy stuff? Wrote it all down in a red notebook.
I tried to find the red notebook our entire conversation,
couldn't find it. But coach Um Paul, I know you're
very good, good friends with in wedding in his wedding
and he said, you guys are roommates and you would
come home with crazy an Arbor news stories because you
(19:23):
used to cover the police too, and an arbor right,
So how humbling of an experience was that? Well it was.
It was humbling, and it was enlightening and it was
rewarding because I wanted to be a sportswriter when I
went there, and that internship, that that little reporting job
I had part time led to an internship which led
(19:43):
to a full time job. It was covering police. Well
that's when they told me that. I was like, Okay,
I don't know any think about police reporting. I know
what cops do, but aside from that, and they said,
you'll be fine. And the best thing that Antiberti's ever
did for me and some great people that I got
in Rick Fitzgerald now is UM. He worked for the
University of Michigan. He was an editor. They let me
(20:06):
go around with all the different reporters to learn what
they did in their beats, and so all these great
people taught me something about being a reporter. And then
my first, my first job, my first big story, came
right after I finished that whole process, and it was
a scanner went off in the newsroom and there was
some kind of shooting at Chelsea High School. And this
(20:30):
was before long before high school school shootings became you
know what they've become. And so lets just go out
there and see what happens. I get my car, drive
out there. There's police tape everywhere, there's chaos. You know,
I'm twenty two, twenty two years old, and so and
it turns out this UM teacher had gone in to
(20:53):
a meeting and shot the superintendent and his principal killed him.
Both and so I go being this kid who's just
like three years removed from trying to figure out how
to you know, deal with life after football. To all
of a sudden, now I'm like, okay, this is real
life stuff, and I'm trying to make sense of a
double homicide. And so that was my first case. A
(21:16):
month later, scanner goes off again. I had to go
out to I think Pittsfield township. There was a seven
eight year old girl had died, and so I had
to go find out what happened. So again, go out there,
got a knocked on the door. Hey, I'm Jeff Chidieff
and anamur news. I just heard something tragic happen. Talking
(21:37):
to the woman's the girl's mom, can you tell me
what's going on? And she's like, well, yeah, my daughter
was at school on the slide. That slide faced away
from the school. She was going down a recess or
the after school program, and it was February. She wearing
a heavy coat and her drawstring got stuck on the slide,
so basically she got stuck in a choking position and
(22:00):
ended up you know, choking it down. Eight year old girl. Yeah,
and I remember, Okay, now, I really feel like a
jerk coming in here having to talk to you about this,
and you said, no, no, no, come in, I'll talk
to you. I have some friends over talking about the girl. Now.
I always remember this because I sat down. I haven't
(22:21):
my notebook and my tape recorder, and I was ready
to be a really good journalist and I just sat
in the room table like this and just watch people
just talk and listen to them tell stories. The couple
couldn't have kids, so they had adopted the girl from
another country on top of that, and it was just
so powerful, and it just made me realize, you know,
when you do this job, you're really entering into people's lives,
(22:43):
and you're really playing a really influential role, and you
can screw it up in a second and destroy them,
and so you gotta take it seriously. And so you know,
when I walked out of there, I mean, I wrote
the story and all that, But every month after that
there was a story of that kind of magnitude, that
level of intensity, whether it was a serial rapist going on,
(23:05):
it was murders and um and it just kind of
I think after a year of that, I was like, man,
I gotta take a break. But I learned a lot
about life just going through that. I think of two
years on that beat, well yeah, how well it did
that set you up to tackle the next things. If
you're a Sports Illustrated fan, you know Jeff. If you're
(23:25):
an ESPN fan, you know they know you. Like so
what happened after that that would lead you down the
path of making it to the network? Well, um, after
about three years of that's about two years I have
covering police. Jason Wentlock left. That's so I started covering
Michigan's football and basketball team. And then in ninety six
(23:46):
I got a phone call from a guy in San
Francisco saying, Hey, do you want to come out here
and work for me? The LA Raiders just moved back
to Oakland and I'm looking for a young guy to
do this. And I thought, okay, that's interesting. And I
was at that point where I was not sure if
I wanted to stay in journalism or not, because an
editor once told me that journalism is what you do
(24:07):
when you're trying to find something else to do with
your life, and so always thought maybe I'm just doing
this because it's fun, it's interesting, but I should be like, so,
I was actually studying to go to law school. I
was taking it and I think the l sat and
I was going to try to get in the law
school and on top of this reporting. Yeah, so when
this guy called me and so I said, I'll come
out and take a look around. And I flew out
(24:28):
to San Francisco and fell in love with it. And
my editor, my sports editor back in ann Arborage, Jeff Larker,
said you know, hey, you seriously think about taking this job.
And I said really why. He's like, well, if you
had come to me and said, oh, you're gonna cover baseball,
Oh you're gonna cover the NBA, I would have been like,
well that's what they put young people because those are
(24:49):
really exhaustive beats and you travel a lot. But so
the NFL is a big deal. And I was twenty five,
and he said, if someone's coming to you saying you
can cover NFL team, you know you should do it. Yeah,
And so I went out there, and you know, I
was there for four years and I met a lot
of people, broke some stories and made a name for myself.
And then um in two thousand, a friend of mine,
(25:12):
Mike Silver, was working for Sports Illustrated and he said that,
you know, I read your stuff. I see you. He
lived in the Bay Area and he said, you should
like apply to our place. And I was like, what
it's like really like that was the dream back then.
It's it's not the same place now, but it was
a huge deal. And he said, no, just send your
stuff in and we'll see what happens. And I did that,
(25:32):
and about three months later, I was in Puerto Rico
on vacation and I was checking myself phone messages and
I got a message from a guy named Rob Flater
and Sports Illustrated and he said, hey, Jeff, this is
Rob Flater. I saw your stuff. I like it. Can
you give me a call? I want to talk about
a job. And so I called the guy back and said,
you know, you know at some like little Poe Dunk
(25:52):
like phone booth. Yeah exactly. I was in like a
remote part of the island, chickens running around and straight
dogs and talking to this guy about this job and
he says, uh yeah. I said, uh, I like your stuff.
I want you to come work for for Sports Illustrated
and um and that's really what launched me onto the
road that I'm to where I am now. Could you
(26:14):
imagine not getting that message from sports? Would they have
tracked you down down to me? Yeah, I think they
would have tracked me down. But it was a different
world in terms of like cell phones were just starting
to become a thing. It was two thousand and so, yeah,
it was a little bit. I still had to go
call remotely to get my messages, like I couldn't just
like do it on my phone at the time. But
I was I was humbled because it was it had
(26:36):
been seven years or I had been ten years since
I had left Wyoming and seven and I graduated from
school and had to talk with Anna Abernews. I didn't
know what was gonna happen with my career. But again,
I think the things I learned along the way and
some of those disappointments they helped me. They helped me
work at this in the way I never worked in sports,
(26:57):
Like I was always a pretty good athlete, and I
could get a way with not working as hard now
I tell people now I work harder at being a
journalist because I knew it could go away. Yeah, when
I was an athlete and think I thought it would
be there forever and it's not. It's not gonna work
that way. So you were you said, yeah, when you're
in college you realize you were going to turn pro.
Did you always want to be like an NFL player? Uh?
(27:21):
NFL or NBA? Okay, you know? And I laughed sometimes
with some of the guys who I work with now
we were Hall of famers, I said, man, there was
between me and you is that I got hurt? Exactly?
I thought I was gonna be exactly where you're sitting.
And we laugh about that. But um, so much of
this world, like being a pro athlete, you know, and
you have to be super talented, you have to be
(27:41):
super strong willed, you have to have immense perseverance and
resilience inside you. But luck plays rowing it too, you know,
just not getting hurt. Um being with the right coaches,
being in the right programs. M. I laugh. Now when
I people were asking me, hey, can you help me
(28:02):
get my son recruited? Or can you show my tape
to this guy or whatever? And I'll always ask people, well,
as your kid getting recruited, and they go yeah, I said,
well who's looking at him? Oh? You know, it's like
Tulsa or it's like Boise State or it's Bowling Green.
I said, well, then what's wrong with those places? Yeah,
well he wants to be at Oklahoma or Michigan or
USC and I always tell him go where they want you,
(28:25):
go where they know they're going to be developed, and
they'll be fine, you know. So I think with me again,
it was like when I was in college. Sometimes chasing
those kind of dreams can lead you into the wrong places,
and what you're getting those places you got to figure
out is this what you really want for your life.
As painful as it was for me to get hurt
(28:45):
when I was nineteen, it really helped me have to
look at myself and figure out what I wanted to
be and what I could be more importantly, and so
I'm grateful for it. Now, I know you're figuring out
if you wanted to keep going at this journalism thing.
So ESPN calls, what is your reaction? What was that like?
It was, Well, it wasn't so much a call because
(29:07):
I was living in New York City at the time
and the show is called First Take now used to
be called Cold Pizza, and so I would do stuff
with them. They would they actually call me up and
say they we're going to do a newsing notes segment,
and so you had to come in and you have
to do like three or four NFL notes with somebody else.
So I'd give a note, other guy would give a note,
(29:28):
and we do that for like two minutes. And so
I would do that in the studio. And then Jim
Rome had a TV show on ESPN and so I
could go out there and being part of that, I
got the guest hosted a few times. And so the
world was changing. This was like around two thousand and five,
two thousand and six, and so I started talking to
ESPN about, you know, what kind of roles could I
(29:48):
have over there? And then coincidentally, at the same time,
Sports Illustrated was starting to become more concerned about the
digital world, and ESPN dot com was getting bigger and
trying to figure out what should we do with our website,
and I just felt like PRENT was starting to really
fade away and the digital world and TV world was
(30:09):
where things were at. And so I just I ended
up talking to the producer of copets about auditioning, and
he said, why don't you come on up and we'll
do that, and they ended up hiring me, and it
was it was exciting. But my initial job was I
was on first take debating with Skip Bayliss. Yeah, I
was part of a rotation. It was myself and Jamal
(30:30):
Hill and Nick Steve and A Smith was still around
the first time he was there and some other people,
and they weren't getting the numbers they wanted to get
with that part of the program, and so they began
to find more bombastic personalities to come in and be
a part of the show, to really get into it
with Skip and I always you know, Skip gets a
lot of criticism, and I remember talking to him one
(30:54):
time because I was doing some stuff with these sixty
two and they weren't crazy about me doing that show
because it was kind I conflicted with what they wanted
to put out as far as branding. And so I
went to Skip and I said, Skip, you know, like
I see more like high profile, like big personalities coming
out here and they're more argumentative and just more bravado
and bombastic, and they're getting more room than I am.
(31:17):
And I said, do you think I should be more
like that? And what he told me is still something
I tell young people today. He said Jeff, it's like,
I gotta tell you, like, I respect you, I like you.
My girlfriend who's now his wife, she enjoys when I
do my segments with you. You bring a lot to this.
If you ever try to be something you're not in
(31:39):
this business, that camera will expose it ten times over.
Like you're just fine being you, Like, don't ever ever
think you gotta change. And again it was it was
a very important moment in my life because he just said,
you know, he reinforced what I had to learn along
the way at a younger age, like if you're yourself,
(32:01):
if you're authentic, you're going to succeed in life. And
so I ended up doing these sixty Um it was
a great run for me, and then I ended up
going to NFL Network because that gave me a lot
of exposure and storytelling, make him a bigger part of
this business. And you know it worked out in the end. Well,
how many Super Bowls have you covered since? Oh, since
(32:22):
I started covering NFL. Oh, It's it's like twenty twenty three,
twenty four. Now, Yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy. And for me,
the best part is that I've been able to take
my brother, my twin brother. My some good friends have
been able to go with me. Um, you know my
girlfriend now, she's been to a bunch and so it's
you get to a certain point where you're like, it's
(32:43):
just work, Yeah, but for them to experience it and
to be able to go to cool cities and go
to fun parties and all that stuff. Um, my contract
just I just resigned a new contract with NFL Network,
And I tell my girlfriend it's like, if I had
left this place, you would have been so angry with
super Bow rolled around because it'd be wouldn't be the
cool cars, the stub picking you up and taking you over,
(33:05):
the NFL honors anymore, and I'd have to hear about
that for the rest of my life. Yeah. I guess
we never ask enough men. I feel like how they
balance the work family life. So your nine year old son,
who we're looking at the basketball videos are coming, he's
extremely tall. Maybe he'll get to the height of your
twin brother six foot six one day. How do you
(33:27):
balance your job everything it demands and then having a
nine year old son at home too? Well, one thing
I did, I had a son late, so I didn't
have him until I was forty two, and a big
reason for that was when I was traveling so much
when I was younger. I didn't want to not, you know,
be able to be around a kid, to be able
to raise a kid. So you're super conscious about that,
(33:47):
oh super My dad always told me, don't ever have
a child to you're ready to raise him. And so
that's always been the forefront of my mind. And so
when I got to be in my forties and then
my son came around, I had a little more old
of my schedule, which was important to me. I do
a lot of gymnastics. I try to make sure I
get on playing at the right time, a lot of
(34:07):
early morning flights or red eyes to get back. And
then when I have him, I'm divorced, but when I
have him, I try to make sure I make the
most of it. You know, somebody gave me some great
advice once that it's not how much time you have
with your kids, what you do with it that matters.
And so I try to listen to him. I try
to make sure he's doing the right things. I try
(34:28):
not think because I'm older, I'm able to be more
patient and sit back as opposed to trying to always
fix stuff, and you know, get on him about things.
He's a great kid. And then the big thing for
me is that I just tried to make sure that
I also expose him to some of the things I do,
so he knows what I'm about. So try to take
(34:48):
him the training camps now, and I try to when
I'm out puts on the sideline. He wants pictures of
certain stuff. I try to do that stuff, and I
know it means a lot to him because when he does,
he's passed the where he does showing sharing school Now
he's going to the fourth grade. But you know, I
got a championship ringing for being in Wyomi. He loves
wearing that thing. I got a jersey from those days.
He loves putting that stuff on. He loves showing my
(35:10):
emmy off. He loves I wrote a book with Chris Carter.
He sees that stuff more now. And there was one
day over the summer when a neighbor came by and
he had the book that I'd written with Chris, and
he wanted me to sign it for his son. And
my kid was there watching TV. I thought he was
just watching YouTube or whatever and hanging out, and I
turned back after signing and walked back in and he
(35:32):
was looking at me like, wow, what was that? I said,
I said, what are you? What are you look at at?
He's like, I've never seen you sign an autograph before.
You know, you had a cool dad. Yeah, so's it
means something to him too. Now is he gonna go
to Wyoming or is he gonna go to Michigan? Oh?
He said he wants to go to Duke. I think
he wants to play basketball. Yeah, already figured it out
(35:53):
at nine where he wants to go. Okay, I think
you need to use your Michigan connections, get John Howard
on the phone and just let him talk. Ut. Yeah,
I'm gonna get him to a basketball camp, get him
on their radar pretty soon here. But we'll see. I
think it'll buy Jay. But the one thing I know
now that if he's lucky enough to be recruited and
have a chance to play at the next level that one.
(36:15):
Obviously I know how the process works, but I would
give him some advice about being able to make sure
you enjoy it as best you can, that you never
know when it's gonna go away. You just listen to
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