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In the NFL, there's never really that moment where you're like, Hey, I made the team. Or: Hey, you made the practice squad. You just kind of show up the next day and go to work. Nobody really says anything. You just kind of go to work.
As an NFL analyst, my job was to watch countless hours of game film and critique NFL coaches and that's what I've been doing the last 10 years. And there are coaches that I question in the NFL, and at other big collegiate institutions.
The NFL is such a large, multibillion dollar enterprise with fan loyalty because they have provided not only entertainment for sports fans, but memories, good memories, family memories to these fans, that can only bring about good will.
The argument has never been whether Kaepernick is one of the top five quarterbacks in the NFL. He's not in the top 10 either. But when you consider the alternatives teams are considering, Kaepernick's omission begins to look ridiculous.
One of the strong principles that I believe in is that you're always learning, whether you're a commissioner, a current general manager, a president or an owner, or somebody that's trying to become a general manger or a coach in the NFL.
The NFL has gone a long way to Disney-fy its image, but it's not Disney. It's the MMA. It's a violent, brutal human war, with rules. The same guy who says, 'I'm going to rob everybody,' is the same guy who would be successful in the NFL.
For 15 years I have been lucky enough to play quarterback in the NFL and it has been the most incredible experience of my life. There wasn't one second that I took it for granted or failed to appreciate what a tremendous privilege it is.
Playing behind a first-ballot Hall of Famer, who also is the all-time record holder for consecutive starts by a quarterback, it's a different mind-set. You just have to challenge yourself in ways that you never challenged yourself before.
When I go back to NFL functions today, I feel a bit on the outside looking in. I played 13 years in the NFL, and I loved it - made a Pro Bowl and went to the playoffs - but I always felt like I was having to knock the door down to get in.
This isn't a competitive sport. Wrestling is not the NFL or the NHL. It's not really sports. It's entertainment. And in order to be entertaining, you have to create emotion. And you can't create emotion by simply having a wrestling match.
I remember I wanted to be an athlete. I wanted to be in the NFL or NBA or something, and I don't think I dreamed of being a benchwarmer. I'm sure I wanted to be the best. But I didn't really ever think I was going to be a famous musician.
Each NFL team has its own policy about their own players dating their own cheerleaders. And in the Raiders there is no policy against it, though it is not encouraged. Yes, there are successful relationships between players and Raiderettes.
When I went to the Hall of Fame in 2000 and was inducted, it was a travesty the kind of carnage I saw out of these guys who were in their 50s and 60s, who had defined and in many ways laid the foundation for the NFL being what it is today.
There is a difference in being in shape and being in football shape. Any one can out on the field and run around , but once you start getting hit and have to get up then you find out the difference between being in shape and football shape.
It brings a smile to my face every time I look in the record book and see my name with the likes of Hutson and Lance Alworth and Raymond Berry, some of the fabled receivers of the NFL. It's all like a dream to me. I can't believe it's true.
I've always said, if everything was equal, from money to retirement to endorsement opportunities - all that stuff - if everything was equal, I'd play Arena football over the NFL. It was built for quarterbacks. It was just backyard football.
You know how many people would give up their life to get in one NBA game or NFL game or get one fight? Just to do something that has been a dream and they've aspired to do for their whole life - can you imagine what that means for a person?
I think I can go on the record and say this: I am the only player in the history of the NFL that has called an NFL game that was not a broadcast bootcamp graduate. And with that being said, that also means I have no clue what the hell to do.
I wanted to play football all my life, and when I got accepted to Florida State, it was academically - it wasn't for any kind of scholarship. I kind of sat down and said, 'I'm not going to make it to the NFL. I'm not the size nor the skill.'
The NFL has done a great job of promoting the popularity of the game. There now are youth leagues in Puerto Rico and Mexico. You're starting to see more and more young men with Hispanic surnames come into the NFL and that's a wonderful thing.
The culture precedes positive results. It doesn't get tacked on as an afterthought on your way to the victory stand. Champions behave like champions before they're champions: they have a winning standard of performance before they are winners.
I don't think there's any question that the Arena League allowed me to flourish. I played three years in a league where the quarterback wasn't supposed to be stopped. We never wanted to kick. When I went into the NFL, I had that same mentality.
I never thought my choice to leave the NFL would lead to 'Face the Nation.' When I first thought of quitting, I cringed at the notion of becoming a football safety advocate. I was making a personal decision; I never set out to influence others.
I feel like in the NFL, they preach loyalty and family and they have none for you. As a player, you see it's not a family during negotiations, how it becomes them versus me or me versus them. That's part of the NFL I believe the fans don't see.
It's been a dream of mine to play in the NFL, so whenever I hear my name being talked about in someone's mock draft or whether or not he should stay or go, it's always interesting to listen to, but at the same time, I don't take it for granted.
There's a big difference between where I came from and the NFL. Things like this don't happen to people from there often. It just took a lot of hard work and dedication, staying on the right path, believing in myself, and having an inner drive.
Playing in front of the greatest fans in the NFL is easily the greatest honor that I've had in my 11-year career. I hope I was able to make you guys proud in the way that I was always proud when I told people boldly that 'I am a Cleveland Brown.'
I've been asked a lot about filling Chris Berman's role - to be honest, I don't even allow myself to see it that way. He is a total legend and created so much of what ESPN is known for and specifically our NFL coverage. That's an impossible task.
The entire existence of the NFL - and of football at any level, for all of that - rests on whether or not the game can keep fooling itself, and its paying fan base, that it is somehow superior to boxing and to the rest of our modern blood sports.
The biggest leap between the NFL and college football is the speed. That's something you hear often. But I think there's more to it than just the speed of the players - there's also the speed with which you have to process information around you.
Tennis is interesting. I feel, in terms of stats and stuff, maybe we're a little bit behind the curve, especially me just coming to the States and seeing stats used for, obviously, NFL, NBA, et cetera. Especially in baseball, there's stats galore.
That's the NFL: Not For Long. First year's a welcome year. Second it's, What are you going to do? Third year's like, Well, you didn't do much last year; give us something or you're going. That's the way it is. They'll trade you or they'll cut you.
It was a wonderful experience to play in the NFL, and I have no regrets. I truly will miss playing for the Lions. I consider the Lions' players, coaches, staff, management and fans my family. I leave on good terms with everyone in the organization.
We don't have any kind of sponsors. The players invest themselves. They need money. They need resources... That's why, in sports and teams, they have sponsors - in soccer, in the NFL. Everyone has sponsors who invest and help to pay daily expenses.
When I got to the NFL, they asked me what number I wanted, and I said No. 44, but they told me tight ends are not allowed to have that number. So I said, 'Just double it up for me if you can' and took No. 88. I figured I'd be twice as good as I was.
When I came into the NFL, there were three things that were very important to me: money, power and prestige. I was powerful now because I was a famous athlete. I had prestige because I was doing what everybody wanted to do. And I had a lot of money.
Some of those 10, nine-year vets, they know some things that your typical college senior wouldn't. I've come across some guards in the NFL that know how to use their hands better than D-linemen in college. I guess they've learned from their enemies.
If you can have a really good coaching staff, and you can have a really good young quarterback and do a really good job in player personnel and string together multiple successful drafts, your window is not small in the NFL because of the quarterback.
There have been nine Super Bowls in New Orleans, and not all of them have brought the best of luck to NFL Films. We got robbed twice there, got food poisoning, and my hotel room was broken into on the day the Bears played the Patriots in January 1986.
My first season with Pittsburgh was 1969. We were still in the old NFL. My second year, we moved to the AFC when the leagues merged. I went to the Pro Bowl that season, and there must have been nine Raiders and nine Chiefs. I got to know all those guys.
I think you have to every day as an NFL player. I think you have to go out there... and show that you earned the right to be an NFL player and you earn the right every single day by your work habits, your preparation and the way you perform on the field.
The NFL is a unique work place. There are no secrets anymore. Technology has taken over, and secrets are exposed. People are going to know what you're all about. You have to make sure you have real honesty in the work place, or you're going to be exposed.
And you get into that sort of cannibalistic feeling - all you want to do is go out there and, like I say, kill somebody. I'm going to get him. I'm going to kill'em. Not like you are going to put them into the ground after, but you just want to kill a guy.
When you play for the Raiders and you play for Al Davis, it was always the talk that it was Al Davis against the rest of the league. Some of the calls that we would get, we would always say, 'Oh we got that call because of Al's relationship with the NFL.'
The further you go in life, the more you realize what you're going to leave this earth. It's not going be, "It was a great platform. It was great to win the Super Bowl." But, really and truly what you're going to leave this earth is the influence on others.
We got to think of other ways to help these kids out because there's a lot of kids who get hurt in college and then don't make it to the NFL and don't have insurance, and their entire lives are changed when they put their bodies on the line for their school.
When I flew from Orlando to Los Angeles in 1960, I sat next to a guy from Disney who was paying 75¢ an acre for land. I thought he was some special kind of fool - and since they built the park, history has proven there was a fool sitting in one of our seats.
The idea of going to New York for five days and kinda being paraded around by the NFL as they make money off your every step, and the whole purpose is just for publicity for me to stand there in a suit and go, 'Look at me everybody!'... That sounds horrible.
When we started NFL Films, there were no focus groups, there were no demographic studies, there were no surveys. Every decision that we made, we made with our hearts, not with our heads. And, in the very beginning, we really didn't even have a business plan.
If you want to provide for your family, maybe show business is not a high degree of success. You will need to keep your day job until you make it, and know it's an odds thing just like the NFL. I personally wouldn't recommend anybody to go into this business.