Chapter 3 - Looking for Terry

I was struggling. No question about it. There were some bad days. Once, I remember there was a bad snowstorm, and I missed a film session. I had called Chuck Noll and told him my situation. At practice a few days later, he made me stand up on a chair in front of the whole team and just tore into me. He embarrassed me. It was humiliating, but I took it. I had no options.

Things happened that I just could not understand. In 1972 the Steelers drafted Joe Gilliam. “I didn’t see him play,” Noll said. “We drafted him off reports . . . because he has a good arm.” The Steelers had not intended to draft another quarterback, he explained, but picked him because he was the best player available in that round. That made no sense to me. We already had two quarterbacks. I believed I had improved significantly during the season. Terry Hanratty was a talented veteran.

The Steelers were telling me, “You’re our quarterback. We’ve got a lot of confidence in you. You’re going to win Super Bowls for us. You’re our man.” But here’s what I was hearing: “Just in case we’re wrong . . .” What? Hello? If they believed in me, why did they draft another quarterback? It had nothing at all to do with Joe Gilliam. The Steelers were telling me this is not a message, but it sure seemed like a message to me.

We became a good football team in 1972. I started all fourteen games, and we won our first division title with an 11–3 record. I passed for almost two thousand yards. Our first playoff game was against John Madden’s Oakland Raiders, a game that was won by what’s often considered the greatest touchdown in NFL history, the Immaculate Reception.

This did not cement my place in football history, but maybe it did flypaper it. I was just beginning to establish a little bit of a reputation, fans knew about me, and this play definitely earned me a tremendous amount of attention. When it took place it did not occur to me that I would still be writing about it more than half a century later, but any story I might tell about my life would be incomplete without it.

Notice my clever use of the word incomplete?

It was a nasty, rainy day. The footing on our artificial turf wasn’t great. Most of the game had been a defensive struggle. With one minute, thirteen seconds left, Raiders quarterback Kenny Stabler scored to put them ahead 7–6. We got the ball on our own twenty with fifty-one seconds on the clock. We didn’t need a touchdown; we just needed to get within field goal range for Roy Gerela. I completed two short passes for twenty yards, then threw three straight incomplete passes. It was fourth and ten from our own forty with twenty-two seconds left in our season.

The play I called was sixty-six circle option full right split, a pass play to our rookie wide receiver, Barry Pearson, on the right side. We were just looking for a first down to retain possession. Our rookie running back, Franco Harris, was supposed to stay in and block for me, but after the ball was hiked, the right side of our offensive line collapsed. I started scrambling, looking for someone to get a step on the defender; Franco went out as a safety valve, a last-ditch option. I was getting desperate. Somebody got a hand on me, but I shook loose. Then I saw Frenchy Fuqua in the middle of the field. There’s no thinking in that situation; it’s all reaction. Do the same thing you’ve done a thousand times before. I drilled a throw at him. I mean, it was just let it fly and see what happens.

This was the play from my perspective: What happened? What’s going on? I couldn’t see anything. What does that cheering mean?

Oakland’s great defender Jack Tatum slammed into Frenchy just as the ball got there, and it popped into the air. Franco Harris, coming up on the play, somehow grabbed it inches off the ground and took off along the left sideline for the end zone. One Raider managed to grab Franco’s wet pads but slipped off. He scored with five seconds on the clock.

The officials looked at one another, but no one signaled a touchdown. The NFL rule was that two offensive players could not touch the ball in succession. But if the ball had hit Tatum, it was a legal play. The officials weren’t certain. Nobody was. While we celebrated, they called up to Art McNally, the NFL’s supervisor of officials, who was in the press box, looking for a definitive instant replay. Finally, McNally ruled Tatum touched the ball. Touchdown!

The reality is that there never was a clear view of Frenchy, Tatum, and the ball coming together, so it is still impossible to know for sure what happened. I will never say our great fans intimidated those officials, but it would have been interesting watching them leaving Three Rivers if they had ruled the other way.

At that time no one questioned if Franco had actually caught the ball before it touched the ground. That would have ended the play too. It was pretty close. But today there is a statue of Franco at Pittsburgh airport, depicting him scooping up the ball just before it hits the ground, so that will have to do.

After the game John Madden was incredulous. “Fourth down,” he said, then repeated it shaking his head. “Fourth down. It just seems unfair. The ball pops into someone’s hands like that. It just seems unfair to lose like that. It wouldn’t happen that way again in a million years.”

It was later that night when a fan calling in to broadcaster Myron Cope’s radio show called the play “the Immaculate Reception.” That was a perfect description of it, and maybe, just maybe, there was some divine intervention. But in the league championship game a week later, I was painfully reminded of Job 1:21 from my Bible: “The LORD gives, and the LORD takes away.”

Near the end of the first quarter, we were on the Dolphins’ two-yard line. I called my own number, faked a handoff, and ran left. Just as I reached the goal line, I ducked my head before Jack Scott nearly took it off. It was a clean hit, and it rattled my cage. I fumbled into the end zone. Fortunately, Gerry “Moon” Mullins fell on it for the touchdown. After the game I told reporters, “I got knocked looney.” The trainer asked me the usual question: How many fingers? Fingers? I was trying to guess how many hands he was holding up.

In our next possession I threw two incompletions, and Noll replaced me with Terry Hanratty. I didn’t know what was going on for the rest of the first half. I was confused. I couldn’t call plays. On the sideline I looked at the clipboard with our game plan on it, and I didn’t know what it was. Some of the plays I couldn’t believe. I thought it was for another game.

Noll would not put me back in the game until late in the fourth quarter. I led the first drive for a touchdown, but on the next two possessions, I threw interceptions. I shouldn’t have been in the game, but in those days, if you were breathing, you were playing. I was just playing on instinct. On both interceptions, receivers were open. All I had to do was hit them. I tried to lob the ball, but both times I threw it straight. We lost 21–17. A day later we discovered I also had pinched a nerve in my neck.

In the locker room after the game one of the reporters said to me, “Boy, they knocked you silly.”

“Nah,” I disagreed, “I was already silly.”

One of the news services reported the next day, “Bradshaw was unusually cheerful despite the pain in his shoulder and the end of Pittsburgh’s Super Bowl dream.”

I stood there and answered every question. I made a few jokes. I made a point of complimenting Hanratty, who had thrown only four passes all season, saying, “Man, he did a whale of a job. You could hear that rusty arm squeaking all over the stadium when he cranked it up.”

I think that demonstrated how much I had matured in those first two seasons. Either that or I was still giddy from a probable concussion.

There is no way I can accurately describe how much difference confidence can make in a person’s life. In your life. As an athlete the difference between playing confidently and insecurely can be the difference between success and failure. That’s true in anything you do. Knowing you’re going to succeed is a whole different attitude—in whatever you’re doing—from hoping you succeed. A good part of a coach’s job, or any mentor, is to instill that confidence.

When the 1974 season began, I had that confidence. In the college draft that year, we selected four players who eventually would be named to the Hall of Fame: Lynn Swann, Jack Lambert, John Stallworth, and Mike Webster. Probably the best draft class in league history. I couldn’t wait for the season to begin.

We’d gone 10–4 the previous season, finishing second in the league and making the playoffs. I was one of the few quarterbacks calling my own plays. That was important to me. Even the Cowboys’ Roger Staubach, who everyone knew was one of the most intelligent players in the league, did not call his own plays. His coach, Tom Landry, did. To me, having the sideline calling the plays was like having them tying my shoes. Running the game rather than executing plays called from the sideline made me feel like I was in control.

In the summer of 1974, the NFL Players Association went on strike. Rather than reporting to preseason practice, I honored the picket line. The strike lasted seven weeks, and by the time it ended, Joe Gilliam had become our starting quarterback, becoming one of the very few Black players to open an NFL season as the starting quarterback. On the Steelers—and I think this is true of most if not all NFL teams—race was never a factor. You could either play at this level or you couldn’t. That’s all that mattered. Several players before him had already proven that Black players could play quarterback in the NFL, although they definitely had fewer opportunities.

Gilliam was given an opportunity, and he took advantage of it. We were 6–0 in preseason games, and while I was not a math major, I knew that was good. When the regular season opened, he played well for several weeks. Unfortunately, there still was considerable racism in this country, and there were a lot of fans who didn’t want to see him succeed. I know he got so much hate mail that he had to move his family out of Pittsburgh, back to Nashville, Tennessee.

There had never been any racial issues on our team. The Steelers organization treated every player with respect, but this situation was a little bit uncomfortable. We had so many great Black players on our team, but I had no idea what issues they were living with on a daily basis. Even though I was brought up in the South, racism had never been a factor in my life. I wasn’t oblivious to it. I knew all about it, and I knew it wasn’t right. I knew it didn’t square with what I was reading in my Bible or hearing in my church on Sunday morning. I’d seen those people sitting in the back of the bus. I hadn’t even played against a Black player until my junior year at Tech. I was never prejudiced, but I was a kid living in Shreveport, Louisiana, surrounded by a way of life. There was nothing I could do about it, and I had no desire to change the world. I just wanted to be a football player.

On the Steelers, future Hall of Famer “Mean” Joe Greene became my closest friend. When I was failing, he pushed me to be a better player and a better person. Joe Greene was the foundation of our legendary defense, the Steel Curtain. When I was struggling during my rookie season, he was right there telling me I was going to be all right, that I shouldn’t pay attention to all that crap in the background. Some of his toughness rubbed off on me. The fact that any part of this quarterback controversy had a racial component surprised me. But our Black players had lived with some form of racism every single day of their lives. I promise you, the last thing anybody in the entire organization wanted was for race to appear to be a factor in this situation. Six and zero is a statement.

My only issue with Joe Gilliam was that he had beat me out fair and square. I lost my job. My pride was really hurt. I had proven I could play in the NFL. I had no desire to sit on the bench, even if we’d had those nice heated benches used today. I knew there were other teams that would love to have me. New Orleans would be a great place for me. Kansas City. Atlanta. There were places I could get my career back on track.

So I went into Noll’s office and told him I thought it would be best for everyone if they traded me. His exact words in response were, “I’m not going to trade you. You’re going to be great.” That was about the last thing I expected him to say. How could I become great when I was sitting on the bench?

I also heard from some angry, racist fans who blamed me for losing my position to Gilliam. There were some nasty things said by some ignorant people.

After winning our first regular-season game, Sports Illustrated put Joe Gilliam on its cover. Gilliam played well for several games but eventually began struggling. He had a thin build for a quarterback and got worn down. Then he started abusing drugs. It was a hard situation for all of us. Our defense was carrying the team, with the offense just putting enough points on the board.

Noll continued playing the three quarterbacks. I played in our sixth game and started the seventh game. One of the local papers even ran a contest asking readers to pick the starting quarterback, which was probably as good a way as any to make that decision. I understood what Noll was doing . . . well, at least I thought I did. He was trying to get me fired up, make me angry, ready to run through a wall to prove that I could be as great as he thought I could be.

Terry Hanratty and I replaced Gilliam. By the end of the regular season, I had regained the starting position.

While I was establishing myself as a winning quarterback, the press had latched on to the “dumb” image. In an article meant to compliment me after we went 11–3 in the 1972 season, a newspaper columnist wrote, “Some people in Pittsburgh say Terry Bradshaw isn’t as bright as he could be. Maybe so. And maybe the NFL could use more people who aren’t as bright as they could be.”

That was supposed to be a compliment, but the image began snowballing. New York Times columnist Dave Anderson wrote an article before the 1975 Super Bowl titled “Is Bradshaw ‘Too Dumb’ to Be Super?” Imagine that—an entire story about my intelligence. When Anderson interviewed me about that image, I tried to defend myself. “Since I went to Louisiana Tech instead of LSU,” I said, “I had to be a dummy, but I know a few dummies who went to LSU.” Maybe I didn’t help myself when I added, “You don’t have to be an Einstein or magna cum laude to be a good quarterback. . . . I was a home boy raised on my mother’s arm. . . . If you talk slow, you’re stupid. If you’re clean cut, you’re square. It’s ridiculous.”

Looking back on when I was drafted by Pittsburgh, I admitted, “I must have been a showcase to look at—the comic strip kid, the country bumpkin, the savior of the team. It was too much for a twenty-one-year-old kid, too much for me.”

Anderson didn’t help, suggesting, “If brains were the primary ingredient of a quarterback, NFL teams would be drafting PhDs instead of physical education majors who don’t always graduate.”

I guess you have to be a little smarter than me to understand to whom Mr. Anderson was referring.

My ambivalence about Chuck Noll is well known. At various times I hated him and I loved him—though I always respected him as a truly great football coach. But this was a place where he should have stepped up to defend his player, and he really didn’t do it very forcefully. His response to Anderson was typical: “His not being a heady quarterback is a bad rap,” he said. “It’s unfair and unfounded all the way down the line. It hasn’t come from anybody in our organization.”

I didn’t have much of a choice but to take it. It bothered me; I tried to ignore it, but that became impossible. It was too loud and too often. That was my reputation: a big dumb guy. When we won, it was because the team played well, almost as if we won despite me. When we lost, it was my fault.

After all the turmoil, we finished the 1974 season 10–3–1. We beat the favored Raiders in the AFC championship and began preparing to play the Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl IX. And the big question became, Was I smart enough to win a Super Bowl? Story after story speculated on my intelligence: “They say he had a split major in college—basket weaving and alphabet.” “Bradshaw doesn’t read defenses, just looks at the pictures.” “Ask him his name, he has to hum the first few bars of ‘Happy birthday’ until he gets to Terry . . .” “His brains are located entirely in his right arm.”

Imagine how you would feel if someone came to your house or place of work and made fun of your intelligence?

The Super Bowl was being played in New Orleans, practically in my backyard, so the mocking was in front of my family and friends. Well, if you believe the papers, at least those of them able to read. It was unbelievably insulting. There I was, preparing for the biggest game of my career, and reporters were asking me about my ACT score.

“I’m so tired of hearing about it,” I told a columnist, “so sick of trying to defend myself that I’ve just given up fighting it. No matter what I do, it won’t make any difference.”

Naturally, after we beat the Vikings 16–6 to become Super Bowl champions, guess what some headlines focused on? “Bradshaw Proves He’s Not ‘Dumb.’ ” “Terry’s Not So Dumb After All.” When the reporters tried to bring it up to me, I told them, “I don’t think this is going to change anybody’s mind. . . . But I don’t want to get into that.”

I don’t know, maybe it’s foolish of me to write about this, but this image became the foundation of what my life would become. That was the first of our four Super Bowl victories, but the image stuck. It was incessant. People would approach me in the stores and make dumb jokes, asking, “You need help reading the label?” Maybe they thought it was all good-natured fun. But it wasn’t, not to me.

I did not appreciate how important that hayseed image was to become to me. Athletes mostly get known only to sports fans. In those days, long before the internet existed, long before the cable networks and YouTube and other media platforms, it was very difficult for an athlete to become known to a wider audience. Athletes had to win enough to bring attention to themselves and then display enough personality to entertain people. If an athlete was hired to endorse a product, it was a product that appealed to fans.

At that time, for example, Joe Namath was by far the best-known football player, but mostly he was known as an athlete with a flamboyant lifestyle. People who were not sports fans couldn’t name more than a few football players. But my hayseed image got me attention. I started getting invitations from TV programs. In 1977 I was invited to appear on the popular TV shows Pop Goes the Country and Hee Haw, which featured country music and comedy. For Hee Haw I put on a straw hat and coveralls and sang the great Hank Williams song “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” Yessiree!

But the event that cemented this image into sports lore took place right before the 1979 Super Bowl. We had already won two Super Bowls. I’d had a strong season. I threw for a league-leading twenty-eight touchdowns and almost three thousand yards and was named the league’s Most Valuable Player.

So what was the biggest story before we played the Cowboys in Super Bowl XIII? I was not surprised when a reporter asked the usual loaded question: “I hear that when you were a rookie, you went blank in the huddle once, and you forgot which play to call.” By that time, I was basically ignoring those conversations. I had pretty much outplayed the image.

“When you have played as long as I have,” I responded as politely as I could manage, “you can’t help but get smarter.”

A reporter asked Dallas linebacker “Hollywood” Henderson if the Steelers had “enough class to be in the Super Bowl.” Come on, what kind of question is that? In response, thinking he was being clever, Henderson made his infamous crack about my intelligence.

Later in that same interview, he agreed with a prediction that the Cowboys would win 35–0, responding, “Yeah, it’ll probably take Bradshaw a couple days to understand that.” He also took unnecessary swipes at some of my teammates.

But it was that glib remark, “Bradshaw can’t spell cat,” that got him a place in sports history. You can look it up, unfortunately. Henderson was a good player, but that quote is the main reason people remember him.

One thing you never want to do is give your opponent what is called “bulletin board material,” something said that gets pinned up on the board that motivates your opponent. One reporter called it “an attempt to get under Bradshaw’s helmet, to grab some kind of edge.” That can be overrated. This was the Super Bowl, the single most popular sports event in the world, and there is a significant financial payoff for the winners. We didn’t need any additional stimulus.

Instead of responding to Henderson’s comment, I kept quiet. What I should have said was, “I’m gonna have the best game of my life, and you’re gonna regret you ever said those words.” Yes, I was angry. But I didn’t say anything. Instead, we posted his comments on the bulletin board—and we remembered them.

In the first quarter, we were returning a punt when our linebacker “Dirt” Winston absolutely leveled Henderson. It was a message hit. I’m definitely not saying Dirt went out of his way to hit Henderson harder than necessary. It was a hard, clean play. Henderson took it, and later in the game, he hit me and caused me to fumble. But that was one of the few mistakes I made that afternoon. It turned out to be one of the best games I ever played. I completed seventeen of thirty passes, four of them for touchdowns, for 318 yards, the most of my career. We won 35–31, and I was voted the game’s MVP.

In our locker room after the game, I was asked about Henderson. I wanted to talk about the game—this was a wonderful football game—but I couldn’t avoid it. “I’m not dumb,” I said. “I never was dumb. Go ask Thomas Henderson if he thinks I was dumb today.”

If we had memes back then, “Terry Bradshaw is so dumb that . . .” would have been a meme. We didn’t. All we had were me’s. Admittedly, at that time, I wasn’t smart enough to understand how valuable being dumb was becoming. What was to become my next career got started on an entertainment special NBC broadcast the night before the 1978 Super Bowl. In that show Burt Reynolds, then the most popular movie star in the world, did a skit in which he made fun of my intelligence. Apparently, Steelers Nation did not appreciate it, and he received literally thousands of letters.

At that time he was filming the movie Hooper, which was a tribute to stuntmen, in Hollywood. I had started performing, singing at clubs around the country, and coincidentally, about two weeks after the Super Bowl, I was appearing at the famous Palomino Club in Los Angeles. Burt Reynolds sent his manager, a man named David Gershenson, to apologize for him. Gershenson brought a large carnation horseshoe and a letter telling me how sorry Burt was and how much he respected me. He invited me to visit the movie set the next day so Burt could apologize in person.

Gershenson drove me there. I had no way of knowing that David Gershenson would become my close friend and manager and play a vital role in my own life for the next forty-three years. When I got to the set, Burt Reynolds came out of his trailer, grabbed me, kissed me on the cheek, and told me how sorry he was. It was amazing. I was a football player, and he was the number one movie star in the world. He called everybody over to meet me. One thing I remember about that day was the good feeling on that set. That was a reflection of his personality. The easygoing camaraderie was amazing. It was obvious that he was calling the plays.

Then, suddenly, he had an idea: “Hey,” he asked, “how about doing a scene?”

I laughed. “I’m not an actor,” I said.

“I don’t care,” he told me. Burt Reynolds had been a high school football star and earned a scholarship to Florida State. Injuries ended his career, but he still loved football. This was his way of apologizing for making fun of me. He sat down with director Hal Needham, and they went through the script, looking for the right place for me. It turned out to be in the middle of a brawl, supposedly taking place at the Palomino Club.

I had about five lines, and I couldn’t remember them, so I ad-libbed, which turned out to be the way most Burt Reynolds movies were made. I had no idea what I was doing, which turned out to be the perfect preparation for the role. My character was a SWAT team member, but my real role was being tough Terry Bradshaw. Now, that was an image I could happily embrace! In the scene, Burt hit me twice, and I just stood there glaring at him. Then he punched me again, knocking out my tooth; instead of falling over, I gave him a big ol’ Southern-boy-missing-his-tooth grin. Then I hit him over the head with my fist, smashing the motorcycle helmet he was wearing into pieces.

After that first take, he told me he wanted me to hit his helmet harder. I didn’t want to. “I’m afraid I’m going to hurt you,” I told him.

“You’re not gonna hurt me.”

Okay, I hit him much harder. He went sprawling. I panicked, thinking, Oh my God, I knocked him out.

“Okay,” he said, getting up with a big smile on his face. “That was great.”

My part wasn’t mentioned in most reviews, although according to The Shreveport Times, Hooper starred Burt Reynolds, Sally Field, and Terry Bradshaw. That was the beginning of what I accurately describe as my “showing up in movies” career. I didn’t take it seriously at the beginning. I had put years of hard work into becoming a professional football player. It took me five minutes to become an actor.

I gradually accepted the fact that the image people had of me was not going away. I didn’t deal with it well for a long time, but gradually I began understanding that most people were just having fun with it. When I accepted it—and eventually embraced it—I started having fun with it, at least in public. I gave people what they wanted. I began laughing with them. I started making my own jokes: “I didn’t need to be a Rhodes Scholar. I had my gas-station maps!” Never claimed they were good jokes. It opened up a wide range of possibilities for me outside football. It had enabled me to make the transition from football star to celebrity.

Proof of that came in 1980 when I was asked to do a Playboy interview. Playboy was then one of the most popular magazines in the world. It was known for publishing foldouts of beautiful semi-naked women. Seems pretty innocent now, but without a doubt more young men had copies of it hidden under their beds than any other publication. As a God-fearing Christian, I did not read it growing up. Those were not the ideas my parents wanted in my mind.

But the magazine also featured long interviews with notable people, legendary figures like Martin Luther King Jr., presidents, movie stars, and, only occasionally, athletes. In more than two decades, the only football players who had been interviewed by Playboy were Jim Brown, the great running back who had become a controversial civil rights activist; O. J. Simpson, who had become the highest-paid player in NFL history; and Joe Namath, who had become Joe Namath. Now me—because I’d become a character. Enough people outside the football world knew something about me to convince publisher Hugh Hefner his readers would be interested in learning more about me.

Earlier in my career I’m not sure I would have agreed to being in Playboy. Here’s a fact of life: No matter how far a man travels from home, he always wants to please his mother. By this time I had remarried, to the champion figure skater JoJo Starbuck. She also was a Christian and wondered why I was doing this.

As I told the magazine, she was upset when I agreed to do the interview, but as I explained, this was “an opportunity to witness to 22 million people.” She warned me that they were going to ask embarrassing questions. “I know that,” I agreed. “I’m just going to answer as openly and honestly as I possibly can.” Then I added, “And when I think it’s really controversial, I’ll just lie!” She didn’t think that was funny.

I knew she was right. They were going to ask me some questions that would make me uncomfortable, but more importantly, this was an opportunity to introduce myself to people who did not care about football, and the only thing they knew about me was that I was that not-so-bright good ol’ boy who wins Super Bowls. It was a chance to take control of that image.

Turns out religion was the first thing Playboy wanted to talk about, asking me how my religious feelings started. Throughout my career I had never shied away from discussing my religion. My faith wasn’t a secret. There had been several stories written about it. I never pushed it on anyone, but it was pretty well known around the league.

For example, one warm Sunday afternoon we were playing Houston, and they had a rookie defensive end or tackle. The ball was hiked, and I was looking downfield, waiting, bouncing around, annnnnd . . . Here they come! I started scrambling, moving left, moving right, avoiding tackles, darting back and forth until finally—boom!—they got me. Downnnnn I went. This rookie landed right on top of me. Oh, I was angry and I was exhausted. I just let loose a stream of expletives: “Get your blankety-blank blank the blankety-blank offa me, you blankety-blank.”

The rookie looked at me through his crossbar, his eyes opened wide, and said with astonishment, “Mr. Bradshaw! I thought you were a Christian!”

I have never been so embarrassed in my life. Well, except maybe for a few thousand other times. But the point is, he was right. My belief has always been the foundation of who I am as a person. God made me the person that I am. I don’t have to practice being kind, for example. I don’t have to think about it. Kindness comes naturally to me. That’s how I was made.

My faith played a very important role in my career. It provided the support I needed to get through the tough times. At the beginning of my career, when I wasn’t playing well, my prayers helped me deal with it. When I was struggling and sitting on the bench, my belief that this was part of God’s plan helped me deal with the situation. At night I prayed, “God, I want to be the greatest quarterback who ever played this game, and then I’ll use all the honors I receive to glorify Your name.” I wouldn’t claim He entirely fulfilled His part of the deal—there are a lot of people who will dispute that—but He came close enough. And I have tried to keep my side of that promise, although admittedly at times, I have compromised.

My faith has always been mainstream Christian, which means I try to be a good person, I try to treat everyone well, and I respect the way everyone else practices their religion.

Sometimes my faith wasn’t a good fit with football. My success in football took me into different worlds, worlds with very different values. My faith never wavered, and I always felt I was doing exactly what the Lord wanted me to do, but clearly He was working in mysterious ways.

That Playboy interview was conducted exactly ten years from the month I’d been drafted. I didn’t think about it at that time, but it probably was a pretty good measure of how far I had come during that period, how different my life had become. In ten years, I had gone from being a committed Christian who did not drink, smoke, have premarital sex, or even look at pictures of naked women to doing a long-form interview that I knew was going to be published just a few pages away from photographs of a beautiful half-dressed woman. Anyone who wanted to read that interview was going to stumble on pictures.

Ten years earlier I had been a college football star known only to knowledgeable football fans and the population of Shreveport, Louisiana. Now I was someone who couldn’t walk down the street of many major cities without being recognized and stopped. I’d gone from someone who did my own laundry at Louisiana Tech, taking advantage of the fact that my brother had the keys to the laundry room, to a man earning enough money to buy a small ranch and a herd of weight-conscious cattle.

I actually was living three different lives. I was a football star, the quarterback of a team that had won more Super Bowls than any team in history. I was a public figure, a celebrity appearing on TV shows, making record albums, touring with my own show, and making movies, publicly playing the character the media had created for me. And I was leading a private life in which I worked my own ranch and was struggling to hold my second marriage together.

That Playboy interview highlighted the fact that my lives were overlapping. When I was asked about my faith, I told them that I’d had a revelation while watching Monday Night Football. The interviewer’s response pretty much summed up my life at that moment: “Are we talking about Christ or Howard Cosell?”