August 7, 2024 • 42 mins
As the son of a Naval pilot, Bucky Dilts moved around a lot growing. At one point his family was based in Hawaii where he learned to surf and play football, specifically punting. He’d kick a football (with his left foot) over anything high that he could find.
Next came a move to Atlanta. Surfing wasn’t an option, so Bucky went 100% into football during high school. He went on to punt for the University of Georgia as a walk-on. His reverse spin, directional punting and hang time became a problem for opponents.
Despite his collegiate success, Bucky went undrafted in 1977 and while a number of teams offered him a spot in training camp, he went with the Broncos who had a lot of competition at the punting position. Fully confident, Bucky came to camp and won the position.
His rookie season included a trip to the Super Bowl and a spot on the All-Rookie Team. He’d stay with Denver for another year before being traded to the then-Baltimore Colts. After a rough year with the Colts and pricing himself out of the market contract wise, Bucky was done with the NFL.
After retirement, Bucky hit the business world and endured some personal setbacks and challenges with his family. Today he’s helping people (and himself) become healthier versions of themselves.
Next came a move to Atlanta. Surfing wasn’t an option, so Bucky went 100% into football during high school. He went on to punt for the University of Georgia as a walk-on. His reverse spin, directional punting and hang time became a problem for opponents.
Despite his collegiate success, Bucky went undrafted in 1977 and while a number of teams offered him a spot in training camp, he went with the Broncos who had a lot of competition at the punting position. Fully confident, Bucky came to camp and won the position.
His rookie season included a trip to the Super Bowl and a spot on the All-Rookie Team. He’d stay with Denver for another year before being traded to the then-Baltimore Colts. After a rough year with the Colts and pricing himself out of the market contract wise, Bucky was done with the NFL.
After retirement, Bucky hit the business world and endured some personal setbacks and challenges with his family. Today he’s helping people (and himself) become healthier versions of themselves.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Like the last game I think I punted was against
Washington and I'm backed up in the end zone and
I hit an eighty seven yard punt. I've never hit
an eighty seven yard punt in my life, but I
kicked it over the guy's head and he's running backwards
and I don't know where it hit, but it was
eighty seven yards. But then the next week, I think
that little week we can have, I got traded, so really,
(00:21):
that eighty seven yard punt probably made me a little
more marketable.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Welcome to Cut, Traded, Fired, Retired a weekly podcast filled
with stories and advice from conversations with professional athletes and
coaches in a variety of sports. My hope is you'll
gain a nugget or two for your own life on
how to handle stepbacks and move forward. I'm your host,
Susie Wargen. This episode's guest made his way onto the
Broncos roster in nineteen seventy seven as a left footed
(00:47):
punter out of the University of Georgia. Bucky Dilts was
also an undrafted free agent competing for one spot with
a lot of other guys. His directional kicking was different
than anybody else, though and he made the team. His
rookie season, he played for the Broncos in the Super
Bowl in the exact same venue he'd been in a
year prior for the National Championship game with Georgia, the Superdome. Unfortunately,
(01:10):
Bucky's teams were on the losing end in both of
those games, so he learned a lot about picking back
up after losses, a skill that was needed after he retired,
when he began to deal with stepbacks in real life
between family members who committed suicide, divorce, becoming an only
parent after his ex wife passed away from cancer, and
his own cancer scare. These days, Bucky does a lot
(01:32):
of work educating people about staying healthy and also listening
and being present for others. He's also working to become
the best version of himself later in life. Ladies and Gentlemen,
Bucky Dilts cut Traded Fired, Retired podcast with Susie Wargenen.
Hello Bucky Dilts or Douglas Stilts At Douglas, is there
(01:55):
any money? Call you Douglas? Uh?
Speaker 1 (01:57):
My mother, Okay, she did? That was My real true
name is Douglas Riggs Dilts. Of course, I had been
involved in sports a long time. So when I got
involved with sports and I got this nickname of Bucky,
I didn't want to use Douglas. It's a football name.
It's because said maybe if I'm an attorney someday.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Oh yeah, that would have been a very nice attorney name.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
That didn't work out. So how did you get Bucky?
Speaker 1 (02:17):
And it's because my brother John couldn't pronounce Douglas, and
then it went to Duck, and then it went to
duck Buck, and then it went to Bucky.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
So it's like the stupidest.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Funny how nicknames transform, right, Yeah, so that's what it
worked out well. And then especially because you ended up
being with the Broncos, which you know, Broncos Horse Bucky. Yeah, No,
worked out very well. All right, Well, you've got a
very cool story that I want to go back all
the way to the kind of beginning where you're born
in Corpus Christi, Texas. However you end up in Atlanta,
(02:48):
Georgia for high school. I know that your dad was
a naval pilot. Did you travel around a lot as
a kid as a were you a military kid?
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Yes, we had Okay, we had to move every three
and a half years in our last tour of duty
was in Hawaii, and my brother went to a private
school over there called Punaho, so we got to stay
an extra half a year so he could graduate from Punaho.
But when I was in Hawaii, that's where I started
two things. One I was really big into surfing and
sand sliding, and the second was I started to play football.
(03:16):
Football is a total peer pressure thing my brothers and
my father because my father was a backup quarterback at
Georgia Tech. You guys got to go put you know,
you guys have to play, you know, so they had
these little military teams. And I really disliked tackle football.
But I had worked on punning because my dad. Prior
to coming out to Hawaii, we lived in New York
and my dad used to go out in the street
(03:37):
shoes in New York and punt and he'd hit these
really pretty spirals and I'm like, oh, man, I want
to do that. So that's how I got my interest
in punning. And then I took that. I learned how
to kick balls over telephone wires because that was I
had to have some kind of goal, right, so I'll
just kick it over the telephone wires. And that worked
out and so I ended up being the punter on
the pee wee football team. And the big event that
happened to me out in Hawaii is one of the
(03:58):
coaches came up and shook me after I had punted.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
He goes, do you realize what you just did? And
I said no, no, I don't.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Well he goes, you just kicked the ball forty yards
and I'm like, oh, okay.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Coach, Yeah that's great. Like I'm no, I didn't mean
anything to me.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Nothing meant nothing, and.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
I went on.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
But the thing about Hawaii is I really wasn't into
Although I played all the time, I didn't like the
contact aspect of it. And I was big in surfing.
I was a pretty good surfer. And the guy that
I actually surfed with ended up being a pro surfer
in southern California in the seventies.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Oh that's cool.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
So we're kind of buddies and stuff, and I've conversed
with him a couple of times since.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
So then when we get we leave Hawaii.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
My dad grew up in Georgia, so we're going back
to Georgia and I was pissed because I'm like, there's
no beach in Georgia, no with any.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Notoriety, right, no surfing, no surfing. But football was big.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
And when we moved there, I was in my first
year of really kind of high school. And we were
outcasts because I show up in high school and you know,
a Hawaiian shirts and corduroy poison.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Please tell me you weren't wearing a leg no, Okay.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
But I had light you know, white sox and tennis shoes.
I look like a beach guy, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
And we went to this really conservative, stuck up, button
down shirt, you know, higher income group in northwest Atlanta.
So I was really kind of an outcast when I
got there. But I noticed when I started playing football,
I had a chance to be the punter, and then
earned a position to punt as.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
A sophomore at my high school.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
And things went really real well there, and I got
more famous and.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
You know, I feel more accepted.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Yeah, and my brother played too, and so we both
got more accepted, and eventually we changed the way we dressed.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
A little bit.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Stop the Hawaiian shirt.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
I was a full button down, you know, a khaki
pant guy. Then and I get these letters from my
buddy in Hawaii. Hey, I just won this surf contest
here and did this. I'm going, oh, man, he's just
like tearing it up right.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Yeah, so you get noticed in high school, I'm sure yep.
And how many colleges did you have the option to
go to?
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Oh this is where.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
This is where I kind of pissed my dad off
because he's a military guy. I get letters, a lot
of letters from my Clemson and all these other places.
Hey were really interested in you, but they didn't offer
me anything. But I went to one Georgia tech game
with the Naval Academy. I show up and these guys
are all around me, and they got a letter from
a senator it says what a great guy I am.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
And I'm like, who are these people?
Speaker 1 (06:10):
And the next thing I know, they offer me a
full ride to the Naval Academy and I turned it down.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
I thought my dad was going to kill me, Oh
my gosh.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
But I'm thinking, you know, I'm a pretty good punter,
and if I go to the Naval Academy, they keep
you out. Even if I want to shot it pro
I can't get it. So I didn't do it.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
He was man.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
So I went around to a couple of small colleges.
They didn't really want to offer much. So I went
up to Georgia. I had to go to like summer
school to get into Georgia. So the next spring I
walked on there and then I earned a scholarship at Georgia.
But you know, I saw the guys that were punting there,
and I said, I can beat those guys, okay, And.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
So I went out there. And the story of how
I got at.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Georgia is I love this story.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
I'm sitting there on the sideline and they have two
punt teams out there, and the two top guys are punting,
and there's five or six guys that are just guys
that they're just in practice, and they're just like dummies, right,
and I'm not getting a chance. It's the punt. So
I just walked out on the field. I walked right
up to coach Dooley, Vince Dooley, and I said, I said,
Coach Douley, I came out here to show you how
I could punt, and I haven't been given a chance
(07:09):
to do that.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
Could you let me pump with one of these teams?
I was really polite about it, and he looked at
me and like what's your name?
Speaker 1 (07:15):
He didn't even know Carol walk on and I'm like
and I'm like, my name's Bucky Dillon.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
And he goes.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
He kind of looked like he was disturbed a little bit,
and he goes, go over on the second team there,
and you kick a couple of times over there. So
I got two shots, and I kicked the piss out
of the ball when I was in there, I mean
I was all jacked up, right, had all this adrenaline
and boom boom, and then I was in So I
became the scout team punter that fall, and I was
kicking to the number one put return team and they're
(07:42):
rushing me all the time.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
Best practice I could ever have.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Well, yeah, and you know.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
These coaches got dilt. You keep that up, you're gonna
get a scholarship. I said, yeah, go right ahead, that's
fine with me. And finally they did, so got a scholarship.
Travel with the team my first year. I think we
went to the Peach Bowl.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
You went to three bowls three.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Bo actually four because the first year I traveled with
the team, but I wasn't playing.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Oh okay, all right, So then then we went at.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
The Tangerine Bowl, the Cotton Bowl, and the sugar bowls.
Sugar go to all these balls when we never went
any of them. You know, it's kind of reminisces a
lot of things. But it was good, you know, I
really enjoyed it well.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
And you had some different abilities that weren't super common
as far as your hangtime, which I assume maybe some
of that came from punting over telephone wires in Hawaii. Right,
you were left footed, and so you had that interesting
spiral to it.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Well, the other thing is when I played high school football,
I was a completely different punter because I led the
city of Atlanta and punting for like three years in
a row, and I'd average like forty five forty six
yards of punt, but I kicked really low spirals. Okay,
they were always chasing them, right. And so finally about
my junior year, this guy from Georgia Techy you say, Bucky,
you're hitting the ball really well, but you got to
(08:48):
get it up higher or you won't last in college.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
I said, okay, so how'd you do that? Well?
Speaker 1 (08:53):
I just the only way I knew how was that? Okay,
the only way for me to kick a ball higher
is to use, in my mind was to use more
of my leg.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
I was kind of, you.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Know, put a nice ball out, hit a spiral, and
I didn't really finish following through. And I noticed that
right away, so I just started using more of my
leg and so finally I said, well, I'm just going
to try to kick this thing as high as I can.
So all said and done, once I get through the
broncos and stuff. You know, I had I had hang
times in college, and I know college and the Sugar Bowl.
I think they clocked me at about five five five four,
(09:24):
which was you know, for a short little guy, that
ain't bad.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
No, that's not bad at all. Yeah, okay, and that's
so hard for that pint returner to get a beat
on that and figure out where it's going to go,
when's it going to get to him? And by then
everybody's got time to I mean, you can't do it anymore,
but back then you could just completely annihilate the guy
right well.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
And you know the other thing is we when we
played in the Sugar Bowl, we went down there. The
big thing back then is that I guess ray guy
had hit the There's a big, huge video screen way
up and all these reporters said, hey, Bucky, you know
Ray Guy hit that video screen. I said, They said,
do you thinking hit it? I said, yeah, well so
I've lined up and hit the video screen. And they
thought that was like a big deal. I mean it
(10:03):
was up there a ways. But I'm like, you know, no,
you can hit that, but you had to kick really
straight up at it to hit it. And Ray Guy,
to me, he's the best punter I ever saw. Yeah,
ever saw. And I can't tell you when we go
out to those games. I remember the first time we
went out to Oakland and we're back in the end zone,
you know, getting warmed up doing calsenics and stuff, and
he's standing about ten yards in front of about ten
(10:23):
yards in front of us. Okay, he's on like the
ten yard line and he's banging that ball in the
other end zone like it's nothing.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Oh wow, And I'm like, oh my, this guy is
just a lever. You know. I didn't even want to
look at this guy in the field.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
I just got to pay attention to what I'm supposed
to be doing and just do my thing right otherwise
you get intimidated.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Oh absolutely, yeah. Okay, so you get through three years
of playing with Georgia that you had the one year
that you didn't play, So did you graduate from there? No.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
What happened is I went out to mini camp after
I signed with Denver and I were under free and
so they have the mini camps and they go out
there and they said, this is what we're doing.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
Marv Braden, who was.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
There, a specialty scoches out there, said we're switching everything.
We're going to do directional punting. All we care about
is direction and hang time. I said, okay, And.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
So they had these boxes.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
They would make these boxes and you kick at the
boxes and they would core your hangtime and how much
distance and all that.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
And so I said, I'm going home. I'm dropping out
of school.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
I'm going back to Atlanta, and all I'm going to
do is kick at boxes.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
And that's what I did.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
And I worked on hangtime and kicking at boxes on
my own, except I didn't have my targets were like
T shirts in.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
The square, and I kicked for the T shirts right.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
But what I started noticing, I said, you know, I
can hit these boxes pretty good. I wonder what happens
if I shrink the box? I can get more accurate.
So I started shrinking the box and so by the
time I went back out to Denver, I could punt.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
That's so you were nailing those coffin corners.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Yeah, and so I the direction was no problem, the
hangtime was no problem, and I had to be careful though.
You know sometimes when people go the opposite of their
leg in other words, if I'm going to my right,
you can come across your body. I made sure I
didn't make that mistake. And I saw a lot of
guys that I competed against that would make that mistake.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
They had to go another way.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Okay, so you don't finish school, you come out to Denver.
You did have some teams to choose from aside from
Denver when you were undrafted. Why did you decide to
come here? And who were the other teams?
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Other teams were Atlanta and they had a guy named
John James who was an all propunner. I said, I'm
not going to that camp Pittsburgh, who Bobby Walden, who
was a Georgia guy, was about at the end of
his career with that would have been a good slot
for me.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Houston.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
I didn't have any interest in going to Houston. Denver,
and I think of the Jets. So I had like
five teams. And so after all this thinking, right, I said, well,
I've never been out to the mountains.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
I think I'll go to Denver.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Nothing to do with like where you'd fit into the team,
or the fact that there were eight other punters there.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
No the most shallow decision in my whole life. And
you know what, when I originally signed with Denver and
they give you the thousand bucks at the airport in
the twenty five thousand dollars contract.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
A lot of money in nineteen seventy seven.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
So I go out there and I said, Okay, I
got a good chance to go out there and kick
at Denver, right because they had I think Billy Van
Houston had been hurt. Norris Sweets was the punter, but
he was a big distance guy, and so I said,
I I think I got a chance. Of course, right
after I signed with them, they traded for Herman Weaver.
I knew they had.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Drafted Larry Swider.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
I said I could beat him because I kicked against
him in the Sugar Bowl, so I wasn't worried about him.
And then they signed eight of the guys and I'm like, oh, man,
I got ten eleven. I got eleven guys going for one.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Spot, which is insane.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
And they drafted a guy and they traded for a guy.
So I'm already in third place at least, right, So that.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Was the situation, and how do you win the job?
Speaker 1 (13:25):
I had to be good at kicking to targets and
having the best hang time. And most of the guys
that I was kicking against in that camp had longer,
stronger legs than me. Herman Weaver straight up, he'd kill me. Okay,
I'm telling They called him Thunderfoot. That was his nickname,
and you know, he's like a Tennessee legend. He was
in Detroit forever. Even after I won the job over him,
(13:46):
he went out and kicked in Seattle for I think.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
Three or four years.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Oh geez, okay, yeah, and a dome, so that was
a good place for him. But I just was patient.
All of a sudden, they start cutting guys right, So
some of these free agent guys, they'd cut them out
of them because they couldn't do the direction.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
I didn't have the hangtime. And the whole time I'm there,
I keep hearing a little bit of you.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Know, I don't like this directional kicking from Herman, right,
and I'm like, all right, well that's good. I like
that going on in the back of his right. Larry
Swider was not really doing what they thought. His hangtime
wasn't as good as it should be. So anyway, all
cuts down. It's Herman, Larry Me, and then we get
the whole preseason. I got a game in Atlanta, which
was really pretty cool because that's where you came from.
(14:27):
So I punted in Atlanta, punted it in another game,
and so what happens is down to me and Herman.
We go to Philadelphia the last game of the season,
and they give him the whole game.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
They just want him to.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Do you know, you do decent you're in and Bucky's gone, right, yeah,
it was twenty eight yards a punt.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Oh geez.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
And I'm like, man, that's really too bad. But I'm
kind of happy right now.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
It's too bad for him.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
So Marv Braden came out.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
You know, I was I was a cocky little fella
back then because I believed in myself. Sure he was
out by the bus and Bucky, I just I still
know what I'm gonna do with you two guys, and
I looked right at him. I said, Coach Braden, I'll
tell you what you got to do. You gotta cut
him and keep me.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
I just said it, you did. Yeah, just I.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Said that to him, just like when I walk out
to ask Vince Duey for right. I just kind of
said I told you, and he kind of looked at
me like okay then and that was the end of
the conversation. But the next morning they told me I
was a punter. So I picked up the called my dad.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
I said, I made it. I made it. I can't
believe it. I made it. You know, just going nuts.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
That's amazing. And when you're with the Broncos, there's some
intern that some people may have heard of, right, Bill Belichick,
who was also the assistant special teams coach, who was
very enthralled with the fact that you were a left
footed punter.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
Yeah, you know, he ran around, did every he was
like a sponge. Of course, I have no idea this
is the Belichick right, no, right, So he's out there
and he's he's paying a lot of attention to Joe
Collier about his defense and stuff. He was really soaking out,
but he would come and catch my punts all the time.
And he was just trying to figure out about the
spin and what it could do. And I'd tell him,
(16:04):
I said, you know, if I cock it this way,
i can do this and I'll break this way. If
I turn it over, it breaks this way and turns out.
Somebody's telling me about seven or eight of New England's
punters were left footed punters.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Because guys had a very hard time returning because they
couldn't quite figure out you were you were different.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
We had, like the Raiders, Neil Colsey was their defensive
back and return He was a head case with us.
They had David humm who was left handed quarterback out
there throwing them passes, and our guys was run out
there and say we're gonna mess you up today. You
got drop another, you know, and just give him. He
would usually fumble upun.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
And that was a team of talkers back then in
seventy seven and seventy eight.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
A big, big team too. I've never seen people that large.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Oh yeah, no, huge team. Okay. So your rookie season,
your first season with the Broncos, you go to Super
Bowl twelve and what's really crazy is that Super Bowl
of course, is against the Cowboys in New Orleans at
the super Dome. You played there and that Super Bowl
wrote down the date January fifteenth, nineteen seventy eight. You
played just a little over a year before New Year's
(17:03):
Day in nineteen seventy seven at the Superdome and the
Sugar Bowl when Georgia plays against pitt and Georgia loses
that game handily. Good, Yeah, twenty seven to three. What
was it like to go back a You've lost these
Bowl games, so you know what it feels like to lose,
and then you go to the Super Bowl your rookie season,
which is crazy, and then you're in the exact same
(17:24):
venue and the same thing happens. Yeah, twenty seven points
both games by the opponents.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Well, it's one of those things where I knew when
those games are going to be tight, so I was
going to be punting. But in the case of the
Georgia game, we just weren't any We didn't match up
well with Pittsburgh at all. I think I punted eight
or nine times. But that's the best punning average I
ever had in college. And so you know, after the game,
my dad was saying, no, man, that's great, That's the
best kind of thing you could do before you go
to the pros.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
And I'm like, oh, yeah, sorry, you lost.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Yeah, And actually, you know, I felt like I'd actually
almost kind of played in a game because I went
out there eight or nine times.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
You know.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Then the Denver game was tough because I know, I
remember the first punt they fumbled it right at the
goal line, and I'm thinking, how different could it be
if we would have recovered that and gone in and scored,
Because I mean, you really look back at that Super Bowl.
We made a lot of mistakes on offense, a lot
of turnovers. Our defense still played pretty well in that game,
and you just couldn't see it because of all the
mess we had on the offensive side of the ball.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Yeah, it's crazy to me that you played in the
same venue two years a row for college and then
pros in huge games, and that that Sugar Bowl was
for the National Championship too, right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Time, and then we were like fourth in Pittsburgh was first,
and if we beat him then it's a big deal.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
But that is crazy. Shot.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
So you're two years with the Broncos. I should also
mention your rookie season. You're on the All Rookie Team
by the Pro Football Writers.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
I didn't realize that until I opened the program. I
was reading the you know, guys read the program before
the and there I am in the and some rookie
team think I saw, oh, that's great.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
You know, I didn't know that you get one more
year and then.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
That yeah, then they cut you. Well, they traded me,
Oh they traded you. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
So what happened is after my second year, going into
my third year, they drafted Luke Prestritch who was here
for a while, and they brought him in and you know,
we'd sit there and kick together, and I say, oh,
he's got a pretty big leg.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
He kicks good distance.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
That's what they're looking for because I was allowed a
hangtime direction. You know, Bucky's just kind of thirty eight
to thirty nine yards a pop, and he'll kick in
the coffin corner anyway. So he comes in and I'm
sitting there and we have a really even competition.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
We're both kicking well. In the preseason.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Like the last game I think I punted was against
Washington and I'm backed up in the end zone and
I hit an eighty seven yard punt I've never hit
an eighty seven yard punt in my.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
Life, but I kicked it over the guy's head and.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
He's running backwards and I don't know where it hit,
but it was eighty seven yards. But then the next week,
I think that little week we can have, I got traded.
So really, that eighty seven yard punt probably made me
a little more marketable to other.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Teams, I imagine.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Yeah, So while I was really quite happy, I remember
coming off sideline, you know, and Luke's looking down like, man,
you know, he's kind of because I hit an eighty
seven yard putt and I might stick right, Uh huh.
That wasn't the case. They wanted Luke. I mean, Luke
had a little more distance to me.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
That's fine, And that'll happen sometimes in that last preseason game.
Guys will get shown off a little bit because there's
stuff going on behind the scenes, and it makes you
look good to other teams. So you get traded then
to the then Baltimore Colts.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Yeah, and that was that was a really abrupt, emotionally
kind of unsettling time for me because at the time
I was dating my wife, and you know, we were
living together and stuff and all of a sudden.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
I get traded.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
When you get traded, it's not hey, you know, take
a little time, get yourself together. You got a plane
ticket and you're leaving today at two. You're out here.
So I went to Baltimore and I go there and
I'm like, I don't know any of these guys, you know,
I don't know what's anyway. We started out and we
had done pretty well. We had Burt Jones, who was
a very good quarterback, and he won us like four games,
(20:50):
and then then he got hurt. And when he got hurt,
that team quit because he's the guy. He's a catalyst
that makes that team. If you really remember, I think
the year before, they came to Denver and we beat
them at the very end when Tom Jackson picked.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
One of his passes off.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
But they're a very good team when they're right. But
we were miserable. We were like four. We never won
a game again that season. You know, I think I
had a punt blocked. I had one against the England
they ran back a kick for a touchdown. I mean,
it was all kinds of good things in the second
half of the season, and I'm like, I really I
would love being in Denver. I didn't want to leave Denver,
(21:24):
and I when I say the emotional aspect of that
is that they're telling you they don't want you, or
we found somebody better, or however you want a word
that it's rejection.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Yes it is.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
And you know I'm getting I'm getting on a plane
and fly over there, and I'm just like, god, man,
I just hate to leave this place because I got it.
I got everything going on. I'm gonna get married, blah
blah blah blah. So eventually all that stuff happened anyway,
But I think I went into the fourth year, and
part of my complication with me and the teams I
played for is that I got a really good agent
after my first year, a guy named Howard Slusher who
(21:58):
worked for Nike, and he was Craig Morton's I think
Bob Swinson, I think got TJ. All those guys had him.
He set up this really cool contract where I had
a really nice basis, like forty sixty thousand, and then
I had all this incentive pay and I usually made
really good on the incentive pace kicking out of bounds,
keeping the ball out of twenty and so when at
the end of the year, thirty five percent of whatever
(22:21):
I made, and those bonuses got added into my base
for the next year, so I had an automatic raise
built into it too. So not big numbers, but what
happened by the time I got to Baltimore in my
second year, if I would have stayed there, I would
have made a hundred thousand. Only two guys that back
then made one hundred thousand, Raay Guy and Dave Jennings
who played for the Giants. I had outpriced myself out
of the NFL. They weren't going to keep me around
(22:42):
in that kind of money, so they cut me. I
had two calls from I went to Buffalo, had a
good try out there. We're going to give our guy
another week if he you know, if he didn't come around,
we'll sign you. He averages forty five yards of punt.
I went to Cleveland and I, you know, I said,
I'm not going to do this. And my father in
law sitting there at the time, and he goes, just
go get a job. If you want to pursue this,
you can, but to sit here and just run around
(23:03):
doing this my skitch. So I got a job sell
an air freight for a group called Burlington Northern Air
Freight a company car and eighteen thousand a year was
my deal. And I'm like, talk about a culture like
a shot.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Big shock.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
So I'm like, oh my goodness, man, can I get
back in the NFL some whatever? Even twenty five grand
would look good right now.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
So anyway, I went through all that, and eventually what
happened is I never went back to play again. You know,
I had calls from other teams. I just said, no,
I'm out. I've seen a lot of guys that do that.
They just keep chasing something that's not there. I'm like, look,
I got in the league three years, I played in
the super Bowl. I'm happy, you know, move on. But
it was the being rejected thing that, you know, you
(23:46):
get bitter about it. I think I made a snide
comment in the paper. You know, you're just bitter at all.
Oh yeah, all the typical emotions.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
And a lot of guys do that, and even now,
I mean back then it was literally two newspapers that
you guys talked to or maybe KOA and now social
media and you say one thing, and man, it's but
it's hard not to when you feel that and you
realize Oh my gosh, I'm a number. They said all
these great things to me, But I'm just a number
on a ledger that's not working for their bottom line.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
You're a transaction You're a transaction, transactional guy.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Great transactional guy. So after retirement, then now here we are, however,
many years later, and you've done a number of things.
You did commercial real estate for a while, also some
really really good work in nonprofit and mental health, and
so kind of go through what you've done since retirement.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Well, pretty much just sales and marketing. I started out
with the air freight company. I went into a computer
service company, which also led me into a records management
company out of Minneapolis. So I work with them for
fifteen years. So as a big guy in that business,
we sold the business here and it was really good.
Most people won't even understand what I said. Well, we
used to produce microfiche, which is the stuff you look
(24:58):
at as film. Oh yeah, we had a twenty four
hour service perier, so was making that stuff.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
All night long.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
Oh my gosh, our print laser printing statements and all this.
So it's kind of fun business. I'm selling computer supplies
and did very well. At that all through the nineties,
and then that kind of dropped off in the late nineties,
almost at two thousand and That's that was another kind
of storm in my life because in the nineties I
had lost I've lost two people in my family to suicide.
(25:24):
My sister passed away in eighty four and my mother
in law passed away.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
In ninety six.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Oh wow, So you know, you have all that going on,
and it bumps around. And the next thing you know,
it's two thousand and my wife and I were having
some problems and stuff and go through a divorce. We
kind of get things straight with the kids and who's
doing what, and it was like two thousand and four
and she comes down.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
With cervical cancer.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Oh so I think, okay, well this, you know, they
could do something for her.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
Hopefully. She lasted eighteen months and was gone in two
thousand and six.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Oh my gosh, buck destroyed everybody, especially my kids. Yeah,
and so that was going on. We bump along ago.
I think that puts me at about two and ten.
My father, because he had had prostate cancer, he says,
you got to check your PSA and I did, and
I finally caught it when I was working at trans Western.
One time when I went for the blood test, it
went from undetectable to like six and I went, well,
(26:14):
that's too much. And so you know, I get a
doctor said, well, you could do watchful weight to ass it.
I'm out watchful waiting nothing. There's something in there. I
want to buy opscene. Now go see if there's anything
in that good for you, And there was. I was
considering robotic surgery with a guy named Aigner down who
was a really good doctor.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Oh yeah, yes, I know doctor Agner. Oh do you
really well, yeah, he did my husband's visected me. He's
done and many people that I know. That's how I
got him. I was like, hey, who did yours? And yeah,
he's a great, amazing.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
But I didn't pick him.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
He had like a thousand surgeries at the time. So
I went over to doctor Crawford at U See Health
did my surgery. Even since then, I went to Aigner
once or twice just to get a second opinion.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
Yeah I'm okay, so and you're okay.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
Well I'm okay. I still have what they call positive margin,
so I still have some cancer in me, but I
haven't had undete. The bowl PSA for fifteen years. So
I went to Eigner and I asked, I said, well,
you guys, Bucky, if I'm a bet and guy, this should.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
Not crop up again in you.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
But I but you never know, I never know any
they say always get checked once. I get checked twice
because if it does jump, I want to jump as
quick as I can.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Absolutely, And it's so important that we've had so many
more people that have you know, a voice and a
platform that have you know, had Vick Lombardi's one of them. Yeah,
cor again. I mean there's a lot of guys that
I know, and they've been hopefully being able to spread
the word more of Hey, guys, go get it checked.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
I talked a lot of guys.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
I remember when I was on the Bronco alumni group
and I told him, I said, you guys know I
was a prostay cancer.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
So they did a lot of guys that know.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
And so you always have guys come up to you
after the meeting's over and kind of a hush hush.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
Towns like what is like what they do? You know,
what are you gotta do?
Speaker 1 (27:45):
And you know, guys are My whole thing is just
go get a blood test. That's all I want you
to do to start the process.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
That's great that you're trying to educate people on that.
I think that's fantastic. And with the cervical cancer and
then with the mental health part of it too. I
know that you had a lot to do with kind
of getting together Buffs for Life, which is doing great,
great work still and I mean, and they're still so
affected at CU. I mean the amount of athletes. Gary
Barnett was a guest on this podcast and had told
me about how many had passed, you know, and I'm like,
(28:15):
my goodness, it's so hard.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
Eighties and nineties and you know, Rashaan Salambi and the
most famous of the lot. But I actually ran into
Brian Cabrawl out of Mental Health speaking Engagement. He just
happened to be there, and he goes, hey, you know,
we're really trying to do some stuff about mental health
and we need some help. And I said, well, okay,
what do you want to do? And he goes, we
don't know yet, but we got to put something together.
So I went and met with them, and I met
(28:37):
with Gary and him and Sean.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Tuffs, all three of who have been on this podcast.
By the way, you should listen to their episodes.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Yes, I'm just kind of following them along on a
LEAs ship exactly. So I'd like I got an idea,
because you know, I worked for a Colrado crisis line
nine eight eight. Why don't you start a crisis line
for buff alumni men and women both, right, and have
your own private number. So I set them up. We
got that thing set up. Probably wasn't promoted as well
as it should have been. It did have some impact
(29:04):
on a few people, and it's well, it's still there,
but now crisis Line nine eight eight, they've lost that contract.
It's actually going to go out of state now, okay,
down to Arizona. But any rate, that was there, and
so that was a positive thing that we did.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
And hey, even.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
If you save one life, you know, you get a
couple couple of phone calls, that's worth it.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
That's that was Gary.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Gary's point was, even if I save one guy or
one yew, that's great.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
All right. And then Bronco alumni, you stay involved with them.
I know you're involved and you've gone to talk to
the Quarterbacks club and things like that.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
Yeah, I've done that.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
I was on the board for I think about four years.
And you know, Ron Eggloff is lifelong.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
Buddy of mind.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Ron and I literally met at the airport coming into
Denver to be free agents.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
That's what you really.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
Once we both made it, we didn't know what to do.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Is we got to get an apartment, you know, and
go buy a car and do all this stuff. And
I remember we saw our first paycheck, because you know,
our first pay with check was I think it was
like three grand, and we thought we were just rolling it.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Oh yeah, absolutely, you are rich.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
Boy. We were off base there.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
But anyway, it was so I got on the board
for a while, did that for a little bit. But
I really being on boards for me is just not
good because if I can't go do something, it frustrates
me and I'm just like, there's no point to this.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
Which segues nicely into what you're doing right now. Yeah,
your outreach that you're doing with UCEE Health, you see health.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
What I did is I saw an ad all about
a year and a half ago and it said that
you could go through this program and it was on
a grant that was put together by a lady doctor
Katie Nearing, and she wanted to develop older adults to
become what they call older adult research specialists. What we're
supposed to do is get all this education and we
go out and try to connect older adults to clinical
(30:44):
trials at the school. And so we had to go
through all this process, and then you know, we had
to go try and pull all the clinical trials to
deal with older adults, which that number shifts. You know,
if AARP says, if you're forty, you're in the hunt.
Do Yeah, they're just trying to recruit people. So we
started doing these things and the next thing, you know,
we're trying to put together what are called these research
road shows, where we actually go out to communities, bring
(31:07):
the clinical trial groups with us and put on a show.
And then we also have this thing that it's a
consult where we go to a lot of the clinical
trial groups are really young people twenties and thirties.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
Right, Oh okay, so they don't know how to really
relate too well to older adults.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
So we go in and help them design some of
the materials that they put out for that because a
lot of times they get way too technical and getting
the weeds too quick. So we clean that up larger print,
Are they thank you? Are the pictures relevant?
Speaker 3 (31:34):
All that? Just simple stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
So while I'm doing all this and I go do
the research road shows, you know, I really like being
involved in like just outreaching to people. So right now
I'm in the midst of talking to some people to
cancer department to see if maybe I could do some
work there. And what happens is you get hired on
and they you know, I can work ten fifteen hours
a week, try.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
More like a consultant kind of or.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Well on low scale. Yeah, but this is no high
end deal I'm talking about here. But oh and one
thing I left out about odd jobs I've had in
the past, I was I did work in the funeral business.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
For about five years.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
Oh did you really?
Speaker 1 (32:09):
And I would set up funerals, conduct funerals, and I
would go to all the receptions and make sure everybody
was okay.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
And I was actually pretty good at it.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
I can see mean, meaning how I could relate to
people yes there and talk to them, sit down and
make sure they're okay and stuff. But I was doing
all kinds of stuff like transporting bodies and all kinds
of stuff. And I'm like this is getting a little
too interesting for me. I think I'm going to back
out of this. And I did it in Boulder for
about five years, and it was just a kind of
a cash all thing. And when I first got in
real estate, the market had just tanked and like I
(32:37):
think it was two thousand and eight, twenty ten. So
I was just going around doing these these funeral things,
and it was it was it was an education.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Oh, I bet it was.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
And you know how people deal with grief and all
kinds of things like.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
That and all the intricacies that go on with it.
My mom she just passed a couple of months ago,
and so we're kind of going through all of the
things and we have her burial coming up. She decided
to be cremated and so but her best friend works
at the funeral home. Because when I when she got
put in the urn, I was like, what do I
do with her for the next six weeks? Does she
stay in the garage or do we bring her inside
(33:09):
where she goes? Let me just keep her here and
I'll bring her to the burial. I was like, thank you.
I just don't know, you know, you don't know what
to do.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
At least it wasn't somebody on the western slope that
oh I know. Well, it finally got them to actually
make the funeral business. They have to be licensed now.
I believe it's funny because my daughter a long time ago,
I think it was going to cosmetology school or something
a little bit, and they go through all this big process.
Oh yeah, and here I am. I could have been
a funeral director with nothing.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
With nothing. And I'm like, and she's got to have
a license to, you know, take a pair of scissors
to your hair. Oh yeah, exactly. So speaking of your kids,
you got the two Harper you mentioned and Justin where
are they? Do you have any grandkids?
Speaker 1 (33:50):
No, not yet. Got married about a year and a
bit ago. She lives in Salt Lake now with her husband, Zach.
They bought a house a little while ago. So the
big thing is how we're going to fix up this
little you know, it's got a lot of work.
Speaker 3 (34:01):
So they're happy to do that.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
And then my son, Justin lives up north at a
place called Barefoot Lakes. He was in the tennis business
forever and he's out of it now and he's trying
to figure out what he wants to do. He loves
playing golf. He's actually taking me on a little golf
trip in August.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
Fun. We're going to go on the Western Slope and
play a couple of places.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
And he's he's a pretty good golfer, but he just
doesn't really know what he wants to do right now.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Well, I have so many jobs.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
I mean it's hard, I know, but I look at
someone like you and you're you know, you're in eight
different slots.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
You're like NonStop going all the time.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Yeah, but you too, I mean you're still going. You're
doing all kinds of things. When I reached out, You're like, well,
I got a little part time thing here and part
time thing there, and I'm doing this.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
And you know what I did.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
I got to tell you about two years ago, I
started reading some books, and my mom used to harp
on me, all, oh, Douglas, you have to read. She
always called me, Douglas, you have to read, but you
have to get more education and get more well rounded
and understand. So finally, about two years ago I started
reading these books. I read a book called Younger. Next year,
I read a book called Outlive from a guy named
Peter Attiya, New York Times bestseller about how to look
(35:06):
at your health, whether you're young or old. I'm reading
now a book it's called The Twelve Rules of Life,
Jordan Peterson. He's a psychologist. I got to read that
thing slow because that's I'm not a deep guy, I'll
tell you right now. But so I got to read
the pages a couple of times. But that's a good
book about how to change the lens you're looking through
and how to approach life. He's trying to teach people
(35:26):
how to deal with the chaos that is what we
live in in this day and age, and how to
be able to manage it.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
And are the books helping you? Do you feel like
you've change?
Speaker 3 (35:36):
Yeah? I do.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
And so now, what's what happened is I went I
got checked a while back. It was one of the
NFL tests and they give you all this data back
and I was overweight, and you know this could lead
to this, and you know potentially you could have a stroke,
and you know they paint the picture right, and I'm like, well,
I just cannot be this way anymore. So I gradually
started exercising, walking, started lifting weights again. About a year
(35:59):
out from that, I went to the doctor the guy says, hey,
you make some provacy dropped about twelve pounds. It's good,
you know, and your numbers are a little bit better,
and you know, my PSA is still in a good spot.
So you know, Bucky's happy. And so I kept doing that,
and so now I'm actually trying to see what is
the best lifestyle I can create for myself. And I
don't mean this a bad way, but at the end
(36:21):
portion of my life. In other words, I don't care
how long I live now, I want to know how
healthy I live. So when when it does come, you know,
if I'm unhealthy and I've got all bad things going on,
when you go to die, it'll be miserable, I guarantee you.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
But if I'm just sitting along and then I drop,
that's fine. Then that's that's good.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
You did your best until the very end.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
Right.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
So my thing now is I'm going through the NFL
Trust down to New Orleans for two and a half
days of tests, sleep app They look at everything, cardiovascular system.
They give me back a seventy five page report, whoa
all for free. They fly me there, put me into
a hotel. So I got a buddy. I went to
high school with down there, who has a house down
in New Orleans. So when I'm done, I can stay
(37:03):
a day or two later and then fly back, so
I get a.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Chance to fun. But then you go back to New Orleans.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
But that yeah, yeah, and I don't have to go
in the dome anymore. You're a super dome, right, I
go in some tank where they run you know, X
rays on me.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
Right, But I think it'll be good.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
I'll be fascinating.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
Well, this will be a good This is the final baseline.
This is where you are. This is what you really
could improve on all that.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
So I'm eating lots more vegetables now you fish and chicken,
and I'm actually trying to phase that back to small now.
I'm trying to do smaller portions. I'm still an avid
beer drinker, though. That's one thing I have to work on.
I grew up with eggle Off. That was my brother.
Speaker 2 (37:41):
Yeah, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
I've never seen a skinny guy drink someone's beer in
his life. So anyway, if I can stay away from
him and kind of reduce reduce my input.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
With that stuff, you look great, well, fish, But I
like a beer every now.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
Now, this that's Okay, yeah, that's okay. You still need
to live a little bit, but let's have you live
a lot longer. And I love what you're doing, all right.
So then this goes nicely into the last question. I
ask all my guests, Bucky, with all the things you've
gone through, and you probably went through more ups and
downs after football, when you find people that have those
times of down moments, how do you tell them to
(38:15):
kind of move forward? And you're still doing it here
later in life and learning some secrets here just in
the last year and a half.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
Well, in my case, the only way I can have
an effect on those people is to invest in a
conversation with them. So I'll go in there with some
very simple questions. And in the beginning, when you're with somebody,
you're just there for him. Okay, I'm not trying to
ask you all these piercing questions about you know, what's
going on?
Speaker 3 (38:39):
Is this? You know, it's easier to let people talk.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
I was with a lady who works with me over
at you See Health the other day, and she has
a problem because she's living in a place that's very nice,
but eventually she knows that's going to change. And she's
worried about her living conditions. So I said, well, you know,
just settle down a minute. You know what you should
do is think about lay out the landscape first, right
sitting here worrying about stuff you don't even know that's
(39:02):
going to happen or not, and you and I can
talk about what's your process over the next two years
where you can put yourself in a nice position, And
eventually she relaxed, and you know, thank.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
You, thank you for talking me.
Speaker 3 (39:13):
But that's the kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
You just have to invest a little time in people
and chat with them about what's going on.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
Yeah, you do it. And I find with players from
your generation that there's a lot of and I think
you guys do a good job. And I'm glad that
you're closed with Ron and of how are you doing
and take the time to listen and see what's going
on as opposed to just talking and not really paying
attention to some signals and what might be actually happening
with you people.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
Well, that's what a lot of people do. They don't
pay attention to the signals. And I could speak back
to even when my sister passed away, I knew she
was in trouble, and I was trying to I actually
tried to make an offer to get her to move
out here and live with my wife and I for
a while and change the scenery and get her to
go to school and do things. But you know, that's
a big ask. When they're Atlanta to Denver, that's a
(39:56):
big thing. Never could quite get that done, and it
was too bad. And I spoke with my mother in
law several times because I knew she was deeply depressed
and she was in treatment and stuff. But you know,
when people get in situations where they want to do that,
you can't stop them, Okay. I mean, if somebody wants
to get off their medication and go another way, they will,
Or if someone wants to end their life immediately, they.
Speaker 3 (40:18):
Will if they want to.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
So you could just try to get in there and
try to upset them a little bit to kind of
to think about it. Or the one thing we're doing
that there's a bunch of research going on right now
over at University of Colorado that's about firearms, firearms safety
and getting people in a safer place with their guns
even if they have their guns. So it's not about
Second Amendment. This is about firearm injury prevention. Okay, And
(40:42):
there's a lady over there, doctor Emmy Betts, who's.
Speaker 3 (40:44):
Doing great work.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
I think they got like about twelve fifteen million bucks
to continue the work. And she's got a thing called Phippy.
They always acronyms on everything firearm injury prevention anyway, Phippy
is the big thing they're doing now, and they're going
out and working with gun shop owners.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
To try and promote the ideas of what they're how
to store.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
Guns, right safes and whatnot.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
When I went down to Slide, I was I'm talking
to some ladies down there, and I because I gave
a brief talk about suicide suicide prevention when I was
down there, and I talked to two ladies who were
went up to their husbands and took the guns away
from their husband because they thought their husbands were going
to You know, when you get older and you're like, oh, yeah,
chronic conditions. You don't like what you're looking at, and
the guns right there, Yes, I'm going to take this
(41:29):
into my hands and I'll handle it right right. And
that's the kind of stuff we're trying to eliminate. Is
that kind of thing where you locked the gun away,
there's no ammunition in it.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
That kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (41:38):
You put some space in between you and the weapon. Yeah, absolutely, Bucky,
you're doing some amazing things. This was great.
Speaker 3 (41:44):
I enjoyed it. Thanks for I've been in a radio
station of ages.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
Is crazy, right, Look at all the artists are on
the wall, the classic rock artists from when you played.
Speaker 3 (41:55):
Well that or you'll hear them in a food commercial.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
You know, that's exactly I know. I'm a huge like
ste My Love, Steely Dan. Yeah, all right, hey, thank
you for coming in today. Really appreciate the time and
it was great to see you. All right, Thanks love,
Thank you, Bucky. New episodes of Cut, Traded, Fired, Retired
I released on Tuesdays on your favorite podcast platforms. Get
social with the podcast on Twitter and Instagram at CTFR podcast,
(42:19):
and check out the website ctfurpodcast dot com. I'm your host,
Susie Wargen. To find out more about me, visit Susiewargen
dot com. Thanks for listening, and until next time, please
be careful, be safe and be kind. Take care
Like the last game I think I punted was against
Washington and I'm backed up in the end zone and
I hit an eighty seven yard punt. I've never hit
an eighty seven yard punt in my life, but I
kicked it over the guy's head and he's running backwards
and I don't know where it hit, but it was
eighty seven yards. But then the next week, I think
that little week we can have, I got traded, so really,
(00:21):
that eighty seven yard punt probably made me a little
more marketable.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Welcome to Cut, Traded, Fired, Retired a weekly podcast filled
with stories and advice from conversations with professional athletes and
coaches in a variety of sports. My hope is you'll
gain a nugget or two for your own life on
how to handle stepbacks and move forward. I'm your host,
Susie Wargen. This episode's guest made his way onto the
Broncos roster in nineteen seventy seven as a left footed
(00:47):
punter out of the University of Georgia. Bucky Dilts was
also an undrafted free agent competing for one spot with
a lot of other guys. His directional kicking was different
than anybody else, though and he made the team. His
rookie season, he played for the Broncos in the Super
Bowl in the exact same venue he'd been in a
year prior for the National Championship game with Georgia, the Superdome. Unfortunately,
(01:10):
Bucky's teams were on the losing end in both of
those games, so he learned a lot about picking back
up after losses, a skill that was needed after he retired,
when he began to deal with stepbacks in real life
between family members who committed suicide, divorce, becoming an only
parent after his ex wife passed away from cancer, and
his own cancer scare. These days, Bucky does a lot
(01:32):
of work educating people about staying healthy and also listening
and being present for others. He's also working to become
the best version of himself later in life. Ladies and Gentlemen,
Bucky Dilts cut Traded Fired, Retired podcast with Susie Wargenen.
Hello Bucky Dilts or Douglas Stilts At Douglas, is there
(01:55):
any money? Call you Douglas? Uh?
Speaker 1 (01:57):
My mother, Okay, she did? That was My real true
name is Douglas Riggs Dilts. Of course, I had been
involved in sports a long time. So when I got
involved with sports and I got this nickname of Bucky,
I didn't want to use Douglas. It's a football name.
It's because said maybe if I'm an attorney someday.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Oh yeah, that would have been a very nice attorney name.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
That didn't work out. So how did you get Bucky?
Speaker 1 (02:17):
And it's because my brother John couldn't pronounce Douglas, and
then it went to Duck, and then it went to
duck Buck, and then it went to Bucky.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
So it's like the stupidest.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Funny how nicknames transform, right, Yeah, so that's what it
worked out well. And then especially because you ended up
being with the Broncos, which you know, Broncos Horse Bucky. Yeah, No,
worked out very well. All right, Well, you've got a
very cool story that I want to go back all
the way to the kind of beginning where you're born
in Corpus Christi, Texas. However you end up in Atlanta,
(02:48):
Georgia for high school. I know that your dad was
a naval pilot. Did you travel around a lot as
a kid as a were you a military kid?
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Yes, we had Okay, we had to move every three
and a half years in our last tour of duty
was in Hawaii, and my brother went to a private
school over there called Punaho, so we got to stay
an extra half a year so he could graduate from Punaho.
But when I was in Hawaii, that's where I started
two things. One I was really big into surfing and
sand sliding, and the second was I started to play football.
(03:16):
Football is a total peer pressure thing my brothers and
my father because my father was a backup quarterback at
Georgia Tech. You guys got to go put you know,
you guys have to play, you know, so they had
these little military teams. And I really disliked tackle football.
But I had worked on punning because my dad. Prior
to coming out to Hawaii, we lived in New York
and my dad used to go out in the street
(03:37):
shoes in New York and punt and he'd hit these
really pretty spirals and I'm like, oh, man, I want
to do that. So that's how I got my interest
in punning. And then I took that. I learned how
to kick balls over telephone wires because that was I
had to have some kind of goal, right, so I'll
just kick it over the telephone wires. And that worked
out and so I ended up being the punter on
the pee wee football team. And the big event that
happened to me out in Hawaii is one of the
(03:58):
coaches came up and shook me after I had punted.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
He goes, do you realize what you just did? And
I said no, no, I don't.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Well he goes, you just kicked the ball forty yards
and I'm like, oh, okay.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Coach, Yeah that's great. Like I'm no, I didn't mean
anything to me.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Nothing meant nothing, and.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
I went on.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
But the thing about Hawaii is I really wasn't into
Although I played all the time, I didn't like the
contact aspect of it. And I was big in surfing.
I was a pretty good surfer. And the guy that
I actually surfed with ended up being a pro surfer
in southern California in the seventies.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Oh that's cool.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
So we're kind of buddies and stuff, and I've conversed
with him a couple of times since.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
So then when we get we leave Hawaii.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
My dad grew up in Georgia, so we're going back
to Georgia and I was pissed because I'm like, there's
no beach in Georgia, no with any.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Notoriety, right, no surfing, no surfing. But football was big.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
And when we moved there, I was in my first
year of really kind of high school. And we were
outcasts because I show up in high school and you know,
a Hawaiian shirts and corduroy poison.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Please tell me you weren't wearing a leg no, Okay.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
But I had light you know, white sox and tennis shoes.
I look like a beach guy, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
And we went to this really conservative, stuck up, button
down shirt, you know, higher income group in northwest Atlanta.
So I was really kind of an outcast when I
got there. But I noticed when I started playing football,
I had a chance to be the punter, and then
earned a position to punt as.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
A sophomore at my high school.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
And things went really real well there, and I got
more famous and.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
You know, I feel more accepted.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Yeah, and my brother played too, and so we both
got more accepted, and eventually we changed the way we dressed.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
A little bit.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Stop the Hawaiian shirt.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
I was a full button down, you know, a khaki
pant guy. Then and I get these letters from my
buddy in Hawaii. Hey, I just won this surf contest
here and did this. I'm going, oh, man, he's just
like tearing it up right.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Yeah, so you get noticed in high school, I'm sure yep.
And how many colleges did you have the option to
go to?
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Oh this is where.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
This is where I kind of pissed my dad off
because he's a military guy. I get letters, a lot
of letters from my Clemson and all these other places.
Hey were really interested in you, but they didn't offer
me anything. But I went to one Georgia tech game
with the Naval Academy. I show up and these guys
are all around me, and they got a letter from
a senator it says what a great guy I am.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
And I'm like, who are these people?
Speaker 1 (06:10):
And the next thing I know, they offer me a
full ride to the Naval Academy and I turned it down.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
I thought my dad was going to kill me, Oh
my gosh.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
But I'm thinking, you know, I'm a pretty good punter,
and if I go to the Naval Academy, they keep
you out. Even if I want to shot it pro
I can't get it. So I didn't do it.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
He was man.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
So I went around to a couple of small colleges.
They didn't really want to offer much. So I went
up to Georgia. I had to go to like summer
school to get into Georgia. So the next spring I
walked on there and then I earned a scholarship at Georgia.
But you know, I saw the guys that were punting there,
and I said, I can beat those guys, okay, And.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
So I went out there. And the story of how
I got at.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Georgia is I love this story.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
I'm sitting there on the sideline and they have two
punt teams out there, and the two top guys are punting,
and there's five or six guys that are just guys
that they're just in practice, and they're just like dummies, right,
and I'm not getting a chance. It's the punt. So
I just walked out on the field. I walked right
up to coach Dooley, Vince Dooley, and I said, I said,
Coach Douley, I came out here to show you how
I could punt, and I haven't been given a chance
(07:09):
to do that.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
Could you let me pump with one of these teams?
I was really polite about it, and he looked at
me and like what's your name?
Speaker 1 (07:15):
He didn't even know Carol walk on and I'm like
and I'm like, my name's Bucky Dillon.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
And he goes.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
He kind of looked like he was disturbed a little bit,
and he goes, go over on the second team there,
and you kick a couple of times over there. So
I got two shots, and I kicked the piss out
of the ball when I was in there, I mean
I was all jacked up, right, had all this adrenaline
and boom boom, and then I was in So I
became the scout team punter that fall, and I was
kicking to the number one put return team and they're
(07:42):
rushing me all the time.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
Best practice I could ever have.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Well, yeah, and you know.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
These coaches got dilt. You keep that up, you're gonna
get a scholarship. I said, yeah, go right ahead, that's
fine with me. And finally they did, so got a scholarship.
Travel with the team my first year. I think we
went to the Peach Bowl.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
You went to three bowls three.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Bo actually four because the first year I traveled with
the team, but I wasn't playing.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Oh okay, all right, So then then we went at.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
The Tangerine Bowl, the Cotton Bowl, and the sugar bowls.
Sugar go to all these balls when we never went
any of them. You know, it's kind of reminisces a
lot of things. But it was good, you know, I
really enjoyed it well.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
And you had some different abilities that weren't super common
as far as your hangtime, which I assume maybe some
of that came from punting over telephone wires in Hawaii. Right,
you were left footed, and so you had that interesting
spiral to it.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Well, the other thing is when I played high school football,
I was a completely different punter because I led the
city of Atlanta and punting for like three years in
a row, and I'd average like forty five forty six
yards of punt, but I kicked really low spirals. Okay,
they were always chasing them, right. And so finally about
my junior year, this guy from Georgia Techy you say, Bucky,
you're hitting the ball really well, but you got to
(08:48):
get it up higher or you won't last in college.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
I said, okay, so how'd you do that? Well?
Speaker 1 (08:53):
I just the only way I knew how was that? Okay,
the only way for me to kick a ball higher
is to use, in my mind was to use more
of my leg.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
I was kind of, you.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Know, put a nice ball out, hit a spiral, and
I didn't really finish following through. And I noticed that
right away, so I just started using more of my
leg and so finally I said, well, I'm just going
to try to kick this thing as high as I can.
So all said and done, once I get through the
broncos and stuff. You know, I had I had hang
times in college, and I know college and the Sugar Bowl.
I think they clocked me at about five five five four,
(09:24):
which was you know, for a short little guy, that
ain't bad.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
No, that's not bad at all. Yeah, okay, and that's
so hard for that pint returner to get a beat
on that and figure out where it's going to go,
when's it going to get to him? And by then
everybody's got time to I mean, you can't do it anymore,
but back then you could just completely annihilate the guy
right well.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
And you know the other thing is we when we
played in the Sugar Bowl, we went down there. The
big thing back then is that I guess ray guy
had hit the There's a big, huge video screen way
up and all these reporters said, hey, Bucky, you know
Ray Guy hit that video screen. I said, They said,
do you thinking hit it? I said, yeah, well so
I've lined up and hit the video screen. And they
thought that was like a big deal. I mean it
(10:03):
was up there a ways. But I'm like, you know, no,
you can hit that, but you had to kick really
straight up at it to hit it. And Ray Guy,
to me, he's the best punter I ever saw. Yeah,
ever saw. And I can't tell you when we go
out to those games. I remember the first time we
went out to Oakland and we're back in the end zone,
you know, getting warmed up doing calsenics and stuff, and
he's standing about ten yards in front of about ten
(10:23):
yards in front of us. Okay, he's on like the
ten yard line and he's banging that ball in the
other end zone like it's nothing.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Oh wow, And I'm like, oh my, this guy is
just a lever. You know. I didn't even want to
look at this guy in the field.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
I just got to pay attention to what I'm supposed
to be doing and just do my thing right otherwise
you get intimidated.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Oh absolutely, yeah. Okay, so you get through three years
of playing with Georgia that you had the one year
that you didn't play, So did you graduate from there? No.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
What happened is I went out to mini camp after
I signed with Denver and I were under free and
so they have the mini camps and they go out
there and they said, this is what we're doing.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
Marv Braden, who was.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
There, a specialty scoches out there, said we're switching everything.
We're going to do directional punting. All we care about
is direction and hang time. I said, okay, And.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
So they had these boxes.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
They would make these boxes and you kick at the
boxes and they would core your hangtime and how much
distance and all that.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
And so I said, I'm going home. I'm dropping out
of school.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
I'm going back to Atlanta, and all I'm going to
do is kick at boxes.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
And that's what I did.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
And I worked on hangtime and kicking at boxes on
my own, except I didn't have my targets were like
T shirts in.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
The square, and I kicked for the T shirts right.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
But what I started noticing, I said, you know, I
can hit these boxes pretty good. I wonder what happens
if I shrink the box? I can get more accurate.
So I started shrinking the box and so by the
time I went back out to Denver, I could punt.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
That's so you were nailing those coffin corners.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Yeah, and so I the direction was no problem, the
hangtime was no problem, and I had to be careful though.
You know sometimes when people go the opposite of their
leg in other words, if I'm going to my right,
you can come across your body. I made sure I
didn't make that mistake. And I saw a lot of
guys that I competed against that would make that mistake.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
They had to go another way.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Okay, so you don't finish school, you come out to Denver.
You did have some teams to choose from aside from
Denver when you were undrafted. Why did you decide to
come here? And who were the other teams?
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Other teams were Atlanta and they had a guy named
John James who was an all propunner. I said, I'm
not going to that camp Pittsburgh, who Bobby Walden, who
was a Georgia guy, was about at the end of
his career with that would have been a good slot
for me.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Houston.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
I didn't have any interest in going to Houston. Denver,
and I think of the Jets. So I had like
five teams. And so after all this thinking, right, I said, well,
I've never been out to the mountains.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
I think I'll go to Denver.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Nothing to do with like where you'd fit into the team,
or the fact that there were eight other punters there.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
No the most shallow decision in my whole life. And
you know what, when I originally signed with Denver and
they give you the thousand bucks at the airport in
the twenty five thousand dollars contract.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
A lot of money in nineteen seventy seven.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
So I go out there and I said, Okay, I
got a good chance to go out there and kick
at Denver, right because they had I think Billy Van
Houston had been hurt. Norris Sweets was the punter, but
he was a big distance guy, and so I said,
I I think I got a chance. Of course, right
after I signed with them, they traded for Herman Weaver.
I knew they had.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Drafted Larry Swider.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
I said I could beat him because I kicked against
him in the Sugar Bowl, so I wasn't worried about him.
And then they signed eight of the guys and I'm like, oh, man,
I got ten eleven. I got eleven guys going for one.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Spot, which is insane.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
And they drafted a guy and they traded for a guy.
So I'm already in third place at least, right, So that.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Was the situation, and how do you win the job?
Speaker 1 (13:25):
I had to be good at kicking to targets and
having the best hang time. And most of the guys
that I was kicking against in that camp had longer,
stronger legs than me. Herman Weaver straight up, he'd kill me. Okay,
I'm telling They called him Thunderfoot. That was his nickname,
and you know, he's like a Tennessee legend. He was
in Detroit forever. Even after I won the job over him,
(13:46):
he went out and kicked in Seattle for I think.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
Three or four years.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Oh geez, okay, yeah, and a dome, so that was
a good place for him. But I just was patient.
All of a sudden, they start cutting guys right, So
some of these free agent guys, they'd cut them out
of them because they couldn't do the direction.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
I didn't have the hangtime. And the whole time I'm there,
I keep hearing a little bit of you.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Know, I don't like this directional kicking from Herman, right,
and I'm like, all right, well that's good. I like
that going on in the back of his right. Larry
Swider was not really doing what they thought. His hangtime
wasn't as good as it should be. So anyway, all
cuts down. It's Herman, Larry Me, and then we get
the whole preseason. I got a game in Atlanta, which
was really pretty cool because that's where you came from.
(14:27):
So I punted in Atlanta, punted it in another game,
and so what happens is down to me and Herman.
We go to Philadelphia the last game of the season,
and they give him the whole game.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
They just want him to.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Do you know, you do decent you're in and Bucky's gone, right, yeah,
it was twenty eight yards a punt.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Oh geez.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
And I'm like, man, that's really too bad. But I'm
kind of happy right now.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
It's too bad for him.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
So Marv Braden came out.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
You know, I was I was a cocky little fella
back then because I believed in myself. Sure he was
out by the bus and Bucky, I just I still
know what I'm gonna do with you two guys, and
I looked right at him. I said, Coach Braden, I'll
tell you what you got to do. You gotta cut
him and keep me.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
I just said it, you did. Yeah, just I.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Said that to him, just like when I walk out
to ask Vince Duey for right. I just kind of
said I told you, and he kind of looked at
me like okay then and that was the end of
the conversation. But the next morning they told me I
was a punter. So I picked up the called my dad.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
I said, I made it. I made it. I can't
believe it. I made it. You know, just going nuts.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
That's amazing. And when you're with the Broncos, there's some
intern that some people may have heard of, right, Bill Belichick,
who was also the assistant special teams coach, who was
very enthralled with the fact that you were a left
footed punter.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
Yeah, you know, he ran around, did every he was
like a sponge. Of course, I have no idea this
is the Belichick right, no, right, So he's out there
and he's he's paying a lot of attention to Joe
Collier about his defense and stuff. He was really soaking out,
but he would come and catch my punts all the time.
And he was just trying to figure out about the
spin and what it could do. And I'd tell him,
(16:04):
I said, you know, if I cock it this way,
i can do this and I'll break this way. If
I turn it over, it breaks this way and turns out.
Somebody's telling me about seven or eight of New England's
punters were left footed punters.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Because guys had a very hard time returning because they
couldn't quite figure out you were you were different.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
We had, like the Raiders, Neil Colsey was their defensive
back and return He was a head case with us.
They had David humm who was left handed quarterback out
there throwing them passes, and our guys was run out
there and say we're gonna mess you up today. You
got drop another, you know, and just give him. He
would usually fumble upun.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
And that was a team of talkers back then in
seventy seven and seventy eight.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
A big, big team too. I've never seen people that large.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Oh yeah, no, huge team. Okay. So your rookie season,
your first season with the Broncos, you go to Super
Bowl twelve and what's really crazy is that Super Bowl
of course, is against the Cowboys in New Orleans at
the super Dome. You played there and that Super Bowl
wrote down the date January fifteenth, nineteen seventy eight. You
played just a little over a year before New Year's
(17:03):
Day in nineteen seventy seven at the Superdome and the
Sugar Bowl when Georgia plays against pitt and Georgia loses
that game handily. Good, Yeah, twenty seven to three. What
was it like to go back a You've lost these
Bowl games, so you know what it feels like to lose,
and then you go to the Super Bowl your rookie season,
which is crazy, and then you're in the exact same
(17:24):
venue and the same thing happens. Yeah, twenty seven points
both games by the opponents.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Well, it's one of those things where I knew when
those games are going to be tight, so I was
going to be punting. But in the case of the
Georgia game, we just weren't any We didn't match up
well with Pittsburgh at all. I think I punted eight
or nine times. But that's the best punning average I
ever had in college. And so you know, after the game,
my dad was saying, no, man, that's great, That's the
best kind of thing you could do before you go
to the pros.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
And I'm like, oh, yeah, sorry, you lost.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Yeah, And actually, you know, I felt like I'd actually
almost kind of played in a game because I went
out there eight or nine times.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
You know.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Then the Denver game was tough because I know, I
remember the first punt they fumbled it right at the
goal line, and I'm thinking, how different could it be
if we would have recovered that and gone in and scored,
Because I mean, you really look back at that Super Bowl.
We made a lot of mistakes on offense, a lot
of turnovers. Our defense still played pretty well in that game,
and you just couldn't see it because of all the
mess we had on the offensive side of the ball.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Yeah, it's crazy to me that you played in the
same venue two years a row for college and then
pros in huge games, and that that Sugar Bowl was
for the National Championship too, right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Time, and then we were like fourth in Pittsburgh was first,
and if we beat him then it's a big deal.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
But that is crazy. Shot.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
So you're two years with the Broncos. I should also
mention your rookie season. You're on the All Rookie Team
by the Pro Football Writers.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
I didn't realize that until I opened the program. I
was reading the you know, guys read the program before
the and there I am in the and some rookie
team think I saw, oh, that's great.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
You know, I didn't know that you get one more
year and then.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
That yeah, then they cut you. Well, they traded me,
Oh they traded you. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
So what happened is after my second year, going into
my third year, they drafted Luke Prestritch who was here
for a while, and they brought him in and you know,
we'd sit there and kick together, and I say, oh,
he's got a pretty big leg.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
He kicks good distance.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
That's what they're looking for because I was allowed a
hangtime direction. You know, Bucky's just kind of thirty eight
to thirty nine yards a pop, and he'll kick in
the coffin corner anyway. So he comes in and I'm
sitting there and we have a really even competition.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
We're both kicking well. In the preseason.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Like the last game I think I punted was against
Washington and I'm backed up in the end zone and
I hit an eighty seven yard punt I've never hit
an eighty seven yard punt in my.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
Life, but I kicked it over the guy's head and.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
He's running backwards and I don't know where it hit,
but it was eighty seven yards. But then the next week,
I think that little week we can have, I got traded.
So really, that eighty seven yard punt probably made me
a little more marketable to other.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Teams, I imagine.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Yeah, So while I was really quite happy, I remember
coming off sideline, you know, and Luke's looking down like, man,
you know, he's kind of because I hit an eighty
seven yard putt and I might stick right, Uh huh.
That wasn't the case. They wanted Luke. I mean, Luke
had a little more distance to me.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
That's fine, And that'll happen sometimes in that last preseason game.
Guys will get shown off a little bit because there's
stuff going on behind the scenes, and it makes you
look good to other teams. So you get traded then
to the then Baltimore Colts.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Yeah, and that was that was a really abrupt, emotionally
kind of unsettling time for me because at the time
I was dating my wife, and you know, we were
living together and stuff and all of a sudden.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
I get traded.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
When you get traded, it's not hey, you know, take
a little time, get yourself together. You got a plane
ticket and you're leaving today at two. You're out here.
So I went to Baltimore and I go there and
I'm like, I don't know any of these guys, you know,
I don't know what's anyway. We started out and we
had done pretty well. We had Burt Jones, who was
a very good quarterback, and he won us like four games,
(20:50):
and then then he got hurt. And when he got hurt,
that team quit because he's the guy. He's a catalyst
that makes that team. If you really remember, I think
the year before, they came to Denver and we beat
them at the very end when Tom Jackson picked.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
One of his passes off.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
But they're a very good team when they're right. But
we were miserable. We were like four. We never won
a game again that season. You know, I think I
had a punt blocked. I had one against the England
they ran back a kick for a touchdown. I mean,
it was all kinds of good things in the second
half of the season, and I'm like, I really I
would love being in Denver. I didn't want to leave Denver,
(21:24):
and I when I say the emotional aspect of that
is that they're telling you they don't want you, or
we found somebody better, or however you want a word
that it's rejection.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Yes it is.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
And you know I'm getting I'm getting on a plane
and fly over there, and I'm just like, god, man,
I just hate to leave this place because I got it.
I got everything going on. I'm gonna get married, blah
blah blah blah. So eventually all that stuff happened anyway,
But I think I went into the fourth year, and
part of my complication with me and the teams I
played for is that I got a really good agent
after my first year, a guy named Howard Slusher who
(21:58):
worked for Nike, and he was Craig Morton's I think
Bob Swinson, I think got TJ. All those guys had him.
He set up this really cool contract where I had
a really nice basis, like forty sixty thousand, and then
I had all this incentive pay and I usually made
really good on the incentive pace kicking out of bounds,
keeping the ball out of twenty and so when at
the end of the year, thirty five percent of whatever
(22:21):
I made, and those bonuses got added into my base
for the next year, so I had an automatic raise
built into it too. So not big numbers, but what
happened by the time I got to Baltimore in my
second year, if I would have stayed there, I would
have made a hundred thousand. Only two guys that back
then made one hundred thousand, Raay Guy and Dave Jennings
who played for the Giants. I had outpriced myself out
of the NFL. They weren't going to keep me around
(22:42):
in that kind of money, so they cut me. I
had two calls from I went to Buffalo, had a
good try out there. We're going to give our guy
another week if he you know, if he didn't come around,
we'll sign you. He averages forty five yards of punt.
I went to Cleveland and I, you know, I said,
I'm not going to do this. And my father in
law sitting there at the time, and he goes, just
go get a job. If you want to pursue this,
you can, but to sit here and just run around
(23:03):
doing this my skitch. So I got a job sell
an air freight for a group called Burlington Northern Air
Freight a company car and eighteen thousand a year was
my deal. And I'm like, talk about a culture like
a shot.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Big shock.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
So I'm like, oh my goodness, man, can I get
back in the NFL some whatever? Even twenty five grand
would look good right now.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
So anyway, I went through all that, and eventually what
happened is I never went back to play again. You know,
I had calls from other teams. I just said, no,
I'm out. I've seen a lot of guys that do that.
They just keep chasing something that's not there. I'm like, look,
I got in the league three years, I played in
the super Bowl. I'm happy, you know, move on. But
it was the being rejected thing that, you know, you
(23:46):
get bitter about it. I think I made a snide
comment in the paper. You know, you're just bitter at all.
Oh yeah, all the typical emotions.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
And a lot of guys do that, and even now,
I mean back then it was literally two newspapers that
you guys talked to or maybe KOA and now social
media and you say one thing, and man, it's but
it's hard not to when you feel that and you
realize Oh my gosh, I'm a number. They said all
these great things to me, But I'm just a number
on a ledger that's not working for their bottom line.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
You're a transaction You're a transaction, transactional guy.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Great transactional guy. So after retirement, then now here we are, however,
many years later, and you've done a number of things.
You did commercial real estate for a while, also some
really really good work in nonprofit and mental health, and
so kind of go through what you've done since retirement.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Well, pretty much just sales and marketing. I started out
with the air freight company. I went into a computer
service company, which also led me into a records management
company out of Minneapolis. So I work with them for
fifteen years. So as a big guy in that business,
we sold the business here and it was really good.
Most people won't even understand what I said. Well, we
used to produce microfiche, which is the stuff you look
(24:58):
at as film. Oh yeah, we had a twenty four
hour service perier, so was making that stuff.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
All night long.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
Oh my gosh, our print laser printing statements and all this.
So it's kind of fun business. I'm selling computer supplies
and did very well. At that all through the nineties,
and then that kind of dropped off in the late nineties,
almost at two thousand and That's that was another kind
of storm in my life because in the nineties I
had lost I've lost two people in my family to suicide.
(25:24):
My sister passed away in eighty four and my mother
in law passed away.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
In ninety six.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Oh wow, So you know, you have all that going on,
and it bumps around. And the next thing you know,
it's two thousand and my wife and I were having
some problems and stuff and go through a divorce. We
kind of get things straight with the kids and who's
doing what, and it was like two thousand and four
and she comes down.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
With cervical cancer.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Oh so I think, okay, well this, you know, they
could do something for her.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
Hopefully. She lasted eighteen months and was gone in two
thousand and six.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Oh my gosh, buck destroyed everybody, especially my kids. Yeah,
and so that was going on. We bump along ago.
I think that puts me at about two and ten.
My father, because he had had prostate cancer, he says,
you got to check your PSA and I did, and
I finally caught it when I was working at trans Western.
One time when I went for the blood test, it
went from undetectable to like six and I went, well,
(26:14):
that's too much. And so you know, I get a
doctor said, well, you could do watchful weight to ass it.
I'm out watchful waiting nothing. There's something in there. I
want to buy opscene. Now go see if there's anything
in that good for you, And there was. I was
considering robotic surgery with a guy named Aigner down who
was a really good doctor.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Oh yeah, yes, I know doctor Agner. Oh do you
really well, yeah, he did my husband's visected me. He's
done and many people that I know. That's how I
got him. I was like, hey, who did yours? And yeah,
he's a great, amazing.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
But I didn't pick him.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
He had like a thousand surgeries at the time. So
I went over to doctor Crawford at U See Health
did my surgery. Even since then, I went to Aigner
once or twice just to get a second opinion.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
Yeah I'm okay, so and you're okay.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
Well I'm okay. I still have what they call positive margin,
so I still have some cancer in me, but I
haven't had undete. The bowl PSA for fifteen years. So
I went to Eigner and I asked, I said, well,
you guys, Bucky, if I'm a bet and guy, this should.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
Not crop up again in you.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
But I but you never know, I never know any
they say always get checked once. I get checked twice
because if it does jump, I want to jump as
quick as I can.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Absolutely, And it's so important that we've had so many
more people that have you know, a voice and a
platform that have you know, had Vick Lombardi's one of them. Yeah,
cor again. I mean there's a lot of guys that
I know, and they've been hopefully being able to spread
the word more of Hey, guys, go get it checked.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
I talked a lot of guys.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
I remember when I was on the Bronco alumni group
and I told him, I said, you guys know I
was a prostay cancer.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
So they did a lot of guys that know.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
And so you always have guys come up to you
after the meeting's over and kind of a hush hush.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
Towns like what is like what they do? You know,
what are you gotta do?
Speaker 1 (27:45):
And you know, guys are My whole thing is just
go get a blood test. That's all I want you
to do to start the process.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
That's great that you're trying to educate people on that.
I think that's fantastic. And with the cervical cancer and
then with the mental health part of it too. I
know that you had a lot to do with kind
of getting together Buffs for Life, which is doing great,
great work still and I mean, and they're still so
affected at CU. I mean the amount of athletes. Gary
Barnett was a guest on this podcast and had told
me about how many had passed, you know, and I'm like,
(28:15):
my goodness, it's so hard.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
Eighties and nineties and you know, Rashaan Salambi and the
most famous of the lot. But I actually ran into
Brian Cabrawl out of Mental Health speaking Engagement. He just
happened to be there, and he goes, hey, you know,
we're really trying to do some stuff about mental health
and we need some help. And I said, well, okay,
what do you want to do? And he goes, we
don't know yet, but we got to put something together.
So I went and met with them, and I met
(28:37):
with Gary and him and Sean.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Tuffs, all three of who have been on this podcast.
By the way, you should listen to their episodes.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Yes, I'm just kind of following them along on a
LEAs ship exactly. So I'd like I got an idea,
because you know, I worked for a Colrado crisis line
nine eight eight. Why don't you start a crisis line
for buff alumni men and women both, right, and have
your own private number. So I set them up. We
got that thing set up. Probably wasn't promoted as well
as it should have been. It did have some impact
(29:04):
on a few people, and it's well, it's still there,
but now crisis Line nine eight eight, they've lost that contract.
It's actually going to go out of state now, okay,
down to Arizona. But any rate, that was there, and
so that was a positive thing that we did.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
And hey, even.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
If you save one life, you know, you get a
couple couple of phone calls, that's worth it.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
That's that was Gary.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Gary's point was, even if I save one guy or
one yew, that's great.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
All right. And then Bronco alumni, you stay involved with them.
I know you're involved and you've gone to talk to
the Quarterbacks club and things like that.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
Yeah, I've done that.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
I was on the board for I think about four years.
And you know, Ron Eggloff is lifelong.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
Buddy of mind.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Ron and I literally met at the airport coming into
Denver to be free agents.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
That's what you really.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
Once we both made it, we didn't know what to do.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Is we got to get an apartment, you know, and
go buy a car and do all this stuff. And
I remember we saw our first paycheck, because you know,
our first pay with check was I think it was
like three grand, and we thought we were just rolling it.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Oh yeah, absolutely, you are rich.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
Boy. We were off base there.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
But anyway, it was so I got on the board
for a while, did that for a little bit. But
I really being on boards for me is just not
good because if I can't go do something, it frustrates
me and I'm just like, there's no point to this.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
Which segues nicely into what you're doing right now. Yeah,
your outreach that you're doing with UCEE Health, you see health.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
What I did is I saw an ad all about
a year and a half ago and it said that
you could go through this program and it was on
a grant that was put together by a lady doctor
Katie Nearing, and she wanted to develop older adults to
become what they call older adult research specialists. What we're
supposed to do is get all this education and we
go out and try to connect older adults to clinical
(30:44):
trials at the school. And so we had to go
through all this process, and then you know, we had
to go try and pull all the clinical trials to
deal with older adults, which that number shifts. You know,
if AARP says, if you're forty, you're in the hunt.
Do Yeah, they're just trying to recruit people. So we
started doing these things and the next thing, you know,
we're trying to put together what are called these research
road shows, where we actually go out to communities, bring
(31:07):
the clinical trial groups with us and put on a show.
And then we also have this thing that it's a
consult where we go to a lot of the clinical
trial groups are really young people twenties and thirties.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
Right, Oh okay, so they don't know how to really
relate too well to older adults.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
So we go in and help them design some of
the materials that they put out for that because a
lot of times they get way too technical and getting
the weeds too quick. So we clean that up larger print,
Are they thank you? Are the pictures relevant?
Speaker 3 (31:34):
All that? Just simple stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
So while I'm doing all this and I go do
the research road shows, you know, I really like being
involved in like just outreaching to people. So right now
I'm in the midst of talking to some people to
cancer department to see if maybe I could do some
work there. And what happens is you get hired on
and they you know, I can work ten fifteen hours
a week, try.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
More like a consultant kind of or.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Well on low scale. Yeah, but this is no high
end deal I'm talking about here. But oh and one
thing I left out about odd jobs I've had in
the past, I was I did work in the funeral business.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
For about five years.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
Oh did you really?
Speaker 1 (32:09):
And I would set up funerals, conduct funerals, and I
would go to all the receptions and make sure everybody
was okay.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
And I was actually pretty good at it.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
I can see mean, meaning how I could relate to
people yes there and talk to them, sit down and
make sure they're okay and stuff. But I was doing
all kinds of stuff like transporting bodies and all kinds
of stuff. And I'm like this is getting a little
too interesting for me. I think I'm going to back
out of this. And I did it in Boulder for
about five years, and it was just a kind of
a cash all thing. And when I first got in
real estate, the market had just tanked and like I
(32:37):
think it was two thousand and eight, twenty ten. So
I was just going around doing these these funeral things,
and it was it was it was an education.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Oh, I bet it was.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
And you know how people deal with grief and all
kinds of things like.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
That and all the intricacies that go on with it.
My mom she just passed a couple of months ago,
and so we're kind of going through all of the
things and we have her burial coming up. She decided
to be cremated and so but her best friend works
at the funeral home. Because when I when she got
put in the urn, I was like, what do I
do with her for the next six weeks? Does she
stay in the garage or do we bring her inside
(33:09):
where she goes? Let me just keep her here and
I'll bring her to the burial. I was like, thank you.
I just don't know, you know, you don't know what
to do.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
At least it wasn't somebody on the western slope that
oh I know. Well, it finally got them to actually
make the funeral business. They have to be licensed now.
I believe it's funny because my daughter a long time ago,
I think it was going to cosmetology school or something
a little bit, and they go through all this big process.
Oh yeah, and here I am. I could have been
a funeral director with nothing.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
With nothing. And I'm like, and she's got to have
a license to, you know, take a pair of scissors
to your hair. Oh yeah, exactly. So speaking of your kids,
you got the two Harper you mentioned and Justin where
are they? Do you have any grandkids?
Speaker 1 (33:50):
No, not yet. Got married about a year and a
bit ago. She lives in Salt Lake now with her husband, Zach.
They bought a house a little while ago. So the
big thing is how we're going to fix up this
little you know, it's got a lot of work.
Speaker 3 (34:01):
So they're happy to do that.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
And then my son, Justin lives up north at a
place called Barefoot Lakes. He was in the tennis business
forever and he's out of it now and he's trying
to figure out what he wants to do. He loves
playing golf. He's actually taking me on a little golf
trip in August.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
Fun. We're going to go on the Western Slope and
play a couple of places.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
And he's he's a pretty good golfer, but he just
doesn't really know what he wants to do right now.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Well, I have so many jobs.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
I mean it's hard, I know, but I look at
someone like you and you're you know, you're in eight
different slots.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
You're like NonStop going all the time.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Yeah, but you too, I mean you're still going. You're
doing all kinds of things. When I reached out, You're like, well,
I got a little part time thing here and part
time thing there, and I'm doing this.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
And you know what I did.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
I got to tell you about two years ago, I
started reading some books, and my mom used to harp
on me, all, oh, Douglas, you have to read. She
always called me, Douglas, you have to read, but you
have to get more education and get more well rounded
and understand. So finally, about two years ago I started
reading these books. I read a book called Younger. Next year,
I read a book called Outlive from a guy named
Peter Attiya, New York Times bestseller about how to look
(35:06):
at your health, whether you're young or old. I'm reading
now a book it's called The Twelve Rules of Life,
Jordan Peterson. He's a psychologist. I got to read that
thing slow because that's I'm not a deep guy, I'll
tell you right now. But so I got to read
the pages a couple of times. But that's a good
book about how to change the lens you're looking through
and how to approach life. He's trying to teach people
(35:26):
how to deal with the chaos that is what we
live in in this day and age, and how to
be able to manage it.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
And are the books helping you? Do you feel like
you've change?
Speaker 3 (35:36):
Yeah? I do.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
And so now, what's what happened is I went I
got checked a while back. It was one of the
NFL tests and they give you all this data back
and I was overweight, and you know this could lead
to this, and you know potentially you could have a stroke,
and you know they paint the picture right, and I'm like, well,
I just cannot be this way anymore. So I gradually
started exercising, walking, started lifting weights again. About a year
(35:59):
out from that, I went to the doctor the guy says, hey,
you make some provacy dropped about twelve pounds. It's good,
you know, and your numbers are a little bit better,
and you know, my PSA is still in a good spot.
So you know, Bucky's happy. And so I kept doing that,
and so now I'm actually trying to see what is
the best lifestyle I can create for myself. And I
don't mean this a bad way, but at the end
(36:21):
portion of my life. In other words, I don't care
how long I live now, I want to know how
healthy I live. So when when it does come, you know,
if I'm unhealthy and I've got all bad things going on,
when you go to die, it'll be miserable, I guarantee you.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
But if I'm just sitting along and then I drop,
that's fine. Then that's that's good.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
You did your best until the very end.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
Right.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
So my thing now is I'm going through the NFL
Trust down to New Orleans for two and a half
days of tests, sleep app They look at everything, cardiovascular system.
They give me back a seventy five page report, whoa
all for free. They fly me there, put me into
a hotel. So I got a buddy. I went to
high school with down there, who has a house down
in New Orleans. So when I'm done, I can stay
(37:03):
a day or two later and then fly back, so
I get a.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Chance to fun. But then you go back to New Orleans.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
But that yeah, yeah, and I don't have to go
in the dome anymore. You're a super dome, right, I
go in some tank where they run you know, X
rays on me.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
Right, But I think it'll be good.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
I'll be fascinating.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
Well, this will be a good This is the final baseline.
This is where you are. This is what you really
could improve on all that.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
So I'm eating lots more vegetables now you fish and chicken,
and I'm actually trying to phase that back to small now.
I'm trying to do smaller portions. I'm still an avid
beer drinker, though. That's one thing I have to work on.
I grew up with eggle Off. That was my brother.
Speaker 2 (37:41):
Yeah, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
I've never seen a skinny guy drink someone's beer in
his life. So anyway, if I can stay away from
him and kind of reduce reduce my input.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
With that stuff, you look great, well, fish, But I
like a beer every now.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
Now, this that's Okay, yeah, that's okay. You still need
to live a little bit, but let's have you live
a lot longer. And I love what you're doing, all right.
So then this goes nicely into the last question. I
ask all my guests, Bucky, with all the things you've
gone through, and you probably went through more ups and
downs after football, when you find people that have those
times of down moments, how do you tell them to
(38:15):
kind of move forward? And you're still doing it here
later in life and learning some secrets here just in
the last year and a half.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
Well, in my case, the only way I can have
an effect on those people is to invest in a
conversation with them. So I'll go in there with some
very simple questions. And in the beginning, when you're with somebody,
you're just there for him. Okay, I'm not trying to
ask you all these piercing questions about you know, what's
going on?
Speaker 3 (38:39):
Is this? You know, it's easier to let people talk.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
I was with a lady who works with me over
at you See Health the other day, and she has
a problem because she's living in a place that's very nice,
but eventually she knows that's going to change. And she's
worried about her living conditions. So I said, well, you know,
just settle down a minute. You know what you should
do is think about lay out the landscape first, right
sitting here worrying about stuff you don't even know that's
(39:02):
going to happen or not, and you and I can
talk about what's your process over the next two years
where you can put yourself in a nice position, And
eventually she relaxed, and you know, thank.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
You, thank you for talking me.
Speaker 3 (39:13):
But that's the kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
You just have to invest a little time in people
and chat with them about what's going on.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
Yeah, you do it. And I find with players from
your generation that there's a lot of and I think
you guys do a good job. And I'm glad that
you're closed with Ron and of how are you doing
and take the time to listen and see what's going
on as opposed to just talking and not really paying
attention to some signals and what might be actually happening
with you people.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
Well, that's what a lot of people do. They don't
pay attention to the signals. And I could speak back
to even when my sister passed away, I knew she
was in trouble, and I was trying to I actually
tried to make an offer to get her to move
out here and live with my wife and I for
a while and change the scenery and get her to
go to school and do things. But you know, that's
a big ask. When they're Atlanta to Denver, that's a
(39:56):
big thing. Never could quite get that done, and it
was too bad. And I spoke with my mother in
law several times because I knew she was deeply depressed
and she was in treatment and stuff. But you know,
when people get in situations where they want to do that,
you can't stop them, Okay. I mean, if somebody wants
to get off their medication and go another way, they will,
Or if someone wants to end their life immediately, they.
Speaker 3 (40:18):
Will if they want to.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
So you could just try to get in there and
try to upset them a little bit to kind of
to think about it. Or the one thing we're doing
that there's a bunch of research going on right now
over at University of Colorado that's about firearms, firearms safety
and getting people in a safer place with their guns
even if they have their guns. So it's not about
Second Amendment. This is about firearm injury prevention. Okay, And
(40:42):
there's a lady over there, doctor Emmy Betts, who's.
Speaker 3 (40:44):
Doing great work.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
I think they got like about twelve fifteen million bucks
to continue the work. And she's got a thing called Phippy.
They always acronyms on everything firearm injury prevention anyway, Phippy
is the big thing they're doing now, and they're going
out and working with gun shop owners.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
To try and promote the ideas of what they're how
to store.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
Guns, right safes and whatnot.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
When I went down to Slide, I was I'm talking
to some ladies down there, and I because I gave
a brief talk about suicide suicide prevention when I was
down there, and I talked to two ladies who were
went up to their husbands and took the guns away
from their husband because they thought their husbands were going
to You know, when you get older and you're like, oh, yeah,
chronic conditions. You don't like what you're looking at, and
the guns right there, Yes, I'm going to take this
(41:29):
into my hands and I'll handle it right right. And
that's the kind of stuff we're trying to eliminate. Is
that kind of thing where you locked the gun away,
there's no ammunition in it.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
That kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (41:38):
You put some space in between you and the weapon. Yeah, absolutely, Bucky,
you're doing some amazing things. This was great.
Speaker 3 (41:44):
I enjoyed it. Thanks for I've been in a radio
station of ages.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
Is crazy, right, Look at all the artists are on
the wall, the classic rock artists from when you played.
Speaker 3 (41:55):
Well that or you'll hear them in a food commercial.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
You know, that's exactly I know. I'm a huge like
ste My Love, Steely Dan. Yeah, all right, hey, thank
you for coming in today. Really appreciate the time and
it was great to see you. All right, Thanks love,
Thank you, Bucky. New episodes of Cut, Traded, Fired, Retired
I released on Tuesdays on your favorite podcast platforms. Get
social with the podcast on Twitter and Instagram at CTFR podcast,
(42:19):
and check out the website ctfurpodcast dot com. I'm your host,
Susie Wargen. To find out more about me, visit Susiewargen
dot com. Thanks for listening, and until next time, please
be careful, be safe and be kind. Take care
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