Speaker 1: Welcome to All the Smoke, a production of The Black
Speaker 1: Effect and our Heart Radio in partnership with Showtime. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to All the Smoke. Jack Shoes Man, he came
Speaker 1: through this week week. Yeah, you have me feeling like
Speaker 1: I'm an elementary school versus working with someone in college.
Speaker 1: I know you'm fly. Like I said, I'm just putting
Speaker 1: more pressure on you to go on that closet because
Speaker 1: it's in there. Yeah. I don't want to though. Man,
Speaker 1: today we got a man that former number two pick,
Speaker 1: Hell of a Journey just released Hell Long Relicia Doctor.
Speaker 1: We released in mid football season. We just kind of
Speaker 1: we just we did. We released it every Tuesday and
Speaker 1: it was a series, right. We did ten episodes My
Speaker 1: story from my birth until where I'm at right now? Man,
Speaker 1: how was that for you? I mean, you know, obviously
Speaker 1: very well documented, but it's it's been a rocky journey.
Speaker 1: How do you are? Are you in a space now
Speaker 1: we're talking about the bad times? Doesn't bother you? Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a ton of acceptance right and surrender to like
Speaker 1: I have no control over that anymore. I can just
Speaker 1: control now and I know that it's going to help
Speaker 1: somebody maybe struggling or where I'm at, and I'm super
Speaker 1: relatable now, Like when people listen to it, they go, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's my dude up all the time too. I'm just
Speaker 1: like him, and there's a way out of it, there's
Speaker 1: a solution to it. Also, like I watched Tom Brady
Speaker 1: and we have one of the most most amazing things
Speaker 1: in common. We both played professional football. But I look
Speaker 1: at that dude and I'm just like, I can't relate
Speaker 1: to him. He is too perfect, right, And so this
Speaker 1: was just an opportunity for me to kind of do
Speaker 1: what I do, but do it in a raw, uncensored, vulnerable,
Speaker 1: transparent way in my voice. So it's me in front
Speaker 1: of a microphone for ten episodes telling you exactly how story.
Speaker 1: No one can tell your story better. And really that's
Speaker 1: the first step being accountable. That's on the way you can,
Speaker 1: you know, get to the next But when people want
Speaker 1: to listen, you know what I mean, that's that was beautiful.
Speaker 1: What was it like for you? Because I remember, I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously I've been through some ship on and off the court,
Speaker 1: and I feel like if I'll be forty two next month,
Speaker 1: but I feel like at like thirty being able to
Speaker 1: just really look at yourself in the mirror and like
Speaker 1: find your faults in what you did, being able to
Speaker 1: forgive yourself and move forward. How was that process for you?
Speaker 1: It happened in prison. Um Like, when I went to prison,
Speaker 1: I had never been marginalized before. I grew up in
Speaker 1: a predominantly you know, white suburban um. And when that
Speaker 1: judge kind of you know, he looked at me and said,
Speaker 1: you have no value to society. I'm gonna warehouse you
Speaker 1: and give you a number. You know, I never experienced
Speaker 1: anything like that. So I went in there with a
Speaker 1: well defeat his attitude at first, and for about two years,
Speaker 1: I didn't I didn't do anything. I got fat, I
Speaker 1: got lazy. I thought I was doing everybody a service
Speaker 1: by not being in the public, being around my community.
Speaker 1: You know, that was the most selfish thing I could
Speaker 1: have done. My family wanted me back, and my roommate
Speaker 1: he was he was an Afghan Iraqi war bet and
Speaker 1: he just one day had enough of my ship, I guess,
Speaker 1: and was just like, you don't understand the value that
Speaker 1: you have not only the men in here, but when
Speaker 1: you get out, because you're gonna get out at some
Speaker 1: point Ryan. So he says, we're going down to the
Speaker 1: prison library and we're helping prisoners learn how to read
Speaker 1: who don't know how to read. And I was just
Speaker 1: like I had many of those that come to Jesus
Speaker 1: moments in my life, coaches, mentors and stuff, and I
Speaker 1: just flipped in the bird, you know, and I went begrudgingly.
Speaker 1: I mean I went, maybe because I don't know why
Speaker 1: I went to tell you the truth, but I remember
Speaker 1: walking down that hallwins Red jumpsuited in prison, thinking this
Speaker 1: is stupid. This isn't gonna help me, Like, doesn't even
Speaker 1: know how I'm poor, and I am the irony of that.
Speaker 1: And a guy and I've read prisons who thinks he's
Speaker 1: still important. So I walked into this room and there's
Speaker 1: these men where you're not supposed to show any vulnerability
Speaker 1: at all because I get you hurt or and fifty
Speaker 1: year old man look at me and go, Ryan, I
Speaker 1: can't read, you know, can you help me? Growing up
Speaker 1: in Montana, where's a huge cowboy culture that in locker
Speaker 1: rooms my whole life, I've never seen another man look
Speaker 1: at me and say, I'm sucking hurt in here? Can
Speaker 1: you help me? Never seen it, so how am I
Speaker 1: supposed to do it or understand it? And so it
Speaker 1: flipped a switch in terms of perspective and what I
Speaker 1: needed to do, and it was about being a service
Speaker 1: and it could never be about me again selfless. What
Speaker 1: did you learn about yourself from the year ten part
Speaker 1: series and how has the response been? Kind of a
Speaker 1: two part question. Well, I I didn't know if I
Speaker 1: was a great storyteller or not, but I had a
Speaker 1: really good teacher, essentially Kevin Connolly. I don't know ifage.
Speaker 1: So Kevin produced it with me and my wife, and
Speaker 1: they know me better than anybody, and I needed to
Speaker 1: trust somebody. So when I sat in there and we
Speaker 1: recorded probably twenty five hours worth of stuff, and there
Speaker 1: were days where I could roll five hours, but then
Speaker 1: there were days like like the prison episode, it was
Speaker 1: it was, you know, the hour and a half and
Speaker 1: I was just emotionally drained. But I also know it's
Speaker 1: not gonna hurt me anymore. It's going to be a reminder.
Speaker 1: So I think I learned that to your question there,
Speaker 1: I learned that from all this, And then the response
Speaker 1: has been overwhelming. Right, I've never thought that, you know,
Speaker 1: simply my story, but the people reaching out who are
Speaker 1: either going through something or a family or have gone
Speaker 1: through something, and how meaningful it's meant. I would have
Speaker 1: never had this kind of impact if I had a
Speaker 1: you know, played twenty years in the NFL on a
Speaker 1: couple of Super Bowl they just wouldn't have. Well, I
Speaker 1: think that's what you know. Sometimes the athletes we were
Speaker 1: forgetten and people who aren't athletes forget like we're normal people,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. I think you sharing your
Speaker 1: story makes and Jack and I, you know, because we
Speaker 1: had a misconception of who we were as athletes, and
Speaker 1: we've been able to kind of really tell who we
Speaker 1: are and tell our own narrative. You know, you're telling
Speaker 1: your own story, but we don't don't sometimes like device versa.
Speaker 1: We don't realize they don't realize, but how relatable we
Speaker 1: are and we go through the same ship, but it's
Speaker 1: just on the biggest stage, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like we can't recover in private like we recovered in
Speaker 1: front of the world. Yeah, And it's uh, I think
Speaker 1: that just because we're good at something like like the
Speaker 1: best in the world at doing it, that we're not
Speaker 1: really messed up everywhere else pretty much like a terrible
Speaker 1: coping mechanisms and everything else I did, like if I
Speaker 1: couldn't play football or sports in general, Like I was
Speaker 1: a mess. I was bad with girls. I was bad
Speaker 1: with with communication. I mean anything outside of being on
Speaker 1: a court or being on a football field trying to
Speaker 1: kick your ass. That was it tell us about your upbringing?
Speaker 1: Well it was. It was different because I'm the old me.
Speaker 1: I'm the only Montana who's ever been drafted in the
Speaker 1: first round. They're more first round draft picks in the
Speaker 1: Manning family Montana ever, so I didn't have a trailblazer,
Speaker 1: you know. I was just breaking eggs as I went.
Speaker 1: All I knew is I wanted to get out. I
Speaker 1: wanted to be My heroes were the Fat Five, like
Speaker 1: Jalen Rose was my that was my dude, right, I
Speaker 1: wanted to be him. I cut my hair like like it,
Speaker 1: my black socks and my my yellow shoes, and we
Speaker 1: had unis like that, and I and I warmed down
Speaker 1: to my knees. And I was not in a very
Speaker 1: conservative white Montana town. It was not well received and
Speaker 1: there was a lot of backlash um and I didn't
Speaker 1: feel like I could be myself. And then when I
Speaker 1: finally started being myself, I wasn't accepted and I just
Speaker 1: said it, I need to get out of this place.
Speaker 1: Whatever I can to do it. And it was about competing.
Speaker 1: I didn't care who you were, what you did. And
Speaker 1: I burned a ton of bridges through that process, but
Speaker 1: I got I got where I needed. Um, multi sport athlete,
Speaker 1: what made you decide to choose Washington State could have
Speaker 1: pretty much one anywhere? Yeah. Um, they head coach of
Speaker 1: the football team, he was gonna let me play basketball.
Speaker 1: A lot of the other football coaches were saying like, no,
Speaker 1: we don't. We don't want to see the quarterback. That's
Speaker 1: that's a risk to play anything else but football. They're
Speaker 1: like yeah, And he was like He's like, whatever you
Speaker 1: want to do to to keep competitive, keep that edge. Um.
Speaker 1: But I also think he was doing whatever he could
Speaker 1: to recruit me. And I bought it. Hook client a sinker,
Speaker 1: Come here, you can play whatever you want. We're gonna
Speaker 1: go to a Rose Bowl together. Yeah. I buy what
Speaker 1: you're selling. I didn't do any research. I hadn't realized
Speaker 1: they han't been to a Rose Bowl since ninety one. Um,
Speaker 1: so it was a leap of faith, right, it was
Speaker 1: a leap of faith. I walked on the basketball team,
Speaker 1: UH played shorte stuff for the baseball team that freshman year.
Speaker 1: And then after that he came to me and he said,
Speaker 1: you know you could you could make a living right stop.
Speaker 1: That's a tough position. That's the best athlete right there
Speaker 1: in baseball. Shops up lead Washington State to their for
Speaker 1: is tim pec PEC ten championship finalists for the Heisman
Speaker 1: named All American. I mean it seems like in Kyege
Speaker 1: you had everything you can ever imagine. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: pretty special. I mean I had a great team. Though
Speaker 1: I got a lot of the accolades, but I mean
Speaker 1: we had we had five wide receivers, we had an
Speaker 1: offense line of defense that made huge plays, and we
Speaker 1: were really senior laden I was, I was underclassman, but
Speaker 1: but we had a lot of guys that have put
Speaker 1: in the work. And we had a bunch of guys
Speaker 1: that back in the day where you can do Prop
Speaker 1: forty eight. So I don't know if you guys remember
Speaker 1: that or not, where you don't qualify and they can
Speaker 1: get you to junior college or get you there and
Speaker 1: get you ready playing with a ton of those guys,
Speaker 1: especially from down here in l a Um that became
Speaker 1: some of my best friends and some of our best players.
Speaker 1: And coach Price did a tremendous job of I mean,
Speaker 1: you walk into a room in south central l a
Speaker 1: And tell the mom of a prospect that you know
Speaker 1: your son is gonna be up here in Pullman. He
Speaker 1: doesn't have to lock his doors anything in life. Different life.
Speaker 1: You know, we can he can feel, you can feel
Speaker 1: safe and and get to be and express who he is.
Speaker 1: And that was pretty cool. And that's I learned a
Speaker 1: lot that way too. I mean, all the accolades, you know,
Speaker 1: seemingly seemingly in college. What was it like for you
Speaker 1: mentally though? Were you at that point fighting any demon
Speaker 1: struggling or was it what did that come a little
Speaker 1: bit later? I mean, it's always been there. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, once you get placed on that pedestal and
Speaker 1: consequences aren't the same for you, You kind of there's
Speaker 1: a bit of arrested development. I didn't develop some of
Speaker 1: the key things or life skills that I needed to
Speaker 1: deal with adversity. And then I always want, like I
Speaker 1: always go back onto a quarter or field and and
Speaker 1: and dominate no matter how I messed up or something
Speaker 1: like that, be like, wipe it away. You're so good,
Speaker 1: they would wipe it away. And college was kind of
Speaker 1: the same thing. You know, if I acted out or
Speaker 1: if I misbehaved, or I was just you know, and
Speaker 1: I used the bravado of who I was on the
Speaker 1: football field and who I was off it. I almost
Speaker 1: had to like Dennis Robin was a huge influence. He
Speaker 1: became a friend of mine when I got to the NFL,
Speaker 1: and I just I saw ah who he wasn't. He
Speaker 1: just went all in on who that was because people
Speaker 1: already telling him he was that. So when people started
Speaker 1: attributing the black hat to me, I was just like,
Speaker 1: fuck it, Yeah, I'm fine with that. We want to
Speaker 1: be the golden child. I'm gonna I'm gonna whoop your
Speaker 1: ass and I'm gonna tell you about it. And I
Speaker 1: don't I don't know why. I don't know why I
Speaker 1: did it. I wasn't that guy. I didn't think that way.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to be like, I'm just his redneck
Speaker 1: from Montana who loves sports and wants to be liked.
Speaker 1: That's that's pretty much who I was. And and I
Speaker 1: never really truly could be that guy. And and when
Speaker 1: things get tough and when things get bad, um, my
Speaker 1: talent wasn't wasn't enough to carry me through it all
Speaker 1: before ago you're saying your season and the draft, Well,
Speaker 1: how did that process come about? Well, I mean I
Speaker 1: was coach came to me and said, after the Rose Boys,
Speaker 1: like you know, the draft, the scouts say you're gonna
Speaker 1: be the first pick of the second pick, and Peyton
Speaker 1: are going to be the guy ponny. So what am
Speaker 1: I supposed to do? I'm supposed to be out to college,
Speaker 1: maybe get hurt, uh, maybe not play as well because
Speaker 1: we were gonna lose twenty eight seniors. Um, and now
Speaker 1: I'm drafted you know later where we're talking about maybe
Speaker 1: you know, my contract was thirty million dollars as a
Speaker 1: twenty one year old kid, So I didn't know what
Speaker 1: That's the only thing I knew what to do. And
Speaker 1: I also loved the idea that I was so good
Speaker 1: that I could leave college early to go do it
Speaker 1: like that was even a more prideful thing in all
Speaker 1: of it. And so I jumped at it and went
Speaker 1: through the whole process. Uh, And you know I was
Speaker 1: going to be the first to the second pick in
Speaker 1: the NFL draft. And that's the way it all shaped out.
Speaker 1: NFL combine, Randy Moss, all these people in your class.
Speaker 1: What was that like? That was pretty cool? Um. Peyton
Speaker 1: and I were roommates and we we we we weren't
Speaker 1: gonna do nothing. We looked at each other, We're like,
Speaker 1: we're going one and two. Man, let's you know, how
Speaker 1: was he though? How was he as a person when
Speaker 1: we've we met during my my sophomore year, simply because
Speaker 1: we both knew we were gonna be tied to one another,
Speaker 1: and our s I D S put us in touch.
Speaker 1: And back in the day right where no cell phones,
Speaker 1: you had to set a time where you're gonna be
Speaker 1: at home wine rings, and I remember my boys were
Speaker 1: all sitting around drinking beers and playing dominoes and and
Speaker 1: uh and the phone rings and it was that time.
Speaker 1: And I go pick it up and actually telling him,
Speaker 1: and I hear the Southern draw on the end, and
Speaker 1: I was like, it's it was always that guy, because
Speaker 1: I thought I was. I don't know if I ever
Speaker 1: felt like I was there, peers it was I should
Speaker 1: have been, because I was just a talented. It's just good.
Speaker 1: But I just could never like after games, I'd be
Speaker 1: not like these days where they exchanged autographed jerseys and
Speaker 1: like doing for pictures. Like we beat Steve Young and
Speaker 1: the fourty niners in my first preseason game. I whipped
Speaker 1: his ass and I walked. I walked up to him
Speaker 1: in the shaking his hand, and I'm like an autograph,
Speaker 1: you know, And it's so I don't know it. I
Speaker 1: still look back in those days finally, but it was
Speaker 1: it was I just didn't necessarily think I'd probably fit.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. So when it comes down, I mean again,
Speaker 1: he's your roommate in the combined it's one too. It
Speaker 1: could a flip with the coin. Really, you end up
Speaker 1: going to San Diego, beautiful city, by the way, what's
Speaker 1: your first impression of that? Well, that was, you know,
Speaker 1: and he was really close to draft in me and
Speaker 1: my agent and I went to and said, then't go there.
Speaker 1: I wasn't thinking about the right thing. So I wasn't
Speaker 1: thinking about having Marshall Falcon, Marvin Harrison in the backfield, beach,
Speaker 1: the babes money all that I was. I wasn't thinking
Speaker 1: about the right For whatever reason, I wanted. That was
Speaker 1: the goal. It was always the goal to be a
Speaker 1: professional athlete. And maybe I didn't. I didn't see past that.
Speaker 1: And when I got there, I was like boom. And
Speaker 1: I also didn't think money was going to change me.
Speaker 1: I didn't think it. My dad is a two tour
Speaker 1: Vietnam veteran. He's worked his tail off. Um, we never
Speaker 1: wanted for anything, but we never saw any moneys they
Speaker 1: went through, but you know they did. They just didn't
Speaker 1: let us see it. And I just thought I would.
Speaker 1: He was frugal. I just thought what I Money changed me?
Speaker 1: You know, all those character defects that were there are
Speaker 1: now louder, were just louder because of the money. And
Speaker 1: I thought that money, power and prestige made you success.
Speaker 1: It's everything I thought I had seen. Right, I had
Speaker 1: all this money, all this power, and now the prestige
Speaker 1: should be in a starting NFL quarterback. Like, no one
Speaker 1: could tell me anything. You rarely hear someone admit that
Speaker 1: ship though, like money changed me. I don't think I've
Speaker 1: ever heard be honest about that, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Although it changes a lot of people, is interesting that
Speaker 1: you know, to have that perspective. Um, when you don't
Speaker 1: experience the media success you had not only in college
Speaker 1: but throughout your playing career when you get to the NFL.
Speaker 1: How hard is that? Well, I had a media six success.
Speaker 1: We won our first two starts that hadn't happened since,
Speaker 1: and John Elway, so like PEPSI came in and gave
Speaker 1: me a big deal Rolex Toyota, and I'm just like
Speaker 1: Peyton lost his first two starts. I'm like, okay, I'm
Speaker 1: killing a ship, right, And then we go to then
Speaker 1: we go to Arrowhead, Kansas City, and uh, who's the
Speaker 1: quarterback there at the time, Rich Gannon. And the week
Speaker 1: before we played Tennessee Steve McNair Eddie George in in
Speaker 1: Tennessee and we beat him, and I slide on the
Speaker 1: turf and it was in the old Vanderbilt Stadium before
Speaker 1: they built a with the new spot, and I got
Speaker 1: a turf burning. I was wearing these tights outside of
Speaker 1: uh my socks and like melted and burnt into my skin.
Speaker 1: And I got a staff affection that week. So I
Speaker 1: was in the hospital all week long leading up to
Speaker 1: Kansas City, and I was I didn't care. I was
Speaker 1: gonna play like I was just tough s O B.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna show the team I'm here, I'm I'm a winner.
Speaker 1: So they're bringing film over to me in the hospital
Speaker 1: and and uh, I go, I fly, Um we warm up.
Speaker 1: They shoot me up with whatever they needed to. I
Speaker 1: don't felt like adrenaline. Then I was firing it around.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, the skies start closing in and
Speaker 1: dumping and it becomes a monsoon. I complete my first
Speaker 1: pass and then proceed to go one for fifteen four yards,
Speaker 1: two interceptions, three phonels like seven sacks. The worst performance,
Speaker 1: humiliating performance of my life. And it's not just about that.
Speaker 1: It's what I do after the game. I came remember
Speaker 1: back in the day, those cameras with a huge battery
Speaker 1: in the locker room. They're spinning around sometimes while standing up,
Speaker 1: and he spun it around. It smoked me right in
Speaker 1: the head and like split me and I lost it
Speaker 1: on this dude, like dressed him down. I just played
Speaker 1: the worst game of my life. Was completely embarrassed, you know,
Speaker 1: took it out on a guy. You know. The reporter
Speaker 1: was inside there. He was a beat writer documented it. Monday.
Speaker 1: I'm driving into the facility. It's all over the papers
Speaker 1: that incident. So, um, we do the gaggle, you know,
Speaker 1: postgame stuff with the reporters. I asked him to stand
Speaker 1: around a little bit later. Um, and then I proceed
Speaker 1: to tell him why it is right. I'm the big
Speaker 1: tough to make football life. Grab his ass, I throw
Speaker 1: him in the chair and I start motherfucking him up
Speaker 1: and down. And the cameraman in the corner flips around
Speaker 1: and starts getting this. And this is the viral video
Speaker 1: which didn't it was viral videos didn't exist back then,
Speaker 1: and this is like one of the first ones. And
Speaker 1: that's the picture you see of me acting like a
Speaker 1: petulant child braiding the reporter. Junior say, I was gonna
Speaker 1: come in and grab me. He pulls me into the shower,
Speaker 1: turns it on cold. He used to call me baby boy,
Speaker 1: Uh said, baby boy. Cooled down. We'll get some dinner
Speaker 1: after this. Just just cool down. And uh, it became
Speaker 1: this big thing, right Um. And then then my dad
Speaker 1: was in town some of his clients and everything like that,
Speaker 1: and uh, inside the NFL which is on the showtime
Speaker 1: was on HBO at the time, and it it played uncensored,
Speaker 1: you know, and we're all watching, and my dad clients
Speaker 1: are there watching in the house. I'm on, damn boy,
Speaker 1: your son looks great. He helps me craft an apology.
Speaker 1: And if you watch me the next day reading this apology,
Speaker 1: I don't want to be there. I think it. I
Speaker 1: think what I'm doing is wrong. I believe I'm the
Speaker 1: victim and all this, and you can see the disdain.
Speaker 1: I read it then and then just kind of flip
Speaker 1: it into the locker and that, and then I fight
Speaker 1: the media the rest of the year, and I play poorly.
Speaker 1: You know, you can go be an asshole and go
Speaker 1: out and ball and it doesn't matter. That's always been
Speaker 1: my life, Like I could have been an asshole to
Speaker 1: everybody else, but I go get it done on the field.
Speaker 1: I threw four picks against the Giants. Next week, they
Speaker 1: had to make a wish commercial that I did up
Speaker 1: on the jump with on midgame and it got booed.
Speaker 1: It was it precipitous boom like that. I don't remember
Speaker 1: another positive thing in my NFL career, and I would
Speaker 1: go on play for four years simply because I couldn't
Speaker 1: deal with failure in a healthy positive What was the
Speaker 1: locker room light? What was it teammates. Like around this time,
Speaker 1: it started to get progressively worse because report We're writing
Speaker 1: things in the paper, guys on the team, we're leaking
Speaker 1: stuff bacons teammates and I just had a relationship, had
Speaker 1: a relationship with my teammates through the media. There wasn't
Speaker 1: a right there was one guy in a team, uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, Rodney Harrison was like was my roll dog.
Speaker 1: We did everything together, and I I should have just
Speaker 1: I should have grasped it onto their him and juniors
Speaker 1: like coattails and just saw how they did it and
Speaker 1: went about my business that way. And I did, and
Speaker 1: I just thought I had all the answers, and it
Speaker 1: just there's a reason why at this level you only
Speaker 1: get one shot. If you you mess it up, you
Speaker 1: don't get that you don't get that other shot. When
Speaker 1: you look back now, obviously very self aware and the
Speaker 1: accepting of the way you used to be. When you
Speaker 1: know when the labels arrogant or too good or any
Speaker 1: you hear any of that stuff, like how does that
Speaker 1: make you feel? Now? I mean, I'm human, right, so
Speaker 1: any kind of anything critical it's just it's it's hard
Speaker 1: to here, but I'm I'm more self aware The definition
Speaker 1: humility I found to be is that the guy I
Speaker 1: look in the mirror at, I'm okay with that guy.
Speaker 1: That's what humility is. I understand who I am, and
Speaker 1: I'm okay with it. I'm on this flawed human being
Speaker 1: like everybody else, trying to be better every single day
Speaker 1: and fucking mess up all the time. I'm a new dad,
Speaker 1: really screwing up with that, you know, you know, raising
Speaker 1: a kid, being a partner to my wife, all these things,
Speaker 1: trying to navigate the business world. Uh, you know when
Speaker 1: when you're when you're labeled this thing. And also I'm
Speaker 1: a seven time felon right, That's that's that's it. That's
Speaker 1: that's who I am. And I know, like I don't
Speaker 1: take things for granted anymore because I know that I
Speaker 1: am blessed if I do the next right thing, Like
Speaker 1: amazing things happened for me, where it doesn't maybe for
Speaker 1: other people who have gone through the same things I have,
Speaker 1: especially guys that don't look like me. And so I'm
Speaker 1: really aware of that, and so I try to try
Speaker 1: to be his understanding about it. And when things don't
Speaker 1: go my way, I just I'm not quick to react
Speaker 1: and go fuck them. You know, I'm just like, I
Speaker 1: only can control what I can control, right, I just
Speaker 1: gotta work harder. And I wasn't that guy before, and
Speaker 1: so I had to be had. I had to wake
Speaker 1: up on the floor of the prison cell floor and
Speaker 1: for me to be humbled. Maybe you know, you thought
Speaker 1: when somebody would slapped you around the head and staid
Speaker 1: get get right, or or or you lose everything, or
Speaker 1: your drug, drug addict, all that stuff, it wasn't that.
Speaker 1: It was it was waking up on that floor just
Speaker 1: going like, this is your life and if you're okay
Speaker 1: with it, then you can just stay here. When you
Speaker 1: start getting all this and like you said back then,
Speaker 1: it's the papers and and in the TV a little bit.
Speaker 1: But all this negative press, what is that? When? What
Speaker 1: do you do to cope with that? Surround myself with
Speaker 1: yes man who tell me that, uh, that I'm the victim,
Speaker 1: that's they're fucking fault. It's not yours. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: everybody that was you know who unconditionally loved me and
Speaker 1: wanted to show me the mirror I pushed out of
Speaker 1: my life. Right, Um, I was the golden goose. So
Speaker 1: the guys that were the yes men they weren't gonna
Speaker 1: they We're gonna turn down that ride. They'll be like,
Speaker 1: co man, we gotta get you some help. We gotta
Speaker 1: we gotta try to right this train. They were like,
Speaker 1: I mean, we're going to Vegas every weekend. We're on
Speaker 1: private planes, you know, the women going to the Playboy mansion.
Speaker 1: I'm being a huge football fan. Obviously the world misses him,
Speaker 1: but this is one of your best. Um, explain your
Speaker 1: relationship with Junior. Say, Julian, we went to dinner with
Speaker 1: Julian Edelman and Brenda marshall night and it was Juliane
Speaker 1: we's talking about him about Jia said, oh yeah, what
Speaker 1: kind of guy he was. Say, Junior played with Julian
Speaker 1: and at the end of his career. I mean, he
Speaker 1: he's the epitome of a football player that it just dude,
Speaker 1: show up at six. It was the hardest worker, practiced
Speaker 1: his ass off. Any I mean, when you go see
Speaker 1: Hall of Famers, you see Hall of Famers and you
Speaker 1: see great players and you see, you know, NFL guys,
Speaker 1: dude six five to fifty and can outrun everybody, right,
Speaker 1: just a monster and played so hard and uh but
Speaker 1: just like everybody else, like he was a great football player.
Speaker 1: He struggled with some other things, right, He struggled with
Speaker 1: how to how to be seen in the public and
Speaker 1: be supposed to be the savior of San Diego, you know,
Speaker 1: because he's from there and everything like that. There's a
Speaker 1: ton of pressure on him. And then ultimately, you know,
Speaker 1: he remember I was I saw the news when he
Speaker 1: when he was in the accident where he drove off
Speaker 1: a bluff in San Diego, and everybody was just like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, he fell asleep or this, that and the other.
Speaker 1: And I remember point of a couple my boys down here,
Speaker 1: I said that dude, he tried to kill himself. I
Speaker 1: knew it because I I had the same feeling. And
Speaker 1: then so when you know, about a year later, when
Speaker 1: we heard that he took his own life, I was
Speaker 1: just I mean, sometimes I have so much survivors guilt
Speaker 1: because I'm like, why the funk am I here? Like
Speaker 1: if that guy would have a better message than I would,
Speaker 1: he would make such a more impactful statement or platform
Speaker 1: than I would, So I have this guilt around it.
Speaker 1: And because his message would have been so impactful, and um,
Speaker 1: I missed him. I mean, we we lost touch for
Speaker 1: a while, but I think it's a big reason why
Speaker 1: what I do now is about the NFL brotherhood. There's
Speaker 1: only twenty seven thousand of us ever hundred years less
Speaker 1: with you guys, I'm assuming. And we've seen guys die
Speaker 1: alone in hotel rooms since Jackson, and I was, and
Speaker 1: I know exactly how they feel because I was there.
Speaker 1: I was alone in a hotel room dying and I
Speaker 1: couldn't ask for help, and if I did, I didn't
Speaker 1: believe anybody would be there for me anyway. Uh, And
Speaker 1: so it makes me incredibly sad, and I don't ever
Speaker 1: want to see it happen again. So we're trying to
Speaker 1: be there for one another. That's why people need to
Speaker 1: see that dot because like people don't understand everybody is
Speaker 1: human and everybody is going through something something. It might
Speaker 1: not be on TV, you know, it might not be
Speaker 1: all do social media and the tablist, but everybody, regardless rich, poor, not,
Speaker 1: everybody's going through something, you know what I mean. And
Speaker 1: if you look at life like that, you can never assume,
Speaker 1: you know. And when I get angry at somebody, I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know what's going on with him or her,
Speaker 1: just on your own ship, Ryan, and and and move forward.
Speaker 1: And that's that's worked. Every single day is different, it's
Speaker 1: a different adjustment, it's different things. But you know, when
Speaker 1: I decided to do this podcast, it was in the
Speaker 1: hopes that somebody who needed to hear it. And it's
Speaker 1: every green right, and you can listen to it tomorrow,
Speaker 1: you can listen to it a year from now, five
Speaker 1: years from now, ten years from now, if you need
Speaker 1: it or your family needs it. It's just it's always
Speaker 1: going to be there. And that's the transition of wh
Speaker 1: when we leave our sports, when we take our uniforms off,
Speaker 1: because the identity is so who we are, and if
Speaker 1: you were failed one or if you had a misstep
Speaker 1: along the way, that's attached to it too, and dreads
Speaker 1: with you. You have to find that new purpose. What
Speaker 1: is that going to be? And I didn't know what
Speaker 1: that was gonna be. I didn't know what it was
Speaker 1: going to be, and now I do, And so there's
Speaker 1: purpose every morning when I wake up. You finish your
Speaker 1: rookie season on the sideline due to a shoulder injury,
Speaker 1: what's that like on the professional level? Being there watching
Speaker 1: it struggling but then not being able to get out
Speaker 1: there and kind of redeem yourself. I've never been hurt
Speaker 1: in my life right ankle, you know, turning it ankle,
Speaker 1: go up and dunk on somebody come down on their ankle.
Speaker 1: I still get shivers when I think about that, not
Speaker 1: the dunking part, broke blowing your ankle out part. But
Speaker 1: I've never been hurt where I couldn't play, like bones
Speaker 1: had to be coming out of my body where I
Speaker 1: wouldn't play. But I tore my labor im in my
Speaker 1: right shoulder, which was my life. I couldn't throw the football,
Speaker 1: so I went and I missed my entire second season
Speaker 1: where you're supposed to make that jump as a rookie, right,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't do it. And I and if I'm
Speaker 1: not active, like if I'm not moving like a shark
Speaker 1: at all times, like you don't want to be inside
Speaker 1: my head, right, it's fucked up, right, And so you
Speaker 1: know I need help with that. And I just I
Speaker 1: surrounded myself the wrong people. I wasn't playing um all
Speaker 1: of it and every day because I'm supposed to be
Speaker 1: the savior it's written about and talked about and this
Speaker 1: that and the other, and the word bust started being
Speaker 1: brought up, and I'm just it just took me down
Speaker 1: a terrible path. Um. I ultimately came back, uh and
Speaker 1: was named the starter in year three, but we had
Speaker 1: a new head coach. We didn't win our first two games.
Speaker 1: I got benched. Um, it's good story about that in
Speaker 1: the podcast. I don't know if I could just go
Speaker 1: listen to. I was so angry. I got bench through
Speaker 1: the media. I was driving in and I heard it
Speaker 1: on the radio and I pulled it into the facility.
Speaker 1: I walked up the stairs and head coach's office is
Speaker 1: like hangs over the back and he's got a balcony there,
Speaker 1: and I was so like, I walked in and motherfucked
Speaker 1: him up and down and I feel like I got
Speaker 1: black eyes, Like I don't know if I hung him
Speaker 1: out over the top of the bottony here, so I
Speaker 1: don't know if his kids were there. I didn't know
Speaker 1: what was going on. I was just so pissed and
Speaker 1: like the oppulsive nature of of a football player and
Speaker 1: who thought he was wrong and all that ship. So
Speaker 1: it's it's Um. The storytelling has been a trip. Two thousand,
Speaker 1: two thousand one, he was preparing for a comeback talk
Speaker 1: about that. Yeah, you know the surgery, right, you go
Speaker 1: take the surgery, go down and work with the specialists
Speaker 1: in Birmingham, Alabama. Get right, come back, go up against
Speaker 1: the likes of Jim Harbaugh, who ended up being my backup.
Speaker 1: I win the job. I go down to Atlanta in
Speaker 1: our last preseason game at ball right, nine for nine
Speaker 1: in the first drive, a touchdown, Get handed the job,
Speaker 1: cover Sports Illustrated right back from the brink, you know,
Speaker 1: and we weren't very good. I wasn't very good, um,
Speaker 1: you know. I I didn't understand what kind of work
Speaker 1: ethic it took, especially when things got bad, and I
Speaker 1: didn't realize what I was starting to develop was a
Speaker 1: mental illness depression, right because I was I felt lazy.
Speaker 1: I was having a hard time getting out of bed.
Speaker 1: I felt sad all the time. I wasn't in joying
Speaker 1: what I was getting to do, which is what I
Speaker 1: love to do since I was four years old. I
Speaker 1: didn't understand it. I just thought I was you know,
Speaker 1: I just thought I was weak. And so after that
Speaker 1: comeback didn't pay out and I popped around from Tampa
Speaker 1: to Dallas to Seattle, I just I just thought I
Speaker 1: was so sick and tired of getting beat up physically
Speaker 1: and mentally from from critics and everything like that. I
Speaker 1: just I thought I'd be able to disappear drained. You
Speaker 1: was drained. I was just physically and mentally done. But
Speaker 1: I thought I had all those things that still made
Speaker 1: me a success, the money, power, prestige. The prestige was
Speaker 1: gonna be tarnished a little bit now because I was
Speaker 1: I wasn't a starting NFL quarterback, but I was still
Speaker 1: a former quarterback. Come on, now, still walk me into
Speaker 1: Vegas and get everything I need and want and all
Speaker 1: the I guess, the notoriety I want. I like being famous,
Speaker 1: right care if it was for the negative or positive things.
Speaker 1: At that point, people looked at me and I was
Speaker 1: a rich, famous person. So you write your risk step back?
Speaker 1: What was going on there in your mind? Uh? They're like,
Speaker 1: now this ship just I just figured out I've never
Speaker 1: I just thought I was never going to be the
Speaker 1: guy again, and that wasn't okay with me. I also
Speaker 1: had this mindset that like, if I'm not a starting quarterback,
Speaker 1: then I can't play. When I realized that you can,
Speaker 1: you tell me you can pay like these backups now,
Speaker 1: they make seven ten million dollars and they never take
Speaker 1: a snap. There's a bunch of guys that have played
Speaker 1: like ten twelve years that I have more touchdowns and
Speaker 1: more passing yards and and they've made fifty sixty million dollars.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's great for them, but that was available
Speaker 1: to me if I do have just chosen instead, I'm
Speaker 1: in Seattle. Then I walked into Mike home Wars office
Speaker 1: and I said, I'm done. I'm out out after four years. Right,
Speaker 1: I think I wanted to do since I was four
Speaker 1: years old, because I couldn't tell him like, I'm really
Speaker 1: struggling here. Damn, I can't get out of bed. I'm lazy.
Speaker 1: And you would have hoped he would have looked at
Speaker 1: me and said, all right, let's get you, let's figure
Speaker 1: it out. It's get you some help. Maybe I'm a
Speaker 1: starting quarterback in Super Bowl forty gains the Steelers, you know,
Speaker 1: who knows, who knows. But I wasn't capable at that
Speaker 1: time of asking for help. And I just figured I'll
Speaker 1: be fine. Football will go away, people forget about me,
Speaker 1: and I'll just live this lifestyle. So you damn you
Speaker 1: walk away after four years? Where if you don't mind
Speaker 1: sharing light. The drugs came in and how deep did
Speaker 1: you get into drugs? Yeah, in Vegas about three months
Speaker 1: after I retired. Quit. Uh, We're at the MGM Grand
Speaker 1: I think it was Dala Hoya fight or something like that.
Speaker 1: You guys have been to Vegas for fighting be the
Speaker 1: coolest thing in States, Like the adrenaline in the room
Speaker 1: and everything like that leading up to it. And I
Speaker 1: like that, um, and I like Vegas because I wasn't
Speaker 1: the most famous guy in Vegas, so I could kind
Speaker 1: of go and do whatever the hell I want and
Speaker 1: people really weren't focused on Yeah. And so we're there
Speaker 1: and when they give you those great seats ringside and stuff,
Speaker 1: they announced Susan in the audience. So they announced there
Speaker 1: was Tiger was in the audience. Was Charles Barkley and
Speaker 1: Dr Dre and all these The audience just went nuts.
Speaker 1: And then and I'm just kind of like, don't, don't
Speaker 1: and they'd say my name and that whole Grand Garden arena,
Speaker 1: fucking boot. It's not like that hadn't happened before. We're
Speaker 1: going to the Posting Stadium, you know what it's supposed
Speaker 1: to happen there, though, right, and you have arm aroun
Speaker 1: when you play football, like you can want to do
Speaker 1: something about it? What my attic mine? Because I was
Speaker 1: a drug a drug addict long before I ever took
Speaker 1: a drug, I believe that my attic mind heard not
Speaker 1: only you were a terrible football player, but you were
Speaker 1: a shitty human being. That's what I heard it sure enough,
Speaker 1: an acquaintance of mind. That night at a party where
Speaker 1: there were Super Bowl champions and Hall of Famers were
Speaker 1: I always felt less than and judged, offered me some
Speaker 1: Viking And now I'd taken Vica in my whole life
Speaker 1: after surgeries, I knew what it did. It worked, It
Speaker 1: dealt with my physical pain. This would be the first
Speaker 1: time I took it from my emotional pain and the
Speaker 1: call of pain killers for a reason. Man, it did
Speaker 1: it made me feel better, made me feel nothing. And
Speaker 1: I've been searching for that feeling of not feeling anything
Speaker 1: for so long and I found it. And that would
Speaker 1: be the next eight years of my life, guys, just
Speaker 1: chasing that initial like not feeling the guilt and shame
Speaker 1: of who I'd become or what I had done, or
Speaker 1: what I was going to have to do. All of
Speaker 1: it I had friends in high school that got addicted
Speaker 1: to pain killers and and I it was I saw,
Speaker 1: I mean from Viking into Norcos and you know, i'd
Speaker 1: see kids take how was it that heavy? I had
Speaker 1: to take a hunterd milligram, So yeah, I would, depending
Speaker 1: on what kind of potency it was. Right. I'm just
Speaker 1: surprised my liver didn't crap out from all the tile
Speaker 1: and all that was in that um and I and
Speaker 1: I didn't search for anything else, like, I didn't move
Speaker 1: on to heroin or something like. I liked what it
Speaker 1: made me feel like. That made me feel like like
Speaker 1: I wasn't looking for uppers. I wasn't looking for coke
Speaker 1: or anything like that. I felt like I was already wired.
Speaker 1: I wanted to be sedated, you know. I didn't want
Speaker 1: to feel anything. I didn't want to feel all that failure.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to feel when people booed me or
Speaker 1: told me I was a piece of ship or or
Speaker 1: a bust. I didn't want to feel any of that stuff.
Speaker 1: And this worked. Now, it goes away quickly, and that's
Speaker 1: what the what tolerance does and what your addiction does.
Speaker 1: Then I had to then I had to chase it
Speaker 1: and I had to chase it so I didn't feel
Speaker 1: that way every and I would look in the mirror
Speaker 1: every night, thinking, you fucking junkie, you piece of shit.
Speaker 1: But the only way to get rid of that take more.
Speaker 1: Let's take more, because then you don't feel like it's
Speaker 1: just vicious cycle, the psychology of it all. And I
Speaker 1: would find them. I ultimately started breaking into houses right
Speaker 1: in around my hometown, um to find these bills because
Speaker 1: I didn't know what drug dealer, and they were in
Speaker 1: my hand. They weren't even my system, but they got
Speaker 1: in my hand. I'm leaving a house and getting my
Speaker 1: car going, they were in my hand, and I knew
Speaker 1: everything was gonna be okay for damn, a little bit right,
Speaker 1: for a little bit. So arrested on burglary, theft, drug
Speaker 1: charges in your hometown, like criminal, I'm a bad criminal.
Speaker 1: How does it are you still so much in a
Speaker 1: fog that you don't realize like damn, like I was
Speaker 1: the man here, got out. Now I'm back in my
Speaker 1: hometown for the wrong reasons, doing the wrong thing. Did
Speaker 1: it hit you then or hit you later? Nothing hits
Speaker 1: you then because all you're chasing is that you don't
Speaker 1: care what the consequences. You're ultimately the ultimate. Not feeling
Speaker 1: that anything would be to die and I wouldn't feel
Speaker 1: anything ever again. So I was like at that point
Speaker 1: after I got arrested. I got arrested on a like
Speaker 1: a Friday, and I bonded out because I'm so fearful. Um.
Speaker 1: But then I didn't have pills and I had to
Speaker 1: figure out and I couldn't figure it out, so I
Speaker 1: googled how to kill myself. I'd slit my wrist. You
Speaker 1: can see the scar still there. I see it every day.
Speaker 1: It's a reminder. It didn't work. I went and found
Speaker 1: more pills. I took them um, and got arrested for
Speaker 1: the second time in forty eight hours. And then I
Speaker 1: wouldn't get out after that one help thirty two thirty
Speaker 1: two months in prison, and that's where you kind of
Speaker 1: felt like you hit rock bottom. And two there was
Speaker 1: nowhere up. It wasn't even that, you know. I almost
Speaker 1: felt like that, Okay, this is where, this is where
Speaker 1: life is. So I don't think I ever hit rock bottom.
Speaker 1: Tell you the truth, like rock bottom is when you
Speaker 1: don't get back up, that's rock bottom. You know. I bounced,
Speaker 1: I didn't and it for how long ever it took
Speaker 1: me to figure out how to be a human being.
Speaker 1: It it took what it took, and so um and
Speaker 1: luckily I'm still here because a lot of guys, and
Speaker 1: in particular, I think that the act that I was
Speaker 1: famous and the consequences were quick and severe, and the
Speaker 1: spotlight was on me. I feel I could save my
Speaker 1: life because there's so many of my peers or people
Speaker 1: who go through what I went through. Do it in
Speaker 1: the shadows or do it in the dark, and then
Speaker 1: they're gone and no one knows. And so you know
Speaker 1: a lot of people say to me like, hey, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: that must have been so hard to do in the
Speaker 1: public eye. Yeah, but it probably saved my life. Said
Speaker 1: it would have been in the dark, and no one
Speaker 1: would have sayn that I would have been dead. What
Speaker 1: was it like once you got out? Where was your
Speaker 1: mind that at that particular time. Well, you know, I
Speaker 1: had hope, and I had developed that hope because of
Speaker 1: the things I told you guys about earlier. We I
Speaker 1: started helping guys, being of service. But I had nothing right.
Speaker 1: I did have my mom and dad, who God bless him,
Speaker 1: unconditionally loved me. They never wanted the famous football playing son.
Speaker 1: They just wanted me, and they were there outside the
Speaker 1: prison that day December and they picked me up. Now
Speaker 1: I had nothing. I had no money left. I couldn't
Speaker 1: rub two pennies together, had no place to go. I
Speaker 1: had no prospects, like you know, Fox and ESPN were
Speaker 1: coming knocking on my door, Hey Ryan, you want to come,
Speaker 1: you know and work for us. Nothing at a credit
Speaker 1: score like five um curls weren't lined up to date me.
Speaker 1: I just had this hope it was maybe I don't know.
Speaker 1: So when I get back, my parole officers like I
Speaker 1: wanted to go to treatment. I knew I needed to
Speaker 1: go to treatment for physically, it's like three pounds to
Speaker 1: stroke out from high blood pressure, and I needed I
Speaker 1: needed physical and emotional rehabilitation. So I asked to go
Speaker 1: to treatment. It's like, no, we don't hear that. I
Speaker 1: gets out of institution, wants to go to an institution again.
Speaker 1: I said, you're gonna punish me because I want to
Speaker 1: set a president h So I still got stuck there
Speaker 1: in that hometown, in my parents basement on their couch.
Speaker 1: Now it's more than a lot of people get when
Speaker 1: they get out of prison, right they don't have anywhere
Speaker 1: to go, so they go back to doing what they're doing.
Speaker 1: So I'm incredibly grateful, and I understand that I had
Speaker 1: much more than a lot of people. Get at a
Speaker 1: roof over my head which started and then I thought, Okay,
Speaker 1: what was I doing in there? How do I go
Speaker 1: about doing that? And it was about being a service.
Speaker 1: So I started. I was a Nike rep. I had Nike.
Speaker 1: Nike was my my endorser, and I, you know, every
Speaker 1: year we get that a lot mint and I spent
Speaker 1: it every year, and I kept all that stuff and
Speaker 1: it was all in the storage facility. So I started
Speaker 1: going to my storage facility, and when guys that I
Speaker 1: knew in prison were getting out, I put together a
Speaker 1: duffle bed and I would go down to the mission
Speaker 1: and I said, if you were in Great Falls, Montana
Speaker 1: in the winter of two thousand fourteen, you saw the
Speaker 1: most swagged out homeless and people Jordan's and uh everything.
Speaker 1: Nike and I got rid of it all and I
Speaker 1: didn't tell anybody about it. I just went and did
Speaker 1: it um And then I started volunteering for that stuff,
Speaker 1: and either my parole officer saw what I had done
Speaker 1: and there was some evidential reproof. He let me go
Speaker 1: to California to seek treatment, and that's where this all
Speaker 1: started and how I got to l A and it
Speaker 1: really paved the way for for how I got here
Speaker 1: to You guys, how long do you feel like it
Speaker 1: really took you once you got to that treatment facility
Speaker 1: to feel like but what do we call it? A
Speaker 1: new person or yourself? What would you call it? I don't.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's I'm ever evolving. Still, I'm better today
Speaker 1: than I was last year, and that's always going to continue.
Speaker 1: And once that starts stopping, and then I gotta have
Speaker 1: to go back to the drawing board, right and figure
Speaker 1: out where I'm where I'm when I'm messing up. A
Speaker 1: couple of weeks into treatment prison, still kind of in
Speaker 1: my head, I was watching TV. Guy comes in and
Speaker 1: wants to watch something else, and I just kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, big, big time in a little bit, you
Speaker 1: get the hell out of here. And I was, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm a big guy. And when I say that,
Speaker 1: when I say fuck it, kind of it's there's a
Speaker 1: incentivized way about the way I do it. And uh,
Speaker 1: and I can't imagine these people. They're looking at this
Speaker 1: dude six seven, you know at the time, two eight
Speaker 1: pounds or something like that, you know, like being impulsively angry,
Speaker 1: and they're going through their own stuff. And then when
Speaker 1: I got shown them mirror like, Ryan, this is who
Speaker 1: you were in this moment. This was old behavior. I
Speaker 1: was like, fuck you, I'm gone. That's always been my thing.
Speaker 1: And I left treatment. But the difference in me that
Speaker 1: time as I went back and said I was sorry
Speaker 1: and asked if I could come back, and I'd never
Speaker 1: done that in my life. I'd always pointed my finger
Speaker 1: to everybody else and said it's your fault. And that
Speaker 1: was the switch. And I think back now to it now,
Speaker 1: and I feel like that was the switch, the change
Speaker 1: that that was completely degrees different than who I had
Speaker 1: been my whole life. So you get out of treatment, um,
Speaker 1: do you feel like you can accomplish anything? At that point,
Speaker 1: you feel like you can. But then you realize that,
Speaker 1: I go get a job and the job pays fifteen
Speaker 1: bucks an hour, and you've made millions of the story. Right.
Speaker 1: I went and got this job working in a recovery house.
Speaker 1: I was gonna be a driver for the guys who
Speaker 1: were newly sober and everything like that. And he tells
Speaker 1: me it's fifteen bucks an hour. And the only reason
Speaker 1: I say that because I was making five million dollars
Speaker 1: a year and I felt like I was miserable and
Speaker 1: I was a miserable person and this guy had just
Speaker 1: offered me a job fifteen bucks an hour, you know,
Speaker 1: Like I felt more value than I ever felt my life.
Speaker 1: I remember that first paycheck, it was like three something
Speaker 1: like that, and I took a picture and I sent
Speaker 1: to my parents, like money. I know what money is
Speaker 1: for now. Money makes the lives better for my son
Speaker 1: and my family. It's not about me. And every time
Speaker 1: I had any money in my pocket, I made it
Speaker 1: about me and it just exacerbated my character defects. So um,
Speaker 1: I understand the value of it and the inherent value
Speaker 1: it gives me and what it makes me being uh,
Speaker 1: someone who speaks on your past and kind of a
Speaker 1: public speaker. Now, what is it that you preach and
Speaker 1: hope that people take away from listening to you that
Speaker 1: if I can do this, anybody can that. My hope
Speaker 1: is to destigmatize mental illness and substance abuse. Everybody deals
Speaker 1: with it. Everybody goes through it, whether you know somebody
Speaker 1: you've been through it or or you've dealt with it yourself. Uh,
Speaker 1: And it's okay not to be okay, Like we're all
Speaker 1: funked up, And I don't think that the last two
Speaker 1: years couldn't have shown that better to all right, and
Speaker 1: how we need to be here for one another, like
Speaker 1: every life is precious and fully understanding that, So um,
Speaker 1: that's the hope. And then the understanding is that it
Speaker 1: can never be about me again. So when I go
Speaker 1: speak somewhere, it can't be about me ultimately at the end,
Speaker 1: getting some applause for sharing my story, but it's about
Speaker 1: that one individual in the back of the room. It
Speaker 1: couldn't take his eyes off me because guess what, Uh
Speaker 1: you know, he knows as soon as he gets home,
Speaker 1: he's got to get some more pills to make sure
Speaker 1: his life is in order. And so, like I told
Speaker 1: you guys earlier, I I would never have the impact
Speaker 1: that I'm going to have if I had just been
Speaker 1: a good football player. This is your path, crazy foot
Speaker 1: path back in TV and radio now talking football. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you start grinning instantly. How good does that
Speaker 1: make you? Feel football gave me everything and for a
Speaker 1: long time it was toxic for me. But football didn't
Speaker 1: do anything to me. I did it to myself. Um,
Speaker 1: and I love talking about it. I've I've forgotten more
Speaker 1: football than most people know, right, and I'm really good
Speaker 1: at it. I didn't know if I was gonna be
Speaker 1: good at it or not. And I went shadow guys
Speaker 1: that have been in the business for a while, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, I really would like to do that. And luckily,
Speaker 1: and I don't take this for granted anyway. People have
Speaker 1: given me an opportunity when they didn't have to, Like
Speaker 1: these these corporations didn't have to, Like you know, when
Speaker 1: I fill out the background background check, right, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: a felon, and that's always going to be there, right.
Speaker 1: So if I don't get hired because of that, there's
Speaker 1: consequences to my action, I fully understand it. Um. My
Speaker 1: hope is that they get to know me. They see
Speaker 1: how hard I work, how good I'm at what I do,
Speaker 1: and my character is different from what they know and here,
Speaker 1: and that's what you want to see when people get
Speaker 1: out of prison, every everybody, and so we do a
Speaker 1: ton of work with with my my foundation and anybody
Speaker 1: I can to help those so the recidivism rate goes down. Right.
Speaker 1: We don't want people going back because this country loves
Speaker 1: guys going back. They're playing on money, these prisons business.
Speaker 1: And I was in one in Montana. I was in
Speaker 1: a private, for profit prison, and so I see how
Speaker 1: it works. Right. It's more beneficial for d a's and
Speaker 1: UH judges to send you to prison and anything anything
Speaker 1: else because if you're not in there, there's the states
Speaker 1: still paying for bed, whether it's filled or not a
Speaker 1: cap on it. So we're working hard for it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't get down when things don't go right because
Speaker 1: I'm like, we're just gonna We're gonna eat a piece
Speaker 1: every day. Somebody told me to how do you eat?
Speaker 1: How do you eat an elephant? You're like one bite
Speaker 1: at a time to be part of the solution, real quick,
Speaker 1: coming down to the end, um fatherhood, What does that
Speaker 1: mean to you? And like you said early on, you
Speaker 1: you struggle that at the beginning, where are you at
Speaker 1: in that process? The best thing I've ever done? Right, Um,
Speaker 1: there's something about when they lay them in your arms
Speaker 1: and you realize or this wave of selflessness just overwhelms.
Speaker 1: You're like, everything I do from this point on it
Speaker 1: is going to be about him. That's it. And I'm fearful. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, you know d N a mental illness. I'm
Speaker 1: fearful of all those things. But I also have a
Speaker 1: lot more knowledge. How about go about being a dad differently?
Speaker 1: My dad, I love him, He's my hero. You know,
Speaker 1: he came home from the war. They spit on him.
Speaker 1: He wasn't really vulnerable or transparent or anything like that.
Speaker 1: So I never saw it. I'm I want my son
Speaker 1: to understand fully that, like it's okay to show that
Speaker 1: it's not weakness, it's it's actually a strength and uh
Speaker 1: and you'll be more relatable to people and everything like that. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, he's only four right now that cares about
Speaker 1: his Uh it's gymnastics training, but he calls it ninja training.
Speaker 1: Right now. What he cares about that transformers and his
Speaker 1: swords and so, um, you know, we're working on working
Speaker 1: on the things that we need to work. And I
Speaker 1: got a great partner, m HM who helps me along
Speaker 1: the way. She uh she produced the podcast as well. Um,
Speaker 1: just really talented and she knows me better than anybody. Um.
Speaker 1: So she she can call me all that ship better
Speaker 1: than anybody being a parent. Like we have a lot
Speaker 1: of success in sports, but what is what do we
Speaker 1: have that's really ours? Like that's that feeling you have
Speaker 1: Like I got kids to him when I felt my
Speaker 1: youngest daughter and already had kid. But just the feeling
Speaker 1: of holding it, like you have something that's yours that
Speaker 1: you can say that's actually yours, but tell of your things, No,
Speaker 1: not like that, but you made this child. This is
Speaker 1: your seed, you know what I mean? The feeling of
Speaker 1: saying something that is actually yours is the best feeling
Speaker 1: of being a father for me. And I never understood it.
Speaker 1: And I'm so glad I didn't have a child until
Speaker 1: I was ready mentally forty forty years old is when
Speaker 1: I have my kids, you know. And UM so grateful
Speaker 1: for that because he's never gonna see his dad as
Speaker 1: a funked up addict or or a guy that that
Speaker 1: yells at people and and I mean, he's just never
Speaker 1: gonna see that version of me, And so I'm really
Speaker 1: appreciative for that nice quick hitters. First thing that comes
Speaker 1: to mind. Let us know, if you had a life
Speaker 1: message put on a billboard, what would it be what
Speaker 1: it is? It is? Yeah, Stuck on the Island. Three
Speaker 1: movies or shows you will watch on repeat, The West Wing, Uh,
Speaker 1: let's see here, I probably oh, Miracle the Hockey. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: um what those the Dark Knight Dark Nights? I've seen that.
Speaker 1: It's probably in the works. But if you had a
Speaker 1: biopic of your life, who would play you? Oh? I
Speaker 1: don't know. Um. I got a buddy named Jeff Stults. Uh,
Speaker 1: he's an actor. A train with him sometimes he played quarterback. Uh.
Speaker 1: I like him. I think I think he would do
Speaker 1: you pull it off? I think he would do a
Speaker 1: hell I love the job. We've to your point. We've
Speaker 1: been talking to people and I a couple of people
Speaker 1: they approaches like Chris Pratt or Channing Tatum. You know cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't want it to be a boy I wanted
Speaker 1: to be a documentary. I'll, you know, I'll, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Did you guys ever see a Tania? No. I wanted
Speaker 1: if I could do it that way, I would do
Speaker 1: it in that format, kind of make it self deprecating
Speaker 1: and have a comedic flare to it because it's a
Speaker 1: serious subject. But I want it's kind of like how
Speaker 1: I take myself. I don't take myself very seriously, subject seriously,
Speaker 1: but I don't take mysel my pain. Is that what
Speaker 1: Kevin Hart said, laugh at my pain? Give me your
Speaker 1: top five college programs of all time? H Washington State one,
Speaker 1: uh U c l A basketball for sure. We played
Speaker 1: abandoned brothers, TOLDE. Bailey j R. Henderson tyas Sedney always
Speaker 1: running to the national title that year I fit. That's
Speaker 1: where I fitl That's really where I figured out, like,
Speaker 1: you're not playing bad in Notre Dame. I grew up
Speaker 1: a West Virginia fan. Major Harris. It was a quarterback
Speaker 1: for that team. I wanted to be him, and so
Speaker 1: I put him up there. I put that team up
Speaker 1: there on what they were able to accomplish there in Morgantown.
Speaker 1: I love the bulls they were during my the nineties run.
Speaker 1: But g P and the Sonics for me with Sean
Speaker 1: Camp and Debt Left and and McMillan and it's just
Speaker 1: uh ope, those dudes used to be a fake police
Speaker 1: officer and pull people over it. I would fly had
Speaker 1: season tickets for the Sonics and I'd fly up in
Speaker 1: g P and then and every was shot. Lewis there
Speaker 1: at the end, we all go out to Julian's, a
Speaker 1: billiard place up there in Seattle, and we would we
Speaker 1: play crafts and play pool and drink our faces off.
Speaker 1: Ah man, I love those guys. They didn't they didn't
Speaker 1: care at all where my career kind of went that.
Speaker 1: They just still love you. They wanted to embrace me.
Speaker 1: So that's that Sonics team that played the Bulls in
Speaker 1: that like that that team was. That's one of my
Speaker 1: top five five dinner guess that are alive. Uh John F. Kennedy,
Speaker 1: Michael Jordan's um Kobe Uh Kobe and I came into
Speaker 1: the league's at the same time in San Diego in
Speaker 1: l A. His assistant at the time and my assistant
Speaker 1: went to the same high school, so we did a
Speaker 1: lot of things together. His career started going like this,
Speaker 1: might I started going like this. Remember he called me
Speaker 1: from Italy one time. It was just like it was
Speaker 1: like trying to be my therapist in the process his
Speaker 1: mentality that where it got to. So definitely, definitely I
Speaker 1: still have his original KB eate Adidas as we go
Speaker 1: to games and given to my brothers, and I got
Speaker 1: to the black one with the white stripes yeah, the
Speaker 1: white ones with yeah crazy eights, yeah and uh yeah,
Speaker 1: so so Kobe would be one of them. Two more,
Speaker 1: two more? Okay, President Obama? Um and uh um. I'd
Speaker 1: probably say Aaron Rodgers because I think he's an amazing
Speaker 1: football player. But I'd like to know what the is
Speaker 1: going on in that mind sometimes, right, I'd like to
Speaker 1: ask Pepper in with questions, but golf a couple of times,
Speaker 1: but it was I wasn't, I wasn't those those those
Speaker 1: are probably good five guys. I probably want to ask questions.
Speaker 1: If you could have a guest on All the Smoke,
Speaker 1: who would it be? But before you answer, you, before
Speaker 1: you answer this question, you have to help us get
Speaker 1: your answer on the show. Okay, Okay, got it, I
Speaker 1: got it. Accept the challenge. I accept that challenge. Um,
Speaker 1: I would say, um, I always find it incredibly guy
Speaker 1: named Rob Mendez, Okay, haven't heard that name. He is
Speaker 1: a He is a guy with no arms, no legs,
Speaker 1: and coaches in foh. I played football with him on
Speaker 1: on Tuesday night of this week, and I had him
Speaker 1: on my radio show this week too, and I was
Speaker 1: you know, I read this book in prison, Unbroken, about
Speaker 1: Louis Zamparini, who was an unbelievable sprinter at Torrance, California.
Speaker 1: Here went to the Olympics in the thirties in Nazi Germany.
Speaker 1: And if it weren't for a guy named of Jesse
Speaker 1: owens Uh. He comes home, he goes to war, he
Speaker 1: gets shot down uh in a plane, lives for forty
Speaker 1: some days in a raft um, gets thrown into pow
Speaker 1: camp with the Japanese and the in the Pacific, and
Speaker 1: then gets out. And I thought to myself, I'm like, like,
Speaker 1: if that dude, I can go through all of that
Speaker 1: and then come out as a better man. And it
Speaker 1: wasn't until he got home that he found he had
Speaker 1: a ton of problems until you addressed him and fixed him.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, so I look at a guy like
Speaker 1: that who has no arms and no legs but continues
Speaker 1: to wake up every day with this optimism and drive.
Speaker 1: I would recommend it. The dude is amazing. That's a
Speaker 1: great suggestion. And I got you for Jack, Would you
Speaker 1: like to do what you normally do at the end
Speaker 1: of the show. Now, well, we don't like our guests
Speaker 1: to come and leave him to hand it, okay, But
Speaker 1: for you guys, you have to go to All the
Speaker 1: Smoke Store to get yours. But for you, my brother,
Speaker 1: we got you some power and a nice little All
Speaker 1: the Smoke bag coming back. So we are pretty state.
Speaker 1: You're coming in your time. Honestly, Bro, I appreci you
Speaker 1: guys taking the time. I mean, I mean, when you
Speaker 1: have a platform, use it. Yeah. Absolutely, And you know,
Speaker 1: like I said, the first time, really getting a chance
Speaker 1: to meet. But we're not too far off in the age.
Speaker 1: So I've always followed your story and I just said,
Speaker 1: I'm a fan of the person, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like the humility to being able to look yourself in
Speaker 1: the mirror, be able to bounce back and just understand
Speaker 1: why you're here. You know, like you said, you could
Speaker 1: have played twenty years, but your purpose was to go
Speaker 1: down this to help people. And that's something that you know,
Speaker 1: we don't we don't get every day, especially in these
Speaker 1: kind of times. I mean, we just want to say
Speaker 1: we really appreciate you. Man. Best of luck on, continue
Speaker 1: to get better yourself, fatherhood and man, everything else you
Speaker 1: have going on. He as real as they come. He
Speaker 1: as real as they come, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So you you cross a lot of people and and
Speaker 1: they you can't really relate to him because they went
Speaker 1: through nothing. You know what I'm saying. The best people
Speaker 1: that I could set of friends out of people that
Speaker 1: I love to be around, all the people that went
Speaker 1: through something, you know what I'm saying, because you and
Speaker 1: learn something from it and you can also build. So
Speaker 1: I appreciate you being here. Bro. And like I said,
Speaker 1: coming on the show, because the guy from Entourage, you
Speaker 1: called me. Kevin called me in my d M. You
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. We talked about it a while back.
Speaker 1: So I'm glad we made it happen that a little
Speaker 1: Kevin has been great. Uh he's a big sports fan.
Speaker 1: I mean, I told you guys, you guys are like
Speaker 1: we're the same manche the real house. I want appreciate.
Speaker 1: So this is mean. This was meaning just town appreciate
Speaker 1: that man. Thank you. Man. That's a rap. Ryan Leaf.
Speaker 1: You can find this on Showtime Basketball, YouTube and the
Speaker 1: I Heart platforms Black Effects. We'll see you all next week.
Speaker 1: L A. This is all a smoke a production of
Speaker 1: The Black Effect and Our Heart Radio in partnership with
Speaker 1: Showtime