Chapter 9 - Looking for Terry

I am always working to be a better person. Years ago I was in a hotel in Chicago, where I was beginning a series of promotional appearances. As I often do, I was reading a self-awareness book. This book suggested a task: For the next fourteen days, don’t do anything ugly, mean, or hateful. Make every person you come into contact with in those weeks a priority. Basically, fourteen days of being nice. Okay, I decided, that sounds like it might be fun. I’m going to see what impact it has on my life.

I took it as a challenge. Don’t say a bad word, and don’t even think of anything negative. Positive, positive, positive for fourteen days. I started right away. I walked into an elevator and greeted each person. “How you doing?” I asked. “Nice to meet you.”

Great, Terry! Big smiles.

I got in the car and met my driver and escort for the day. “How you doing?” I asked. “Tell me all about yourself.”

At the first event, I signed autographs. One man told me, “I never did like you.”

I smiled. “That’s okay. I don’t expect everyone to like me. I wish you did, but thank you for coming out anyway. You still wanted my autograph, and I appreciate that.”

“It’s not for me. It’s for my brother. I hate my brother for making me do this.”

“Oh, that’s great. It’s good to have strong emotions! I hope you have a wonderful day.”

All day long I said thank you. Whatever anyone said, I said thank you and I appreciate that. All day. Finally, we went to the airport, and I flew to the next city on my tour. Same thing. Thank you. Pleased to meet you. Thank you for spilling that coffee on me. Third day, same thing. “Ah, what a cute baby! Does he always pee on people like this?” Fourth day, “You don’t like me? I don’t blame you.” Fifth day, “No, I don’t mind standing in the rain waiting for our car because the grass needs the water.” Not one negative action. Sixth, seventh . . .

Fourteen days of goodness like to have killed me. I didn’t leave a single breath for Roy. Can you imagine living your life and never expressing anything other than goodness? After fourteen days, I took a deep breath and thought, That’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Maybe other than getting over a divorce. Forget dealing with a drinking problem. Man, you don’t have a problem till you try to be nice for fourteen days. I’d challenge anybody to try being only good for fourteen days. It goes against human nature. It’s exhausting. There should have been a warning: Don’t try this at home. Or anywhere else.

Big note: I’m not suggesting you go out and do something negative and then explain, “Terry Bradshaw told me to do it.”

This is what I believe: God created me the way that I am. He put inside me a tremendous desire to make people happy, to bring happiness into their lives, and then He gave me the platform to do it. He also gave me my frailties. Did He ever.

I’ve sinned. I’ve made mistakes. I’ve done things I’m not proud of. There are times I’ve been confused about my religion. After my second divorce, I went to see a preacher in Pittsburgh, and he told me I was going to hell. I immediately began looking for a loophole, and responded, “Well, God said I was saved.”

The preacher corrected me, pointing out, “If you were saved, you wouldn’t have gotten divorced.”

It gets confusing. According to my Baptist faith, once you’re saved, you’re saved forever. And if I’m saved forever, why am I still a sinner?

No one will be surprised to learn that I don’t always follow the Scripture religiously. I like my bourbon. I get mad. I cuss. And then I pray for forgiveness. I learned that none of us are perfect. Once, when I was a teenager, I saw the musical director of my church looking through girly magazines in a 7-Eleven. I thought he must be the biggest heathen in the world. The fact that I remember that reveals the impact it had on me.

As I learned, it’s impossible to go through life consciously focusing on being a good person. You can’t practice being kind. It has to be who you are inside. I was brought up within my Baptist faith, and while at times I’ve taken some detours, that has remained the bedrock of my life. When I’ve needed God, He’s been there.

I never evangelize. Never. That’s not my place. I never try to spread my faith. I just try to live it. My relationship with God is just between us. Us and Tammy. Tammy shares my faith, and that’s certainly one of the elements that bind us together.

In fact, after Tammy and I moved, we began attending a new church, and I joined the choir. Apparently, word spread that a celebrity was joining the congregation, causing the pastor to remind worshipers, “This building is about church. It’s not about Terry Bradshaw. We’re happy he’s joined us here, but this needs to be about God, not Terry Bradshaw.”

I pray every day. I try not to pray for myself. I don’t ever pray for prosperity. I don’t pray for money. I never tell the Lord, “Look here, I need $3.5 million for that brand-new house up on the hill, and if I have that, my life will be perfect. I trust You to give that to me.” Why in the world would I pray for that when millions of people around the world are suffering?

I pray for my family. I pray for health. I pray for peace. And I remember to give thanks for all the wonderful gifts I’ve been given. Do I hope God answers my prayers? I do. And at the most difficult times of my life, my prayers have been answered. I’ve been able to find the calm that I needed and the faith that the pain I was experiencing was temporary.

Once, I remember, Tammy was having an especially difficult day. As she looked down at her phone, a message popped up. “Lord, thank You for this new day. I don’t take it for granted. If I lose focus, bring me back. If I grow anxious, be my calm. Give me peace in uncertainty and strength and clarity when I’m confused. You brought me this far. I trust You with what’s next.” She saved it, and we both refer to it from time to time.

Faith and football have been a potent combination for a long, long time. Prayer is part of the game. Teams pray for victory. Players pray for safety. On the field I never prayed. I was too busy thinking about what I had to do to win the game. I was thinking about the next play, not my soul and salvation.

The NFL is a great mix of different religions and backgrounds, especially now that people are coming from all over the world. I remember when I was playing, one of my teammates came into my hotel room and asked if I’d ever been filled with the Holy Spirit.

“Well,” I responded, “if you’re talking about accepting Christ, then yes, I have been.”

“No, that’s not what I mean,” he explained. “Can you speak in tongues?”

“Um, no,” I said respectfully. “God has never revealed Himself to me that way.”

“Speaking in tongues,” he said, “is God’s way of connecting His spirit and my soul.” Then he offered to show me how God did that.

“Thank you,” I said, “but that’s not really something I—”

Before I finished, he started speaking in unintelligible sounds while rolling his eyes and his head. It was an unusual display. When he finished, I thanked him very much for the demonstration, but I reiterated that it wasn’t for me. Each person has to decide what his or her relationship with spiritual matters is going to be. Speaking in tongues worked for my teammate. Hallelujah! But his way wasn’t my way of being connected to God.

I also question why players begin a postgame interview by giving all the glory to God for their victory. I have a problem with that. When I hear them I think, Wait a second, don’t you think that other team was praying for victory too? I wonder, Are you going to bless God when you lose next week and they put the microphone in front of you, or are you going to blame Him for taking sides?

I get it. Some people are profoundly religious Christians, but I don’t believe God chooses sides. And I don’t see people with other religions sharing that belief. I believe God gave us all the talents and skills we have, and He gave me the ability to play football, but it’s up to us to use our gifts.

People sometimes feel embarrassed professing their religious beliefs in public. Instead of saying they believe in Jesus, or sharing their religious affiliations, they say they’re spiritual. I like to say, “I’m a spiritual Christian who believes in Jesus.” It covers it all for me, but I also have great respect for other religions.

For me, at least, that appreciation is best professed in church. I love being in a church. I just love it. When I’m in a church, I feel holy. I feel spiritually cleansed. I find a deep peace. I love singing the old gospel songs. I could sing gospel songs all day long. I’ve actually preached a couple of times.

I preached at a gathering of cowboys, ranchers, horsemen, and cattlemen. I gave my testimony and shared about my relationship with the Lord and what it’s meant for me. I told them about that Monday night in Pittsburgh, after I had been benched, when I felt the presence of God trying to comfort me. I admitted that too often I don’t live up to the highest standards of my faith. It’s hard to claim I’m a good Christian while I’m marketing my own brand of bourbon. I struggle with it. Do I read my Bible daily? No. Do I pray daily? No. Do I treat people the way I would like to be treated? Yes, I do. Do I love my neighbor? Um, well, there was this guy near me when we had the ranch in Thackerville . . .

The truth is I’m being the best Terry Bradshaw I can be. If you haven’t figured it out by now, that’s a complex package. Which means I’m very fortunate to have a backup pray-er. Tammy. I don’t pray for myself. Instead, I ask Tammy to pray for me. I write down all of her prayers. Here’s an example: Dear God, thank You for this day filled with opportunities. Today we know You’re guiding every step we take. We ask that You close every door that no longer serves Your plan and open every door that leads to purpose and peace. Please surround Terry like a shield and give him wisdom for every decision. Calm his heart, steady his mind, and strengthen him to release yesterday and step boldly into today. Amen.

Amen.

I’ve seen a great variety of religious services, from my small Louisiana church to monks in Thailand. But for some reason, I’ve never been to a bar mitzvah. Never even been invited to one. Now please, this isn’t me asking for an invitation. And while I’ve never personally attended one, I once sent a tape congratulating a young man on his. I don’t quite remember what I said on it, but the boy’s father sent it back and asked me to redo it. I guess I failed my only bar mitzvah speech.

Most of us acknowledge that God definitely works in strange ways. For example, He’s put me in a position to endorse products that He might not approve of. Years ago I was on a USO tour with the secretary of defense, William Cohen. During the trip, Cohen asked me what I did to earn money outside of playing football. I told him that my quarter horse operation was so successful I was losing less than half the money I had lost with cattle. Basically, I admitted I was earning a living making speeches—many, many speeches. Cohen gave me the best business advice I’ve ever received. “You need to make money while you’re sleeping,” he said. “You can’t keep flying around the country. You’ve got to brand yourself.” I’ve never forgotten that. Maybe I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I didn’t forget it.

I eventually understood that at some point I had to become a brand. My name has value. People believe I’m honest, that when I say something, I mean it, that when I talk, I’m telling you how I really feel. I’ve touched nerves and I’ve pissed off people—mostly not intentionally—but that’s who I am. As a result, when I put my name on a product and tell people this is a quality purchase, they believe me. It gets attention and often sells. Thank you, Jesus.

Through the years I’ve endorsed an incredible variety of products, from number twelve jerseys to knee replacements. For the most part I use the products I endorse. Although, admittedly, I never put together that one-hundred-piece Terry Bradshaw jigsaw puzzle. I don’t endorse anything I don’t believe in. I’ve turned down some potentially lucrative opportunities. Among them was a significant offer to have a hair transplant and then endorse the company. I thought about it—I did. Nice, wavy hair. Watch out, Howie, here comes Terry as Elvis. Could I be a blond again?

Every offer goes through Tammy. We discuss each of them. She was firmly set against the hair transplant. “This is how the world knows you,” she said firmly, then affectionately rubbed my bald head. “This is how I fell in love with you. Don’t change your image.” So I turned down the offer.

While we were doing the reality show, I was offered nearly $2 million to endorse a male enhancement product. Now, what in the world gave that company the idea that I was a good fit for their product? Did they sit around thinking, Who does the public believe needs to be enhanced? Who would be the right person to get men thinking, Gee, if it works for him, it definitely will work for me? How they figured it was me, I have no idea.

Was that really the image I wanted? No!

Thank you, Tammy. This time she didn’t affectionately rub anything. She just said, “No! Don’t even think about it.” But what about the $2 million? For a guy who claims he doesn’t care that much about money, that’s a lot of money not to care about. It was a hard choice. My whole family discussed it. That was just a typical Sunday night Bradshaw family dinner: Pass the ketchup, honey, and should Dad go on TV bragging on this product? Would they want to see it?

The family voted down the male enhancement drug. I knew the medication helped many men dealing with a legitimate and often difficult medical issue. And unlike when my knee went out, you can’t get a replacement part. It was a good product, but not the right fit for me, so I put the company in touch with Coach Jimmy Johnson, who happily endorsed the product.

I’ve also created some products. During my playing career, I founded Terry’s Creamy (or Crunchy) Peanut Butter. Author’s note: There’s no connection between my peanuts and the last story. Nor is there any connection between that and the commercials I did for Williams Lectric Shave, which “makes my beard stand up.”

I don’t remember exactly why I got into the peanut butter business other than it was a really tasty product that I loved. I wrote the scripts for all the commercials. They were really corny, but that’s why they fit me so well. We were selling well in about a dozen markets and getting ready to expand. But that year, it rained too much and the peanut crop rotted, creating a shortage. Who knew it was possible to run out of peanuts? There’s no way of substituting something else for peanuts in peanut butter. So we went out of business after a year. It’s actually possible to buy an almost fifty-year-old jar of my peanut butter on the internet.

As I got older, my stomach got bigger. Let’s blame it on the steroids. When I’m not working, I like to dress casually with my shirttails out, and I don’t wear a belt. So I wanted to market stretchy casual dress pants. I wanted pants you could wear on your tractor and then you could put on a jacket and go out without changing. I wanted to call them Fat Boy Britches!

The name didn’t catch on. Potential investors thought that name might run off retail sales. They couldn’t imagine people telling their friends, “You should get a pair of these Fat Boy Britches.” So we had to put that idea aside.

I also wanted to get into the spirits business for a long time. Celebrities had shown they could be successful in this industry. Several years ago I tried to start a wine company. I wanted to market affordable, accessible Italian wines. We spent time in Italy selecting our wines. We had a classy label and a marketing program. But because it looked like it was going to be successful, the people I went into business with got greedy. There was only a little piece of the profit left for me, and it wasn’t enough for me to invest the necessary time, so I shut it down.

But I learned a lesson. Let me correct that, I thought I learned a lesson. Watching the great success some people had putting their names on vodka, tequila, and other liquors, I decided to get into the bourbon business. One thing I know for sure, we’re not running out of bourbon anytime soon. As a Christian, getting into the bourbon business was a little tricky for me. I was reminded by members of my family that Jesus did not turn water into bourbon. Apparently, that was my job.

I love my bourbon. I have to admit I like to sip bourbon while I’m playing golf because it’s the perfect drink for the course. It definitely doesn’t help my golf game, but that evens out. Bourbon helps me not care that it doesn’t help my golf game. One beautiful afternoon Tammy and I were playing mixed doubles with good friends. My friend came over to me and said, “Bomber”—close friends call me Bomber—“there’s a nip in the air. What do you say we have a little sniff?”

“A fine idea,” I agreed. I pulled out a bottle from my bag. It was empty. I pulled out the second bottle. Empty. I felt around the bag, thinking the bottles might have been leaking. Then I looked at my caddy.

That guy had the biggest golf-eatin’ grin I’ve ever seen on a caddy’s face.

Creating my own bourbon brand actually began as a fund-raising effort. We were raising money for the great Wounded Warriors Project, which assists men and women who’ve sacrificed for this country. It’s a program I feel strongly about and have been actively involved in for a long time. And being realistic, it’s considerably easier to raise money selling twelve-year-old bourbon than fifty-year-old peanut butter.

Tammy and I were permitted to buy one large barrel of Four Roses bourbon. We selected from nineteen different blends. The barrel was enough for 130 bottles, which we shipped to a retailer in Sarasota, Florida. We advertised on the radio and sold autographed bottles for $100 apiece. All the money went to the Wounded Warriors Project. The following year we were allowed to buy two barrels and did the same thing. The bourbon wasn’t made by me, just selected and endorsed by me. But I liked the process, and I definitely liked the bourbon.

Eventually, I decided to create my own bourbon brand from scratch. We contacted a distiller in Owensboro, Kentucky, who brews celebrity brands. When we started this project, all I knew about bourbon was: “Sure, I’ll have another one.” I didn’t know anything about the history of bourbon. I didn’t know anything about the bourbon market. But I set out to learn.

Sometimes it’s good to just pause for a bit and consider all the unexpected directions that life has taken you in. There was never a time when I thought, I’ll have my own brand of alcohol. Playing pro football and winning Super Bowls? Those were all part of my plan. Bourbon wasn’t in my playbook. But somewhere along that path, I learned to be open to new possibilities.

I love the Robert Frost poem “The Road Not Taken.” A lot of people, I’ve noticed, are set in their lives and stay on the main road. That’s never been me. There have been times when I’ve reached a crossroads and instead of taking the known roads, I went my own way. I made my own path. That wasn’t always easy. As people can tell you, sometimes I got a little lost along the way and ended up in the brambles. But my life has never been dull, and most of the time it ended up being fun.

That’s how I ended up producing Bradshaw Bourbon. It seemed like it could be a lot of fun. I knew what I wanted my bourbon to taste like, and it took fifteen months to settle on the right blend. The key to good bourbon or bad peanut butter is age, and the secret to my bourbon is the yeast. That’s not much of a secret, though. It’s like telling a team playing the Chiefs, “Psst, watch out for that Mahomes guy.”

My bourbon tastes a little older than it is. My two-year-old bourbon tastes like it’s aged for four or six years. I helped design the bottle and the label. I wanted it to look like a long-necked bottle you might see sitting on the bar of Miss Kitty’s Long Branch Saloon on the old TV show Gunsmoke. I wanted the label to convey that the bourbon is reliable and traditional, strong and smooth. The little bit of a gimmick is that the alcohol content is 51.9 percent, the same as my career passing percentage. The label is smoky gray with my signature across it in red ink. I was really proud that I wasn’t just endorsing this. I didn’t just stick my name on it, but I actually created it. I can say this is my flavor, my juice, and my bourbon.

I am extremely proud that my name is on the bottle. But in the words of a friend of mine who truly appreciates a good bourbon, “So what?” Maybe the importance of my name on the bottle can be summed up as, “Who cares?” It’s not like a replica jersey. No one serious about their bourbon cares what the bottle looks like. Taste is the only thing that matters.

My goal was to create a drink that would make people think of hard work and good company, well-earned bourbon. And in a blind-taste competition at the 2026 Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America convention in Las Vegas, we won Best in Class and a double gold medal. We beat out a lot of well-known major brands. We’d won other honors before, but this confirmed that Bradshaw Bourbon wasn’t just another celebrity product. It was a legitimate brand.

My job, after creating the bourbon, is to grow the brand. That’s inside marketing talk. It means getting distributors to carry our bourbon and people to try it. That’s where my name makes a difference. I can walk into a distributor’s office, a tasting, or a bar anywhere in the country, and people will smile and say, “Hey look, there’s what’s his name! The guy who stands near Howie on that football show.” And then often they’ll hand me a pen and some paper and ask shyly, “Would you get me Michael Strahan’s autograph?”

The reality is my name actually does have value. Obviously, it can be a considerable help in growing a business. But just signing my name also has real value. There’s a market for my signature. Think of it this way: The actual rookie contract I signed with the Steelers is probably worth considerably more than the contract paid me. I think the first time anyone asked for my autograph was back in high school, after I set the national record for seventeen-year-olds throwing the javelin. They wanted my signature—that was cool. The first two, maybe three, times that happens, it’s exciting. The next 2.5 million times is less so.

I do autograph shows. People line up and pay for me to sign pictures and other objects. It’s a business, and it helps pay for my horses. I understand that doesn’t reflect their love for me. It’s the fact that an autographed card, photo, or piece of equipment can be resold for more than they paid for it. I get it. I’m a willing participant in the celebrity culture. But I don’t mind signing at other times for free.

How wonderful is it that I can make people feel good just by scribbling my name on a piece of paper or shaking their hand? How easy is it to take a few seconds or say a few words to brighten someone’s day? Of course, I also know some of those people intend to sell whatever item I’ve signed. When a ten-year-old comes up to me, for example, and holds out a piece of paper and tells me, “You were always my favorite player,” I know there’s a parent nearby pushing him. That young person doesn’t have the slightest idea who I am.

Lots of people give me reasons why they’re asking for a signature. It’s astonishing how many relatives are dying or suffering from rare diseases and want my autograph. That’s not necessary, though. All someone has to do is ask, and if I have the time, I’m happy to do it. But I hear a lot of dubious woe. One man told me sadly that his dad had only a few weeks to live and I was his favorite player. I asked him brightly, “Hey, then why waste the autograph?”

Well, maybe I didn’t say that out loud, but I’ve heard that sort of claim often enough to doubt it’s true.

Sometimes when I get out of a car, there’s a crowd of people waiting for me with pens and paper. They tell me, “We love you! You’re great! You’re wonderful!” I sign as many as I can while walking steadily to the door, but if I don’t get to everyone, it’s guaranteed someone will yell at me, “You’re nothing but a %^&! You’re a low-down %^$&*^$!” Imagine that, after working at it for fifty years, it took me only thirty feet to go from being the greatest guy in the world to a low-life sucker.

I get asked to sign autographs almost everywhere I go. I actually had a woman walk into my house one morning while I was sitting at the table in my pajamas eating breakfast. She followed a truck through the front gate and decided it was okay because she was my biggest fan.

People have asked me to sign their bodies. Most times it’s babies or foreheads. But once I was with friends at the nineteenth hole after a round of golf when a woman asked me to sign her leg with a marker. She specifically said, “Make it big!” An hour and a half later, she returned to show me my signature had been tattooed on her leg. Whoa. At least I knew she wasn’t going to sell it.

My name isn’t just a signature. The memorabilia business basically grew into an industry during my career and has continued to grow. People have been selling and buying everything from my football cards to used uniforms and equipment forever. I haven’t paid much attention to it. I’ll tell you what really surprised me. In early 2026 a representative of the Topps card company asked me to guess how much someone paid for a Terry Bradshaw football card. I had no idea. “Eighty dollars?” I said. Higher. “Eight hundred dollars?” Higher. “Eight thousand dollars?” Higher.

At a card show someone had paid $430,000 for a 1971 card in perfect condition. “Tammy! Put my card collection in the safe!” I yelled. I couldn’t believe it. Four hundred thirty thousand dollars?

None of us NFL players back then could ever have imagined that the dirty jerseys we wore and threw into a locker room pile at the end of a game would eventually be worth thousands of dollars. A jersey I wore in several games in 1978 sold a few years ago for $97,600. If my mama had known my used clothes would be worth that much money, it would have saved both of us a lot of effort.

More than anything else, though, after all the cards, autographs, jerseys, movies, and bourbon, the two things that I love doing most are the football show and raising my horses. I can’t adequately explain my love for horses, but it’s deep and enduring. I suspect it has to do with my childhood. One day my uncle picked me up and put me on the back of the big, powerful animal, and wow! Suddenly I’d discovered a whole new world. What an amazing feeling for a kid. That horse didn’t even know I was on his back, but I could control it with the reins. I’ve ridden most of my life. I can’t ride anymore because of my own bad back, but my appreciation, my love, and my passion have never diminished.

Horse breeders go through life pursuing perfection. I’ve helped deliver a lot of foals. I honestly don’t like putting my hand into a horse’s uterus to help get out the baby, but few things bring me as much excitement as looking at the newborn baby, the living result of my breeding choices. I always think, This could be the next great champion.

Breeding horses and matching a specific stallion with a specific mare to hopefully produce an animal reflecting their best qualities is like rolling the dice on a table on a ship at sea during a hurricane. You absolutely never know what you’re going to get. Sometimes you get a Terry, other times you get a Howie. But it never stops you from trying again, fooling yourself into believing the next time it’s definitely going to work.

My favorite horses have always been the underdogs. Or maybe underhorses. The toughest part of the business for me is my love for my horses. At the beginning of my breeding career, I had a great stud named Concention. Oh my goodness, he was a beautiful animal. The problem was I couldn’t afford to breed him to quality broodmares, so he never fully got the chance to prove his greatness.

Except once. I finally saved up my money and bought a mare whose babies had won several competitions. The mare had bad feet, which was one reason she was in my price range. I bred her to Concention, and they had the most gorgeous baby I’d ever seen. I looked at that foal and I thought, I made . . . Well actually, in this business, I’m more of the director than the producer.

Unfortunately, this mare contracted West Nile virus. I believe she got it from birds. She died with her head in my trainer’s lap. That just destroyed me. How could that be? I wondered. I’ll never get another horse like this one. It hurt me so much that I got out of the business for a couple of years. Just shut it down. That was the way I took actions in those days. I made up my mind, sometimes irrationally, and did it.

A few years later, I got back into horse breeding and bought my favorite stallion, Major JD Parker. I saw his picture in The American Quarter Horse Journal, and it was love at first sight. Don’t ask me why. But it was just like when I first saw Tammy. I stood Major JD Parker for about twelve years. During that time he sired two American Quarter Horse World Champions and one Reserve World Champion. I often went to the barn and visited with him.

In 2013, when Major JD Parker was twenty-nine years old, I left the ranch to give a speech. While I was away, I received a call from my trainer. “He’s really in a lot of pain, Terry,” he said. “We’ve been injecting his knees, trying to ease his pain, but his legs are about to buckle under. What do you want to do?”

I can’t bear to see any living creature suffering. Can’t bear it. It wasn’t what I wanted to do, but I understood what I needed to do. “Okay,” I said, “we need to put him down.” I cried about that one. That hurt. After that, I said never again. I don’t care how much I’ve paid for a horse or how successful it’s been, I decided I wouldn’t make any emotional ties. If something happened, it happened. That was it for me. There’d be no more emotional attachment. I’d treat it like a business.

Well, except for the one old mare we’d had for a long time. She was the only one of Major JD Parker’s babies I had left. The mare was basically a pet. We practically had to give away her foals, but I loved her. She belonged on the ranch.

As it turned out, Tammy is no better at being tough than I am. We bred a horse we named Sassy. Sassy was beautiful, but she had serious health issues. She was born with a cleft palate, so we sent her to the vet school at Oklahoma State, and they treated her there. Then she had to have surgery for colic. She recovered, and about a year later Tammy told me, “We got an offer of $250,000 for her and—”

“Sold!” I interrupted.

Tammy shook her head. “Nope. I’m not selling that mare,” she said. “That mare has had so many problems in her life, and I’m just afraid whoever buys her won’t take care of her and love her the way I do.” So, we turned down the offer. By “we,” I mean Tammy.

Two weeks later, incredibly, that mare died. That was so sad, so unbelievable. I started crying again. Two hundred fifty thousand dollars!

Eventually I built my breeding operation into a sometimes-successful business. I bought some of the best studs and bred the best mares to them. Of the top ten great studs in America, I’ve probably owned seven of them.

The deeper I got into that business, the more it became obvious that small owners were getting the shaft. The horse business is based totally on sex. Owners are paid a fee for their horses to impregnate mares. The more successful the horse is in competitions, the higher its stud fee is. There are a lot of people who love the business but can’t afford to breed their mares to better studs. All that does is guarantee that wealthy people will always control the industry.

So I did something that made me really unpopular. My horses were standing at stud for $2,000 or a little bit more, which was about what other owners were charging. During COVID-19, I decided to drop that fee to $1,000.

I created a scandal! Other owners told me that I couldn’t do that. They didn’t want me breeding my stallions to mares from the other side of the pasture. They warned me I’d be breeding my stallions to the worst mares in America. I told them I didn’t think my studs would know the difference. (This would be another good place for you, reader, to make your own joke! I’ll wait.)

I told them, jokingly, “I’m the Walmart of quarter horses. I just decided I was going to start looking out for the fella who was like me when I was young and couldn’t afford to breed to quality horses. If someone wants to breed to a plow horse, God bless ’em. That’d be the most beautiful plow horse in America.”

The other breeders were furious with me because by lowering my fees, I was taking customers away from them. Well, I might not be a genius in business, but I’ve always believed that was the objective. The economics were simple: If my competitor charges $3,000 and I’m charging $1,000, lemme figure this one out . . . multiply one times three . . . let’s see here . . . it appears a customer can breed three years at the same cost as one year.

I was confident my horses were up to the task. I can report that not one of them complained. But it definitely riled up my competitors. They started taking shots at me, taking down my signs, talking about us, and making fun of us.

Making fun of us? Did anyone believe that was going to bother me? I built my career on that. I no longer considered it an insult. Instead, it was an incentive. It no longer pained me. I’m not good at a lot of things, but I’m real good at a few things. Breeding horses is one of them.

The program worked. We ended up breeding more than five hundred mares a year for several years.

Imagine how those same people reacted when they found out we were giving away horses. Tammy and I know how fortunate we’ve been. We haven’t made a habit of it, but we have given horses to people who love the industry but couldn’t afford to buy one. We gave one horse to a man who showed it for years and won everything. Okay, then we gave him another horse and took that one back!

The value of a horse depends mostly on its success in competition. Champions breed champions. One of my champions is a stallion named Mean Joe Greene. Love the man, love the horse. Now, for a time Mean Joe was a work in progress. He was, as I explained to Michael Strahan on the show one Sunday as my way of giving a pep talk to the struggling Dallas Cowboys, “the biggest disappointment I ever had in my barn.”

I understand that Mean Joe isn’t a name you want to put on a horse, but I gave him that name for an important reason. I loved sitting in the stands at a competition and hearing the announcer saying, “And now here comes Gerald Jackson leading Mean Joe Greene.” I also knew people weren’t going to forget that name, which can make a difference in this business.

The problem was that this horse got nervous around crowds, and his legs would start trembling. So I had to have a serious conversation with him. “Look here,” I said, standing face to muzzle, “we got the world show coming up, and you’re gonna stay in the Bradshaw barn or you’re going somewhere else.

“I’ve given you one of the greatest names you can have. Mean Joe Greene is one of the greatest defensive tackles in the history of the NFL. I put his name on you because you’re going to be one of the greatest stallions of all time. Now, you cannot disappoint me and Mean Joe. Your legs have got to stop shaking when you go out there. I know you’re nervous, but you got to stop shaking. It’s time to deliver.”

It worked! Mean Joe Greene, the horse, has won two world championships so far. And the Cowboys won that weekend. We named one other horse after a football player, Patrick Mahomes. “We,” once again, meaning Tammy. She’s a huge Kansas City Chiefs fan. Fortunately, I was able to get her a signed Mahomes helmet! She named one of our young studs Mahomes, and when she puts a name on a horse, it has a permanent home in our barn. And like the original, TB Mahomes has won several world championships.

In addition to horses, somehow I got involved in buying and selling airplanes. Here’s a sentence I probably never thought I’d write. I have bought and sold a lot of jet planes. I’ve traveled millions of miles since the day back in Louisiana when I first sat on an airplane, looked out that little round window at the engines, and thought, Oh Lordy. I am not sure about this.

And then, during my rookie year, I had one close call. We were flying on a two-engine Comanche from Midland, Texas, to Hereford, Texas, on a mission for my church when suddenly one of the engines began sputtering, then it cut out. Seconds later the electric power failed, meaning we lost the radio and the ability to lower our landing gear.

I didn’t know much about airplanes at that time, but I knew that landing was an essential part of flying.

In a situation like that, take it from an expert, the important thing is not to panic and start screaming, “We’re gonna crash! We’re gonna crash!” Fortunately, our pilot didn’t panic. Instead, he told me calmly, “I need you to knock the landing gear loose.”

Me? Knock loose the landing gear? Who did he think I was, James Bond?

He told me how to manually lower the gear. As we circled, I banged it into place and locked it, enabling us to make a safe, smooth landing. “I was a little nervous,” I told reporters after we landed. A little nervous?

I fly more than 300,000 miles a year now. It’s easy. In addition to flying to Los Angeles for the show every weekend during football season, I travel around the country making more than two dozen speeches a year, and Tammy and I go to our home in Hawaii as often as we can. I figured out once that with all the time that I save not having to use regular commercial schedules, flying privately gives me an extra forty days a year at home. Who wouldn’t want that? That’s like adding almost a whole month to the year!

So I bought myself a small jet. Then, typical me, I saw another jet I liked and wondered why I hadn’t bought that one. So I began buying and selling I don’t know how many different jets. I love planes. I don’t have a pilot’s license and don’t want one. I have a terrible sense of direction, and I know if I were up there flying, I’d make a wrong turn and get lost. Or I’d run out of gas because I’d forget where I was going.

Besides, having done both, I can tell you it’s considerably easier to buy or sell an airplane than a herd of cattle.

In my lifetime I’ve been involved in numerous business ventures, not including Fat Boy Britches. Not yet, at least. It turned out that being this Terry Bradshaw, with all my issues, has been good business. I’ve earned a large amount of money—enough to buy Henderson’s missing A many times. I’ve made good deals and bad deals, and I’ve bought and sold. I love being in different businesses, trying new things. I’ve learned through experience. After all I’ve learned, here’s the best business advice I can give anyone: Don’t take any business advice from me. The mistakes I’ve made were getting involved in things I knew nothing about with people whose backgrounds I didn’t know—people who sometimes didn’t have my best interest at heart.

There are three things I’ve learned. Be quiet, listen, and have your own in-house Tammy to rely on. I like to say that I make all the business decisions, and because I like saying it, Tammy lets me. But I’m smart enough now to be quiet, listen to other people, and depend on Tammy.

The best business deal I ever made was when I only lost $900,000. At that time I owned about $13 million in property in Texas, Oklahoma, and Mexico. I got one of those feelings that hit me from time to time, the kind of feeling that, in the past, led me to sell my livestock. My business deal was based on a gut feeling. So I sold my $13 million in property, and I lost $900,000. Not too long after I sold the properties, the Great Recession took hold of the economy. Over a period of time, property values declined more than 30 percent.

I don’t have to do the math, but I could if I needed to. I know that while I lost a lot, it would have been a whole lot worse if I hadn’t acted on that feeling to sell the properties earlier.

Eventually, I got a call from my financial advisor, who had questioned my decision to sell, and he told me that taking that loss was the smartest investment decision I ever made.