Chapter 4 - Looking for Terry

I was about seven years old when my family got our first television set. It was a little-bitty screen inside a large case, sitting on a table. It was a big deal, and it was magic. I’d only seen TV a few times, probably at Sears. I can close my eyes and still see the TV man setting it up in our living room. He adjusted it, then stood back to admire the black-and-white picture. I was probably thinking, This is amazing! I don’t have to go outside to play anymore. I can stay inside and watch TV all day.

As far as I was concerned, life was measured in Howdy Doody Time. Saturday was my worst night because I wanted to watch a movie, but my parents insisted on watching the wholesome band leader Lawrence Welk.

It seemed like only a few years later I was over at our rich neighbor’s house watching color TV. That was even more amazing. My friends whose parents could afford a color TV would tell us, “You guys gotta come over and see all the colors.”

It was like we didn’t know that trees were green until the color TV confirmed it.

For me, TV became Marshall Dillon on Gunsmoke and professional football on Sunday afternoons. I don’t remember watching it, but the first pregame football show had begun in 1956. It was called Football Preview and it was hosted by Chris Schenkel. It never occurred to me that someday it would be me inside that box, or the extraordinary impact TV would have on my life.

When I started my playing career, professional football was still considered a growing sport. By the time I finished, it had become prime-time entertainment. Football turned out to be the perfect fit for TV. It was a match made for advertising. What made the game attract a huge audience were the collisions. In 1960 CBS put a microphone on Giants linebacker Sam Huff for a program titled The Violent World of Sam Huff. It gave people a glimpse of how physical the game was—and they loved it. People love to see hard contact. They love seeing big hits. Players are gladiators.

I’ll give you an example. You’re driving down the highway, and suddenly traffic slows down. Cars start creeping along, and when you get to the reason, you see an accident on the other side of the road. I say, “Look at that car, Tammy. Wow. That really got smashed up. Think anybody got hurt?”

That’s what made the NFL a multibillion-dollar business. People love it. They think, I’m just gonna sit down right here on my couch for the next six hours and watch people crash into each other. Oh my goodness gracious, look at that! Look at that quarterback getting smashed into the ground. Oh my goodness, that is just awful. Can’t wait to see the slo-mo replay!

Fans couldn’t get enough football. The American Football League was founded the same year the Sam Huff documentary was broadcast. The AFL survived and grew because ABC needed football to compete with the NFL games on the other networks. The competition between the networks was greatly responsible for the 1966 merger.

The two leagues played very different styles of football. The NFL emphasized running the ball, the traditional three yards and a cloud of dust. The AFL realized that fans like scoring—they wanted action—so the league came in and started throwing the football all over the field. They modified the rules to open up the field. I loved the AFL because it was way more fun watching the ball being put in the air than being handed off and run into the line. That was me. I ran when I had to, but I loved throwing the ball.

TV also created rivalries, and rivalries created passionate fans. After the Immaculate Reception, Oakland Raiders fans hated us. Hated us. And hating makes ratings! When we played them, you couldn’t find a ticket. The TV ratings were enormous. Same thing with the Cowboys. After we whupped so-called America’s Team a couple of times, our games became wars. It was way more exciting than a car wreck, and no one had to sit in traffic to see it.

This is how passionate it became: One night, several weeks after we’d beaten the Cowboys in Super Bowl X, I was performing my singing act in a club in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Number X is considered one of the greatest Super Bowls. At that time, it was the most-watched sports event in history. To demonstrate the growth of the NFL, the 57 million viewers just about doubled the audience of the first Super Bowl ten years earlier. And it was the second most-watched program of any kind that year, just behind the last episode of M*A*S*H.

With a little more than three minutes left in the game, I called a pass play to Lynn Swann. I had been wanting to throw deep all day. The Cowboys blitzed, bringing half the stadium, and I was under pressure. I felt D. D. Lewis coming from my blind side and stepped up. He went sliding by. At the last split second, I saw Lynn had a step on the defender. I let loose a sixty-four-yard touchdown pass to him.

That might have been the best pass I threw in my career. It is definitely one of the best calls. But this is how intense that rivalry was. After the game Lewis said, “We were in a safety blitz, and I had Bradshaw dead in my sights to kill him. It was the greatest opportunity of my career . . . and I just grazed him.”

I didn’t see that completion either. Soon as I released the ball, the Cowboys’ Larry Cole clobbered me. He hit me in my jaw with his helmet and knocked me straight back. That was the last thing I remembered. I was pretty much out cold. Today a hit like that would be illegal. My teammates had to buddy-carry me off the field. I didn’t learn Lynn Swann had caught it on the five and taken it into the end zone until they told me in our locker room.

Cowboys fans already hated us and that loss rubbed it in. It wasn’t just a game. It was the Super Bowl. So a few weeks later I was having dinner in Albuquerque between my two sets when a guy pushed through security and came up behind me.

“Bradshaw!” he screamed, yelling something about the Cowboys.

Instinctively, I turned and reached behind me. I grabbed something in my hand. It took me a second to realize it was a gun. A gun. A fan was pulling a gun on me. I didn’t believe this was a response to my singing. I jumped up, but security was all over him. They dragged him away. I never found out what he intended or what happened to him.

By the time I got injured into retirement, the NFL had established itself as the most valuable TV property in existence. In 1982 the league signed a $1.8 billion, five-year deal with the networks, the largest contract in the history of show business. I actually was not intending to retire any more than I had expected to be the first draft pick. I was living my dream, although maybe in my dream they were paying me a lot more money. But I was having more fun playing quarterback than I ever had in my career. I understood the game. I recognized defenses, knew what plays to call, and had the skills and the teammates to execute them. It was a violent chess game, and we were better at it than any team in history.

There was one thing I didn’t figure on though. The end. I had been hurt a lot during my career. I was a walking collection of breaks, bruises, scars, strains, and tears, but I had played through most injuries. I had established another reputation: being tough. A year earlier I’d done a pilot episode for NBC in which I played a stock car driver, racing around the country. If the network had bought it, I would have retired. Or maybe not. I wasn’t really ready to give up football. Fortunately, they did not buy it.

I was ready to play. “I think I’ve got it all figured out at the age of thirty-three,” I told a reporter during training camp in 1982. “The old hunger and desire just kind of crept back in. I’m going to play six or seven more years of football and give it all I got. Then I’m going to quit.”

During camp I stepped into a hole and wrenched my back, then banged up a thumb that I’d broken two years earlier against the Raiders. I just never thought much about being hurt; injuries were part of the game. You get hurt, you heal up, you play. Then one afternoon we were doing takeoffs, which is a passing drill, and my foot slipped, putting my elbow at an awkward angle. I pulled something. It felt like a bee sting, and I ignored it. I just rubbed it. After being sacked more than three hundred times, this was nothing.

But the pain didn’t go away. When I tried to warm up before a preseason game, I had a really bad pain in my right elbow, my throwing arm. I couldn’t throw the ball ten yards. So I sat out that game.

Has to be nothing, I thought. Pain is the price of playing football. But it just didn’t heal. It was a burning pain that wouldn’t go away. I played with a bad elbow that whole season. I had to get a cortisone shot every week, but I played. If this happened today, they would have shut me down for the whole season and let it heal naturally. But that wasn’t me. It was a macho thing: I played hurt.

The last game that season was in the playoffs against the Chargers. Up until the fourth quarter I had played well. At one point, I completed fourteen consecutive passes. We were winning. But on a third-and-eight, I couldn’t find a receiver. I should have run, could have run, but as I admitted, “Gosh dern, I don’t know why I didn’t run. I got a peek at Lynn and threw it. Only me and God knows why I threw it, and even He was telling me not to . . .” The pass was intercepted. “This is the first time I’ve ever felt I really cost us a victory. They say adversity makes a better person out of you. I figure, I ought to be a heckuva nice guy next year.”

After the season I was operated on for a torn muscle in my elbow. I didn’t want it to be a big deal, so I checked into the hospital under an assumed name. And this is true, the name I used to check into the hospital was . . . Thomas Brady. Get it, Terry Bradshaw, Tom Brady, T. B.? The doctor described the injury as “a relatively minor thing caused by wear and tear, the same thing as tennis elbow.” Of course, that would be assuming tennis was a contact sport. But my elbow just never got better, and I didn’t play most of the 1983 season.

Want to know what it feels like for an athlete to stand on the sidelines watching other people playing? Maybe they smile on the outside, but I guarantee you inside they are dying. I’m ashamed to admit it, but during that time, I was not a good teammate. That’s the person I was at that time. I didn’t know how to deal with not playing. I didn’t want anybody playing quarterback but me. The quarterbacks behind me, Cliff Stoudt and Mark Malone, were good players, and they were my friends, but it killed me to watch them playing instead of me. I was wrong, but that was in my DNA. That was my job. I had been through so much; I had earned the respect of my team, the head coach, and maybe the Steelers fans. I had years left to be “the man,” and now I was hurt.

In public I tried to be good ol’ happy Terry. A Steelers fan had a myna bird that he claimed had healing powers. We set up a meeting, and the newspapers took pictures of this bird sitting on my elbow and walking on my shoulders. It was silly; that bird had absolutely no healing powers, but I was willing to do anything if I thought the fans would enjoy it.

What I should have done was shut my mouth, stand on the sidelines, and help our quarterbacks. I tried for a few games, but it overwhelmed me. It was torture. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I went home to Shreveport. I just had to clear my mind. I wanted to play so badly that I started using a stimulus machine that woke up my endorphins. And for about thirty minutes after I used the machine, I could throw a football without pain. Oh my goodness gracious. I’m back! I’m me! Stoudt and Malone had done a fine job most of the season, but we had lost the last few games. We needed to beat the Jets to make the playoffs. I took my machine and told Chuck Noll, “Here I am. I can play.”

I knew I wasn’t right, but I was going to try it one play at a time. Whatever limitations the injury put on me, I figured I could make up by smart play calling. My first few plays were great. Oh man, I thought, I’m back! The old guy’s still got it. At the end of the first quarter, we were in the red zone, and I saw Gregg Garrity coming across, and I turned and let it loose. A rocket. Pow! My arm just snapped. Oh, Lordy, that hurt! The pain was sumpthin’ awful.

Garrity took it in for a touchdown, and I went over to the sideline in so much pain. The whole stadium was exploding in noise: He’s back! Bradshaw’s back! I just stood there, staring out at the field.

Tony Parisi came over to me and asked, “You okay?”

“Oh my God, Tony, you have no idea how much p . . . p . . . p . . . pain I’m in.” He asked what I wanted to do. I told him, “Let’s just pray that we don’t get the ball back. We’ll go in at halftime, and we could say I’m out of the game.”

But we got the ball back. I put on my helmet and ran out onto the field, just like I had been doing since high school. I had no way of knowing this would be the last time I would ever do that. Instead, I was thinking, Let me just run this sucker out and get out of here. Meanwhile, the fans were celebrating, “Ter-ree! Ter-ree!”

I wanted so much to win this game for them, for the city, and for my team. On third down I tossed a little flare to Franco Harris for a first down. Yeah! I mean, Ow! I barely got the ball out of my hand. My whole identity was my ability to throw—javelins, rocks, footballs—and I couldn’t do it. No matter how badly hurt I had been previously, I could always throw the ball. When I was knocked cold and didn’t even know I was on the field, I could throw the ball. Now I was playing on memory. My will was stronger than my body. We got down to the goal line, and I managed to throw a short pass to Calvin Sweeney for a touchdown, and that was it. I do not know how I did it. My arm was just blown up. I couldn’t play anymore.

I prayed it would feel better, that maybe with a little rest I would be able to play against Oakland in the playoffs. No way. After the season, I went out to California to consult the great Dr. Frank Jobe, who had invented Tommy John surgery. All my lateral ligaments were torn. He told me he could operate. I think I would have been the third person to have that surgery, which would have kept me out for the next season, or I could try to build the muscle with weights to support the ligaments.

I considered it, but what I really wanted was Chuck Noll to want me. I wanted to hear him say, “Terry, please come back. We need you to win.” I needed that. But he didn’t. If he’d told me, “Have that surgery, get healthy, and when you’re ready to go, you’re our quarterback,” I believe I would have run through a wall for him. But I never got those words of encouragement, so it was an easy decision. I figured, I’ll show him. I won’t get the surgery that might extend my career.

I’m certainly not the only athlete who has ended his career feeling disrespected. And looking back on it, I don’t blame him. He had to deal with the players he had. He needed a quarterback, and I couldn’t play.

I lifted weights like crazy, even though I didn’t believe weights were the answer. Right after the NFL Draft, when they brought the rookies in, I went up to Pittsburgh. I went out on the field, dropped back and threw one pass. Oh, it hurt so bad. I went into the locker room and found our equipment managers, Tony Parisi and Jack Hart. “I’m done,” I said. I hugged them both and told them how much their friendship had meant to me. We all got emotional. I asked them if I could have a helmet or a pair of shoes to remind me of my career.

Then Chuck Noll came in and asked what’s up. “I’m through, Coach,” I told him. “Thank you.” And to the best of my memory, we shook hands and I went home.

I never played another down. I never really missed it either, and I always felt the Steelers organization felt the same way. I never thought about trying to come back, although on very rare occasions I do still dream about it. In this dream my team is behind, and I’ve got a receiver open for a game-winning touchdown. I try to throw a pass, but the ball won’t go out of my hand. I can’t throw it, like the ball is sewn to my palm.

I left Pittsburgh a very different man than the wide-eyed kid I had been when I came to the big city. Back then I had been totally unprepared. The first press conference I ever saw I was in. I left with four Super Bowl rings and very mixed feelings. I was a whole lot tougher. I always described Pittsburgh as a town you’d want on your side if you went to war. Pittsburgh was steel, coal mines, furnaces burning through the night, and good hardworking people, but you do not want to be on its dark side.

I think, like many people, the bad times tended to dig deeper into my soul than the joy. After a rough first few years, the fans mostly had been very supportive, but it was hard for me to forget the day in 1973 when I broke my collarbone and the fans jeered me as I was helped off the field. I left the city believing I had been on an island by myself. I wanted to be loved by Pittsburgh the way Joe Montana was loved in San Francisco, the way Peyton Manning was loved in Indianapolis, and the way Tom Brady was loved in New England. I wanted people to say, “We can’t do anything without Terry Bradshaw.” It was important to me to feel that love. And I never had enough confidence in myself as a player to feel it. I know now that those people waving those Terrible Towels did care for me. They honored me and believed in me. I just couldn’t see it.

To survive I learned how to cuss. I learned how to say, “F–you,” and I learned how to say, “Kiss my posterior.” I learned how to say, “Get the hell out of my face,” and how to be nasty. All those nice edges my childhood had rounded off got broken and sharpened. I learned how to be a pretty unpleasant guy when I needed to be. I didn’t like being that person; that was my defense system kicking in. I wasn’t going to let them get to me.

I didn’t try to defend myself. I didn’t scream and holler. Nobody wanted to hear that. I knew I could play, though. I knew what I had accomplished. I was so incredibly proud of our team and what we did together, but if I had said that out loud, people would respond, “Yeah, Bradshaw was good, but he had Franco Harris, Joe Greene, Jack Hamm, Lynn Swann, and Moon Mullins,” and yes, I did. But would we have won those Super Bowls without me? I don’t believe we would have. Truthfully, I never felt appreciated. It was as if I happened to be standing there in the middle of the field when all these great things happened around me, and I was good enough not to get in the way.

I was so proud that we’d won four championships, more than any team in history. But the fans wanted to know why we hadn’t won one for the thumb. God bless them! That’s their job as fans, to push for one more, then one more.

The funny thing is, I kept thinking the next win, the next championship, the next accomplishment would finally make me feel the way I wanted to feel. It never did.

I put on my personality when I went outside. I was smiling, happy-go-lucky, let’s have some fun and go see the magic myna bird. I projected a positive image, even accepting—if not embracing—that “dumb” character the media had created for me. I had learned how to make other people happy, but what I didn’t know was how to make myself happy.

In private, I was struggling. Nobody knew the pain and the hurt I was going through. Nobody knew how much I needed emotional support. Nobody. That was my fault, obviously. At that time, I was ashamed to admit any weakness and too embarrassed to ask for help. I thought the emotional ups and downs I was feeling were normal, that everybody had problems. I thought maybe mine were intensified by the pressure to win and to play well. It would be a long time before doctors put a name on those feelings. I was eventually diagnosed with clinical depression. The doctors explained that it was a reasonably common illness that could be treated. As I tell the audience when I do my stage act: Learning that I was depressed made me very happy.

It took me decades of being unhappy to figure it out. I was just as confused by me as anybody else. I couldn’t understand why, with all the wonderful things happening in my life, I wasn’t content, why I couldn’t feel plain, simple, unmitigated joy. Is there anything more exciting in football than being the quarterback of the Super Bowl champion? Or how about four Super Bowl championships? I should have been the happiest person in the world. Instead, I was spending too much time alone, wondering why I just couldn’t enjoy it.

After winning a Super Bowl, it’s not uncommon to go through a downer. You have spent six months of football, six months of great moments, of wins and losses, of hearing the whole stadium rocking around you. Then, abruptly, it’s over. You were on a super, super high, and then you’re standing in the canned soup section looking for the chicken and rice. It’s normal to feel down. What’s not normal is when that feeling doesn’t go away.

Depression is a terrible disease. It can destroy your life. It makes relationships difficult. I talk about depression a lot now. People might think, Oh man, Terry’s gonna talk about depression again. That’s depressing. Well, I do talk about it because I know how many people are silently suffering. I have had men come up next to me when I’m in the supermarket and whisper that they heard me and got the help they needed. I talk about it because it is a pretty common disease, and people are ashamed or embarrassed to admit it might be affecting their lives. And I talk about depression because there are effective treatments.

I know I’m doing some good when I hear people say, “When I get depressed, the first person I think about is Terry Bradshaw!”

But before I was correctly diagnosed, there were years of some bad times. After my third season, for example, I was very lonely. I went home after the season and stayed with my parents. I was incredibly irritable. I had this unsettled feeling in the pit of my stomach, and I couldn’t shake it. I have always been close with my brothers, Gary and Craig. We spent our childhoods teasing one another. One day Craig was picking on me, and I lost it. Totally lost it. In a rage I grabbed him by the throat and slammed him down. I was out of control—completely out of control—and I didn’t know why. That was ugly. It wasn’t me, but it was me.

I never knew when the emotions might overwhelm me. One night, for example, during those weeks Joe Gilliam was starting, I was in my apartment watching Monday Night Football. I was by myself, as usual. Suddenly, I was just overwhelmed by sadness. I was sitting in front of the television with the volume turned down, and I started crying. Tears were just rolling down my face. I couldn’t understand it. The pain was deep inside me. I felt like a total failure. I felt like I was weak, that a real man stands up to his demons and deals with them. Crying? Tears? I was Terry friggin’ Bradshaw. Number twelve, quarterback of the Pittsburgh Steelers. People wanted to shake my hand. Kids were collecting my football cards. When I went to the store, people asked for my autograph. How could I tell them the truth? How could I tell them that I wasn’t who they wanted me to be. How could I admit I was sitting alone in my apartment, bawling?

The only resource I had was my faith, and I turned to that. That night I felt the presence of God. I felt Him trying to comfort me. I told God, “I need You in my life to straighten me out. I can’t. I’ve tried to help myself, and I messed up.” I started bargaining, adding, “I’m gonna get out of this hole I’m in, and when I do, I’m gonna give You all the glory. But You have just got to take my life and straighten me up and help me get over this pain. Help me get myself together.”

I had no one else to ask for help. I didn’t dare show my weakness to anyone, including my family. Especially my family. I had been fooling myself, telling myself that this was my kind of normal. That everybody goes through challenging times and I just had to deal with them until they pass. When I was doing something I loved or could put all my focus on a project, the sadness went away. My way of dealing with it was to keep myself busy. My peace, my joy, came from playing football, and for three hours every day on the field, the emotions didn’t affect me.

Fortunately, I did find at least some comfort in my faith. But these episodes continued to pop up in my life. Another time, I remember, while I was going through some difficult issues, including getting divorced, we were playing a preseason game. Just before halftime, I got sacked; my head got bounced off the turf. Instead of popping up as I usually did—see, you didn’t hurt me—I sat there, put my hands over my knees, and shook my head, trying to clear the cobwebs. Then I started bawling. Tony Parisi and our team doctor came running onto the field. They made it look like I was clearing my head after getting hit, but really they just loved on me. They knew what I was going through and helped me get through it.

The real problem was that it was affecting my entire life without me realizing it. I was playing defense, making significant decisions based on what I thought would make me feel better. I was so angry after my fight with my brother that I got married. That was my thinking! I’m going to marry this girl, and that means I’m not going to slam my brother again.

I was always looking for the final piece that would complete me, the piece that would make that hollow feeling go away. What I needed was always just over there, over that next hill, and if I do this or that, I would finally feel better. Minutes after we got married, I knew I had made a bad mistake. So when that marriage failed, which made me even more depressed, I got married again. This marriage was going to make me feel better. Of course it didn’t. My issues had nothing to do with those women. They were fine people. It was me.

My depression was certainly a factor when my playing career ended and I was looking at a wide-open future. I had no idea where my life was going to go. My whole life had been football, and suddenly it was done. “Thank you very much, Terry, but don’t let the locker room door hit you on the way out. Please leave because we’ve got a game next Sunday to prepare for.” I was thirty-five years old, an age when most people are just entering the middle of their career, and my career was over.

It was like being pulled out of the ground by my roots. My life was structured around football. It was my identity, and it was done. The question was, What comes next? And honestly, I didn’t have the slightest idea. How do you reinvent yourself when you’re already unsure who you are?

Part of my uncertainty came from wondering how I was going to earn a living. Unlike athletes now, we were not paid millions of dollars. On occasion I do think about that. I wonder how much four Super Bowl championships would be worth today? I’m not jealous, not at all. I think that—oh come on, of course I’m a little jealous. It’s human nature. If I were playing at a later time, I would have signed contracts that provided security for myself and several generations of future Bradshaws.

I had no solid plans for my future. I didn’t know what I was going to do. On some level most professional athletes believe their career will go on forever. Obviously, there were exceptions. There were players who used the off-season to get into professions that would support them when their playing days were done. They understood how to use their celebrity to build a future. Roger Staubach, for example, built a real estate corporation. Fran Tarkenton became an entrepreneur and founded literally dozens of businesses. Me? I bought cows.

I will find my happiness in cows, I thought. I believed that.

The thought of having to work at a job did not bother me. I’ve always had a strong work ethic. I had been working my entire life. Making a lot of money had never been my primary objective; money had never been the secret of happiness for me. I definitely proved that.

The question most people ask themselves at some point in their life is: How much money is enough? The answer, usually, is just a little more than you have. And no matter how successful you are, that answer never changes. It’s like trying to catch your shadow.

I never had big financial goals. That turned out to be a good thing when you played for the Rooney family, because, like all NFL owners, they did not want their players to have big financial goals. One of the classic stories about the founders of the league concerned the Chicago Bears owner and coach, George Halas. Even among the NFL founders, he was considered notoriously cheap. Supposedly one day Dick Butkus was at a urinal in the locker room when Halas stood next to him. Butkus noticed there was a quarter at the bottom of the urinal. Mr. Halas reached into his pocket, took out another quarter, and dropped it in the urinal. “Geez, Coach,” Butkus asked, “what’s that about?”

As Halas reached down to pick up the quarters he explained, “Well, it’s not worth going in there for twenty-five cents. But for half a dollar . . .”

That was still accurate during my career. Supposedly, at a league meeting, one owner suggested laying down two fields in his stadium, one running east–west, the other north–south, with a half being played on each field. “That way,” he explained seriously, “we could sell twice as many seats on the fifty-yard line.”

When I was drafted, I was a kid who knew nothing about contracts. My dad and I sat down and discussed how we would negotiate with the Steelers. We talked about hiring an agent, but we were scared an agent would be asking for more money than the team would pay, and, coming in new, we didn’t want to create any problems. I wanted to be the good guy. I wanted everybody to like me. I wanted to be a good employee. So my dad and I decided we could negotiate a better deal by using a local attorney. Worst mistake I made in my entire career.

At that time teams held all the negotiating power. They negotiated hundreds of contracts every season. Players negotiated one. And they knew the numbers. Players never talked to each other about their salaries, so we didn’t know what the market was. Teams had total control over players, so there was no opportunity to find a better deal elsewhere. The only leverage players had was to hold out for more money. It was play for the money they offered or don’t play at all. My first contract was $90,000 for three years, plus a $100,000 signing bonus spread over ten years. As I told reporters, “We weren’t demanding a lot and stuck by our principles. We never ran into a problem.”

Dan Rooney told those same people, “We’re very, very happy.” No kidding, Dan.

My negotiating approach with the Steelers never changed. Basically, it remained “please love me.” I never had an agent representing me. I trusted that the Steelers were going to reward me for what we accomplished. I based my contract demands primarily on what I needed in order to take care of my ranch. And all I wanted was to live on the farm debt free and run my cattle. If I needed a new tractor or I needed to paint the barn—red paint was expensive—I talked to Mr. Rooney and told him how much money I needed to buy a tractor and paint my barn. Okay, I’m being a little disingenuous here. Obviously, I wanted to be paid more than that. But essentially that’s true. I had no business negotiating my own contract. It made no sense at all. What I lacked in experience, I made up for in naiveté.

Mr. Rooney and I would have a pleasant conversation. Then he would tell me to talk with his son, Dan Rooney. Dan and I would have a pleasant conversation. Then he would tell me to go talk to the lawyer. It was always me telling them what I wanted. That definitely was the wrong approach, but it was all that I was capable of doing. They listened seriously, then told me what they would pay.

After winning our fourth Super Bowl, I told Dan Rooney I wanted $500,000. I liked Dan, and I have always liked the Rooney family. He told me flatly that I wasn’t worth that much money. “Go talk to the lawyer,” he said. That was kind of a hard pill to swallow, but I wasn’t comfortable hurting his feelings. Imagine that. I just didn’t know how to stand up for myself. So I met with the lawyer and accepted the Steelers’ offer, which was around $300,000. I definitely had a choice. I could accept their offer or retire from football.

I found out later that another quarterback who had been to only two playoff games and never come close to winning a championship was making twice as much as me. Yeah, but he was paying an agent. Look at all the money I was saving.

I signed and smiled for the newspaper cameras. It was still more money than my dad had ever made. I bought myself a brand-new Pontiac GTO for $7,200, I bought my mother some nice furniture, and the main thing I bought with my contract was my ranch in Mansfield, Louisiana. I’d always wanted to own land. My grandfather and several uncles had their own spreads, and growing up, I found a kind of peace there that I’ve never experienced anywhere else. It was my place to escape. As soon as I signed my contract, my dad found 400 acres in Mansfield, which was only about forty miles from Shreveport. There was a small house on it, an old David Brown tractor, and a five-foot lawn mower. I paid $140,000 for it with a twenty-year loan.

Then I borrowed another $100,000, using the rest of my contract as collateral. I bought a baler, a hay rake, a sickle cutter, and a John Deere tractor. I didn’t know anything about farming. Those first years I just cut the grass. I didn’t know what else to do. That didn’t matter to me. Owning it, the contentment of being on my own land, cutting my own grass, was enough for me. I’d get up in the morning and have my bacon, eggs, and orange juice, go for a good long run down to the front gate, then cut my grass.

My NFL contract didn’t come close to covering my financial obligations. I had to make about $18,000 a month to keep the ranch operating. It was ironic that paying for the ranch did not allow me the luxury of actually spending time on the ranch. Somehow, though, I managed to come up with the mortgage and operating expenses every month. I was willing to do anything to make that money.

Unlike today, professional sports were seasonal for athletes. Now it’s a year-round job; when you’re not playing, you’re training to play. To supplement my salary in the off-season, I sold used cars and trucks for Bill Hannah Ford in Shreveport. I wasn’t very good at it. I knew nothing about the vehicles I was selling, and I was honest about that, which was not necessarily an attribute for a used-car salesman. I’d say, “Look at this sweet little pickup. That’s a great shade of black, isn’t it?” I wasn’t making any money because I was giving everybody the best deal in the world just so they would buy from me. I was the leading salesman one month, but that was only because the sales manager gave me a fleet deal. I didn’t like that job, but I didn’t have many choices.

I had to work, and few places would hire an employee who was going to be leaving for half the year to play sports. For a time I worked as a fishing guide on Toledo Bend Lake. I was paid fifty dollars a day. I knew how to bait a hook, but I had no idea where the fish were in that lake. Nobody cared, though. I was the number one draft pick. I was an NFL quarterback. And people wanted to be able to tell their friends, “Hey, I went fishing with Terry Bradshaw the other day.”

I never had a big house. I never had fancy jewelry. But the one thing I have always had is a big personality—and the recognition that comes with a successful sports career. I found out people would pay for that. I was capable of giving them the Terry Bradshaw they wanted to meet. I began speaking to any group that would hire me. Twelve hundred bucks? I’ll do it! Fifteen hundred bucks? When do you want me there? Twenty-five hundred bucks? Oh boy, I’m there. I spoke to every organization that invited me. While I considered myself naturally shy, I was surprised to find that I enjoyed speaking at these events. I didn’t necessarily love getting to the place and eating the chicken, but I definitely enjoyed being with people and feeling the warmth in the room. They were excited to see me. Me! And nobody boos the speaker at a high school football banquet.

I hadn’t yet grasped the full power of celebrity. I’d put on my Terry suit and do my act. “Whoever thought a grown man could get paid for putting his hands on Mike Webster’s behind . . .”

I stayed so busy making that $18,000 a month I was never home. I spoke at ten to twelve events a month during the off-season. I found out something interesting, something that I might not have expected: I had a gift. I started talking and funny stuff came out. People were laughing with me. And when they laughed, I’d remember that line and incorporate it into my next speech. I learned what got a reaction and gave them more of it. I loved hearing their laughter and looking out at the audience and seeing smiles. I fed off that. I would always conclude with some inspirational words, usually beginning with a self-deprecating remark like “If a guy like me can . . .”

It took me some time, but from starting as a small but manageable financial drain, I built my ranch into a significant money loser. Once all the grass was cut, I decided I wasn’t going to farm my land—I was going to be an animal guy. The fact that I knew absolutely nothing about cows did not concern me. I used to listen to the farm report on the radio, and I heard the host announcing they were going to have a Shorthorn cattle sale in Tyler, Texas. Okay, I decided, I’m going to buy Shorthorn cattle. Gonna be a cattleman, just like the Cartwright family on Bonanza. My wife went with me to the auction. Fortunately, she knew even less about cattle than I did.

Before the auction started, I met with a group of people who wanted to shake hands with the Steelers quarterback. Among them was the auctioneer. I asked him an obvious question: “What’s the one breed you’re selling that you’re making the most money off of?”

“Well, right now it’s Limousins.”

Limousines? Whoa, I thought, he sells cars too. I guess that makes sense, an auctioneer can probably sell anything—cows, horses, buildings, cars. I was just about to say, “You’re telling me you make more money selling cars than cattle?” But before I could, my wife said, “You mean you make more money selling cars than cattle?”

Everybody in that little circle around us started laughing. “Oh you sweet young thing,” one of them said. “No, sweetheart. Limousin is a breed of cattle.”

I smiled and put an affectionate arm around her shoulders and said something like, “That’s good cattle.” Meanwhile, I’m silently thanking her for bailing me out, stopping me from embarrassing myself. I ended up buying about a dozen head. “Head” being one animal. I was learning to talk cattle.

I built a little herd. I loved being at the ranch. I was a loner, so it was a good place for me to be alone. As I would learn, being a loner is typical of depressed people. I wasn’t good at making friends. I always had a lot of people around me but not a lot of friends. I didn’t often go out with my teammates. On the Mondays after a game, if the weather was good, I’d go out to the golf club. Often by myself. The club would leave a cart out for me, and I’d play till it got dark. At night I’d watch Monday Night Football. Later in my career a couple of teammates like Calvin Sweeney and Jimmy Smith would join me. But after my first divorce, most nights during the week, I’d come home, heat up a can of Campbell’s vegetable soup, grab a sleeve of crackers, and sit on my couch watching movies. HBO had recently been created, and it was perfect for me. Give me a good movie, Campbell’s soup, and crackers, and I was fulfilled. Didn’t even have to be a good movie. Every movie was better than Lawrence Welk.

Football and my ranch, that was my life. My wife hated the ranch, so most of the time I was there by myself. In the evening, after a full day of mowing, painting, fixing fences, whatever had to be done, I’d take my Jeep and drive out among the cows. I’d pop open a can of beer and sit on the hood of the Jeep, leaning back against the windshield and waiting. Eventually the cows would wander slowly over to me.

I was alone, but somehow I was never lonely. I didn’t need anything else. I’d just sit there watching the sun go down, looking out over my land and remembering how thankful I was for those moments and how wonderful it was to be able to do this.

There were two places I loved being: on the football field surrounded by fifty thousand screaming people or sitting on the hood of my Jeep, surrounded by my cows, honoring the end of the day. It was everything in between that was causing my problems.