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173: Seth Wickersham - Special Episode · Sports History Network

• 0:59
  This podcast is part of the Sports.
• 1:00
  History Network, your headquarters for the yesteryear.
• 1:03
  Of your favorite sport.
• 1:04
  You can Learn more at sportshistorynetwork.com Names.
• 1:08
  Like Tom Brady, Andrew Luck, and Ya Tittle are three great quarterbacks whom time has not forgotten.
• 1:17
  But there are stories and facts about them that have not been told or that time has forgotten.
• 1:23
  And next on Sports Forgotten Heroes, we're going to explore a few very unique stories, not only about these three great quarterbacks, but of a few other sports figures who just might surprise you.
• 1:39
  This is Sports Forgotten Heroes, a tribute to the stars who shaped the games we love to watch and the games we love to play.
• 1:46
  Stars who provided us with many thrills, but when their time was up, they faded away.
• 1:51
  We'll take a look back at their spectacular careers, their moments of fame, even if it was just, just for one season or just one game.
• 1:58
  And now, here's your host, Warren Rogan.
• 2:02
  Hello and welcome to Sports forgotten heroes, episode 173 forgotten and unknown Stories.
• 2:10
  Today's episode is a little different from what I normally do.
• 2:14
  Usually I talk about a sports hero whose accomplishments and story have largely been forgotten.
• 2:22
  Well, nobody has forgotten Tom Brady.
• 2:26
  Nobody has forgotten YA Tittle.
• 2:28
  And if you're a football fan, you certainly remember Andrew Luck.
• 2:33
  But sometimes it isn't the person we forget, sometimes it's part of their story.
• 2:39
  And that's what we're going to explore today with a terrific sports writer, Seth Wickersham.
• 2:45
  Seth's new book, beyond that Hill, is actually being released today, September 22, 2026.
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  It's a collection of some of his best long form writing.
• 2:57
  But what interested me most were the stories behind the people we think we already know.
• 3:04
  We're going to talk about Andrew Luck and why One of the NFL's brightest young stars walked away from football at just 29 years old.
• 3:13
  We'll look at Tom Brady and the extraordinary drive that allowed him to keep chasing greatness long after there was seemingly nothing left to prove.
• 3:24
  We'll talk about Rolando McLean, another enormously talented player who walked away from the game at a young age.
• 3:32
  And Scott McLuhan, one of football's great talent evaluators, a man whose fingerprints were on successful teams, even though most fans probably never knew his name well.
• 3:46
  Also talk about Bill Walsh.
• 3:47
  Remember the genius, the Super Bowls and the west coast offense.
• 3:52
  But there was another side of Walsh, one filled with doubt, insecurity, and an almost relentless need to prove himself.
• 4:02
  And finally, YA Tittle, a Hall of Fame quarterback remembered by generations of football Fans for one unforgettable photograph.
• 4:12
  The famous image of Tittled, bloodied and helmetless on his knees.
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  It's an image he hated.
• 4:21
  And Seth's story about Tittle late in his life raises a fascinating question about memory.
• 4:27
  Who gets to decide how an athlete is remembered?
• 4:32
  That's really what today's show is about.
• 4:34
  Not necessarily forgotten heroes, but forgotten pieces of people who we thought we knew before we get there.
• 4:42
  Please follow Sports Forgotten Heroes on X at sportsfheroes.
• 4:46
  Look for the Sports Forgotten Heroes page on Facebook.
• 4:49
  And for Sports Forgotten Heroes shorts, check out Sports Forgotten Heroes on Instagram.
• 4:57
  Also, please give Sports Forgotten Heroes a like and hit that subscribe button, too.
• 5:02
  And as always, thanks for your support.
• 5:06
  Okay, let's get into today's show with.
• 5:08
  My guest, Seth Wickersheim.
• 5:14
  Seth, welcome to Sports Forgotten Heroes.
• 5:16
  I am so glad you could join this evening.
• 5:20
  It's great to be here, man.
• 5:21
  Yeah.
• 5:22
  Yeah.
• 5:22
  This should be a fun one.
• 5:23
  And I'm gonna do something a little different today.
• 5:27
  This show is called Sports Forgotten Heroes.
• 5:30
  And usually I told the story of an athlete or sports figure in history who has largely been forgotten.
• 5:41
  You are obviously not that, and neither are Tom Brady or Bill Walsh.
• 5:50
  But reading beyond that hill, something occurred to me.
• 5:57
  Sometimes we remember the athlete, but forget the person.
• 6:03
  Sometimes we remember one moment and it becomes their entire story.
• 6:10
  And sometimes the people who helped build we remember, they sort of disappear altogether.
• 6:22
  So today I want to talk about some of those people and some of the stories that in your book.
• 6:30
  And I'd like to start with Andrew Locke.
• 6:36
  You have a unique perspective on a lot of these stories.
• 6:41
  What was the ultimate determining factor that led to him saying, I've had enough.
• 6:50
  And how long did it take him to finally accept the fact that.
• 6:56
  That he was going to step away from the game?
• 7:01
  Yeah.
• 7:01
  Well, first, thanks for having me.
• 7:03
  And even though, you know, Andrew Luck is a.
• 7:06
  Is a relative, he's a young man, and he's a relatively contemporary athlete, he's now the general manager for Stanford football.
• 7:14
  And I think there are kids who come into Stanford who have no idea who he is, even though he's their boss.
• 7:21
  And so, you know, I think that he.
• 7:24
  He fits.
• 7:26
  And, you know, Andrew's interesting because he was first known as a generational quarterback, and then he was known as the generational quarterback who walked away and surprised everybody.
• 7:39
  And he kind of went underground and when, you know, disappeared from the public eye for a couple years after retiring in 2019.
• 7:49
  And this is a long way of answering your question, but I think it's the most accurate one.
• 7:55
  A couple months after he retired, I wrote him a letter, and I kind of guessed some of the things he might be going through.
• 8:04
  Questioning identity, because you don't play quarterback, you are a quarterback, all of these things.
• 8:11
  And he wrote me back and he said, maybe we'll talk someday.
• 8:15
  It might be two weeks, it might be two years.
• 8:18
  You know, thanks for the note.
• 8:21
  We just kind of stayed in touch, and I think that when we finally did connect in 2022, and I spent.
• 8:32
  I visited him a lot that year, I think that he was still trying to figure out why ultimately he walked away.
• 8:41
  Clearly, injuries were a part of it and just being in pain, how pain changes you, how pain changes decision.
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  But really, I think that the.
• 8:52
  I think the real answer was more interesting and more complex, and that's that I don't think he liked who he was as a quarterback.
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  You know, everything had to revolve around him for him to think he was giving.
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  Getting the best chance to go out there and play well and win on Sundays.
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  And when he was injured and he had a chance to step away and question assumptions and question who he was and why he was playing football and why he was playing quarterback and what it was doing to him,
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  I think that he came to some answers that helped him as a human, but gave him a world beyond quarterbacking.
• 9:33
  And so, you know, we talked a lot about it.
• 9:38
  He said, you know, you can't think about anything else if you're an NFL quarterback.
• 9:43
  And he said, it's, you know, it's not the healthiest way to live.
• 9:45
  And it seeps into a lot of other areas.
• 9:47
  And so I think that, like, that was it.
• 9:49
  But ultimately, these are still questions that he asks himself.
• 9:53
  And there was one moment where he was talking about his decision and why he did it and theories, and his wife, Nicole, who had known him since college, they had a newborn girl.
• 10:06
  And I think that at that point she was realizing that having a newborn baby was easier than having a retired quarterback in the house.
• 10:13
  And she said, andrew, does anybody talk about themselves more than you?
• 10:19
  Or how can someone talk about themselves so much?
• 10:21
  And they both laughed.
• 10:23
  But it was a.
• 10:23
  It was a point well taken.
• 10:26
  You know, here.
• 10:27
  Here's a really odd question for you.
• 10:32
  Obviously, he was a star quarterback.
• 10:36
  He replaced Peyton Manning.
• 10:38
  I mean, he was the guy that was going to lead Indianapolis to the promised land.
• 10:45
  Do you think he could have made the choice he did if he didn't have the kind of bank account that he had?
• 10:59
  That's such an interesting question, and I wish I had asked him that.
• 11:04
  I mean, I think that like, you know, certainly there was a measure of security that he had, you know, by virtue of the, the compensation that he had had.
• 11:22
  But, you know, I think that if he were playing in the 50s and getting beaten up, you know, like those players did, I mean, maybe like in the 70s, probably the, probably the most brutal area era of professional
• 11:35
  football was in the 70s, but wasn't making that kind of money, it might have been easier to walk away in some ways.
• 11:43
  I don't know.
• 11:44
  I mean, I think that the contract and the fact that he had signed this big contract made him the game's highest paid player and then retired shortly after that and was injured so much after he signed it.
• 11:55
  You know, I think those things weighed on him because he had a deep, deep, deep responsibility and ethos and ethic to please people and deliver.
• 12:11
  And if he started a game, he was finishing it.
• 12:14
  And I think that it complicated things.
• 12:19
  What was it like for him at first?
• 12:21
  First of all, the way you wrote the book, I really enjoyed.
• 12:24
  I'm reading another book that's somewhat similar in the way you structure it.
• 12:28
  These are not mammoth, you know, 200 page chapters, you know what I mean?
• 12:35
  These are stories about different people and different aspects about their careers and, and decisions that they made.
• 12:45
  And it makes it for a very easy read.
• 12:49
  And I appreciate that after reading some of the bios I read.
• 12:54
  Thank you.
• 12:55
  Well, it was, it's a collections, you know, so I think I was trying to.
• 12:58
  What's the organizing principle for, you know, what's your most essential work?
• 13:04
  And so those are the things.
• 13:05
  I divided them into four categories that I thought, you know, might give it some sort of logical cohesiveness.
• 13:12
  The jury's out whether I actually accomplished that.
• 13:16
  Well, what was it like for Andrew at first when he, when he decided to step away?
• 13:21
  I mean, there's got to be a withdrawal period.
• 13:28
  It lasted that withdrawal lasted years.
• 13:30
  I think that like, you know, the first thing he did was he went to Europe, he grew his hair out, he went on a keto diet and, you know, his wife gave birth and so he became a father.
• 13:42
  And then the world shut down shortly after that.
• 13:47
  And so there was this.
• 13:48
  All of these things that, you know, came together to take what was an incredibly busy life that he was at the center of to one that kind of became quiet and more still and smaller.
• 14:06
  And I think that he didn't regret his decision, but he just was constantly wondering what had he had done and how he fell out of love with a game that he loved so much for so long.
• 14:20
  And those, you know, he saw a counselor.
• 14:23
  Those weren't.
• 14:24
  He journaled a lot, and the answers didn't come easy.
• 14:28
  And I think that, like, eventually he arrived at what he told me was the clarity that I'm not going to have clarity, and I don't need clarity, because, again, it's like there was one morning I was with him,
• 14:41
  and he was making an omelet for his daughter.
• 14:44
  And, you know, he was really trying to make a perfect little omelette for his daughter.
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  And, you know, it was a quiet morning in their house.
• 14:52
  And, you know, think about all the things he could have been doing right then.
• 14:57
  He could have been preparing for the next opponent.
• 14:59
  He could be, you know, getting paid a contract that was probably double what his last one was.
• 15:06
  He might have been a Super bowl champion.
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  He also might have been alone and not married.
• 15:14
  So those are the things that we're all kind of going through his head.
• 15:19
  Do you think it's the competition that a guy like Andrew Luck misses more or the camaraderie with the guys in the locker room?
• 15:34
  I would probably say, you know, the camaraderie, but the competition's part of it.
• 15:42
  It's all.
• 15:42
  It's all wrapped up in the same, you know, mosaic of what drives these guys.
• 15:50
  But, you know, I think that, like, when he was injured and he was thinking about really for the first time, and it was pretty private, he wasn't even talking to his wife to be a lot about this.
• 16:03
  But I think that when he was injured and he was really trying to assess what am I doing and why, and why is my identity all wrapped up in being a quarterback and is that healthy?
• 16:15
  All of these big questions.
• 16:16
  As he's rehabbing his injured shoulder, you know, he.
• 16:23
  He boiled it down to his essence and that he liked throwing the ball to his friends.
• 16:29
  And, you know, he's a really analytical thinker.
• 16:32
  You know, I think that.
• 16:35
  How do you.
• 16:36
  What's the perfect makeup for a quarterback?
• 16:38
  I mean, there's all kinds of different types of personalities that end up having the same kind of traits.
• 16:44
  But his.
• 16:45
  He's the kind of inside his own head that I've met, you know, maybe Steve Young, you know, the 49ers quarterback.
• 16:53
  You know, those are.
• 16:54
  Those guys contend with doubt in ways that are different than.
• 16:58
  I think that maybe more transparent than a lot of quarterbacks.
• 17:03
  But, you know, it was that he liked throwing the ball to his friends, and so there's A competitive element in that, too, because obviously they're winning the play if he's completing a pass to his friends.
• 17:13
  But I think that he just loved gifting the ball and, you know, making his friends happy and earning them bonuses in their contracts and all of these things.
• 17:22
  And so.
• 17:23
  But there was a lot of moments within the game that I think that, you know, he misses.
• 17:31
  Part of the cool thing about that story was since he had never talked before, once he was talking to me, all the people that he was confidants with or people that hadn't really talked about him before talked to
• 17:44
  me for the story, including some of the people at the Colts that he, you know, left, you know, on the eve of a season.
• 17:52
  And, you know, Frank Reich, who's the.
• 17:56
  The Colts coach at the time, Andrew started coming by the facility about a year after he retired, and they would talk ball, and Coach Reich didn't really know what to make of it.
• 18:07
  And there was one day he was driving.
• 18:08
  He's like, is he telling me he wants to come back?
• 18:10
  You know, and one day he was driving, and message in a bottle by the police came on.
• 18:15
  And Frank pulls over on the side of the road and he types out, sending out an sos, and he, you know, asks him to come back.
• 18:23
  And Andrew, you know, was like, I appreciate the message in the bottle, but I'm not coming back.
• 18:28
  And I think that it's because there are things he misses, but he didn't miss them enough that he would trade the things in his life that he's gained away from the field.
• 18:38
  I found it so interesting in how you wrote about Andrew Luck versus how you wrote about Tom Brady.
• 18:47
  One of the messages, and you sort of alluded to that just a little while ago that I took away from Luck was he didn't want to be known strictly as a quarterback.
• 18:58
  He wanted more out of life.
• 19:01
  So he retired when he had so many more years ahead of him so he could experience more in life.
• 19:08
  And again, you talk about, and you mentioned it just now, how he's the general manager of the Stanford University football team.
• 19:18
  He didn't want to be just a quarterback.
• 19:21
  He wanted to be a dad.
• 19:22
  He wanted to do other things.
• 19:26
  Again, he didn't want to be measured just as a quarterback.
• 19:29
  The polar opposite is Tom Brady.
• 19:32
  His story is about someone who wanted nothing more than to be a quarterback.
• 19:40
  He saw his life as a quarterback first, and everything else came second.
• 19:49
  You titled that chapter Tom Brady Always Stood Alone.
• 19:56
  It's a pretty powerful choice of words.
• 19:59
  He spent his entire Career, surrounded by teammates, coaches, families, millions of fans, and yet you chose the word alone.
• 20:14
  What did you come to understand about Tom Brady that made stood alone the way you wanted to describe him?
• 20:24
  Yeah, it was actually my editor, Eric Neal, who headlined that piece that way.
• 20:30
  So in 2001, I had.
• 20:34
  I was a year having graduated from the University of Missouri School of Journalism.
• 20:38
  I was at ESPN magazine, and they sent me, and I was just, you know, just getting started in my career, and they sent me to go write a story about the quarterback in Foxborough, the sixth round pick from
• 20:49
  a year earlier, who had come off the bench and was filling in well for Drew Bludsoe, and then would probably go back to the bench, something like that.
• 20:57
  And so I go to Foxborough and I met with Brady.
• 21:00
  And, you know, I'm not trying to over dramatize this, but it felt like we were kind of both the same species, like we were both getting our career breaks at the same time.
• 21:10
  Both graduated from college in 2000.
• 21:12
  And, you know, he was wearing a sweatsuit and a backpack.
• 21:17
  He looked like a college student.
• 21:18
  And, you know, I'll never forget, he said, you know, football's always come really easy to me.
• 21:24
  And at the time, I didn't have the perspective to kind of take him at his word or even think about what that might mean that he said that.
• 21:33
  But it always kind of stayed with me.
• 21:35
  And I think that as I visited with Brady in subsequent years when, you know, we were not the same species because he became, you know, the best player in the game, you know, a target of the paparazzi once
• 21:49
  he got married and maybe even a little before, and, you know, was someone who's the rare football player whose body outlasted his will, you know, usually it's the opposite.
• 22:08
  I kept thinking about what motivates him, and I really think that, you know, it was love, you know, and I think that there was nothing really that he wanted to do other than that.
• 22:20
  And he organized his entire life to accommodate it.
• 22:24
  He became so ruthlessly efficient at his training and study and practice to try to balance family duties.
• 22:36
  But, you know, there is a.
• 22:39
  There's a place where the rubber meets the road with that.
• 22:41
  But I do think that, like, even when he walked away and nobody had a better Runway, you know, exit out of the game than he did, I mean, he had a huge deal with Fox a year before he
• 22:55
  had retired.
• 22:56
  He had all these businesses that he had set up, and he had played, you know, the entire his career on his terms, you know, and even when he walked away.
• 23:09
  He talked about how, you know, he felt like a sock and a dryer, I think is what he said, because he had just, you know, that was everything to him.
• 23:21
  The game was everything to him.
• 23:23
  Being a quarterback was everything to him.
• 23:25
  He sacrificed so much for it.
• 23:27
  Maybe paid, you know, maybe too steep of a price.
• 23:30
  I don't know.
• 23:30
  You never know.
• 23:31
  You never know exactly what's going on in someone's marriage.
• 23:33
  But clearly his ex wife, you know, had been pretty vocal about thinking that.
• 23:41
  Remember, he won his super bowl with the Bucks.
• 23:43
  Yeah.
• 23:44
  Afterwards you write about it, she goes, what more do you have to prove?
• 23:48
  And your conclusion seems to be that proving something almost wasn't the point anymore.
• 23:57
  He just simply wanted more.
• 24:00
  He wanted more.
• 24:00
  And, you know, it's just competing against yourself and knowing that, you know, this, you're never going to be as alive as you are on a field, you know, on Sundays.
• 24:11
  And, you know, we've seen people like that.
• 24:15
  Like, I remember when I was with him in 2013, I was at his apartment in Boston.
• 24:23
  We were talking and he, he said really nonchalantly, you know, my first 10 years in the league have prepared me for my last 10.
• 24:30
  And again, it was kind of like the games always come easy to me.
• 24:33
  You know, it's like I didn't really think about it.
• 24:36
  But what he was saying was, I'm going 20 years.
• 24:40
  And when he says stuff like that, even if it's hard to take, he means it to the bottom of his soul.
• 24:46
  And at the same time, Michael Jordan had just turned 50.
• 24:49
  My buddy Wright Thompson had written a story about Michael Jordan, a great piece about how tortured Jordan was without the game and how he was still searching for self meaning and identity and something to fill that void and
• 25:04
  nothing would.
• 25:04
  And turns out Brady is exactly like that.
• 25:11
  Andrew Locke was able to step away and do something.
• 25:16
  He had something.
• 25:17
  He knew.
• 25:18
  He, he might not have known what it is he wanted to do, but he knew he wanted more.
• 25:25
  Brady, of course, like you said, has this contract with Fox, you know, becomes part owner of the Raiders.
• 25:33
  Do you think he was afraid, do you think he was afraid to step away from the game?
• 25:40
  I mean, after everything that he had accomplished, what was he still chasing?
• 25:47
  Immortality?
• 25:48
  I mean, what.
• 25:50
  It's just love.
• 25:51
  It's just, it's that he loves doing it.
• 25:53
  Why does Jerry Seinfeld do stand up comedy even though he is, you know, he doesn't need to do that.
• 25:59
  You know, he doesn't need to take the risk of going out there with new material after the legacy that he has, it's like, why does Bruce Springsteen go out and play 3 hour shows at age 75?
• 26:11
  Whatever, however old he is, it's love at some point.
• 26:15
  Like there's nothing else that it could be.
• 26:18
  And you know, that's the, the problem with professional athletes is that the game ends.
• 26:25
  And it does for everybody.
• 26:27
  When, when Brady on draft day.
• 26:31
  So it was the second, the last day of the draft.
• 26:32
  Brady still hadn't been picked.
• 26:35
  And Tom senior, his dad said, was starting to think about how to.
• 26:40
  What to say to his son in the event that, you know, he went undrafted and his career was over and he, he had a speech in his head.
• 26:49
  And I'm paraphrasing a little bit, it was a really beautiful thing.
• 26:52
  But he's, you know, he's like, you know, the game ends for everybody.
• 26:55
  For some it ends.
• 26:56
  And you know, when there are five, for some it ends in and high school, for some it ends, but it ends for everybody.
• 27:03
  And the end of an athletic career doesn't mean the end of a life.
• 27:09
  You know, it's just a transition.
• 27:11
  And you know, turns out he, he didn't have to give that speech for another quarter century.
• 27:16
  But, you know, it's just the pure love of the game.
• 27:22
  Michael Jordan always calls it the game of basketball.
• 27:25
  I always think that's really interesting.
• 27:27
  The game of basketball, not basketball.
• 27:30
  It's just there's an inherent joy with it.
• 27:34
  Again, luck versus Brady.
• 27:37
  I think in a way, Luck was able to deal more with knowing when football had taken enough away from him, whereas Brady couldn't come to terms with that in a way.
• 28:00
  No doubt.
• 28:00
  And I don't know if football ever took enough from Brady because he talked about coming back a couple years after he was in retirement.
• 28:07
  So, you know, I think that like Brady could come back and probably be a top 10 quarterback right now.
• 28:17
  He's 49 years old.
• 28:19
  Andrew's.
• 28:20
  They're just different people.
• 28:21
  And I think that again, it's like Andrew fell out of love with football.
• 28:25
  Brady's love of football never waned.
• 28:27
  If anything, it just intensified as he got older.
• 28:32
  You mentioned Ray Thompson.
• 28:33
  He writes in the forward of your book that these stories, the stories, we're concentrating mostly on football today.
• 28:40
  And part of the reason for that is we're getting into the football season.
• 28:46
  So I'm really concentrating on football stories from your book.
• 28:52
  And Wright says, you know, these stories are about people willing to lose, suffer, overcome, and collect scars for the possibility of realizing a dream after spending your career, Seth, around these Extraordinary achievers.
• 29:13
  Does greatness almost always require a price?
• 29:21
  Oh, without a doubt.
• 29:23
  And you know, I think that these guys are kind of, can be extraordinarily selfish in the pursuit of that dream.
• 29:31
  And you know, the question is like how many prices?
• 29:39
  I think, you know, I, I go back to this.
• 29:42
  It's not a football story, but Alex Honnold, the rock climber who did that Academy Award winning documentary Free Solo, you know that that documentary was a, was a pretty real look at the ruthlessness and selfishness required to try
• 30:03
  to do something singular and maybe crazy, but definitely unique, accomplishing a huge goal.
• 30:12
  And I, I spent some time with him on the tail end of that documentary when, you know, a guy who used to live in a van so that he could go anywhere he wanted at any time was spending
• 30:27
  the first night in his new house and he was becoming kind of domesticized and that was interesting because he was battling this, these urges that he, the way that he had like hardwired and programmed himself to, you know,
• 30:45
  be accountable to nobody but himself.
• 30:47
  And he was having to learn how to be a domestic partner and soon a husband and soon a father and oh by the way, deal with this urge you have inside yourself to top whatever you did.
• 31:01
  Knowing that if he tries to top what he did in Free Solo, it could easily mean death.
• 31:08
  And so it was interesting.
• 31:09
  He was very honest about it.
• 31:10
  As we were, you know, spending time together, there was a freedom that I think that he was coming to, a loss of freedom that he was coming to terms with.
• 31:19
  And he kept saying, you know, I don't have to top Free, you know, El Cap, I don't have to do this stuff.
• 31:26
  I don't want to die.
• 31:27
  I don't have a death.
• 31:27
  You know, we talked a lot about it and then of course in January you see him scaling what, the 10th largest building in the world in Thailand.
• 31:38
  All of which is being live programmed, you know, in one slip with two kids and a wife and one slip and that's it.
• 31:45
  And you know, he was kind of hammered it up the entire way.
• 31:48
  And you know, it just shows that sometimes you have to watch what you have to believe what you see and not what you hear with people, no matter how well intentioned they might be.
• 32:00
  You know, that, that little thing, that worrying inside him that made him want to do extraordinary things.
• 32:08
  Just that doesn't go away.
• 32:10
  Well, you know, you played a little football and you're around these again.
• 32:16
  Great achievers.
• 32:19
  Have you personally ever thought to yourself, man, I'm not sure I would Want what this person has, if this is what it takes to get it.
• 32:31
  Yeah, I've thought that a lot.
• 32:33
  I mean, you'd clearly want their money, right?
• 32:36
  But I don't know if you would want life living inside their own body where, you know, nothing can top game six in the Delta center for Michael Jordan.
• 32:53
  Nothing can top these Super Bowls for Tom Brady.
• 32:56
  And, you know, you can find ways to live a fulfilling life, but you're living without that thing that sustained you for so long.
• 33:03
  It's why, like Bill Parcells, he calls, you know, football a narcotic.
• 33:10
  And he doesn't mean it is a necessarily a compliment.
• 33:14
  He means it exactly as you would define a narcotic.
• 33:17
  And it's a reason why so many of these coaches, Bill Belichick, Parcell's before him, you know, they.
• 33:22
  They just struggle to ever walk away because, you know, a kickoff on Sunday afternoon is about as much action as the nervous system can take outside of war and, you know, some other things.
• 33:37
  And so, yeah, you know, would I trade it for that?
• 33:45
  I think I'd want a taste of it, but I don't know if I'd want it over the course of a life.
• 33:50
  Well, there was a guy that you wrote about in your book.
• 33:55
  Some people might remember him, some might not remember him.
• 33:59
  Rolando McClain.
• 34:01
  He stepped away from the game at such a young age.
• 34:04
  Then he came back and he dealt with injuries and he had his share of off the field issues as well.
• 34:12
  What makes his story so unique?
• 34:16
  Well, again, you know, it was pre Andrew Luck, but he walked away from football like, I want to say, a couple years into the game.
• 34:23
  He took like a year off, which nobody does, you know, and he, he basically was like headed to a point where he had a quote in that story where he was like, I felt like I was just going
• 34:33
  to kill somebody.
• 34:34
  Like, he was so consumed with anger and, you know, frustration about things off the field, really.
• 34:42
  And then on the field they weren't going great either.
• 34:44
  And so he walked away for a year and, you know, I just never heard of anyone doing that.
• 34:49
  And so that's why I, I went down to Alabama and spent some time with him to try to like, watch someone in real time try to slow their life down.
• 35:03
  It just doesn't happen in professional sports.
• 35:08
  How does he justify walking away from the game and then coming back?
• 35:14
  He didn't need to because, you know, the, I think it was the Ravens or the Cowboys, you know, they.
• 35:19
  They signed him to a deal.
• 35:21
  So, you know, he had a market for his services just barely, but he did have a market.
• 35:30
  Well, again, there is a price to pay.
• 35:33
  And, you know, you have a unique perspective on all of this.
• 35:39
  And like I said, you played the game, albeit at a lower level.
• 35:43
  But even today, with CTE in the news as often as it is, what are your thoughts on whether or not playing the game of football is worth it?
• 35:56
  We just saw not too long ago, Roger Craig, the great back for The San Francisco 49ers all those years ago winning those Super Bowls, who's now suffering from dementia.
• 36:11
  Does a guy like that look back at it and say, yeah, man, it was worth it?
• 36:19
  You'd have to ask Roger Craig.
• 36:20
  I mean, I think that, like, It's just such a hard.
• 36:26
  And it's a personal question.
• 36:31
  I, I'm fortunate in that, you know, I don't have any injuries from football that's, you know, affecting me now.
• 36:43
  But, you know, I think those who played professionally, you can always kind of tell something, you know, that whatever it might be, you can.
• 36:50
  You can sort of tell that maybe they're walking a little funny, maybe their reactions to stuff are just a little off.
• 37:00
  And I think that, like, you know, the Washington Post did a big story, I think, in 2024 that showed that high school tackle football participation levels were down in every state except Mississippi and Alabama.
• 37:17
  I think that was the two.
• 37:20
  Maybe it was Louisiana.
• 37:20
  I can't remember.
• 37:21
  It was something like that.
• 37:22
  And, you know, that's not changing.
• 37:26
  And so.
• 37:31
  At the same time, you have this, you know, insatiable public appetite for football.
• 37:38
  And, you know, what is it, 90 something out of the top 100 programs from last year were foot.
• 37:43
  Were live football games.
• 37:44
  And so I can't wrap my head around it.
• 37:51
  I've tried, but I think that, like, the grassroots problem with football will eventually catch up with college and pro football.
• 38:01
  And that's why I think you see the NFL trying to get so involved with flag football, because I think they realize they got to get on top of this thing because participation, Participation rates for tackle are declining.
• 38:16
  And it's, you know, because of those head injuries, the specter of those head injuries.
• 38:22
  All right, I drifted a little bit too far away from the thesis of the show.
• 38:25
  Let's bring it.
• 38:26
  Let's bring it back in here.
• 38:28
  Let's change the topic and talk about someone who I think most of the listeners of sports forgotten heroes, I would imagine, probably have never heard of, Scott.
• 38:39
  And I'm going to.
• 38:40
  I hope I say his last name correctly.
• 38:42
  McLaughlin.
• 38:43
  Scott McLaughlin.
• 38:44
  McLuhan.
• 38:45
  McLuhan.
• 38:45
  McLuhaN.
• 38:46
  Okay.
• 38:46
  Scott McLuhaN.
• 38:47
  Yeah.
• 38:48
  Let's get the big part of the.
• 38:50
  Out of the way first.
• 38:51
  You said your story about McLuhan, that there's an old joke in the NFL that everyone is either born again or alcoholic.
• 39:01
  Scott is not born again, so we got that out of the way.
• 39:05
  What made him such a.
• 39:08
  A good evaluator of talent?
• 39:13
  You know, he.
• 39:13
  His dad was a scout, his brother was a scout.
• 39:16
  So there's clearly, clearly like something in the blood and the.
• 39:19
  The way that he had been raised, but he just kind of, you know, he had a good sense and, you know, he helped assemble these great 49er teams that were just loaded with talent and had some hall of
• 39:32
  Famers and, you know, Frank Gore, Patrick Willis, you know, you know, he went to the.
• 39:42
  But even for him, even for someone who was such a savant, you know, there was that.
• 39:50
  There was that price, that cost, and that was that, you know, he.
• 39:55
  He struggled with alcohol and, you know, he always would kind of not you.
• 40:03
  You know, there was three times with the 49ers, with the Seahawks, although he.
• 40:09
  He disputed that.
• 40:11
  And then with Washington, which he somewhat disputed, too, that he was let go from a prominent position.
• 40:18
  And almost every time it was around the draft.
• 40:21
  And it just shows that, like, as.
• 40:24
  As diligent and as good of a talent evaluator that he was.
• 40:29
  The stress, you know, was self destructive.
• 40:36
  You said it with.
• 40:38
  About.
• 40:39
  Brady sort of said it about luck.
• 40:43
  There's a.
• 40:44
  A love of this game, I guess, in any sport that maybe the majority of us can never truly understand.
• 40:55
  This incredible love, passion, an insatiable desire to consume as much of the game as possible, whether.
• 41:06
  Whether you're in football or baseball, hockey, basketball, whatever it is.
• 41:11
  And from a very young age, Scott showed this incredible love for the game.
• 41:17
  You talk about it in your book.
• 41:19
  Tell us about how he would skip home, skip school, stay home and watch film at a young age.
• 41:27
  Well, and I think that, like, you know, like Bill Belichick to a certain extent, and like some other guys, you know, whose fathers are prominent figures in the game, you know, you got to.
• 41:37
  Tell us that, too.
• 41:39
  Well, his.
• 41:40
  His dad was just a great scout for the raiders and Kent McLuhan.
• 41:43
  And so I think that, like, what.
• 41:45
  He,.
• 41:47
  You know, that was the world that he grew up in.
• 41:49
  And he was a really good baseball player, Scott was.
• 41:51
  And he.
• 41:53
  He injured his knee, I believe, and I think that that was kind of the end of his baseball career.
• 41:57
  And so he tried.
• 41:58
  He transitioned into scouting, and I think that, like, it just.
• 42:02
  I think it felt like the family business for him.
• 42:05
  And so it was not only, you know, the language of love in their family, but, you know, it was also competitive.
• 42:20
  And it was something that he, you know, was very good at from a young age.
• 42:23
  And so I think that, like, you know, again, you can't.
• 42:29
  It's that cliche.
• 42:30
  That's that cliche for coaches.
• 42:31
  You can't fake want to.
• 42:34
  And I think that, like, you know, the passion part of it, you know, is there for every character in that book.
• 42:41
  The question is, like, what is it enough to handle everything else that comes, you know, with professional sports?
• 42:51
  You write that he had a pretty unique view of Russell Wilson.
• 42:54
  Talk about that.
• 42:57
  Well, he was part of the scouting team that drafted Russell Wilson, obviously, GM John Schneider, who's, you know, one of his good friends and, you know, is certainly, I think, the best GM in the game.
• 43:12
  He's the one who drafted Russell.
• 43:14
  But I think that, like, again, they all saw something special in him, even though he was only 5, 10.
• 43:20
  And I think that, like, that's what scouts do.
• 43:22
  I mean, they have to find.
• 43:24
  They have to.
• 43:27
  Scouts need to be able to, like, look at someone's heart and, you know, can they.
• 43:35
  You know, can they look inside a player and see that ineffable quality of running for a finish line that doesn't exist, for wanting to be great at this thing so bad that it becomes the only thing they chase?
• 43:59
  And again, in the business of professional sports, how well rounded you are is not the point.
• 44:09
  The point is how good are you at this particular thing?
• 44:12
  And, you know, he was good at finding guys who, you know, Adam Timmerman was a.
• 44:19
  Was a Packer lineman that he found in the sixth round when he was a scout with the Packers.
• 44:23
  Again, he was just.
• 44:24
  He had a gift at finding these guys who had that internal motor that was really insatiable.
• 44:32
  And that all goes back to the time he spent learning from his father and evaluate, watching film and evaluating talent.
• 44:46
  And, my gosh, he did such a great job of it.
• 44:50
  He becomes the big wig with The San Francisco 49ers, you know, President of operations, general manager.
• 45:00
  How does someone like a Scott McLuhan get that role?
• 45:07
  Well, reputation and, you know, I think that, you know, talent and, you know, all the things that he looks for in players owners were looking for in, you know, who they hire to run their football operations.
• 45:22
  And so he was hired at a very young age to run the 49ers football operations.
• 45:30
  And, you know, it was, again, it's like, you know, with these great opportunities, you know, comes that, you know, everybody has that, like, imposter syndrome type thing.
• 45:46
  And, you know, I think there was just an insecurity with him.
• 45:51
  And, you know, he.
• 45:53
  He felt like he had to work every day no matter what.
• 45:56
  And, you know, that's not atypical for.
• 46:00
  For football coaches and for football men.
• 46:03
  But, you know, he had been taught to work hard and play hard, and when in doubt, work harder and play harder, and that's what he did.
• 46:14
  And it came with a lot of successes and, you know, some big prices to pay.
• 46:21
  Well, the big prices, I mean, you write about his divorce, then he got engaged, then he got divorced again.
• 46:30
  How much does.
• 46:31
  Does.
• 46:31
  Does the commitment that you need to make to make it in a professional sport again beat the NFL, baseball, the NHL, NBA?
• 46:43
  How much does that commitment affect the personal life of.
• 46:51
  Of.
• 46:51
  Of the guys on the field and the guys in the front office?
• 46:57
  I mean, it obliterates their personal life.
• 47:00
  It's not a contest.
• 47:02
  And so, yeah, I mean, you know, these.
• 47:10
  There's no.
• 47:12
  There's so little margin for error in these jobs, and they're so rare that when people get them, you know, that's what they're married to.
• 47:21
  And, you know, everybody else is kind of along for the ride whenever it ends.
• 47:24
  And, you know, he embodied that, and other people do, too.
• 47:27
  And, you know, elsewhere in the book, I have, like, a story about Sean McVeigh, the Rams coach is.
• 47:32
  He's kind of at a precious age, coming off his super bowl win and kind of weighing whether he kind of wants to keep going to the dark side.
• 47:41
  Sort of like Andrew Locke.
• 47:42
  Right.
• 47:42
  He weighs leaving the game.
• 47:45
  Yeah.
• 47:46
  And, you know, I think it's like, again, there's very few people who can step out and just say, is this good for me?
• 47:54
  Most people don't want to ask that question, don't want to hear the answer, and just want to keep going on the track that they're on.
• 48:03
  I think that.
• 48:04
  And that's.
• 48:05
  That's across sports.
• 48:06
  Like, I think that, like, it's one of the reasons why you, by and large, you see a lot of former players struggle when they become coaches or GMs, because, number one, they've already spent their lives chasing, especially if
• 48:20
  they're great players, like Magic Johnson struggled as a coach.
• 48:23
  You know, they've chased.
• 48:24
  They spent their lives chasing something, chasing greatness.
• 48:29
  And, you know, to keep up with the Joneses as an executive or as a coach requires that same effort.
• 48:37
  And a lot of them are just tired.
• 48:38
  But I think the other part that's tricky for them is that, like, they can't, they have an innate quality that they can't explain.
• 48:45
  And it takes someone who, I think failed at sports and is consumed with studying it, who's able to, you know, kind of help become a better teacher, I think, in a lot of ways.
• 48:59
  But either way, it's just, it's so all consuming.
• 49:02
  There's a, There's a story that's in the book, in the final version, that is a story I did about Sean Payton and the Denver Broncos.
• 49:11
  And I spent the entire playoff run with him last January.
• 49:15
  And I'd never done anything like that.
• 49:17
  I mean, I was completely embedded with the team.
• 49:19
  And here he was, like, in his 60s, and he was faced, you know, with.
• 49:25
  He won a playoff game against the Bills, and then he lo.
• 49:28
  Found out he lost his starting quarterback within minutes of that game ending.
• 49:31
  And he had to, like, try to figure out a way to win.
• 49:35
  You know, nobody's, nobody can relate to what was going through his head right then and that challenge that was posed.
• 49:40
  And so again, it's like these things are just so all consuming that, you know, as I watched him try to get his team ready to play a game that few thought that they could win, you know, I saw
• 49:54
  someone almost break themselves because he was, he was.
• 49:58
  Forget about burning the candle at both ends.
• 50:00
  I mean, he was destroying the candle.
• 50:03
  Well, speaking of coaches, one of the more fascinating chapters I read was the book of Coach.
• 50:11
  Thought about those statements in a different way.
• 50:13
  You know, while we, we know about Bill Walsh's legendary career as coach of the 49ers, he also doubted himself on the way up.
• 50:24
  I mean, there are so many chapters of his career that we don't know about and have long been forgotten.
• 50:33
  Talk about Bill Walsh and his, like, these other guys, his incredible desire to succeed.
• 50:42
  The part of Bill Walsh that we might not know about.
• 50:46
  And by the way, I'd love to get a copy of his book, Finding the Winning Edge, but slightly a little too expensive for me.
• 50:56
  Let me know if you could find one for about.
• 50:58
  I have one right over my shoulder.
• 51:00
  I have it right behind me.
• 51:01
  But no, you know, I, I.
• 51:03
  There was a book called Finding the Winning Edge, and it was written by Bill Walsh.
• 51:06
  And I had seen it in the offices of coaches.
• 51:10
  It seemed like it was like infinite jest for coaches where they all had it, but none of them had read the entire thing.
• 51:17
  But it was like a coaching Bible.
• 51:20
  And, you know, when you flip through it it's like such.
• 51:23
  It's like, you know, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages, and it's like a mind dump.
• 51:29
  It's like what he would say on day three of training camp in the full squad meeting, how he evaluates centers, methods for firing coaches who aren't performing well, how to deliver the news.
• 51:44
  Sprint, right option.
• 51:45
  What are the reads for the quarterback?
• 51:47
  It was all these things in his head, and I'm like, oh, my God.
• 51:50
  It's like all this stuff was going on inside him.
• 51:53
  And so I wanted to write a book about, you know, I wanted to write a story about that book and as a way of writing a story about Bill Walsh.
• 52:02
  And it turned out, you know, that it was.
• 52:04
  It was really a tortured football genius who.
• 52:08
  Who wrote that.
• 52:10
  And he was, you know, he was so frustrated with how his career ended.
• 52:15
  He burned himself out and he walked away.
• 52:18
  And the 49ers won a Super bowl the year after he left.
• 52:20
  And, you know, he hated his.
• 52:22
  That he had done that.
• 52:23
  And, you know, again, he needed somewhere to put all of that energy that he had once put into coaching, and he decided to write a book.
• 52:33
  And, you know, the book is at once a window into, you know, once in a generation, football mind who had, you know, maybe the most influential coach, him and Paul Brown, maybe ever.
• 52:47
  And then also it was a look at someone.
• 52:50
  It had like.
• 52:51
  It was like a guide for ruining your life.
• 52:53
  Because I paralleled.
• 52:54
  I paralleled the story of how he wrote the book and what he was putting into it and the torture involved with that with a young coach who was reading it.
• 53:01
  He was in high school.
• 53:02
  He was a high school coach, and, you know, how he was trying to implement parts of it that he could to his high school team as you're supposed to.
• 53:11
  But what he was really kind of wiring himself with was this, you know, formatting of never being satisfied with anything and always thinking that perfection can be achieved at what's really a random game.
• 53:28
  So it's like really a manual to drive yourself crazy.
• 53:31
  And Walsh did.
• 53:32
  And a lot of coaches have.
• 53:34
  Did.
• 53:34
  Did.
• 53:35
  Did any of his genius.
• 53:39
  Let me say that again, did any of his genius actually come from his insecurity?
• 53:50
  You know, I think it always does.
• 53:51
  You know, I think anyone's does, but I think that, like, came.
• 53:55
  He was just a really, you know, a lot of coaches are kind of glorified gym teachers.
• 54:01
  And he was a real thinker.
• 54:03
  And, you know, he would always.
• 54:04
  He'd always been a thinker, and he kind of looked like a professor even Though he didn't.
• 54:09
  He looked like one.
• 54:09
  He didn't always carry himself like one, but he looked like one.
• 54:12
  And I think that, you know, insecurity, pragmatic, problem solving, you know, all of these things that come up, but he revolutionized football.
• 54:24
  I mean, you know, by the time he retired out of the NFL, or maybe by the time the book came out, I think, you know, half the league was running his west coast offense.
• 54:32
  I mean, he was such a.
• 54:34
  A towering figure.
• 54:36
  Talk about like a legend that probably a lot of people have forgotten about.
• 54:40
  I mean, you know, he was so powerful and potent across the game of football and, you know, yet there was always a little hole in his personality that could never be filled, no matter how many Super Bowls they
• 54:55
  won, no matter how proficient his offense was.
• 54:58
  Yeah, you know, it's interesting on another level, we talk about, again, going all the way back to Andrew Luck.
• 55:05
  He didn't want to just be known as a quarterback for his whole life.
• 55:10
  And Tom Brady, that's all he wanted out of life.
• 55:13
  And then we look at Bill Walsh.
• 55:15
  He was so consumed with being Bill Walsh, the genius, that he didn't know who he was when he wasn't coaching.
• 55:27
  You know, it's just strange.
• 55:30
  It's such a different mentality that I think, I hate to use this term, us everyday people just don't know.
• 55:40
  Well, it's an identity thing.
• 55:42
  And, you know, maybe that's, you know, where you trace the roots to.
• 55:45
  But, you know, it's people who choose to define themselves by this thing that they do, not by who they are.
• 55:51
  And, you know, it's led to some of the greatest sports moments that we could imagine.
• 55:57
  And it's also, you know, you look at like, Pat Riley, you know what I mean?
• 56:01
  Like, look at these guys.
• 56:02
  They can't walk away.
• 56:06
  You know, they just get used to that way of life and really can't imagine anything else.
• 56:14
  All right, let's talk about YA Tittle.
• 56:18
  I love that story.
• 56:19
  That's such a.
• 56:20
  Well, talk about a forgotten hero.
• 56:22
  Yeah, I mean, he is.
• 56:24
  He's the guy, right?
• 56:25
  Ya Tittle, you know, he was with the 49ers in the AAFC.
• 56:32
  Ultimately played with my team, the Giants, for a little bit.
• 56:38
  And you talk a lot about.
• 56:40
  Well, the story really starts off with that famous photograph of him on his knees, helmet off, blood running down his face.
• 56:50
  He didn't like that photograph, did he?
• 56:53
  No.
• 56:54
  You know, and I think that, like, what made Wyatt Hittle so interesting is he was the first quarterback, first great quarterback who was kind of tagged with can't win the big one.
• 57:05
  And you know this photo of him after he threw an interception where he got hit and his helmet got knocked off and it shows him bleeding from the head and you know he looks like a defeated, broken, broken
• 57:18
  man.
• 57:18
  And he hated it because you know, that wasn't who he was.
• 57:23
  He was actually like a fighter.
• 57:25
  And you know, it, it, you know you talk about forgotten moments.
• 57:31
  I mean he, I want to say it was the 1963 NFL championship game, the New York Giants against the Bears.
• 57:40
  It was freezing in Chicago, I think it was at Wrigley Field, but it was freezing.
• 57:46
  And you know again, tittles knock had been that, you know, he didn't come through in championship moments.
• 57:55
  And I think they were ahead at that in the second quarter.
• 58:01
  They got a turnover and he threw to the end zone and he had a receiver open on like a, a seam route and he hit him right in the hands and the receiver dropped the ball.
• 58:13
  I think that would have put them, if I remember right, I think it would have made the score 14 nothing.
• 58:20
  And you know that score would have held and instead they lost the game.
• 58:25
  He threw five interceptions.
• 58:28
  Miserable day.
• 58:29
  He hurt his knee but.
• 58:31
  And so like he couldn't really move but like you know, that's how, that's how legacies are defined.
• 58:37
  And you know, stuff like that.
• 58:38
  He never, I never, in the years I knew him, he never once blamed a teammate for dropping the ball.
• 58:46
  You know, he was a quarterback until the very end.
• 58:48
  But again, it's like those little moments end up defining how we see these people.
• 58:56
  And so does a photograph like that.
• 58:58
  When in fact like, you know, White Hittle was an astounding quarterback.
• 59:01
  Completed 60 some percent of his passes.
• 59:03
  In 1963, I think he threw 36 touchdown passes in 12 games.
• 59:09
  A record that lasted.
• 59:11
  He retired.
• 59:12
  He might have been the all time leading passer in the history of the NFL.
• 59:16
  I think he might have thrown for more yards than anybody else in the history of the NFL when he retired.
• 59:21
  I mean he threw 36 touchdown passes in 12 games.
• 59:24
  In that era of football.
• 59:26
  First of all, it took Dan marino.
• 59:28
  It was 20 years before Dan Marino broke that record.
• 59:31
  John Elway never threw 36 touchdown passes in a 16 game season.
• 59:35
  I mean it just shows how good he was.
• 59:38
  And he threw seven touchdown passes in one game and you know, easily could have had eight but chose to, to hand the ball off instead.
• 59:47
  And so, you know, spending time with him, this story was kind of about this party that he threw at his hometown in East Texas.
• 1:00:00
  And he was getting older in life.
• 1:00:02
  He had dementia.
• 1:00:03
  He had some breathing problems.
• 1:00:05
  And, you know, there was a question about whether he'd be able to do this party one last time.
• 1:00:11
  And, you know, my story kind of traced him trying to do this party one last time, even though he was facing all of these obstacles and his daughter was trying to make it happen for him, because, you know,
• 1:00:26
  that.
• 1:00:26
  That party was kind of like a win for him.
• 1:00:29
  It was like, what, the championship of a.
• 1:00:31
  You know, because he never won a championship, I think he always looked at that party as like a moment of victory.
• 1:00:36
  And it was.
• 1:00:38
  You don't get stories like that very often.
• 1:00:41
  And that was like a really beautiful story to.
• 1:00:44
  To.
• 1:00:44
  To.
• 1:00:45
  To report and to write and to just witness.
• 1:00:49
  You know, it's.
• 1:00:50
  It's.
• 1:00:51
  It's sort of cruel in a way.
• 1:00:52
  I mean, these guys just.
• 1:00:57
  They mean so much to us in something that is.
• 1:01:03
  When you think about it, it's really insignificant.
• 1:01:06
  But we live our lives through.
• 1:01:09
  Through a lot of these guys.
• 1:01:11
  And it's funny, all the stuff that.
• 1:01:15
  All the records that Y.A.
• 1:01:16
  Tittle set, the wins, the touchdown passes, it's that photo that.
• 1:01:25
  That we remember most about YA Tittle.
• 1:01:28
  And that's sort of cruel.
• 1:01:30
  Totally.
• 1:01:31
  And it's also, you know, that photo is emblematic of football and the brutality of the game, but he called it the blood picture.
• 1:01:37
  And he, you know, he had it in his house.
• 1:01:39
  It was.
• 1:01:39
  He had like a wall with all these mementos and trophies and stuff, and it was there.
• 1:01:44
  But he didn't define himself by that photo.
• 1:01:49
  Even though, you know, he had dementia, even though, you know, his.
• 1:01:55
  His health was failing him, he was able to look at it in a way that, you know, sports fans, by and large, you know, didn't.
• 1:02:08
  And I think that, like, that was.
• 1:02:10
  It was just kind of beautiful to watch.
• 1:02:13
  Well, Seth, I want to thank you so much for taking an hour out of your evening to spend with me on Sports Forgotten Heroes.
• 1:02:22
  Your book beyond that Hill is really a terrific read, and I encourage everybody out there to grab a copy of it.
• 1:02:33
  Again, I enjoyed it a lot and I enjoyed having you on Sports Forgotten Heroes.
• 1:02:38
  Man, I had a great time.
• 1:02:39
  Thank you so much, Warren.
• 1:02:41
  Hey, anytime.
• 1:02:44
  This was certainly a unique episode for sure, but next week we get back to the heart of what Sports Forgotten Heroes is all about.
• 1:02:53
  With a story of a team that time has forgotten.
• 1:02:56
  A story of a team that I am quite sure that many of you have never heard of, a team that came up just short of making the NFL playoffs.
• 1:03:07
  And that would have been one of the most historic events to ever occur in the history of the NFL.
• 1:03:14
  For now, thanks for tuning in, and I'll see you next time on Sports Forgotten heroes.