October 6, 2025 • 52 mins
We revisit Graham’s 2018 chat with the Super Bowl champ turned Emmy-winning TV star, Michael Strahan. The seven-time Pro Bowler reflects on his move from daytime TV to morning news, predicts his eventual retirement and reflects on 15 years with the Giants. Strahan also discusses his childhood in Germany and a deep conversation with his father that changed everything.
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(00:00):
Hey guys, this week we're catching up with one of the
busiest and most successful personalities in television, and
he happens to have played in theNFL.
Broken Sack Records Retired a Super Bowl champ and went on to
earn Pro Football Hall of Fame honors.
Michael Strahan Strahan opens upabout his departure from daytime
TV and Kelly Ripa. I would have been a professional
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from day one there to the last day I left.
Share some fun stories from his 15 years with the New York
Giants. If you look at somebody in the
game program who you hear may bemean and they're like this, a
mean person smiling is an insaneperson.
So I would change it. I would be in the program like I
do. I should do like Glamour shot
and. Gets introspective as he talks
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about why he still works so hardtoday, even though he's no
longer motivated by money. A lot of people don't understand
why I work as much as I do. I do it because I love it.
But first, the seven time Pro Bowler takes us to his days as a
kid growing up as the youngest of six kids and a military brat
in Germany. You were one of six kids, your
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dad, military officer who actually once fought Ken Norton
said You used to tell your threeolder brothers, quote, one day
I'm going to be somebody. I'm going to be famous.
What were you thinking then? Yeah, well, I have.
I don't know I just got tired ofthem picking on me so I figured
if I said that they would leave me alone and hopefully be nice
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so that if I do become that way I can do a favor for.
Them and picking on you. They didn't.
They picked on me. They picked on me endlessly.
They picked on me, their friendspicked on me.
I'm the youngest of 6. So I look back now and I, I
think, what else could I have expected?
I should have expected it now, but it was.
What? What is that nickname?
Bob. Yeah.
Nickname was Bob. Bob meant booty on back.
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Yeah, great nickname. It meant I was a chunky kid.
I didn't play any sports. I played football when we were
in North Carolina when I was 7 and 8.
Then once we moved to Germany, that kind of phased out and I
just ate until I was Bob. And that gave me the motivation.
And that, like, sparked something inside of me to change
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myself, you know, to change. At that point, as much as it was
physical, it was also mental as well.
Because still to this day, I kind of see the Bob.
And that's why I continue to work out.
I continue to push myself. What do you mean you still?
Still see the big booty on the back, man, I'm still that, that,
that, that Hank's a big bone kid.
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And, and I always feel like in, in my head, I'm always fighting
that. But I look back and I think that
it was also a moment that changed my life because had I
not been told by one of my brother's friends with Bob Mitt,
because I thought it was cool atfirst, I thought I got a
nickname from the my brothers and then they were older
friends. If I didn't know what Bob meant,
I don't think it would have mademe start pushing myself and
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working out. Now I bought the Jane Fonda
tapes, started doing Jane Fonda tapes and Herschel Walker,
University of Georgia. So I started watching, watching
him play, and then he wrote a book and I started doing the
Herschel Walker workout book. He came to Germany, into
Heidelberg, the next town over, when I was 13.
Went to see him at a photo op for Kodak.
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You know, I had a picture with him when I was 13 years old.
And those are the things I was like.
That's what he did. And look at him.
He did push ups and sit ups. I can do that.
I don't have to go to the gym. I don't need equipment.
Jane Fonditate, thank goodness we had a Beta VHS.
Popped that sucker in and I would knock that stuff out.
And eventually you stick with something long enough, you start
to see results. And my father, after about six,
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7-8 months of that, watching me do stuff in front of the
television. So I want you.
I want to work out with you. We're going to work out
together. And he really got got me, you
know, started on, on everything.And I think you guys were going
for 5:30 AM morning run you and your dad like that much,
although you like subsequently ended up coming back to Germany
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to graduate high school, your class of 2, which you point out
you weren't the valedictorian. Ladies first Julie Johnson, She
was first in class. I was second in class.
I was #2 in my class. But you, for at least a
temporary time, went to the States to attend high school.
How difficult was that for you? That was hard.
That was one of the hardest things.
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Probably harder or as hard as myfirst year at college just to
leave my family, my parents and my brothers to go stay with an
uncle and used it. It was difficult because I was
at that point I felt more like Iwas European than I felt
American. I remember getting off the plane
and all you hear about at that point when you were in Germany
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was the US is bad. They have so much drugs and
drugs and drugs. And I get off the plane and I'm
in the car with my uncle going to his house and I see the
drugstore. They had drugs, a big sign and I
was like, Oh my goodness, this, this is this is really bad.
They're even putting up signs advertising to drugs here with
the drugstore. But I was that naive.
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I had no idea I was so green. And I go to a high school and I
think I've tried to block out a lot of high school.
I don't even. Remember my high school in the
States? Yeah, I don't remember much of
it because my whole focus, I'm here.
My dad said I could play football and I could get a
scholarship. He believes in me.
I can't let him down. And so I was so focused on just
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making it through school, hopefully getting this
scholarship. And if I could do that, then I
knew I could go back to Germany and I could graduate high school
there. And that was my focus.
So after, you know, six months, five months.
It happened after, I think your first semester in college.
You pack up all your stuff. Why do that?
And what was the conversation that followed with your dad?
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Well. When I left college, I packed up
everything. I packed the light bulbs out of
the lamps. I wasn't going back.
And I went back to Germany for Christmas and school has started
back after the Christmas break for like a week or so.
And my dad said shouldn't you school starts?
Shouldn't you be back at school?And I'm like, yeah, he goes, so
when are you leaving? I said, you know, I figured I
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was a man. That's the first time I felt
like a man. And I think I was 1718 at the
early 18 at the time. I go, I'm not going back.
Gotta let my voice get deep. And he said, well, what are you
going to do? It's like, well, I'm, you know,
I'm a stay here and I'm gonna get a job.
And he looked at me and his voice got deeper than mine.
And he goes, what are you going to do?
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And when he said that, I said, Ican't stay here.
I can't stay here. I know I got to go back.
It was a, it was seriously just a challenge with those simple
words. And I realized at that point,
you have an opportunity. You're going to go back.
And when you go back, you could either sit there and pout or you
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can go back and you can go all out at everything you do because
you're going to do it anyway. So why go there and just go
through the motions and be average?
Everybody can go back and go to school or anybody can go back
and play football for the most part if they're athletic enough.
But how many actually put in thework to try to be great at
something? It just because they should got
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to put in the same amount of work basically anyway.
And that was a motivating factorwhen he told me that it was life
changing. Mom and Dad can't take care of
you forever. You remember what you were
doing. Easter 1990.
Thanksgiving 9192. Easter 1990.
You know, you're at college. Everybody was going home.
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I remember that. Yeah.
It was just, oh, man, this is like sad.
I've lived a sad life, Graham, and you're bringing that out.
It was. Tough for and.
I say that, I've said that jokingly.
I have. I've lived far from a sad life,
but I remember everybody's at home Easter break and everybody
goes home. My parents are in Germany.
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They didn't have the money to fly me back and forth for for
Easter, for Thanksgiving if I was lucky.
I went home for Christmas and maybe the summer and I remember
being at school, the whole, the entire dorm is empty and it's
just me and my, my my roommate, he had these shoes where you
they make you run on your toes. They're like, you know, they're
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like a platform that high and you get in them and you can jog
and you can jump and supposedly it build up your calf muscles
and all that. I would put those things on and
I would just go running. I would work out.
And it was like this time by myself that I had no choice but
to be by myself. But it was, you know what, this
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do something. Just don't sit here and be idle.
Don't sit here and feel sorry for yourself.
But I didn't have the opportunities to to like go home
and do all those things. So I tried to make the most of
the time that I had to try to, you know, get rid of some of the
loneliness of being there by myself.
And but at the same time, when Ilook back in my life or where
it's LED, all those little moments like that led to
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something that has helped me. Or when I look back, I could see
where those things have propelled my career in some way,
shape or form. So the Cowboys told you they
were going to draft. You obviously didn't end up
working out that way. You fall to the second round,
they laughed. And your boy Jimmie Johnson, but
he and he's said as much to you,I think.
But you end up getting drafted in the second round by the
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Giants. New York being a bigger and
colder city than you ever wantedto go to, not to mention the
fact they had the legend Lawrence Taylor already in your
position. What do you I remember from your
first experience actually visiting New York?
Scared to death. I remember flying into Newark
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and it looked so industrial, youknow, and you're going, oh, boy,
I heard, you know, I didn't knowthat wasn't New York.
I was like, OK, this looks roughand tumble.
And then I end up in the city and I remember being in the car,
the taxis are driving crazy, thecorns, there are people
everywhere. And I thought Houston was fast.
I was in Germany. I thought Germany was great.
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Then I moved to Houston and by the time I left college, I felt
like I got this Houston thing down.
Yeah, this is good. This is the fast city, but I can
keep up with this. Then I come to New York and it
was on hyperdrive and I just went to my hotel room, stayed in
my room until they sent someone to pick me up and take me where
I needed to go. I would.
And because I'm in the room all day, I would just, you know, be
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so awake. And I look out the window at two
or three in the morning, people on the street like ants.
And I'm thinking I can't leave the room because if I go
outside, they're going to know I'm new and God knows what's
going to happen to me. I was like, I was walking
looking like that. Don't look up.
If you look up, people go to know that you're new here, you
maybe something may happen to you.
They may rob you, you know, who knows?
But it was just ignorance at itsbest.
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I didn't know any better. I didn't have the experience of
being here and spending time here.
And now after being here, I mean, it's my favorite place in
the world. So between talking to your socks
and reading the game program on the toilet, explain a little
what your pregame routine entailed while playing.
You asking these questions whichmakes me realize I may have told
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people a little too much. Well, my pregame was cool.
I liked it. Apparently.
I had a whole routine of doing stuff.
Everything was in a certain order.
Get there at a certain time, youknow, look at my uniform, put
things on in a certain order at a certain time.
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Everything was perfectly timed out.
And one of the things is I wouldlook at my socks and kind of,
you know, not verbally go, hey, which one do you, which foot do
you want to be on today? Like I didn't speak out loud to
my socks because our teammates would have thought I was nuts.
But I would look at my socks andI'll go, which one?
Which one would you like? Which foot would you like today?
Then they go, they debate, sometime they debate not have to
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put the sock on. And then the sock may go, I
don't like this one today. And then I would switch them up
and I go, OK, now that feels good.
I just felt if my socks didn't tell me and I put the sock on,
it was like, no, that's not a good one.
Then I would be clumsy that day.So I had to listen to the socks.
I had to. And then I would get the game
program. And as the years went on, I even
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learned myself it is football players tried to look mean in a
game program, you know, trying to look so mean.
But if you look at somebody and they're mean, you kind of expect
you have some expectations. But if you look at somebody in
the game program who you hear may be mean and they're like
this, a mean person smiling is an insane person.
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So I would change it. I would be in the program like I
did. I should do like glamour shot.
I figured if the opponent's going to look at the program,
they're going to see me smile like that.
They're going to think he's crazy.
I loved it. But I would go into the
bathroom, close the stall, not to use the bathroom or not.
And I would just go through the game program and I would look at
the pictures of my own teammatesbefore I looked at the
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opponent's teammates every week.The pictures didn't change, but
it was just my routine kind of calming to look through and, you
know, fan through. Yeah.
Yeah, it was. I don't know, maybe I need to
find an old program in a bathroom, calm my nerves.
When you're at the line, what are you seeing and what are you
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thinking about before snap? Well, I used to watch so much
film and like study habits and and little things that probably
a lot of people may didn't see. I, I would study so much film
that I would, I would start on the tackle and then I would
watch the same plays over again.You know, with three or four
games. I watched the guard at that
time. Then I watched it over again and
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I watched the center because there are certain things that
each one would do before a certain play that one may give
away what the other one's supposed to.
You know what I learned? I never, I would always be so
late to get down. I was always the last guy
basically to get into a stance and the coach used to start
yelling I go, you need to get down.
I always wait till the last second to get down because I'm
watching where everybody lines up if anybody move because I've
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already watched enough film to know.
Well if he is there, there's only certain things that he can
do. If he's here then I know he can
affect me in this way. If this tackles here and his
foot is cocked a little bit withthe heel to the inside, then
he's probably pushing off to go down.
If his heel is straight up, he'sprobably dropping by back for a
pass. If his heel is closer to the
ground, he's probably coming at me in the run.
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Then it tied in. If he's a little tighter, if
he's a little looser, it's a double team.
It's not like I would sit there and look at everybody and it's
like dissect and at the last second I'd get down and I'm
ready to go. But I used to love to like
dissect the play and it made thegame easier because I knew there
were certain plays. There's no way this play is
coming towards me. All I got to do is seal off the
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backside. So don't even waste the energy
exploding off the line and then got to gather yourself because
you're out of position because you really need to go that way.
I was able to ease off and just shuffle down the line.
It saved a lot of energy so thatI was able to be a little bit
more explosive later in the gamebecause I knew where to conserve
and then where to go all. Out describe how you would
basically go deaf when you got to the line.
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But you don't hear anything. You're so focused.
And this is a great this, this is so great now for me because
it let me know whenever you really want to focus on
something, you can shut out everything else.
You're on the field. You got 80,000 people screaming.
They're screaming. And the second they walk up to
that line and you just start looking at things and you put
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your hand, I don't hear anything.
I may hear you breathing across from me.
I may look at you and smile at you and I made sometimes I would
say, are they going to run it right here?
Are they going to run it the other way?
I can hear the quarterback and Ican hear the linebacker from my
team who's calling the plays or I can hear myself talking.
I can't hear 1 fan. It's like you just take that
hole, you have that circle and that's the only circle you can
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hear. Everything else outside of it,
you don't hear a thing. And then after the play, say you
get a sack and you stand up and it's like the the, the volume on
your stereo is cranked up to theMax because all of a sudden
everybody bursts in. And that's where you do all the
stupid dancing because it's justthe energy hit you all of a
sudden. Teammates will occasionally get
into it with each other as well and you wanted to make a point
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early on and making sure nobody messed with you.
Two instances when I get what you recall from each.
The first being when the Giants the year after drafting you
draft 1/4 rounder on your team who also happened to be a member
of the Bloods gang. And then the other one being
when you decide it's good idea to take on the biggest guy on
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your team's Scott Gregg. Well, thank goodness I won both.
If not, it may be a different stories that they're talking
about. But yeah, I, I think the first
was Chris Mamalonga. Chris Mamalonga, great player.
I mean defensive tackle, big guy.
And he but he had a penchant forfighting off the field.
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Literally, I think he knocked out two of our teammates playing
video games over to video games.And it was a, it was a offseason
and during the offseason at thatpoint in my career, I was quite
a few, three or four years in, Iif I remember correctly.
And he just was just picking on me that day.
And then he was, he was, he had just finished his first year.
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He was going to a second year. And I guess he was feeling good
about himself. He had a Goodyear.
And I just was like, dude, like,just shut up at this point.
Just shut up. Like trying to be quiet about
it, but he kept going. And then I think I offended him
and I said, you know what? Why are you even talking to me?
You're a rookie. So just shut up Rook and that
and we got a room full of of guys.
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So either I got a dat like this and I got to say these things
after trying to quiet down for awhile, or you're not going to be
respected. Just not because if I were to
back down, then I'm going to look like you know what?
Oh yeah, stray hand. Just challenge him.
He's scared. So I I had to say, you know
what, shut up Rook. You're Rook.
You shouldn't be talking right now.
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You have no right to talk. And he kept going and he kept
going and I find and he's like, you think you can whip me?
And I'm like, I didn't, I didn't.
I'm not saying I could whip you.I'm not even talking about
fighting you. But if you, if you started,
we're going to have to go. And in the back of my head I'm
thinking, oh Lord, I don't want to fight this guy.
And he and I kept going at it, going at it, going at it.
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Then eventually I'm standing up against the board and he gets up
and after many times of if you come at, we're going to have to
go at the many times that he stands up, he gets up in my face
and I knew he had a thing about just stealing guys, you know,
Bam hitting you before you knew what was coming.
And I'm standing there against the board.
I'm thinking, oh, he's going to swing.
Here comes and he swung, but I was ready and I ducked and he
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swung so hard. This is a 300 something pound
guy. He swung.
He spun around to where I lockedhim from behind and picked him
up and slammed him on the ground.
And then by that time I'm in control.
So that's when you're, you know,you start.
I told you not to mess with me, boy.
I will whip you. Like I said, you know, I started
talking good stuff then. And the weird thing is he was
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never the same player after thatwas not the same, was not the
same player. And maybe I think it was a
confidence thing. It took his confidence away And
and I like the guy had his moments as a player.
But you know, I learned you got to stand up for yourself and
Scott Gregg, that was nothing more than just two guys that
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practice fighter. I mean we're, I love Scott,
great guy. I went against him every day in
practice. 676-8320 I mean the mountain man and well.
You said you've looked back and you're like.
Yeah, I could have killed him. And I look back now and I'm
like, oh, that was stupid. But at the time, you don't
understand. It's a different switch.
It reminds me of when I went to Africa and I look at a lion and
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a lion has in his eyes, there's no life.
There's no concern for you. I'll eat you right now.
I'll kill you. I don't care.
You don't matter to me. And when I put on a helmet.
That's what happens. I don't care about you.
I don't care. You get hurt.
Hey, you get hurt me or you ain't going to be me.
And that was just the mentality that that happened.
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So Scott, I would look at him inthe locker room like, Oh my
goodness, big guy. But once I put on a uniform,
we're on the field and it's it'sdoing a Big Spring practice.
We just have on helmets we don'thave on anything else.
And Jesse Armstead, him got intoit.
Jesse knocked him down the wholeteam.
But whoa. So the next play I'm like, OK,
here we go. Scott's going to try to come at
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me even though I had nothing to do with it.
We don't have any equipment on. Well, the next play was a slant.
He went that way and grabbed another linebacker and tossed
that guy. Whoa.
And I'm thinking, OK, it's over.He's got it out of his system.
Well, then the next play comes at me and kind of bracing for
it. So we're struggling and we're
fighting and I'm like, dude, like what's your problem?
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He grabs my face mask. So I grabbed his face mask and
then we're tussling and then hishelmet comes off and he still
had my face mask and I'm in that.
I don't care about you. I looked at it for a second and
thought about it. Why not?
I hit him in the head and I justremember him.
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He falls back like that and thenwhen he falls back then I jumped
on him again. No, you did.
Yeah, God had you have to, you know, fight MMA, got to finish
him. And so I'm down and I'm punched
that they pulled me off. And by that time, Jesse Armstead
started fighting somebody over here, somebody else started
fighting somebody over there. And coach called practice off
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and we get in the locker room and Scott had a little blood and
everything else and he looked atme and go, you got me today.
And that was it. We were great.
We were back at it and that's kind of like what sports is.
It's a challenge and sometime maybe best man wins.
Sometimes it's not always going to be you.
I was just fortunate that it wasme on those two occasions.
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Any lasting injuries or pain from your playing days?
I feel great, to be honest with you.
I think pain and and injury and like stuff.
I think of more of that. Just a life of living for me and
a lot of guys with a lot of different things.
For me, I heard everything, man.I heard everything.
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Some things like I tore my PEC. That was a major thing.
I had wrist surgery. Your fingers are all.
Tore my thumb. But the finger stuff is easy.
I mean, that's nothing. You know, you do when that
happens and you you throw a guy and you run into the play and
the play is over and you go ow and you look and your fingers
sitting like that, you grab it and you snap it back.
And then you think to yourself, I cannot show that I'm hurt.
I can't run to the sideline to tell the coach I hurt my finger.
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It's not that sport. That's not football.
You suck it up and you get back down and you think to yourself,
I hope they don't do anything over here, this play until I get
off this field where I have to use my left hand.
Explain why you never wore a mouthpiece.
Like come on, look at my teeth, man.
There was something. That was like, hey, maybe I'd
get them fixed for free, who knows.
But that that was a conscious decision though, right?
(23:08):
Because you didn't want to like,proactively have the.
Yeah, well, I'm. Wearing mouth before my teeth
are what my teeth are. You know, a lot of guys out
there were pretty smiled. They were worried about how they
look. I look like this, so I always
will. And the worst thing about it was
there were a few times I'd bite through my tongue because, you
know, Michael Jordan would be out there.
Well, you do do that too. And you hit a guy who's got your
(23:30):
tongue out and you hit him so hard it makes you clench, and
then you bite through your tongue.
That was the worst. But once I did that a few times,
I learned not to do that. And I enjoyed not having a
mouthpiece. I could breathe better.
I could talk. You know, I just felt like I'm
out there freewheeling and just doing my thing.
And my teeth are, you know, theymay not be be be together, but
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they're clean and pretty straight.
You wrote in your book that you occasionally had to to negotiate
with pain, and you said you'd have to bring a third party to
negotiations. Occasionally writing quote, I
like to call it the Law Offices of Toradol, Lidocaine and
Vicodin LLC. Sometimes we also place a call
(24:13):
to Indocin and Naprosyn. And then there's the little
private investigator named Prednisone.
When you're playing, you know, my the after effects of the game
now I don't feel I feel better now that I felt I was 20, 25.
But when you are playing the game, you feel bad.
I mean, it takes a toll. It beats you up and there are
certain days you wake up or certain times you realize that
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you need to play that physically, you need help
getting there. And and I wasn't a big guy on,
you know, Percocets and all these other things like that.
I only did that only if necessary, Toradol, only if I'm
in the middle of a game and and I hurt my back and I can't walk.
But yet I remember I hurt my back one day, one game, Keith
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Hamilton tore his Achilles and we're both in the locker room,
games going on out there and Keith looks at me and he goes,
hey, hey man, 'cause we're the vets.
One of us got to get back out there and I'm looking at him
going. Well, basically you're telling
me that I need to go because youtold your Achilles that not, no,
you're not going back out there.So you know what, I'll take a
Toradol shot. I'll take that for the guys so I
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can get back out there and play and try to help this team win.
That's what that's what you did.And, and I never did anything.
I was never forced to do anything.
I always felt like I did what I wanted to do.
But the biggest thing that I, I probably the thing I probably
took the most was innocent and aperson.
And I would take my 14th year inthe league.
(25:39):
I would take it on Friday through Sunday.
Then year 15, I pretty much had to take it every day.
And after playing a season like that, I realized I don't want to
take this stuff every day. I mean, thank goodness we won
the Super Bowl because I forget a long life to live after
football. I never understood guys or
(26:00):
people who are so willing to sacrifice with steroids and all
these things that are tearing your body apart for such a short
period of your life. I want to live and have a good
life afterwards. That's a life that's had to have
a good liver and a good kidney and all these other important
parts that you need to survive. I know you're rightly proud of
the fact that you spend 15 yearswith the same team, began the
(26:21):
career as a starter, finished asa starter with the Super Bowl
championship. But there was a conversation
with your dad that you had, I think, after winning the
championship that made you realize, hey, I actually don't
want to go back for another year.
Always weird because I don't cryat much, but whenever there's a
story of in sports or like some any type of story where you make
(26:47):
your parents or you make somebody proud of you for then
those get me. And I'll never forget watching
the movie Babe and the pig wins the show and the the pig is
basically looking at the farmer like what's next, What's next?
And he goes, that'll do pig, that'll do.
That's what I keep doing. Great job, proud of you.
(27:10):
That's it. You don't have to do anything
else. And I called my dad to talk to
him like, you know, I'm really thinking about retiring.
And I thought he was going to, you know, maybe put up some
resistance to it because in mostways, I only did it because my
dad said you can be a football player.
You can get a scholarship when you make it to the pros, when
you win the Super Bowl, when you're an all pro, when you're
this. I did it because he told me that
(27:32):
I could do it. I didn't necessarily do it
because I cared about being famous and, or any of these
things, because, you know, I want to make my dad proud.
And I remember starting out the conversation, my dad pretty much
said, you know what, you don't have to say anything else.
I, you, I think you should you, you prove it.
Nothing else for you to prove. And when he said that, I
literally, I almost by the crap right now, man, I felt like, I
(27:57):
felt like that pig and baby, I did.
I, I made you proud. Nothing else I can do in this
job, this profession to make youproud.
And and and that was it done. And I wasn't one of these guys
who's going to retire. And when guys retire and I see
them crying, I know you're goingto miss your your career.
(28:19):
I know you're going to miss it. But now a whole nother chapter
of your life starts. And I feel like I put everything
into it, everything. I didn't leave anything out
there that I could ever look back and felt like I want to cry
over this because I know it was something else there.
Could I have physically gone outthere and played?
Yeah. But I knew I gave everything
mentally that I could give and out of my heart to the game.
(28:40):
What made you say Hall of Fame weekend was then the highlight
of your life? That was it, because like this
career that I had all came down to being inducted into like the
greatest fraternity, I guess youcan call it.
You can be inducted into when itcomes to the game of football,
the biggest sport in this country.
(29:00):
And to be a part of that, we're only a very select few where are
able to be a part of it was special.
And also they have my family there like they have my parents
and all my kids and I had my coworkers and all my friends and
people who came that I'd want that I invited.
And I thinking that they would show up because I don't look at
(29:22):
myself in a way to think, Oh yeah, you know, this, this
person going to show it for me. And I almost feel bad asking
people to show up. But everybody I asked showed up
or was happy to be there, had a great time.
And it was like bringing together all the people who were
influential in my career in one shape, one way shape or form to
to the biggest celebration of mycareer as an individual.
(29:44):
But the biggest one was Super Bowl.
You know, I, I, I look back and I think Hall of Fame, yeah, as
individuals, it's the greatest thing.
Would never give that up. But the Super Bowl, just to see
the happiness on a young Eli Manning, the first one, three or
four years in the league, to seethe happiness on his face is as
happy as the joy on my face. We've been there for 15 and this
(30:07):
is something that we can share with these guys and this is so
special. And it still is to this day
because we all still talk. We're on group text, You know,
it's like that's a family in a bond that'll never be broken
because we accomplished something together that you need
each other to do. And it's special when you do
something that involves everybody else in the Hall of
Fame being an individual honor. It doesn't happen without Keith
(30:27):
Hamilton and Jesse Armstead and Jason Seahorn and even a guy
came in with like Marcus Buckleyand all these guys that were big
parts. Robert Harris.
I can keep on naming, going on and on with big parts of my
life, my career. How motivated are you by fear?
Every day I've got fear. I'm I'm afraid to fail.
(30:49):
I'm afraid. I really AM.
Most people are. A lot of people are motivated by
fear. I am motivated by fear.
I'm not. I'm not motivated by oh, yeah,
if I can get this done, this what I'm going to get at the end
of it, the reward. Reward.
I I OK, that's great. I'm motivated by the fact that
if it fails, that just doesn't feel good.
(31:10):
You know what, what, what, what would be thought of the failure.
And I've learned that sometimes failure is necessary in order to
find your path to another place where you can succeed.
Though failure doesn't mean thatI look at failure totally
different now. I look at failure.
It's a learning experience now. I've done things that have
failed and I'm happy that they failed because if they hadn't,
to be honest with you, I wouldn't be where I am now and
(31:30):
it would have been a totally different path that I really
couldn't see myself on anyway. So failure is is the way of
sometimes getting you back on the right path where you should
be. You have a quote I understand.
Hard work will put you where. Good luck will find you.
Explain that. Hard work puts you in a position
(31:53):
where the harder you work, the luckier you get.
Yogi Berra, That's basically what it is.
Hard work gets you into a room per SE, but once you get into
that room, you got to make it soyou stick and stay.
Hard work gets you there. Luck will get you there, but
once you're there, you got to prove that you belong there in
(32:14):
more ways than just that. And I just know from my hard
work in my life is have put me in rooms and and places where
God, whoever would have thought that.
I mean, my whole Hall of Fame speech was about improbable to
possible. I mean, it's improbable.
I'm this 9 year old kid living in Germany who starts working
out and then he comes to the States and he doesn't really
(32:35):
play football and he watches on TV and he gets a scholarship.
All improbable to think that that kid ends up in the Pro
Football Hall of Fame or ends updoing everything that I do now.
But it goes to show that something may seem improbable
and the way that we think or theway other people think about it,
but it's not impossible. It's very possible.
In what ways will you try and outwork people?
(32:56):
Because everybody I talked to about he's like he's, you know,
the first one in less to leave when you're.
No, no, no, no, no. That's why.
You're playing football. Not the first one.
You. Grandma was not the first one
in. They're trying to.
They're trying to make me look good.
I was not the first one in. I may have been the last one
out, but I was not the first onein, but I maximized every second
(33:17):
that I was there. I didn't get there and sit
around for an hour before there was time to do anything.
Why would I do that? I was always after practice.
We, you know, I come in when I need to be there, all the
meetings, the practices and all that stuff.
And during lunch breaks, you know, when we have our lunch
period, which under under the coach with hour and a half or so
(33:39):
hour and 15 hour and 2030 minutes.
Most guys that go in there and they're watching all my children
and having lunch. It's a lunch break.
Me, I had a routine. I come in, I get out of my
practice uniform, I put on my workout clothes and I go to the
gym. I'm going to go work out because
I know I'm tired from running all out all day on the field.
I'm tired from pushing guys. But if I can go in the weight
(34:01):
room and I can lift the same weights that I lift when I'm
fresh, If I can run on that treadmill at 10° incline, 11
degree incline at 10 or 11 mph for sprints after practice, then
when I'm in the game and that's saying and, and the guys are
tired and I'm tired, I'm like, oh, I still don't know.
I got more in the tank 'cause I go kill it after, after I'm done
(34:22):
at I got a lot more in the tank.You're going to get a lot more
tired before I ever do. And it was just a mentally for
me, it was a way to say you always have more in the tank.
So I would always outwork anybody in the weight room.
I would always run sprints. I would always watch more film
and I would watch film every night during the season before I
went to bed because I wanted to go to sleep with it on my mind.
(34:44):
I would be in the grocery store of doing pass rush moves.
I mean, it was always on my mind.
So you're obviously a hugely successful, driven, motivated
individuals. You have 4 kids of your own.
How difficult is it to be the type of parent that you want to
be when you are pulled in all these different directions and
have as busy of a schedule as you have I?
(35:05):
Don't. Yeah, be honest with you.
It's not. And I found for me it's it's
compartmentalizing different things and work is completely
different from home life. I mean, when I'm at work, it's
like, OK, I'm focused on this. I'm focused on this, focus on
this. When I go home, there's no
focus. There's like I'm home.
I just want to relax. I want to have a good time.
(35:25):
I don't work to come home and bring the stress of work home.
Then I'm still working when I leave work and I don't care what
the day was like. I'm at home.
And it's like with the kids, it's the best thing because
that's when you find out when you have kids, that's really
what life is all about. It's like, wow, I was put on
this planet and I have these other people.
(35:47):
I'm responsible for the things that they learn, the way that
they treat people, the way they interact, interact, the, the way
they approach stuff all come from me.
And I, I try to be a, a great parent who, you know, there's
discipline and there are rules, no doubt.
But I always want my kids to feel comfortable enough to talk
to me. I always want my kids to feel
(36:08):
that they know I got their back 100%.
And that says I'm the one personin their life they will love
them no matter what, no matter what, I'll always love them
right or wrong. And that is the thing I, I
retired when I was 36 from football.
My twins were three, three yearsold.
And here I am talking about workhard, get out there and then go
(36:31):
all give it everything you got. They never saw that.
They'd never see me and never Remember Me playing football.
I mean, they're Carolina Panthers fans.
Yeah, but they. See God's sake.
I mean, but they see me now and that's why I work hard like I do
now, because I want all of my kids to see me and know that it
does not. It's not easy.
Nobody gives you anything. You got to go earn it.
(36:54):
What do you like to live with? What am I like to live with?
I'm almost like living with a baby.
How so? Because I don't, you know, if,
if somebody else could do something for me sometimes, wow,
I don't necessarily want to do it, but I've learned to be more
collaborative in life, you know,to, to, to make sure that people
(37:17):
around me are happy, to make sure that I'm willing.
If somebody's willing to get up and get me a glass of water in
the middle of night, why shouldn't I get up and get them
a glass of water in the middle of night when they ask for it?
They're willing to do this for me.
Why wouldn't I be willing to do that?
But I think living with me is, Iwould like to think that it's
fun. I'm, I'm not a demanding, I'm
not a high maintenance. I like to do things for myself,
(37:40):
but I like company. I like vacations and I think I'm
at the point where I just want to enjoy life.
I don't. I don't.
I don't want to work forever. I want to.
I want to enjoy life at some point.
How do you view marriage and could you see getting married
again? I think marriage is great.
I really do. And I know I've had a few
(38:01):
failures and I say you learn from your failures, right?
But I think my, you know, my first marriage was with Wanda
was we were just young and she'sone of my best friends to this
day. I mean, I love her to death and
have two great kids. And and so that was a a great
experience where we both realized we were young, out of
(38:22):
our league, didn't know how we were supposed to be or active
and trying to be kids, trying toplay adults.
And but now that we've realized that we come to that agreement
together, like we have our understanding together, we've
grown together. And then my second marriage,
that one was probably not the definitely not the greatest
experience, but I did learn a lot from that.
(38:43):
And I end up with two incredibleteenagers right now, which
scares me to death, girls. But I'm I love marriage.
I like companionship. I'm not against it at all.
Would I ever get married again? I'll never say never.
I'm not going to be so bitter togo.
Oh yeah, I got divorced and, youknow, stay away from marriage.
No, I'm not that guy. How aware were you of what you
(39:03):
wanted to do post football? Little bit as far as as far as
commentating, I started doing stuff a long time before I
retired. So I kind of knew what I was
getting the sense that I could be in that business.
I got called from, you know, native head of a network who
wanted to have breakfast. And I'm like, I don't have
(39:25):
breakfast with me. And I sit down with him and he
goes, how long do you want to play football?
How much longer do you want to play football?
And I'm like, oh, wow, OK, I never thought about that.
And then he goes into why he asked me that question, which
was for a commentating job. And then I did every network.
I did Super Bowls, I did all these different things with
different networks. And I ended up at Fox.
And I felt comfortable in that role.
(39:47):
Not immediately. I mean, at the first three
weeks, I was ready to go back tofootball.
But I realized I could do that for a long time.
And everything else just kind ofhappened.
Always been like someone who's looking for, you know, something
else. Always trying to, you know, to
keep busy. Football's five months and then
it's one day a week basically onFox.
(40:08):
So I needed something else to get busy.
And now I'm busier than I've ever been, even when I was
playing football. Really.
Yeah. Oh yeah.
Why decide to start a managementand production company?
Because it's fun, it's interesting, and I've an
incredible partner. I mean, Constance Schwartz, it's
my sister. I've known her for 2425 years
and the most incredible partner you can have and partnership you
(40:30):
can have. And the way that it works.
I mean, it's so interesting to have somebody who has a career,
who has a place they want to go and then you sit there and have
to try to figure out the pieces to help them get there.
And I love being able to, you know, help people get places
where they want to go because I was that person who was hoping
(40:50):
to get somewhere and have to pick and choose the right pieces
along with Constance to make it happen.
And to be a part of someone else's career like that is
special. I mean, it's a lot of trust
involved in that. What do you think you've learned
so far in building the company? Man, I think the thing, the
biggest thing is there are so many avenues and so many
different things that you can doyou, you always be open.
(41:13):
You could think I learned the most always be open to different
opportunities that may seem a little unconventional and always
listen. We get so trapped into thinking,
oh, you know, I'm, I'm running this and I'm successful and, and
I'm the boss. You don't listen to everybody
around you. And, and now when you're at my
age and you have your kids who you work with, who in their
early 20s, I, I don't know how alot of this new modern age stuff
(41:37):
is. Be honest with you.
I'm not that interested in it, but they are.
They're the future. That's the that.
So you listen to everybody. Don't cut people out because you
think they're too young or they just don't know what they're
talking about. They haven't been in this
business as long as I have. You always have to be open to
ideas to people. That's how you get better.
That's how you expand. That's how you stay current,
(41:57):
that's how you innovate. And I think that's the one thing
I've learned. The one thing we try to do our
best at is making everyone feel included in our business.
Make everyone feel valuable in our business and and let them
know that we value their opinionand that it does count.
Where would you like to take thecompany long term?
Long term, Oh man, you know, I think for right now with my
(42:19):
personal stuff that we do between GMA and and $100,000
pyramid and, and, and the clothing company at JC Penney
and the production company, all the the Joker's wild, we do with
Snoop. We want to just grow it.
And then with Wiz and Tony Gonzalez and Dion and and Erin
Andrews and Curt Menifee, we want to just build business that
(42:40):
we manage. We want to build businesses off
of who they are, things that areorganic to them.
We don't do it for money. We don't do things for money.
You can have your client, somebody can write them a big
check to do this. If it doesn't fit, then we won't
do it. And sometimes it's hard to
understand even for the client, because sometimes I was that
client to go con. It's a lot of money, but if we
(43:00):
don't get, they don't get paid, we don't get paid.
And we always try to do our, we always make sure their best
interest is what we're after, not our own.
I think when you do that, you build friendships in a family
environment in which what we have at our company and and
that's what we always hope to maintain.
How long do you want to work for?
I don't know. When you do something
(43:20):
repetitively, I don't care what it is and it's the same thing.
It can become the same thing. And I don't want to lose
gratefulness of being there and being a part of something.
So I'm a big believer in football.
When it was done, it was done. I could have played a few more
years. They wanted me to play.
They doubled my salary. The next year.
I said, no, I'm good. And one day I may be like I say,
like Forrest Gump when he's jogging.
(43:41):
And then he just stopped and gotall these people behind him and
they go. He turns around and said, I'm
going home now. And they're like, why?
That's it. That's me when it's over.
Well, I was going to turn. Around and go home.
Because you, you kind of said that to me a couple weeks ago,
but then I was talking to a couple of your friends who said
(44:03):
for him, retirement is more a dream than reality.
I had a conversation last night at dinner with a friend of mine.
We have a little bit, I'm not going to tell you how many years
we bet on, but we have a little bit about how long I'll work.
At some point, you got to look back.
And I love my life and I enjoy my life.
But at some point, my kids are in college.
(44:24):
I want to be able to go to college.
I want to be able to say, yeah, let's take a trip.
Not, oh, you know, I got to get this vacation time off.
Well, there's a game on Sundays.I can't.
I want a life where there's somefreedom at some point.
Is it in two years, three years,five years, 10 years, 1520?
I don't know. But I guarantee you this, I'll
be off TV before a lot of peoplesick of seeing me on TV.
(44:49):
You were guest hosting an episode of live actor Channing
Tatum's on. What about what you did got you
the job, and how did you find out you actually got it?
Oh. Boy, the first, first time I did
that show, I was scared to deathand and then by the time
Channing came on, I had done a few and I had nothing to lose.
(45:12):
Think about it. I was the last guy they were
going to hire. You got Regis Philbin and you
got me. You're not going to follow Regis
Philbin with me. The guy who had no experience in
that genre television, an ex athlete, a guy, a big 6 foot 5
black guy, just ain't going to happen.
So I went in and I didn't have any fear.
So when Channing came on for Magic Mike, I was the day before
(45:33):
and I kept Channing coming off of Magic Mike.
Maybe I should say I'm the real Magic Mike and I should RIP off
and do a striptease. Just joking.
Just like that. I throw it out into the room and
the producers going, would you be willing to do that?
And I'm like, yeah, I didn't think they were going to be able
to pull it off. I'm like, no way.
Can you make pants that quick, that tear away?
I forgot they have costume departments on television.
(45:54):
So they made the pants. They did all these things.
The next day he comes out and I just go back and I change it to
those pants and it was like, here we go and you just got to
do it. Those are things I would never
do if it weren't for that show. And on the show, there's things
I do on TVI would never do anywhere else.
(46:16):
How'd you find out you got the full time?
I got called up to the office ofthe Dave Davis, who runs ABC,
local ABC station here. And I get called up there and I
walk in and it's Dave, it's Michael Gellman and it's Kelly.
And we sit there and they start some small talk about the
history of ABC. And I'm going, OK, why do I need
(46:36):
to know the history of ABC? But I'll listen.
And then Kelly broke in and justsaid, hey, we want to know if
you consider taking the job fulltime.
And she started talking. And I literally I did like Larry
McGuire said, stop, you had me. I consider I wanted it to be
(46:56):
memorable and it was. And that was that.
Four years. Four years of it.
Yeah, obviously it was tabloid fodder.
Rumors swirled amid the switch from live to GMA.
Hindsight certainly 2020, But ifyou had to do it over again,
(47:18):
what, if anything? Nothing.
There's nothing I would have done differently, nothing to do
differently. You know, I handled it as
professional as you can handle it.
And I would have been a professional from day one there
to the last day I left. And I treated it just like I
treated my NFL career, just likeI treat everything I do.
I do everything to the best thatI could do, the most respectful
(47:40):
way to everybody around me, thatI have no regrets.
So when I left there, it was tabloid fodder.
But I think that was more for the tabloids in the seldom than
it ever was for me because I left, I slept well, still sleep
well, and I wake up now every day and I go to another great
job and live with a great job, the great learning experience
for me. But you know, just like
everything else, football was one point in my life that moved
(48:02):
on to sports, TV was moved on todaytime, TV was moved on to
Morning News. And you.
I have the opportunity to do something that most people
don't. I get a chance to evolve, to do
different creative things. And one day I may wake up and
morning TV may not be there. Then it's time to move on to
something else. So I always have done everything
the best most respectful way andI have 0 regrets about anything.
(48:27):
I was having, you know, dinner with the Hollywood producer a
couple weeks ago, told him I wasworking on a taping with you,
and I'm interested to get your reaction to this because he's
like, for the life of me, regardless the amount of money,
I don't understand why Michael would make the switch to GMA
because you go from a place where you have your name in the
show that you can host the rest of your life if you wanted to,
(48:50):
being one of several. But it's that that's not your
perspective. And so I was curious.
To get your reaction, I think that's AI think that's a way of
somebody who's on the outside looking in who doesn't
understand. And that's also a very selfish
way of looking at it. And, and I, I don't, I'm not
surprised it came from somebody who's in a business where it's
all about, it's me, I got to getmine.
(49:12):
I'm not from that business. I've got mine by working with
other people. Sports was great.
I mean, sports set me up to where I don't have to work.
A lot of people don't understandwhy I work as much as I do.
I do it because I love it. I don't do it because I care
about the attention. I don't have to do it.
I do it for my kids. But they see a great example and
I could care less about having my name on the show.
(49:32):
More eyeballs are on GMA, so when they go, George
Stephanopoulos, Robin Roberts, Joe Stephanopoulos, Michael
Strahan, more people see that and see live with Mike Kelly and
Michael. I could care less about having
my name if they didn't want to put my name at GMA.
I'm fine. I just want to be in great
working environments, working with great people, having a
great experience, man. And a lot of people think, oh,
(49:53):
why would he leave? He wants to host that for the
rest of it. Who wants to host something for
the rest of it? I don't want to do that forever.
It's no. People get so complacent.
It makes me sick that someone you know, think, well, you got a
good job, you just got to keep it.
Religion of sports, How did it come about?
(50:13):
Religion of Sports. I had a conversation with Gotham
Chopra, Deepak son years ago. Met at a diner in LA and friend
of ours, mutual friend of ours, connected us and we're just
sitting there talking and eatingand friend thought there was
something that we could work on together.
And Gotham brought up religion of sports and explained the
whole thing to me. And I was like, you know what?
(50:34):
That's fantastic, really amazing.
But years went past and then we finally started to work on it
after some time and it just got better and better.
The concept of it got better andbetter.
We sold it to DIRECTV, The Audience Network, kicked it off
at Tribeca at the Tribeca Film Festival, and it's just taking
(50:56):
off from there. And then we brought Tom came in,
you know Tom Brady. Tom Brady came in, you know, you
know him. You call him Tom.
I'm joking. But when Tom Brady came in and
added another level to it all and Tom is talk about the
ultimate driven guy, I am amazedat what he does because I
realized physically you can do something.
(51:18):
But when you don't have that motivation internally, and it's
so hard and I can imagine, I know the motivation I have for
15. I can imagine having the
motivation he had has now to this day.
It's amazing to me. And he brings that same
motivation to what he wants to do off the field.
And Tom's been very particular about what he wants to do.
He only wants to be a part of the best.
And we've sat down and had this conversation about religion and
(51:40):
sports and what we do, the content, everything we do has to
be the best. It has to exemplify the people
who are involved and none of us are involved in anything that we
don't want to be the best at. And we all have become this
incredible team and put togetherincredible pieces.
And two years on on DIRECTV and hopefully more.
(52:02):
And then we had a Tom versus Time series that has been
gangbusters for Facebook and oneof the most interesting things
I've ever seen. And we're going to continue to
grow this business, continue to to roll it out and hopefully
continue to bring everybody a lot of great content.
Thanks for listening to this week's podcast.
Don't forget to leave a rating and review and for more in depth
(52:22):
interviews visit grahambensinger.com.
Hey guys, this week we're catching up with one of the
busiest and most successful personalities in television, and
he happens to have played in theNFL.
Broken Sack Records Retired a Super Bowl champ and went on to
earn Pro Football Hall of Fame honors.
Michael Strahan Strahan opens upabout his departure from daytime
TV and Kelly Ripa. I would have been a professional
(00:21):
from day one there to the last day I left.
Share some fun stories from his 15 years with the New York
Giants. If you look at somebody in the
game program who you hear may bemean and they're like this, a
mean person smiling is an insaneperson.
So I would change it. I would be in the program like I
do. I should do like Glamour shot
and. Gets introspective as he talks
(00:45):
about why he still works so hardtoday, even though he's no
longer motivated by money. A lot of people don't understand
why I work as much as I do. I do it because I love it.
But first, the seven time Pro Bowler takes us to his days as a
kid growing up as the youngest of six kids and a military brat
in Germany. You were one of six kids, your
(01:06):
dad, military officer who actually once fought Ken Norton
said You used to tell your threeolder brothers, quote, one day
I'm going to be somebody. I'm going to be famous.
What were you thinking then? Yeah, well, I have.
I don't know I just got tired ofthem picking on me so I figured
if I said that they would leave me alone and hopefully be nice
(01:29):
so that if I do become that way I can do a favor for.
Them and picking on you. They didn't.
They picked on me. They picked on me endlessly.
They picked on me, their friendspicked on me.
I'm the youngest of 6. So I look back now and I, I
think, what else could I have expected?
I should have expected it now, but it was.
What? What is that nickname?
Bob. Yeah.
Nickname was Bob. Bob meant booty on back.
(01:52):
Yeah, great nickname. It meant I was a chunky kid.
I didn't play any sports. I played football when we were
in North Carolina when I was 7 and 8.
Then once we moved to Germany, that kind of phased out and I
just ate until I was Bob. And that gave me the motivation.
And that, like, sparked something inside of me to change
(02:12):
myself, you know, to change. At that point, as much as it was
physical, it was also mental as well.
Because still to this day, I kind of see the Bob.
And that's why I continue to work out.
I continue to push myself. What do you mean you still?
Still see the big booty on the back, man, I'm still that, that,
that, that Hank's a big bone kid.
(02:33):
And, and I always feel like in, in my head, I'm always fighting
that. But I look back and I think that
it was also a moment that changed my life because had I
not been told by one of my brother's friends with Bob Mitt,
because I thought it was cool atfirst, I thought I got a
nickname from the my brothers and then they were older
friends. If I didn't know what Bob meant,
I don't think it would have mademe start pushing myself and
(02:57):
working out. Now I bought the Jane Fonda
tapes, started doing Jane Fonda tapes and Herschel Walker,
University of Georgia. So I started watching, watching
him play, and then he wrote a book and I started doing the
Herschel Walker workout book. He came to Germany, into
Heidelberg, the next town over, when I was 13.
Went to see him at a photo op for Kodak.
(03:18):
You know, I had a picture with him when I was 13 years old.
And those are the things I was like.
That's what he did. And look at him.
He did push ups and sit ups. I can do that.
I don't have to go to the gym. I don't need equipment.
Jane Fonditate, thank goodness we had a Beta VHS.
Popped that sucker in and I would knock that stuff out.
And eventually you stick with something long enough, you start
to see results. And my father, after about six,
(03:40):
7-8 months of that, watching me do stuff in front of the
television. So I want you.
I want to work out with you. We're going to work out
together. And he really got got me, you
know, started on, on everything.And I think you guys were going
for 5:30 AM morning run you and your dad like that much,
although you like subsequently ended up coming back to Germany
(04:01):
to graduate high school, your class of 2, which you point out
you weren't the valedictorian. Ladies first Julie Johnson, She
was first in class. I was second in class.
I was #2 in my class. But you, for at least a
temporary time, went to the States to attend high school.
How difficult was that for you? That was hard.
That was one of the hardest things.
(04:23):
Probably harder or as hard as myfirst year at college just to
leave my family, my parents and my brothers to go stay with an
uncle and used it. It was difficult because I was
at that point I felt more like Iwas European than I felt
American. I remember getting off the plane
and all you hear about at that point when you were in Germany
(04:43):
was the US is bad. They have so much drugs and
drugs and drugs. And I get off the plane and I'm
in the car with my uncle going to his house and I see the
drugstore. They had drugs, a big sign and I
was like, Oh my goodness, this, this is this is really bad.
They're even putting up signs advertising to drugs here with
the drugstore. But I was that naive.
(05:04):
I had no idea I was so green. And I go to a high school and I
think I've tried to block out a lot of high school.
I don't even. Remember my high school in the
States? Yeah, I don't remember much of
it because my whole focus, I'm here.
My dad said I could play football and I could get a
scholarship. He believes in me.
I can't let him down. And so I was so focused on just
(05:25):
making it through school, hopefully getting this
scholarship. And if I could do that, then I
knew I could go back to Germany and I could graduate high school
there. And that was my focus.
So after, you know, six months, five months.
It happened after, I think your first semester in college.
You pack up all your stuff. Why do that?
And what was the conversation that followed with your dad?
(05:47):
Well. When I left college, I packed up
everything. I packed the light bulbs out of
the lamps. I wasn't going back.
And I went back to Germany for Christmas and school has started
back after the Christmas break for like a week or so.
And my dad said shouldn't you school starts?
Shouldn't you be back at school?And I'm like, yeah, he goes, so
when are you leaving? I said, you know, I figured I
(06:09):
was a man. That's the first time I felt
like a man. And I think I was 1718 at the
early 18 at the time. I go, I'm not going back.
Gotta let my voice get deep. And he said, well, what are you
going to do? It's like, well, I'm, you know,
I'm a stay here and I'm gonna get a job.
And he looked at me and his voice got deeper than mine.
And he goes, what are you going to do?
(06:31):
And when he said that, I said, Ican't stay here.
I can't stay here. I know I got to go back.
It was a, it was seriously just a challenge with those simple
words. And I realized at that point,
you have an opportunity. You're going to go back.
And when you go back, you could either sit there and pout or you
(06:52):
can go back and you can go all out at everything you do because
you're going to do it anyway. So why go there and just go
through the motions and be average?
Everybody can go back and go to school or anybody can go back
and play football for the most part if they're athletic enough.
But how many actually put in thework to try to be great at
something? It just because they should got
(07:14):
to put in the same amount of work basically anyway.
And that was a motivating factorwhen he told me that it was life
changing. Mom and Dad can't take care of
you forever. You remember what you were
doing. Easter 1990.
Thanksgiving 9192. Easter 1990.
You know, you're at college. Everybody was going home.
(07:35):
I remember that. Yeah.
It was just, oh, man, this is like sad.
I've lived a sad life, Graham, and you're bringing that out.
It was. Tough for and.
I say that, I've said that jokingly.
I have. I've lived far from a sad life,
but I remember everybody's at home Easter break and everybody
goes home. My parents are in Germany.
(07:56):
They didn't have the money to fly me back and forth for for
Easter, for Thanksgiving if I was lucky.
I went home for Christmas and maybe the summer and I remember
being at school, the whole, the entire dorm is empty and it's
just me and my, my my roommate, he had these shoes where you
they make you run on your toes. They're like, you know, they're
(08:18):
like a platform that high and you get in them and you can jog
and you can jump and supposedly it build up your calf muscles
and all that. I would put those things on and
I would just go running. I would work out.
And it was like this time by myself that I had no choice but
to be by myself. But it was, you know what, this
(08:39):
do something. Just don't sit here and be idle.
Don't sit here and feel sorry for yourself.
But I didn't have the opportunities to to like go home
and do all those things. So I tried to make the most of
the time that I had to try to, you know, get rid of some of the
loneliness of being there by myself.
And but at the same time, when Ilook back in my life or where
it's LED, all those little moments like that led to
(08:59):
something that has helped me. Or when I look back, I could see
where those things have propelled my career in some way,
shape or form. So the Cowboys told you they
were going to draft. You obviously didn't end up
working out that way. You fall to the second round,
they laughed. And your boy Jimmie Johnson, but
he and he's said as much to you,I think.
But you end up getting drafted in the second round by the
(09:22):
Giants. New York being a bigger and
colder city than you ever wantedto go to, not to mention the
fact they had the legend Lawrence Taylor already in your
position. What do you I remember from your
first experience actually visiting New York?
Scared to death. I remember flying into Newark
(09:43):
and it looked so industrial, youknow, and you're going, oh, boy,
I heard, you know, I didn't knowthat wasn't New York.
I was like, OK, this looks roughand tumble.
And then I end up in the city and I remember being in the car,
the taxis are driving crazy, thecorns, there are people
everywhere. And I thought Houston was fast.
I was in Germany. I thought Germany was great.
(10:05):
Then I moved to Houston and by the time I left college, I felt
like I got this Houston thing down.
Yeah, this is good. This is the fast city, but I can
keep up with this. Then I come to New York and it
was on hyperdrive and I just went to my hotel room, stayed in
my room until they sent someone to pick me up and take me where
I needed to go. I would.
And because I'm in the room all day, I would just, you know, be
(10:28):
so awake. And I look out the window at two
or three in the morning, people on the street like ants.
And I'm thinking I can't leave the room because if I go
outside, they're going to know I'm new and God knows what's
going to happen to me. I was like, I was walking
looking like that. Don't look up.
If you look up, people go to know that you're new here, you
maybe something may happen to you.
They may rob you, you know, who knows?
But it was just ignorance at itsbest.
(10:51):
I didn't know any better. I didn't have the experience of
being here and spending time here.
And now after being here, I mean, it's my favorite place in
the world. So between talking to your socks
and reading the game program on the toilet, explain a little
what your pregame routine entailed while playing.
You asking these questions whichmakes me realize I may have told
(11:12):
people a little too much. Well, my pregame was cool.
I liked it. Apparently.
I had a whole routine of doing stuff.
Everything was in a certain order.
Get there at a certain time, youknow, look at my uniform, put
things on in a certain order at a certain time.
(11:33):
Everything was perfectly timed out.
And one of the things is I wouldlook at my socks and kind of,
you know, not verbally go, hey, which one do you, which foot do
you want to be on today? Like I didn't speak out loud to
my socks because our teammates would have thought I was nuts.
But I would look at my socks andI'll go, which one?
Which one would you like? Which foot would you like today?
Then they go, they debate, sometime they debate not have to
(11:56):
put the sock on. And then the sock may go, I
don't like this one today. And then I would switch them up
and I go, OK, now that feels good.
I just felt if my socks didn't tell me and I put the sock on,
it was like, no, that's not a good one.
Then I would be clumsy that day.So I had to listen to the socks.
I had to. And then I would get the game
program. And as the years went on, I even
(12:17):
learned myself it is football players tried to look mean in a
game program, you know, trying to look so mean.
But if you look at somebody and they're mean, you kind of expect
you have some expectations. But if you look at somebody in
the game program who you hear may be mean and they're like
this, a mean person smiling is an insane person.
(12:42):
So I would change it. I would be in the program like I
did. I should do like glamour shot.
I figured if the opponent's going to look at the program,
they're going to see me smile like that.
They're going to think he's crazy.
I loved it. But I would go into the
bathroom, close the stall, not to use the bathroom or not.
And I would just go through the game program and I would look at
the pictures of my own teammatesbefore I looked at the
(13:04):
opponent's teammates every week.The pictures didn't change, but
it was just my routine kind of calming to look through and, you
know, fan through. Yeah.
Yeah, it was. I don't know, maybe I need to
find an old program in a bathroom, calm my nerves.
When you're at the line, what are you seeing and what are you
(13:27):
thinking about before snap? Well, I used to watch so much
film and like study habits and and little things that probably
a lot of people may didn't see. I, I would study so much film
that I would, I would start on the tackle and then I would
watch the same plays over again.You know, with three or four
games. I watched the guard at that
time. Then I watched it over again and
(13:47):
I watched the center because there are certain things that
each one would do before a certain play that one may give
away what the other one's supposed to.
You know what I learned? I never, I would always be so
late to get down. I was always the last guy
basically to get into a stance and the coach used to start
yelling I go, you need to get down.
I always wait till the last second to get down because I'm
watching where everybody lines up if anybody move because I've
(14:08):
already watched enough film to know.
Well if he is there, there's only certain things that he can
do. If he's here then I know he can
affect me in this way. If this tackles here and his
foot is cocked a little bit withthe heel to the inside, then
he's probably pushing off to go down.
If his heel is straight up, he'sprobably dropping by back for a
pass. If his heel is closer to the
ground, he's probably coming at me in the run.
(14:31):
Then it tied in. If he's a little tighter, if
he's a little looser, it's a double team.
It's not like I would sit there and look at everybody and it's
like dissect and at the last second I'd get down and I'm
ready to go. But I used to love to like
dissect the play and it made thegame easier because I knew there
were certain plays. There's no way this play is
coming towards me. All I got to do is seal off the
(14:52):
backside. So don't even waste the energy
exploding off the line and then got to gather yourself because
you're out of position because you really need to go that way.
I was able to ease off and just shuffle down the line.
It saved a lot of energy so thatI was able to be a little bit
more explosive later in the gamebecause I knew where to conserve
and then where to go all. Out describe how you would
basically go deaf when you got to the line.
(15:14):
But you don't hear anything. You're so focused.
And this is a great this, this is so great now for me because
it let me know whenever you really want to focus on
something, you can shut out everything else.
You're on the field. You got 80,000 people screaming.
They're screaming. And the second they walk up to
that line and you just start looking at things and you put
(15:36):
your hand, I don't hear anything.
I may hear you breathing across from me.
I may look at you and smile at you and I made sometimes I would
say, are they going to run it right here?
Are they going to run it the other way?
I can hear the quarterback and Ican hear the linebacker from my
team who's calling the plays or I can hear myself talking.
I can't hear 1 fan. It's like you just take that
hole, you have that circle and that's the only circle you can
(15:56):
hear. Everything else outside of it,
you don't hear a thing. And then after the play, say you
get a sack and you stand up and it's like the the, the volume on
your stereo is cranked up to theMax because all of a sudden
everybody bursts in. And that's where you do all the
stupid dancing because it's justthe energy hit you all of a
sudden. Teammates will occasionally get
into it with each other as well and you wanted to make a point
(16:17):
early on and making sure nobody messed with you.
Two instances when I get what you recall from each.
The first being when the Giants the year after drafting you
draft 1/4 rounder on your team who also happened to be a member
of the Bloods gang. And then the other one being
when you decide it's good idea to take on the biggest guy on
(16:39):
your team's Scott Gregg. Well, thank goodness I won both.
If not, it may be a different stories that they're talking
about. But yeah, I, I think the first
was Chris Mamalonga. Chris Mamalonga, great player.
I mean defensive tackle, big guy.
And he but he had a penchant forfighting off the field.
(17:01):
Literally, I think he knocked out two of our teammates playing
video games over to video games.And it was a, it was a offseason
and during the offseason at thatpoint in my career, I was quite
a few, three or four years in, Iif I remember correctly.
And he just was just picking on me that day.
And then he was, he was, he had just finished his first year.
(17:21):
He was going to a second year. And I guess he was feeling good
about himself. He had a Goodyear.
And I just was like, dude, like,just shut up at this point.
Just shut up. Like trying to be quiet about
it, but he kept going. And then I think I offended him
and I said, you know what? Why are you even talking to me?
You're a rookie. So just shut up Rook and that
and we got a room full of of guys.
(17:44):
So either I got a dat like this and I got to say these things
after trying to quiet down for awhile, or you're not going to be
respected. Just not because if I were to
back down, then I'm going to look like you know what?
Oh yeah, stray hand. Just challenge him.
He's scared. So I I had to say, you know
what, shut up Rook. You're Rook.
You shouldn't be talking right now.
(18:05):
You have no right to talk. And he kept going and he kept
going and I find and he's like, you think you can whip me?
And I'm like, I didn't, I didn't.
I'm not saying I could whip you.I'm not even talking about
fighting you. But if you, if you started,
we're going to have to go. And in the back of my head I'm
thinking, oh Lord, I don't want to fight this guy.
And he and I kept going at it, going at it, going at it.
(18:26):
Then eventually I'm standing up against the board and he gets up
and after many times of if you come at, we're going to have to
go at the many times that he stands up, he gets up in my face
and I knew he had a thing about just stealing guys, you know,
Bam hitting you before you knew what was coming.
And I'm standing there against the board.
I'm thinking, oh, he's going to swing.
Here comes and he swung, but I was ready and I ducked and he
(18:48):
swung so hard. This is a 300 something pound
guy. He swung.
He spun around to where I lockedhim from behind and picked him
up and slammed him on the ground.
And then by that time I'm in control.
So that's when you're, you know,you start.
I told you not to mess with me, boy.
I will whip you. Like I said, you know, I started
talking good stuff then. And the weird thing is he was
(19:11):
never the same player after thatwas not the same, was not the
same player. And maybe I think it was a
confidence thing. It took his confidence away And
and I like the guy had his moments as a player.
But you know, I learned you got to stand up for yourself and
Scott Gregg, that was nothing more than just two guys that
(19:32):
practice fighter. I mean we're, I love Scott,
great guy. I went against him every day in
practice. 676-8320 I mean the mountain man and well.
You said you've looked back and you're like.
Yeah, I could have killed him. And I look back now and I'm
like, oh, that was stupid. But at the time, you don't
understand. It's a different switch.
It reminds me of when I went to Africa and I look at a lion and
(19:53):
a lion has in his eyes, there's no life.
There's no concern for you. I'll eat you right now.
I'll kill you. I don't care.
You don't matter to me. And when I put on a helmet.
That's what happens. I don't care about you.
I don't care. You get hurt.
Hey, you get hurt me or you ain't going to be me.
And that was just the mentality that that happened.
(20:15):
So Scott, I would look at him inthe locker room like, Oh my
goodness, big guy. But once I put on a uniform,
we're on the field and it's it'sdoing a Big Spring practice.
We just have on helmets we don'thave on anything else.
And Jesse Armstead, him got intoit.
Jesse knocked him down the wholeteam.
But whoa. So the next play I'm like, OK,
here we go. Scott's going to try to come at
(20:35):
me even though I had nothing to do with it.
We don't have any equipment on. Well, the next play was a slant.
He went that way and grabbed another linebacker and tossed
that guy. Whoa.
And I'm thinking, OK, it's over.He's got it out of his system.
Well, then the next play comes at me and kind of bracing for
it. So we're struggling and we're
fighting and I'm like, dude, like what's your problem?
(20:56):
He grabs my face mask. So I grabbed his face mask and
then we're tussling and then hishelmet comes off and he still
had my face mask and I'm in that.
I don't care about you. I looked at it for a second and
thought about it. Why not?
I hit him in the head and I justremember him.
(21:18):
He falls back like that and thenwhen he falls back then I jumped
on him again. No, you did.
Yeah, God had you have to, you know, fight MMA, got to finish
him. And so I'm down and I'm punched
that they pulled me off. And by that time, Jesse Armstead
started fighting somebody over here, somebody else started
fighting somebody over there. And coach called practice off
(21:41):
and we get in the locker room and Scott had a little blood and
everything else and he looked atme and go, you got me today.
And that was it. We were great.
We were back at it and that's kind of like what sports is.
It's a challenge and sometime maybe best man wins.
Sometimes it's not always going to be you.
I was just fortunate that it wasme on those two occasions.
(22:02):
Any lasting injuries or pain from your playing days?
I feel great, to be honest with you.
I think pain and and injury and like stuff.
I think of more of that. Just a life of living for me and
a lot of guys with a lot of different things.
For me, I heard everything, man.I heard everything.
(22:23):
Some things like I tore my PEC. That was a major thing.
I had wrist surgery. Your fingers are all.
Tore my thumb. But the finger stuff is easy.
I mean, that's nothing. You know, you do when that
happens and you you throw a guy and you run into the play and
the play is over and you go ow and you look and your fingers
sitting like that, you grab it and you snap it back.
And then you think to yourself, I cannot show that I'm hurt.
I can't run to the sideline to tell the coach I hurt my finger.
(22:46):
It's not that sport. That's not football.
You suck it up and you get back down and you think to yourself,
I hope they don't do anything over here, this play until I get
off this field where I have to use my left hand.
Explain why you never wore a mouthpiece.
Like come on, look at my teeth, man.
There was something. That was like, hey, maybe I'd
get them fixed for free, who knows.
But that that was a conscious decision though, right?
(23:08):
Because you didn't want to like,proactively have the.
Yeah, well, I'm. Wearing mouth before my teeth
are what my teeth are. You know, a lot of guys out
there were pretty smiled. They were worried about how they
look. I look like this, so I always
will. And the worst thing about it was
there were a few times I'd bite through my tongue because, you
know, Michael Jordan would be out there.
Well, you do do that too. And you hit a guy who's got your
(23:30):
tongue out and you hit him so hard it makes you clench, and
then you bite through your tongue.
That was the worst. But once I did that a few times,
I learned not to do that. And I enjoyed not having a
mouthpiece. I could breathe better.
I could talk. You know, I just felt like I'm
out there freewheeling and just doing my thing.
And my teeth are, you know, theymay not be be be together, but
(23:52):
they're clean and pretty straight.
You wrote in your book that you occasionally had to to negotiate
with pain, and you said you'd have to bring a third party to
negotiations. Occasionally writing quote, I
like to call it the Law Offices of Toradol, Lidocaine and
Vicodin LLC. Sometimes we also place a call
(24:13):
to Indocin and Naprosyn. And then there's the little
private investigator named Prednisone.
When you're playing, you know, my the after effects of the game
now I don't feel I feel better now that I felt I was 20, 25.
But when you are playing the game, you feel bad.
I mean, it takes a toll. It beats you up and there are
certain days you wake up or certain times you realize that
(24:34):
you need to play that physically, you need help
getting there. And and I wasn't a big guy on,
you know, Percocets and all these other things like that.
I only did that only if necessary, Toradol, only if I'm
in the middle of a game and and I hurt my back and I can't walk.
But yet I remember I hurt my back one day, one game, Keith
(24:55):
Hamilton tore his Achilles and we're both in the locker room,
games going on out there and Keith looks at me and he goes,
hey, hey man, 'cause we're the vets.
One of us got to get back out there and I'm looking at him
going. Well, basically you're telling
me that I need to go because youtold your Achilles that not, no,
you're not going back out there.So you know what, I'll take a
Toradol shot. I'll take that for the guys so I
(25:17):
can get back out there and play and try to help this team win.
That's what that's what you did.And, and I never did anything.
I was never forced to do anything.
I always felt like I did what I wanted to do.
But the biggest thing that I, I probably the thing I probably
took the most was innocent and aperson.
And I would take my 14th year inthe league.
(25:39):
I would take it on Friday through Sunday.
Then year 15, I pretty much had to take it every day.
And after playing a season like that, I realized I don't want to
take this stuff every day. I mean, thank goodness we won
the Super Bowl because I forget a long life to live after
football. I never understood guys or
(26:00):
people who are so willing to sacrifice with steroids and all
these things that are tearing your body apart for such a short
period of your life. I want to live and have a good
life afterwards. That's a life that's had to have
a good liver and a good kidney and all these other important
parts that you need to survive. I know you're rightly proud of
the fact that you spend 15 yearswith the same team, began the
(26:21):
career as a starter, finished asa starter with the Super Bowl
championship. But there was a conversation
with your dad that you had, I think, after winning the
championship that made you realize, hey, I actually don't
want to go back for another year.
Always weird because I don't cryat much, but whenever there's a
story of in sports or like some any type of story where you make
(26:47):
your parents or you make somebody proud of you for then
those get me. And I'll never forget watching
the movie Babe and the pig wins the show and the the pig is
basically looking at the farmer like what's next, What's next?
And he goes, that'll do pig, that'll do.
That's what I keep doing. Great job, proud of you.
(27:10):
That's it. You don't have to do anything
else. And I called my dad to talk to
him like, you know, I'm really thinking about retiring.
And I thought he was going to, you know, maybe put up some
resistance to it because in mostways, I only did it because my
dad said you can be a football player.
You can get a scholarship when you make it to the pros, when
you win the Super Bowl, when you're an all pro, when you're
this. I did it because he told me that
(27:32):
I could do it. I didn't necessarily do it
because I cared about being famous and, or any of these
things, because, you know, I want to make my dad proud.
And I remember starting out the conversation, my dad pretty much
said, you know what, you don't have to say anything else.
I, you, I think you should you, you prove it.
Nothing else for you to prove. And when he said that, I
literally, I almost by the crap right now, man, I felt like, I
(27:57):
felt like that pig and baby, I did.
I, I made you proud. Nothing else I can do in this
job, this profession to make youproud.
And and and that was it done. And I wasn't one of these guys
who's going to retire. And when guys retire and I see
them crying, I know you're goingto miss your your career.
(28:19):
I know you're going to miss it. But now a whole nother chapter
of your life starts. And I feel like I put everything
into it, everything. I didn't leave anything out
there that I could ever look back and felt like I want to cry
over this because I know it was something else there.
Could I have physically gone outthere and played?
Yeah. But I knew I gave everything
mentally that I could give and out of my heart to the game.
(28:40):
What made you say Hall of Fame weekend was then the highlight
of your life? That was it, because like this
career that I had all came down to being inducted into like the
greatest fraternity, I guess youcan call it.
You can be inducted into when itcomes to the game of football,
the biggest sport in this country.
(29:00):
And to be a part of that, we're only a very select few where are
able to be a part of it was special.
And also they have my family there like they have my parents
and all my kids and I had my coworkers and all my friends and
people who came that I'd want that I invited.
And I thinking that they would show up because I don't look at
(29:22):
myself in a way to think, Oh yeah, you know, this, this
person going to show it for me. And I almost feel bad asking
people to show up. But everybody I asked showed up
or was happy to be there, had a great time.
And it was like bringing together all the people who were
influential in my career in one shape, one way shape or form to
to the biggest celebration of mycareer as an individual.
(29:44):
But the biggest one was Super Bowl.
You know, I, I, I look back and I think Hall of Fame, yeah, as
individuals, it's the greatest thing.
Would never give that up. But the Super Bowl, just to see
the happiness on a young Eli Manning, the first one, three or
four years in the league, to seethe happiness on his face is as
happy as the joy on my face. We've been there for 15 and this
(30:07):
is something that we can share with these guys and this is so
special. And it still is to this day
because we all still talk. We're on group text, You know,
it's like that's a family in a bond that'll never be broken
because we accomplished something together that you need
each other to do. And it's special when you do
something that involves everybody else in the Hall of
Fame being an individual honor. It doesn't happen without Keith
(30:27):
Hamilton and Jesse Armstead and Jason Seahorn and even a guy
came in with like Marcus Buckleyand all these guys that were big
parts. Robert Harris.
I can keep on naming, going on and on with big parts of my
life, my career. How motivated are you by fear?
Every day I've got fear. I'm I'm afraid to fail.
(30:49):
I'm afraid. I really AM.
Most people are. A lot of people are motivated by
fear. I am motivated by fear.
I'm not. I'm not motivated by oh, yeah,
if I can get this done, this what I'm going to get at the end
of it, the reward. Reward.
I I OK, that's great. I'm motivated by the fact that
if it fails, that just doesn't feel good.
(31:10):
You know what, what, what, what would be thought of the failure.
And I've learned that sometimes failure is necessary in order to
find your path to another place where you can succeed.
Though failure doesn't mean thatI look at failure totally
different now. I look at failure.
It's a learning experience now. I've done things that have
failed and I'm happy that they failed because if they hadn't,
to be honest with you, I wouldn't be where I am now and
(31:30):
it would have been a totally different path that I really
couldn't see myself on anyway. So failure is is the way of
sometimes getting you back on the right path where you should
be. You have a quote I understand.
Hard work will put you where. Good luck will find you.
Explain that. Hard work puts you in a position
(31:53):
where the harder you work, the luckier you get.
Yogi Berra, That's basically what it is.
Hard work gets you into a room per SE, but once you get into
that room, you got to make it soyou stick and stay.
Hard work gets you there. Luck will get you there, but
once you're there, you got to prove that you belong there in
(32:14):
more ways than just that. And I just know from my hard
work in my life is have put me in rooms and and places where
God, whoever would have thought that.
I mean, my whole Hall of Fame speech was about improbable to
possible. I mean, it's improbable.
I'm this 9 year old kid living in Germany who starts working
out and then he comes to the States and he doesn't really
(32:35):
play football and he watches on TV and he gets a scholarship.
All improbable to think that that kid ends up in the Pro
Football Hall of Fame or ends updoing everything that I do now.
But it goes to show that something may seem improbable
and the way that we think or theway other people think about it,
but it's not impossible. It's very possible.
In what ways will you try and outwork people?
(32:56):
Because everybody I talked to about he's like he's, you know,
the first one in less to leave when you're.
No, no, no, no, no. That's why.
You're playing football. Not the first one.
You. Grandma was not the first one
in. They're trying to.
They're trying to make me look good.
I was not the first one in. I may have been the last one
out, but I was not the first onein, but I maximized every second
(33:17):
that I was there. I didn't get there and sit
around for an hour before there was time to do anything.
Why would I do that? I was always after practice.
We, you know, I come in when I need to be there, all the
meetings, the practices and all that stuff.
And during lunch breaks, you know, when we have our lunch
period, which under under the coach with hour and a half or so
(33:39):
hour and 15 hour and 2030 minutes.
Most guys that go in there and they're watching all my children
and having lunch. It's a lunch break.
Me, I had a routine. I come in, I get out of my
practice uniform, I put on my workout clothes and I go to the
gym. I'm going to go work out because
I know I'm tired from running all out all day on the field.
I'm tired from pushing guys. But if I can go in the weight
(34:01):
room and I can lift the same weights that I lift when I'm
fresh, If I can run on that treadmill at 10° incline, 11
degree incline at 10 or 11 mph for sprints after practice, then
when I'm in the game and that's saying and, and the guys are
tired and I'm tired, I'm like, oh, I still don't know.
I got more in the tank 'cause I go kill it after, after I'm done
(34:22):
at I got a lot more in the tank.You're going to get a lot more
tired before I ever do. And it was just a mentally for
me, it was a way to say you always have more in the tank.
So I would always outwork anybody in the weight room.
I would always run sprints. I would always watch more film
and I would watch film every night during the season before I
went to bed because I wanted to go to sleep with it on my mind.
(34:44):
I would be in the grocery store of doing pass rush moves.
I mean, it was always on my mind.
So you're obviously a hugely successful, driven, motivated
individuals. You have 4 kids of your own.
How difficult is it to be the type of parent that you want to
be when you are pulled in all these different directions and
have as busy of a schedule as you have I?
(35:05):
Don't. Yeah, be honest with you.
It's not. And I found for me it's it's
compartmentalizing different things and work is completely
different from home life. I mean, when I'm at work, it's
like, OK, I'm focused on this. I'm focused on this, focus on
this. When I go home, there's no
focus. There's like I'm home.
I just want to relax. I want to have a good time.
(35:25):
I don't work to come home and bring the stress of work home.
Then I'm still working when I leave work and I don't care what
the day was like. I'm at home.
And it's like with the kids, it's the best thing because
that's when you find out when you have kids, that's really
what life is all about. It's like, wow, I was put on
this planet and I have these other people.
(35:47):
I'm responsible for the things that they learn, the way that
they treat people, the way they interact, interact, the, the way
they approach stuff all come from me.
And I, I try to be a, a great parent who, you know, there's
discipline and there are rules, no doubt.
But I always want my kids to feel comfortable enough to talk
to me. I always want my kids to feel
(36:08):
that they know I got their back 100%.
And that says I'm the one personin their life they will love
them no matter what, no matter what, I'll always love them
right or wrong. And that is the thing I, I
retired when I was 36 from football.
My twins were three, three yearsold.
And here I am talking about workhard, get out there and then go
(36:31):
all give it everything you got. They never saw that.
They'd never see me and never Remember Me playing football.
I mean, they're Carolina Panthers fans.
Yeah, but they. See God's sake.
I mean, but they see me now and that's why I work hard like I do
now, because I want all of my kids to see me and know that it
does not. It's not easy.
Nobody gives you anything. You got to go earn it.
(36:54):
What do you like to live with? What am I like to live with?
I'm almost like living with a baby.
How so? Because I don't, you know, if,
if somebody else could do something for me sometimes, wow,
I don't necessarily want to do it, but I've learned to be more
collaborative in life, you know,to, to, to make sure that people
(37:17):
around me are happy, to make sure that I'm willing.
If somebody's willing to get up and get me a glass of water in
the middle of night, why shouldn't I get up and get them
a glass of water in the middle of night when they ask for it?
They're willing to do this for me.
Why wouldn't I be willing to do that?
But I think living with me is, Iwould like to think that it's
fun. I'm, I'm not a demanding, I'm
not a high maintenance. I like to do things for myself,
(37:40):
but I like company. I like vacations and I think I'm
at the point where I just want to enjoy life.
I don't. I don't.
I don't want to work forever. I want to.
I want to enjoy life at some point.
How do you view marriage and could you see getting married
again? I think marriage is great.
I really do. And I know I've had a few
(38:01):
failures and I say you learn from your failures, right?
But I think my, you know, my first marriage was with Wanda
was we were just young and she'sone of my best friends to this
day. I mean, I love her to death and
have two great kids. And and so that was a a great
experience where we both realized we were young, out of
(38:22):
our league, didn't know how we were supposed to be or active
and trying to be kids, trying toplay adults.
And but now that we've realized that we come to that agreement
together, like we have our understanding together, we've
grown together. And then my second marriage,
that one was probably not the definitely not the greatest
experience, but I did learn a lot from that.
(38:43):
And I end up with two incredibleteenagers right now, which
scares me to death, girls. But I'm I love marriage.
I like companionship. I'm not against it at all.
Would I ever get married again? I'll never say never.
I'm not going to be so bitter togo.
Oh yeah, I got divorced and, youknow, stay away from marriage.
No, I'm not that guy. How aware were you of what you
(39:03):
wanted to do post football? Little bit as far as as far as
commentating, I started doing stuff a long time before I
retired. So I kind of knew what I was
getting the sense that I could be in that business.
I got called from, you know, native head of a network who
wanted to have breakfast. And I'm like, I don't have
(39:25):
breakfast with me. And I sit down with him and he
goes, how long do you want to play football?
How much longer do you want to play football?
And I'm like, oh, wow, OK, I never thought about that.
And then he goes into why he asked me that question, which
was for a commentating job. And then I did every network.
I did Super Bowls, I did all these different things with
different networks. And I ended up at Fox.
And I felt comfortable in that role.
(39:47):
Not immediately. I mean, at the first three
weeks, I was ready to go back tofootball.
But I realized I could do that for a long time.
And everything else just kind ofhappened.
Always been like someone who's looking for, you know, something
else. Always trying to, you know, to
keep busy. Football's five months and then
it's one day a week basically onFox.
(40:08):
So I needed something else to get busy.
And now I'm busier than I've ever been, even when I was
playing football. Really.
Yeah. Oh yeah.
Why decide to start a managementand production company?
Because it's fun, it's interesting, and I've an
incredible partner. I mean, Constance Schwartz, it's
my sister. I've known her for 2425 years
and the most incredible partner you can have and partnership you
(40:30):
can have. And the way that it works.
I mean, it's so interesting to have somebody who has a career,
who has a place they want to go and then you sit there and have
to try to figure out the pieces to help them get there.
And I love being able to, you know, help people get places
where they want to go because I was that person who was hoping
(40:50):
to get somewhere and have to pick and choose the right pieces
along with Constance to make it happen.
And to be a part of someone else's career like that is
special. I mean, it's a lot of trust
involved in that. What do you think you've learned
so far in building the company? Man, I think the thing, the
biggest thing is there are so many avenues and so many
different things that you can doyou, you always be open.
(41:13):
You could think I learned the most always be open to different
opportunities that may seem a little unconventional and always
listen. We get so trapped into thinking,
oh, you know, I'm, I'm running this and I'm successful and, and
I'm the boss. You don't listen to everybody
around you. And, and now when you're at my
age and you have your kids who you work with, who in their
early 20s, I, I don't know how alot of this new modern age stuff
(41:37):
is. Be honest with you.
I'm not that interested in it, but they are.
They're the future. That's the that.
So you listen to everybody. Don't cut people out because you
think they're too young or they just don't know what they're
talking about. They haven't been in this
business as long as I have. You always have to be open to
ideas to people. That's how you get better.
That's how you expand. That's how you stay current,
(41:57):
that's how you innovate. And I think that's the one thing
I've learned. The one thing we try to do our
best at is making everyone feel included in our business.
Make everyone feel valuable in our business and and let them
know that we value their opinionand that it does count.
Where would you like to take thecompany long term?
Long term, Oh man, you know, I think for right now with my
(42:19):
personal stuff that we do between GMA and and $100,000
pyramid and, and, and the clothing company at JC Penney
and the production company, all the the Joker's wild, we do with
Snoop. We want to just grow it.
And then with Wiz and Tony Gonzalez and Dion and and Erin
Andrews and Curt Menifee, we want to just build business that
(42:40):
we manage. We want to build businesses off
of who they are, things that areorganic to them.
We don't do it for money. We don't do things for money.
You can have your client, somebody can write them a big
check to do this. If it doesn't fit, then we won't
do it. And sometimes it's hard to
understand even for the client, because sometimes I was that
client to go con. It's a lot of money, but if we
(43:00):
don't get, they don't get paid, we don't get paid.
And we always try to do our, we always make sure their best
interest is what we're after, not our own.
I think when you do that, you build friendships in a family
environment in which what we have at our company and and
that's what we always hope to maintain.
How long do you want to work for?
I don't know. When you do something
(43:20):
repetitively, I don't care what it is and it's the same thing.
It can become the same thing. And I don't want to lose
gratefulness of being there and being a part of something.
So I'm a big believer in football.
When it was done, it was done. I could have played a few more
years. They wanted me to play.
They doubled my salary. The next year.
I said, no, I'm good. And one day I may be like I say,
like Forrest Gump when he's jogging.
(43:41):
And then he just stopped and gotall these people behind him and
they go. He turns around and said, I'm
going home now. And they're like, why?
That's it. That's me when it's over.
Well, I was going to turn. Around and go home.
Because you, you kind of said that to me a couple weeks ago,
but then I was talking to a couple of your friends who said
(44:03):
for him, retirement is more a dream than reality.
I had a conversation last night at dinner with a friend of mine.
We have a little bit, I'm not going to tell you how many years
we bet on, but we have a little bit about how long I'll work.
At some point, you got to look back.
And I love my life and I enjoy my life.
But at some point, my kids are in college.
(44:24):
I want to be able to go to college.
I want to be able to say, yeah, let's take a trip.
Not, oh, you know, I got to get this vacation time off.
Well, there's a game on Sundays.I can't.
I want a life where there's somefreedom at some point.
Is it in two years, three years,five years, 10 years, 1520?
I don't know. But I guarantee you this, I'll
be off TV before a lot of peoplesick of seeing me on TV.
(44:49):
You were guest hosting an episode of live actor Channing
Tatum's on. What about what you did got you
the job, and how did you find out you actually got it?
Oh. Boy, the first, first time I did
that show, I was scared to deathand and then by the time
Channing came on, I had done a few and I had nothing to lose.
(45:12):
Think about it. I was the last guy they were
going to hire. You got Regis Philbin and you
got me. You're not going to follow Regis
Philbin with me. The guy who had no experience in
that genre television, an ex athlete, a guy, a big 6 foot 5
black guy, just ain't going to happen.
So I went in and I didn't have any fear.
So when Channing came on for Magic Mike, I was the day before
(45:33):
and I kept Channing coming off of Magic Mike.
Maybe I should say I'm the real Magic Mike and I should RIP off
and do a striptease. Just joking.
Just like that. I throw it out into the room and
the producers going, would you be willing to do that?
And I'm like, yeah, I didn't think they were going to be able
to pull it off. I'm like, no way.
Can you make pants that quick, that tear away?
I forgot they have costume departments on television.
(45:54):
So they made the pants. They did all these things.
The next day he comes out and I just go back and I change it to
those pants and it was like, here we go and you just got to
do it. Those are things I would never
do if it weren't for that show. And on the show, there's things
I do on TVI would never do anywhere else.
(46:16):
How'd you find out you got the full time?
I got called up to the office ofthe Dave Davis, who runs ABC,
local ABC station here. And I get called up there and I
walk in and it's Dave, it's Michael Gellman and it's Kelly.
And we sit there and they start some small talk about the
history of ABC. And I'm going, OK, why do I need
(46:36):
to know the history of ABC? But I'll listen.
And then Kelly broke in and justsaid, hey, we want to know if
you consider taking the job fulltime.
And she started talking. And I literally I did like Larry
McGuire said, stop, you had me. I consider I wanted it to be
(46:56):
memorable and it was. And that was that.
Four years. Four years of it.
Yeah, obviously it was tabloid fodder.
Rumors swirled amid the switch from live to GMA.
Hindsight certainly 2020, But ifyou had to do it over again,
(47:18):
what, if anything? Nothing.
There's nothing I would have done differently, nothing to do
differently. You know, I handled it as
professional as you can handle it.
And I would have been a professional from day one there
to the last day I left. And I treated it just like I
treated my NFL career, just likeI treat everything I do.
I do everything to the best thatI could do, the most respectful
(47:40):
way to everybody around me, thatI have no regrets.
So when I left there, it was tabloid fodder.
But I think that was more for the tabloids in the seldom than
it ever was for me because I left, I slept well, still sleep
well, and I wake up now every day and I go to another great
job and live with a great job, the great learning experience
for me. But you know, just like
everything else, football was one point in my life that moved
(48:02):
on to sports, TV was moved on todaytime, TV was moved on to
Morning News. And you.
I have the opportunity to do something that most people
don't. I get a chance to evolve, to do
different creative things. And one day I may wake up and
morning TV may not be there. Then it's time to move on to
something else. So I always have done everything
the best most respectful way andI have 0 regrets about anything.
(48:27):
I was having, you know, dinner with the Hollywood producer a
couple weeks ago, told him I wasworking on a taping with you,
and I'm interested to get your reaction to this because he's
like, for the life of me, regardless the amount of money,
I don't understand why Michael would make the switch to GMA
because you go from a place where you have your name in the
show that you can host the rest of your life if you wanted to,
(48:50):
being one of several. But it's that that's not your
perspective. And so I was curious.
To get your reaction, I think that's AI think that's a way of
somebody who's on the outside looking in who doesn't
understand. And that's also a very selfish
way of looking at it. And, and I, I don't, I'm not
surprised it came from somebody who's in a business where it's
all about, it's me, I got to getmine.
(49:12):
I'm not from that business. I've got mine by working with
other people. Sports was great.
I mean, sports set me up to where I don't have to work.
A lot of people don't understandwhy I work as much as I do.
I do it because I love it. I don't do it because I care
about the attention. I don't have to do it.
I do it for my kids. But they see a great example and
I could care less about having my name on the show.
(49:32):
More eyeballs are on GMA, so when they go, George
Stephanopoulos, Robin Roberts, Joe Stephanopoulos, Michael
Strahan, more people see that and see live with Mike Kelly and
Michael. I could care less about having
my name if they didn't want to put my name at GMA.
I'm fine. I just want to be in great
working environments, working with great people, having a
great experience, man. And a lot of people think, oh,
(49:53):
why would he leave? He wants to host that for the
rest of it. Who wants to host something for
the rest of it? I don't want to do that forever.
It's no. People get so complacent.
It makes me sick that someone you know, think, well, you got a
good job, you just got to keep it.
Religion of sports, How did it come about?
(50:13):
Religion of Sports. I had a conversation with Gotham
Chopra, Deepak son years ago. Met at a diner in LA and friend
of ours, mutual friend of ours, connected us and we're just
sitting there talking and eatingand friend thought there was
something that we could work on together.
And Gotham brought up religion of sports and explained the
whole thing to me. And I was like, you know what?
(50:34):
That's fantastic, really amazing.
But years went past and then we finally started to work on it
after some time and it just got better and better.
The concept of it got better andbetter.
We sold it to DIRECTV, The Audience Network, kicked it off
at Tribeca at the Tribeca Film Festival, and it's just taking
(50:56):
off from there. And then we brought Tom came in,
you know Tom Brady. Tom Brady came in, you know, you
know him. You call him Tom.
I'm joking. But when Tom Brady came in and
added another level to it all and Tom is talk about the
ultimate driven guy, I am amazedat what he does because I
realized physically you can do something.
(51:18):
But when you don't have that motivation internally, and it's
so hard and I can imagine, I know the motivation I have for
15. I can imagine having the
motivation he had has now to this day.
It's amazing to me. And he brings that same
motivation to what he wants to do off the field.
And Tom's been very particular about what he wants to do.
He only wants to be a part of the best.
And we've sat down and had this conversation about religion and
(51:40):
sports and what we do, the content, everything we do has to
be the best. It has to exemplify the people
who are involved and none of us are involved in anything that we
don't want to be the best at. And we all have become this
incredible team and put togetherincredible pieces.
And two years on on DIRECTV and hopefully more.
(52:02):
And then we had a Tom versus Time series that has been
gangbusters for Facebook and oneof the most interesting things
I've ever seen. And we're going to continue to
grow this business, continue to to roll it out and hopefully
continue to bring everybody a lot of great content.
Thanks for listening to this week's podcast.
Don't forget to leave a rating and review and for more in depth
(52:22):
interviews visit grahambensinger.com.
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