Welcome to.

South Beach Sessions. And I will tell Marcellus Wiley this off the top. I'm sure he's felt it off of me, but I will tell him for the first time that I admire you so much meaningfully because your story is amazing and only part of it. I mean, it starts with me discovering that you made it from Compton to Colombia, but then it got interesting to me. That was plenty interesting because you lived a tough football life and you fought your way in business in the broadcasting sphere. I will tell the audience, Marcellus Wiley is someone I've admired for a long time because the pain that you played with and the strength that you had that you showed on and off the field has been something that's been remarkable to me. Thank you for coming in and joining us here in your city because this place feels very you. You love everything about.

This place. Yes, I'm LA to the core, man. I'll be remiss if I didn't give you your flowers. I don't know your age, but I've always looked up to you, always respected you the way that you could always peel back the layers, the way that you approached the craft, the way that you did it, your success. It's funny, even through all my journeys since we met each other, I would always reach out with the random text. And it was always at some critical points where I just needed some affirmations, some assurance from the Triple-O-G yourself. I just want to say that whatever you see in me is always this Votron effect of pulling from people that I look up to and people that inspire me.

Thank you for that. I would receive it. I don't know if you remember, one of the first times I talked to you was on the Bristol campus in the cafeteria, you and Rose. How long had you been at ESPN at that point?

I got there in 2007, so I've been hitting the head a lot. When do we have that meeting?

Yeah, I know. I don't know. But you had been there a while, and I came up to you and I said, They're not using you guys right. The breadth of your personality, they're putting you in a box. You come out, you stand in a place, they ask you a question, be the football expert, be the basketball expert. And they're not showing what incredible breadth you guys had. And the reason I remember the conversation is because you forced your way into showing everyone at that company and everyone in the country. It wasn't because that place was confining to you. Say it again. And you broke free of it to show people the full force of your personality.

Yeah. And it was intentional. I just didn't know when to detonate because you get there, you're a rookie, it feels like, and Coach tells you to run a play, and you run it respectfully. And then one thing I've learned over the years that no matter what situation you're in, there's a lion inside of you just waiting to be uncaged. And usually that comes from comfort and confidence, all these choice words. But basically, you know where those keys are. And it's like, when do I unleash this lion? When do I let people hear and roar? And for me, I didn't know when to do it, where to do it. I was like, first, just have job security. Just stay here. But beyond that, I remember talking to Mike Golec pretty early in my stay there. And he said, said, You're a storyteller. And he says, You have a story to tell. He's like, Stay off the script. Don't do the Xs and Os. Don't do what they want you to do, but tell them who you are. And that sounded great coming from him, but at the same time, I'm like, You're Mike Golec. You're all Mike and Mike.

I can't pull that right now. But then that was actually validated by Seth Markman, who came to me after my 10th NFL live show. He's like, Look, I don't know what you're saying up there, what you're doing up there, but you're not long for this game, not long for this business. I looked at him like, Oh, here comes my walking papers are ready. Guess what he said after that? He said, and that's actually a good thing. He's like, You're bigger than the role we have for you right now. I don't know what the next role is for you, but we'll figure that out. That turns into sports nation. That turns into more personality based commentary. And then I was off to the races.

And then it seems, and I haven't talked to you in a while, it got a little too fluffy for you. You are somebody who has always excelled beyond any reasonable expectation. I've not had this conversation with you, but I have felt from afar, Oh, Marcellus was tired of eating the cotton candy. Tired. And he's like, I'm a grown adult who has lived a full life. I would like to talk to people beyond sports. I'd like to teach them some things about the America we're living in.

Right now. Oh, absolutely. And it happened over time. It wasn't just one day. It wasn't the pandemic. It wasn't any incident. It started with knowing that sports has always been my entryway, my entrance to a new frontier, like born in Compton. Where are you going to get your identity, your self-esteem? How are you going to navigate around all the ills in my community? And sports was always the entrance to something else. So that allowed me to go to a good high school. And I say good because these kids were actually thinking next level secondary education, etc. It takes me to Colombia and it allows me to go to the NFL. Then sports allowed me to have an opportunity to go to ESPN with a Colombia degree and jump the line of all these future Hall of Famers that I was able to get the show before them. And then I'm in the game for 20 years, it felt like. And I'm like, I'm still doing the same thing? What's the next frontier? And I think I was just inching closer and closer to that co-host after co-host, ice skating, as I call it, at the surface level shows, got tired of saying, Jets, Patriots, who you got?

Oh, by three. I was like, Man, I got four kids at home. There's real life in my house present day, and they're looking forward. I got to give them a world that's better than the one I inherited. I'm not going to do that just yelling, Jets and Patriots. I didn't want to disrupt the economic model that existed because it was beneficial to me and beneficial to many others. But I knew it wasn't going to allow me to show all of my skills, my attributes. It wasn't going to allow me to flex all my muscles. I had to make a change.

I'd like to talk to you about some of that journey and what you've learned in broadcasting and in football. But when you mentioned the kids, you felt you would be failing them as a father. Because this I've also seen from afar, and I don't know you this way, but what I've seen from you and your love life in public, you seem very in love, deeply, deeply in love, and she seems from afar like someone who admires the man you really are and the man she thinks you can be. And you can't be the dad that she expects you to be or that you expect to be if you're just cash and checks because you could keep feeding the machine, just saying the things that need to be said as broadcasting great Marcellus Wiley.

Yes. Deeper meaning impact.

I.

Think the moments for me were looking at my kids. You lived that American dream to some degree in your head where you're like, wow, rags to riches. I made it. I made it to the League. I'm on TV and I've checked all those boxes, and I still felt hollow to a point. I was like, why you don't have the total fulfillment, especially because you dreamt of having all of these things. You have all these things in abundance, and they still don't fulfill you. They still don't fill that bucket. I didn't know what it was until I started to really rear my children. All four of my kids all together. And I was like, that's what it is. I'm not looking at life through my scope anymore. I'm looking at it forward through their lens. And this world looks different than the world I grew up in. So for me, it was pretty simple. Even though it was tasking, it was really simple. I looked around when I was little and I was like, I'm smart and I'm good in sports. That's all I got. Then I looked around at everyone else and I was like, I saw talent after talent.

But I also saw dreams, unfulfilled. And I saw the gangs, the drugs, the poverty, all that stuff was in the way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I said, There's something worse here. And it was the low ambition. I saw people who were having jobs, not careers. No one it felt like that I knew could say, yes, I made my dreams a reality. I was like, That's what I'm going to do. My goal in life is make my dreams a reality. And I used my school work, use my skills on the field to get there. And then when I got there, I did all the simple things that you would do, buy the cars, date the girls, spend some money, ball out. I did all those things. Still needed to feel more fulfilled. I had my family. And then it hit me, Dan. I'm coaching. So I coach my son. He's eight years young. And I'm coaching. And I'm literally working at Fox. And I'm coaching my son. And this is when I finally realized what it was. And I'm looking at all these kids. And one day, it was just randomly, Cooper Cup, Matthew Stafford showed up to our championship game.

And after it, you all want a picture and stuff with them. So I take them over there, introduce them. Then we come back as a team. And I was like, So who's your favorite players? They're like, Cooper Cup. Yeah. And I was like, All right. Matthew Staffrey, we love him. That fast they converted from other players. Then we talk in other sports and they're telling me all these names. And I was like, damn, I really do a job. I really work at a place that I would tear down some of these kids' heroes. I'm actually feeding what these kids are trying to build up. I'm tearing down. And I was like, not me personally, but what I do and where I'm at. And then I started to realize, oh, I can't participate in that anymore that way. And that's what you probably witnessed. It's just a shift of my mindset, my spirit of like, I don't want to do it this way anymore. I knew that was the way to the riches. I knew that was the way to success. When you abandon that, obviously, you're going to either plateau or you need to move on and do it your way.

You blew through the gangsters, the poverty. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, you do. You blew through that part. Let's do this a bit biographically before we arrive at the father that you are and the husband that you are. Let's do it. Your scars must run deep, but you're tough and you just say the gangs, the poverty, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm not tough, but yes, I've learned to give is to get. So if I don't want to get any negativity, I don't want anything coming my way that's bad, I can't get that out. I also learned that attention is invention. So I was a youngster and I was like, these suckers are everywhere, and they're running the neighborhood. They're punking everybody. They're robbing, they're killing. They're doing all what they do. They're messing with me here and there. How do I get away from this? I was like, you can't ignore it fully because you got to learn the code. You got to learn how to navigate through it, walk around this, see this, know what this hat means, know what this sign means, know who they are, know where they from. I didn't want to, but I had to, Dan, use up so much of my mental space on bull, like just straight BS. On straight, how am I going to get home today? Oh, there they go. Or how am I going to get there and I can't take that bus? Or how am I going to go over there and I can't where it is?

And my scars, I'm not tough. That's part of how I survived. I didn't even fake it. I didn't even try to flirt with it. I had no interest in being hard, tough, gangster, running the streets. And that with the protection of I was good in sports, they couldn't box me in. I had family that was in the streets. My mother had three brothers. Two were killed, murdered, one committed suicide, all street life. And that's where we moved from Compton to Greener Pastors, which ended up being South Central LA, which if you know both, it's a lateral move at best.

You were a nerd.

Oh, a bona fide nerd. Straight up front class. No apple for the teacher, but still just raised in my hand, intellectually curious. Thought it was not only valuable, but it was the best way to utilize your time to actually sit in class, be attentive, raise your hand, try to learn. I didn't understand the paradigm, the dynamic of, no, it's better to be in the back of the class cracking jokes and being cool and looking fresh. I was like, that's dumb. But I knew that was dumb because I had family, like I said, my uncles who were streetlife vets, OGs, everywhere they went, everybody respect them. Everywhere they went, everyone bowed down to them. But every time they came in the house, I saw the real pain. I saw that they didn't have much. I saw that my grandmother, their mom was constantly on them for real reasons. I was like, damn, look at the dichotomy of them out there, everybody bowing down. And them in here, they don't know which way is up. I just live behind that what a real gangster life was and never ever try to play it off and never try to live up to that part.

How does one survive all of that? Because of that? That's what you're saying? What helped you survive it is just you are authentically yourself and just forever wary and eager to learn something because those are adult processes that you are doing when you're doing the math of very early, I need something better. I don't know that kids always know that. I think kids grow up in what they grow up in, and then they think that's their normal, and that's what life is supposed to be.

Yeah. And that's why when you said, My scars run deep, is because I did have to fast forward through some of those childhood moments. I had to get past those because I had a deeper responsibility. What I realized was like, my mom, I was a mama's boy, and my mom was a straight A student, but she had a kid at 17 and she had me at 19. I was like, My mom is smart. She's funny. She's six one. She's athletic. I was like, My mom checked every box. Why? But we're on welfare. We're on food stamps. We're growing up poor. And since I was a mama's boy, I said, I'm going to take care of my mama. But how am I going to take care of my mama? And why am I going to take care of my mama? The why was answered first because she didn't make it to where she wanted to make it. And having those two kids so young, she devoted all of her attention and time and focus to us. And I was like, this is why I'm going to pay her back, because she could have been more. But she took the time and investment to make sure I am.

So I'm going to pay her back. And I just created this ambition. I would say that really what got me out of there is I knew I had to be greater than my greatest excuse. And I had a lot of excuses because I heard everyone else use them as excuses, and they weren't even just excuses. Sometimes they were reasons and realities why they still were there. And I looked around. I was like, I just can't come back with one of these excuses, reasons back to this reality. So my mother was my fuel, my jet fuel. Every time I started to doubt, started to feel it and started to internalize it, I was like, No, push it back out. You're doing this for mom. I just went on that journey because I knew there are more talented football players, better players, smarter students. I knew all those things. I was like, But I'm not going to take no for an answer. I'm going to make it out of here, and I'm taking my family with me. We're going to make our dreams real.

You seem to object to me saying that you were tough because you're thinking of a younger boy. I'm thinking of the young man that goes from that to football. Because whatever led to that, you accepting the pain that I'm seeing you wave your hands around, people don't have any idea what you've done to those hands in pursuit. You can't tell me that your hands look like that and that you are not tough because in pursuit of your dreams, you did that to your hands.

I know. It's crazy, too. And there are so many moments, Dan, that... How do you say? I always tell people like, No one chooses football. Football chooses you unless your dick bucket is rest in peace or Ray Lewis. I said, Everyone else, football chose them. They did not choose football. It hurts every day, every way, but it's so rewarding. But I chose football because it was my only expression that I saw that would take me to the next level. I ran track when I was really young, super fast, won nationals, won set national records, super fast. But my mom was 6'1, 250, single-terry. I was going to be a big boy, but it just took a while. And so I outgrew track, basically. And football was it. But for me, I didn't have the deepest love for football. I used football as a vehicle. I was like, I'm going to drive this as far as I can because you're right, it hurt. It's a Wednesday, Dan. It's October. You're nine years old. And instead of riding your bike, playing Nintendo, you're putting on thighpads. I was like, hell. But I was like, you got to chip in on this.

You got to invest in your future. And I hated those moments. I love the game. I love playing. I love how good I was. I loved all of that. I hated that process that the only way I can really out of here is in that classroom and these thighpads. I hated that I only thought and only saw those as options. And I saw football as the helicopter ride up and the slow play was going to be in the classroom.

And then you got it, though. You got it through Colombia. I don't know where. Evidently, you got to Colombia thinking still you were going to be a professional football player. You know what? All the math is against you. You know what you're up against, correct? But this is the path. You're going to go through Colombia to the NFL and be a professional football player.

Yeah, you're a smart dude. That's why I always send you those texts. I had to hedge my bet. Remember I said I can't come back with any excuse, reason back to this reality. I was like, I am a good football player. Yeah, I'm getting recruited by big schools. I could be another one of those who goes to the football factory. I said, Man, what if you don't make it? What would they see in you in terms of perception? Will you still be a dumb jock to them? And I was like, Man. So this is what happened. Major school after major school, they were after me, Columbia. I'm like, Oh, random. But at the time, I didn't even know what the Ivy League was. I didn't know about the ancient aid. I didn't know about their academic reputation, except Bill Cosby on The Cosby show, where the Harvard, Yale, Princeton sweaters. And then I found out, Oh, Colombia is one of those schools in that league. Then I said, Okay, here's the calculation. If someone pulls up to you in a Rolls-Royce at the red light and you see them, you look at them, you're thinking to yourself, they're doing well, whatever that may be.

It may not even be theirs, but you're just like, wherever that is, they're doing all right. Not knowing their situation, for real, that's the top layer. I said, but if I saw a guy on the bus, I would think, oh, not doing so well. All right, you're on the bus. But what if a billionaire got on the bus? You didn't know that. What if a broke guy was just driving his boss's, Rolls-Royce, around? I just made this like, perceptional decision. I need people to perceive me as intelligent because big black football player from Compton, I just can see them now under their breaths. If I don't make it, dumbjock. More hurdles in front of me, doors closed. Oh, another football player who didn't make it now he wants to be a CEO, etc. And I was like, Why do I have to go through that process? And so literally, Colombia was going to give me the complexion of the intelligence that I wanted to be perceived. I wanted people to just without... And it happened. It happened in life. No lie, Dan. You have double negatives in the sense, he's just, say something makes no sense.

I went to Colombia. I got the benefit of doubt all the time. That's what I was really signing up to receive when I went to Colombia is, do not doubt me just because of what you see coming. And so those are some deeper dynamics that I had to internalize from growing up in the situation that I did.

The hedging of bets is you're saying, I need as many options as I can to out. And football is one of them. It might be unlikely, but also this will be a good school to go to. And still somehow it seems like somewhere in here, you tell me if I have this wrong, you're feeling somewhere like you're an underachiever because you got to these places in Jockdom that come with great fanfare. And here you are at this age telling me, no, I wanted to be something better. I wanted to be something better to my kids than even that guy who I admired because you understood how much glory and vanity and ego came from the worlds you conquered. Yeah.

I mean, my deeper essence, my deeper mission is always to be, always has been to really inspire others, really to have a greater impact than just what I could have with my body. But I needed my body to even get to the place where people can feel that impact. And it's crazy. My first interview, someone sent this to me maybe a year ago or so I saw it. My first interview when I got drafted to Buffalo Bills, and I learned that the reporter is basically saying, So, Marceau, what do you want to do in your career? You've been drafted. What are your goals? I said, I want to be good enough and play long enough that my voice is loud enough so I can make a difference. And that's not the same rookie speech that you hear from most guys that are getting drafted. In a nutshell, Dan, it was like almost... I was a kid that was like, Damn, this is all I can do, am allowed to do? I'm going to do that. I'm going to do what I have to to do what I want to. And that's where it.

Started to go. Where did you learn that, though? What age are you when you're learning that crossroads right there? I'm going to go really be me. I'm going to answer my heart and not just take what everyone else tells me is a good enough life for me.

It's 40, 45. It's having my son, having my two daughters, my youngest, family complete. And I think when you start to button that up and you start to say, okay, no more kids. Now let's secure this and let's envision what the future looks like for this. And then you're like, what is that? Is that more of the same? And I felt abandoned. I was away from what I wanted to do, and I wasn't doing exactly what I could do where I was. I was like, Oh, man, this is weird. I was fat and fool. I call it the velvet coffin. You're getting those big checks in the direct deposit every two weeks. You're like, it just slows you back to sleep. And then my kids will wake me up with a question. My kids will wake me up with a need. I'll just keep looking at them. I'm like, you're really going to tap out like this. So if I'm living this way because of comfort, just doing what I can do. Imagine how I would live if I were challenged, if I actually leaned into the challenges that I know that I can actually overcome and conquer.

So I think it was just my complete family, my wife looking at me, knowing me, and my kids needing me that made me have to come to that realization. What about you? Because you're someone I look up to. And from my vantage point, I've seen a lot of dynamics and shifts with you. And I'm not just talking about in locale and occupation. It just seems like also in spirit and sentiments. What about you?

Well, what have you seen? And I will answer your question, even though you're turning it back on me, because I want to talk to you about love, because what you're speaking of, and I'm not going to turn this, I will answer your question because I'm not going to avoid it. But because I do think that love is the starting point on all of this. What you've just described to me as somebody who felt like by a very high standard, his own, that he was failing as a father and not being the husband that you thought your wife married and the man that she knows you to be because she loves you. So the love and the strength of that emboldens you. I would say same for me. I found a woman who challenges me to be my best self and demands it in a way that is so loving and caring and understanding only because she knows what I need for myself. And when you're buied from there, one of the things that I've admired from you is like, Oh, this man is strong enough to know he needs to follow. He needs to follow here because this woman can open his heart and reveal himself to himself in a way that the challenge is you must accept them, right?

You must accept them. The degree of difficulty is who you are. That's who you've always been. And so I needed love to teach me that.

That is it. And that is a lot of what I felt. And I also had in front of me the other alternate experience. So I have four kids. Now watch these ages. Twenty-four, eight, four, and three. You already know two different mothers. Three kids from my wife now, and one from baby's mother years ago.

When you didn't.

Know yourself. When I didn't know myself, when I'm checking all these boxes, when the kid from Compton is like, This is the way and this is it, and everything's going to change. And once I move to the suburbs and I have three level home and nine cars, everything's going to be great. And I look in the mirror and it's going to be silent or just nothing but peace because he's happy. And there were moments like that, but they were too infrequent. There were too many times where I was still seeking the next, needing more. And when I had my youngest daughter, so that's three years ago, that adds up to the 45 year-old age. And I'm looking at her and all the moments in one day that she needed daddy from just the toys too far from her to changing her to burp in her. I'm like, can't believe I missed so many of these moments from my oldest. And so her and I will sit back, light a fire, sit in the backyard and try to talk and just cry out because we both know we didn't connect like we could have, should have in so many of those moments.

And I was a quote-unquote, present father, which is a whole different conversation because it's different from being a present father and then being in the home as a nuclear family, nuclear father. But I missed them, Dan. And then now I had them. And that was just another wake-up call to never let them go.

So you've made choices about who you are. And so when you direct the question at me, I have. I am trying a business venture on my own, and you can speak directly of what the challenges are no matter how much you have built up your brand when you leave and go out on your own, there's a fight to be waged in this space over personality-driven podcasts. There are a thousand people and a thousand microphones. You have one yourself. Forgive me. Let's plug it now.

Never.

Shut up. Okay, so forgive me because I want the people to know who you are. That's one of the reasons I wanted to do this with you. Because from way back, we worked during a different time. We had you on as the love doctor, giving us relationship advice at a time. I'm guessing that you probably didn't know yourself or your wife would tell me what a fool that guy was. But I admired him because he knew everything. That guy was wise about relationships. He know more about winning than any of us. He's stronger than us. He's cooler than us. And it seems to me like you have had to make choices on behalf of who you are now, at least in part, correct? And I don't want to speak for you because of who she knows you to be Exactly. As a father, it's the man she loves. The man she loves had to go out on his own and fight for not predicting the jets result that week because that's not the point of having these microphones, and it's not the point of doing everything you did in conquering two worlds, a broadcasting world and a football world.

I don't know which one was harder for you.

Great assessment on it all. My wife slapped me in the head, inadvertently, when my son was like two months old. Then so Little Man, loving life. I'm working with Max at the time. We're doing our radio show and sports nation. I lived in downtown Rich Carlton, right above ESP in L. A. Downtown. So one minute commute walking right across the hall. And everything's convenient. Everything's great. I got my son. I'm loving life. Let's go. This was the first time I saw a stop sign. I went out. I was hanging out with guys in the buildings. Since I live so close and work so close, everything's so close, whatever. La is just down at two o'clock. I get home at three, whatever. Go to bed, like 3:30, got to be up at 6:00. Why do I have to be up at 6:00? Because my wife is like, Uh-uh, you knew that you had to be up. It's your shift for little man. If he wakes up at 6:00, you're playing with him. It wasn't no rollover. Come on, baby. You know, last night I was out. It was like, okay. Dan, there was this temptation, and I know how to rig it.

The door lock babysitter. You go into a room with a baby, you lock the door, make sure it's child proof. Let the baby play you sleep next to the baby, right? I've seen the trick thousand times, right? This is my first boy. My daughter, she's way older, so it's like, damn. All right. And then I was thinking about doing it, and I was like, no. I said, now this is the challenge. That was the challenge. Would you wake up and be present with your son right now because he wants you, doesn't care about anything else? That always sticks in my head like, oh. I answered that challenge. I actually stayed up. It was painful. All the above, took a nap later, but I knew then alterations, edits, start leaning into who you are. You're going to still do this? What? You're going to be the 19th year NFL veteran, even though you're retired, Al Bundi type, still living, hanging, chilling? Are you going to really lean into what's real and lean into what's right for you. So that started me on that mission that day, two months after he was born. When I didn't mell it in that moment, I actually responded to it.

There's real wisdom in this, right? In learning all of a sudden in the presence of that, Oh, my life is... My life cannot be most completely my own unless I live in service of this group of people who have taught me what real love is. So that the happiest I will be on this earth is with this group of people who bring me the greatest joy that reside beyond football conquers and money and joy and the places that people tell you joy is to be found.

Yeah, all of that, man. And it's crazy, Dan, because I literally grew up dreaming of all those things as the answers and the antidotes to all the ills that I had present day. And then when you get it, now I know why Puffy said, more money, more problems. What he really meant is even if you got money, you're still going to have problems. Not more and more. It's just like you think that you're going to get rid of them with a check. It won't happen. And so I came to that realization, and I just knew I had to lean into what was forward for my children and my family. That made my decision to leave broadcast media in the traditional form a lot easier than people think. People don't know the beats of it. I don't necessarily always unveil it, or I do it sporadically, asteroid. So they get a piece here, get a piece there. But it was a long, tedious process of me changing on the inside and the industry changing on the outside.

Well, let's unravel that for a second. Let's go. Because I'd like to take me down the path of what it is that you're entangling as you're trying to come through the thicket of, it's going to be harder to do this by myself. I know that, but I have to do it by myself because it's the only honest, authentic way I can possibly do it. Not bought by anybody. I'm going to try and do it on my own in ways that honor who my family thinks I am.

Yeah. Now, walk with me here. Remember, I'm the kid that was like, okay, got to hedge my bet. Basically give myself the highest safety net. I got to go to Colombia. I know I want to go to these other schools. My friends certainly do. But I was like, no, Doc, I got to go here just for the perception. Get to the NFL, played 10 years. All of a sudden, I skipped the line goal ahead of a lot of players who wanted the same gig. And I got the gigs. But if you look and squint at my broadcast career, you start to realize, damn, you had a lot of co-hosts. You worked with everyone. And that started off, it's Michelle Beato, it's Carissa Thompson, it's a Max Kellerman, it's a Jason Whitlock, Emmanuel Acho, Kerry Champion, Elsy Granison, Ameen El-Hassan, Everybody. And what it told me is that the universe whispers before it yells. And all these changes, I was winning, but more in my world, losing by law of association because everyone was seeing a piece of me as a teammate to someone else, but seeing different pieces and never seeing me in fullness. So I'm like, I'll say the same thing you say with Jason Whitlock, it lands differently than if you say it with Max Kellerman.

I'll say the same thing, Michelle Beatle, it lands differently when you say it with Kerry Champion. And I was like, Why am I getting taken? Me, the persona, not even me, my identity, just the persona. Why am I getting taken all across this landscape in terms of who is he is? What is he really about? Who is he? When I'm like, I'm me. I'm the guy that can work with anybody because I'm good with everybody. But that wasn't really the summation. So that was part of it as well. And I think the last part of it was the fact that the opportunities in front of me, it was a challenge. They said basically, look, we could keep you fat and full in this velvet coffin, or dare I say, you bet on yourself. Just like I bet on myself when I went to Colombia, but I still can make it to the NFL. I was like, I've made that bet before. And leaving Colombia, this is what gave me the confidence, Dan. No one knows this. But when I was graduating in our school paper, they rolled up the salaries that they knew of all the graduating seniors.

And of course, I was number one. I got drafted. And then in that article, they also wrote that the Ivy League was now going to have their third active player in the NFL, me. But the Ivy League had six owners in the NFL. And that hit me like, I am not going to get caught up. I am going to bed on my brain, not on my body, but still got to do what I need to do to do what I want to do. And I kept going.

Any asteroids missing there that you're not telling us that you're trying to avoid just so that I have a complete picture? Because I didn't believe I was whispering to you in that cafeteria. I don't know how you received what it is. It might have been... I will tell you that in what I felt like was a spiritual moment for me, I was overstepping my bounds. I did not know you that way. I'd read articles about you that made me feel like I knew a little bit because of how much you revealed about what your physical pain was in having a certain surgery that tore your abdomen apart. And what you were describing was so excruciating to me that I felt like I knew a little bit a person who was in there who had shown me glimpses of himself in the broadcast. I was telling you flatly, not whispering it. They don't know how to use you. Not with co-hosts, not with this. You need a couple of things here just so that you could be your maximum self, but they have to feel like support to you, not like you need to get along with everybody because you're not the talent here.

Yes. Let's talk through that. So in real time, present time, it's a compliment. Okay, you have your own show. Now your show is with Michelle Beathe. Amazing. The show is with Max. All these names. Great. And I was like, I work well with them, but I work better in a different setting, in a different environment, in a different format, but it's not this one. So it's like, now what do you do? Because I don't have the power to create what I'm talking about, nor do I really have the deep intel of what that is, but I know it's not this. So I didn't want to slap the compliment away of thank you for this job. Thank you for this show, etc. But behind my eyes, it was a slow death in terms of my brain cells based on the subject matter. I was entertaining people. It's fun, but it wasn't making me get any greater in terms of my identity, my essence, my impact, the things that mattered more to me. So I was just basically having a job that was satisfying but not gratifying. And I hated that. And a couple of my bosses started to sniff that.

And they were like, What do you really want to do? And I told them in this last round of contract talks, I kept saying, Deeper. And I knew that I was going to get met with resistance because that's not the model. And I was like, I just can't do water skiing monkeys, and I can't do dark sucks or is dark top five like every other top? I just can't. And I don't want that to come out like those who do. I'm not their thing. I'm not their thing. I'm bad for doing it. But I'm me and they're them.

But it sounds like you also realize, okay, I'm keeping my fame alive. I'm keeping pieces of my identity alive. Nobody has any idea how hard it is to retire as a football player, physically broken and look at the landscape that is the rest of your life that you're going to limp through in a great deal of pain because of what the sport did to you. People can't understand. I don't even know what's harder, getting to the NFL or retiring from the NFL, when I look at both of those things, you can answer that question. Yeah. Look, I.

Was fortunate, but I will talk for those who aren't and weren't as fortunate. When I got drafted to Buffalo, I remember hanging out with all my boys. All of them were straight yellow brick road into Wall Street, become analysts, worked 25 hours a day. That's what their life was to become successful, and they all became successful. But boy, was it a grind. I remember we were pounding a few drinks and just talking and laughing. I was like, You know what the best part about being drafted is right now? They're like, What? I don't have to think about what I want to do next. You guys had to. I know some of them didn't figure it out. I was like, Damn, it's the same thing when you're retiring from the NFL. I had ESPN waiting for me. It took a few months for me to make it work, but I had something. Those guys, man, when they're done, then the light goes off for some of them. Remember that whole perception, the Rolls-Royce and this and that? It's not even that they're not intelligent and not smart enough. They're just wrapped in a packaging that's going to be labeled this.

And I didn't want to be wrapped in that package. So that's where the Colombia paid off. And then talking to them, man, for me, I always had something waiting on me. But if I didn't and I know what that feels like because I've had those conversations with those guys, that's scary. Especially when you're 30 something years old and you're thinking you got 40, 50, 60 more years and no answers, just questions. Yeah, that's devastating, bro.

Yeah, but you get to all of the things and then aren't quite fulfilled. You're still empty. You're holding on to the paychecks that keep you famous. Hey, he's Marcellus Wiley, former NFL great broadcaster for a long time. He's been on my television talking for many years. That's a name I know. He has turned a career that was excellent, above average by any standard. He planned for a broadcasting career, mastered that as well, and is feeling something empty very soon because with Max, I felt like I got a lot of your personality. I felt like I saw more of you with Max than I saw with anybody. I felt like I saw real, genuine friendship and love there, understanding. I thought that was the best partner, and no offense to anybody else, but that was the best chemistry I saw with anybody.

Absolutely. It was the best chemistry. In large part is because we have a lot of similarities in terms of how we look at life. Family first, our affinity for learning, hip hop, beefing, clowning. We just brothers from another in that respect.

You love him.

Oh, yeah, because he's a smart dude. He's a real dude. And he really helped me through some really painful moments. He helped reconcile my father and I. We had a strained relationship for a few years there. On air, we're reconciling this. We're not off air, just vibing bruhs. On air, the death of my former teammate, Junior, many moments where I was really emotional and sometimes in despair. Max and I talked that out on air. Vulnerable, I guess that's what it is for both of us. Vulnerable. And no slight like you said to any of the co-hosts because I grab something from everybody. But I do have a BCS ranking, and Max was number one for sure. That said, what I had still unfulfilled was I wanted to be a school teacher, and people laughed at me. Literally, my fallback plan was if I didn't make it to the NFL from Colombia, I was going to go to L. A. Unified School district and teach kids. Now people were smacking that around and making some sense. They're like, Doc, you're not going to grade 35 papers on the state capitals every day. I was like, You're right.

So principal, dean, something with kids. And that's what I was always in pursuit of. Where can I go to educate, entertain, and still flex all my muscles? So what I'm doing now is trying to rig sports media, lifestyle, entertainment culture, how we communicate in a way that has a positive lace to it, educational base to it, but it's still entertaining. You're basically giving them their medicine in the candy, and I'm trying to do that.

Well, you can teach people a lot of things about a lot of different subject matter, but I'd like to go back to something that you said with some chest on max and some pride. You said vulnerable. We had a relationship that was vulnerable. Where have you learned wisdoms about the value of the best relationships always having that?

Oh, man. The experience speaks for itself in terms of I'm a firm believer to give is to get. So if I want to get this love, I got to give this love. If I want to get this openness and freedom, I got to give it. And I'm like that all the time. And then I read the room, I read my personnel, know thy personnel, and I realized not everyone is receptive of that. And Max was. Max was vulnerable as well. His father being a shrink, him going through life experiences and the death of his brother, all those things left him vulnerable, always thinking, curious, and nuanced and ready to discuss. I'm not a natural debater. I hate that because I'm like, I got to pick a side. Just reminds me of my childhood, Crip or Blood. I'm like, neither. Now that's a gang, because now you got to avoid both of them. I'm like, Oh, God. I hate binary choices. I hate a world where you got to love something or hate it. I hated all that. I'm like, I avoided that my whole childhood, picking which side of the street. And now you're going to make me do that in occupation or in rhetoric?

I was like, This is silly. So Max and I, we had a chemistry where if it's something we're thinking about, let's talk about it. And it was just that simple, man. And that led us to get into places where I wasn't with any other co-hosts. And I think the audience felt the.

Same way. Most fun you've had professionally? Most fun. Just when you think of that, is there anything else? I'm taking football in there, too.

Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Define fun again. What's rating?

I'm talking about the greatest connection that you have had anywhere along your life with a brother or a friend who along the path work was fun because he was there.

Oh, man. Yeah, he's certainly in the College football playoffs for that. Yes, absolutely. They're all like different levels of fun because I had a different level of consciousness at that time. Like, oh, man, I'm pre-social media NFL. It's hard to get more fun than that, you all. Okay, fair enough.

Fair enough. Fair enough. And I got all the.

Receipts up here. Okay, fair enough. I was trying to make it a love story between you and Max, and you're like, No, I played professional football. Do you have any idea how wonderful my.

Life was?

Oh, insane. Fair enough. But when I ask you about the people who have imprinted you, insisting that you be better, I don't know where your ambition comes from. I don't know why it is you're built the way that would make you achieve all the things and then somehow judge yourself as still having underachieved. I don't know where any of that comes from.

I do. It comes from, you know this, looking at your balance sheet from your financial advisor. I remember not having money growing up and you have a bank account. Then you one day get enough money where you got a CPA. You're meeting with all these financial advisors, and they're talking way deeper than you know, but you got to trust in someone. And that's the experience of the young athlete. But the second generation athletes now obviously going to have a leg up. But I remember getting my first statement, and I remember seeing this line said, Unrealized gains. I was like, Oh, what's that? I was like, That's the money you could have, but we're not going to touch that. We're not going to mess with that, but that's what you could have. I grew up in the community, and it started with my mom looking at her every single day in every single way as unrealized gains like she could have, she never did. And so what I now base myself on is, did I do all that I could and I can because I know what she was incapable of doing and didn't allow herself to do?

So that's always like my reflection is like. And it's not a burden. People think sometimes when I talk, Oh, man, you're tortured. I'm like, Nah, B. I just know that I have a deep motivation that I have now aggregated all of the unrealized gains of my family, and I'm going to make sure I make that imprint in this world.

Did I hear blame for your mother in there? Because you're saying she could have and it was unrealized. I would think that there would be a whole ton of variables that you're expecting her to overcome there that might be very difficult to overcome, but you're expecting them because that's where the greatest love resides and that's what you demand of yourself as a wily.

Oh, yeah. You must have been in our house. When I was a teenager, I started to not rebel, but have dialog. Let's say deeper dialog, really vocal dialog with my mother like, Okay, mom, 17 and 19 you had us. We're 13 and 15 now. Your turn to live. Mom is like, it was just like to get old Betsy started, to get the car started, it was tough for her. So she ended up being a postal worker. But she was so much greater in my eyes, so much grander in my eyes. But that's what she became. And I loved her for that. But I always used to challenge her and say, what do you really want to do? Because that's what you're just doing. So then in that conversation, when you're playing that tug of war, you start to realize the grip you have. You start to realize your strength because you're making sense. Because now you're seeing your mom become vulnerable. You're starting to see her weaknesses. You're starting to see her run into her challenges and stopping. And all that empowered me. All of that made me say it's my turn because I see what my mom did well and I see what my mom fell short in.

And instead of using that against her, I'm going to use that for me. And so, yeah, we used to have those discussions. And that's why one of my mantras is be greater than your greatest excuse, because because we all have them. But my mom could have easily turned the corner and became more if she wanted more, but she loved what she was. And then I make it to the NFL and it's a wrap. She's beyond the proudest mama ever, right? That mama. I'm that dude. She's that mama. I'm like, Oh, my God. This is the craziest thing in the world. I let her live, man. I let her live until she passed away in 2005, breast cancer.

Where does the dialog go when you're thinking about your own kids? Because if I can dare to assume that I know anything about you, I'm guessing that your mission is to be of the greatest service to them in every way that you could possibly be or you will have failed?

Yes. Fully motivated, fully dedicated, all in. It's weird. I just want them to have the engine. This is something I used to talk about all the time. But with Max, we used to talk about, I want them to have the hardware so that the world could apply any software and they're able to run efficiently. Give them anything because their hardware is built up. And that's why it's so important that I attack the sensibilities of today's media culture, messaging, whatever is coming at them. It seems like we have fewer decoders out there than I desire. Let's just say that. I wish we had more people who would say it the way it really is, say it the way that we all need to hear it. I'm very blunt, very direct, but I do it with a smile, so maybe it is received differently. But I wish we had more people that just told these kids which way is up. Instead of saying, no, it doesn't matter wherever you want to go, whichever way you want to, that's the way it is. And that's the problem.

I think that you and Max need to get back together. And you need a partner, not because you have to have a partner, but somebody who could live in service of some of the things that you are in making some of the things you make because they believe the same things that you do. I don't know that... Maybe you can explain it to the people. I don't know that they understand the labyrinth that you had to navigate in broadcasting to now, I'm guessing, be able to speak most freely and authentically about yourself in a time in America where your voice has some wisdom in it as things around us collapse.

Yes. The whole journey, I mean, you're doing shows, you're loving it. You're on the road here and there. And it all was simpler back then in terms of the topics. The whole agenda seemed like just to entertain and educate fans, but from a reality base that is now much looser than it was even 10 years ago. I got into it because I love to translate the message, translate the experience of what it was to be a professional athlete. Simple as that. I was like, This is me being a school teacher. Yeah, I could do it. But I'm going to do it on a desk, and I'm going to do it with a suit on, and I'm going to just talk to people with video. Yes, I'm a teacher still, but I'm teaching them what sports really feels like and looks like. And then you start to realize, oh, wait a minute. You're going to have to make a choice, bro. Either you're going to have to get get in one of these circus tents and do a little more theatrics, or you're not going to be all pro. Let's just say that. You'd be on the team.

You could make a player here, but you ain't going to be all pro.

So are there inauthentic versions of yourself that are now performing on television in a way that feel like in any way soul-selling to you? Because you have to be not just your most... You're trying to be your most authentic self. And there are elements of this that are performative. You have to put on a show. I don't know, did you think you were compromising or selling out in some way by trying to do television the way you were being taught to do television?

No. And that's part of why a Dan Levitar comes up to me and says, they're not using you like the way that they should. And I'm sitting there realizing that I'm not at the top of the mountain in sports media because I'm not built to do what's necessary to do and become that guy or those guys up there. Like you said, it's performative. And it's not a slight. It's just like, I'm not doing that. But there is a commonality between all those who are at the top, whether it's based on the business model, economic model, or just how they do it in performance that none of those guys, the Skips, Stephen A, Colin, traditional media make the most, they played. They didn't play. They didn't have that investment. So that gives them, I think, a detachment that allows them to activate their performance even more than me. I feel inhibited. I feel restricted because of my investment, because of the reality base I'm coming from. So it happens in everything. I have a foundation, Project Transition. We work with the underserved in the community. A lot of people have that same mission statement to work with them, give them resources.

A lot of times people come in big, roller decks, big brain, big heart, but not big an experience. They theorize on it. And I'm like, well, let me help you out because I'm bilingual. I speak half and I speak half not. I could tell you that what you're saying sounds good, maybe feels good, but won't be the most impactful. I say I saw that happen in sports media. I was like, whoa, what's happening is there's a choice you got to make, you're going to activate. And working with Emmanuel Atto at the end made me realize, let me slide to the left and let him keep on going because his ambition was the greatest I've ever seen, in part because he's the youngest guy I ever worked with. But he wanted to be a star so much and so hard. I was like, It's almost like the NFL where you're like, This is why you're retired. Because that 21-year-old is going to run through walls that you're not going to run through, and you're not going to do what he's going to do. Whether you can do it or not is not the question. You ain't going to do it.

I was just like, I need to move on. That's when the opportunities started to present themselves elsewhere, and I started to look elsewhere.

That's an interesting way of looking at it. I didn't know that happened with Acho. You say it not bitterly, somewhat gently. It's the business. It's the game. You understood that he was going to do things on the way to start him that you weren't willing to with the take?

Look, I was not bitter and I'm not bitter at what he did. A lot of people want me to be bitter at what he did. I said, no, I'm not. Now, how he did it, that's the conversation if you want to have that. This is how it went at Fox. I get there, Jason Whitlock is recruiting me. He's coming to my backyard a couple of times. I worked with him before. One of the families showed Deeper, got me on the word deeper. I was hooked in. Go there. We worked together for two years. Then he just goes. He's done. He just leaves. Now, a lot of people don't know that they wanted him to stay. They were working on his contract for a long time. It didn't work out. The terms, whatever they may have been, and the power, I think, because we wanted even more. He did a lot for that show. He led the show, designed the show. He did the topics, all that. And I love working on that show, so I won't dislike that in any respect. But I knew a long time ago, months before he left, that he was potentially leaving.

He never told me. Then he just left and never told me. We still boys to this day. But I was like, Dog, you could at least just give me the heads up. But I found out. So remember this, Dan? I have a co-host who leaves in the middle of the night, but I already knew it was coming, so I was prepared. Nick Khan, my guy, Cobra, calls me up. Hey, I got an opportunity. I'm going to take a swing for the fences, and you got to do those things sometimes. I was like, Oh, yeah, go get it. We know.

How that turned out. But this is a super agent you're talking about. When you say nick Khan, you're talking about a star maker. You knew how much power he had at ESP and and beyond. Nick Khan is saying, I, as your agent, can now shoot you into real stardom where you can be your deepest self.

Whoa, no. What he's saying is I'm leaving the agent business, going to www. Either run it as a president. Then he got promoted.

Oh, wow. Okay.

He left. So, Whitlock leaves, he leaves. I'm sitting there like the universe whispers before he yells. I'm like, damn. All right. I don't have an agent in my last two years on purpose. Everyone's calling. I'm like, Nope, because really, I got one foot out or at least pointing in a different direction. Let's see how this plays out. I get Acho, and Acho and I are working together all great, but few weeks into it, just from hell low. I've known Acho for years. I've met him before, like in a more of a I'm in the industry. He wasn't. He was just leaving school, and we stayed in touch, knew him from his ex-girlfriend, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, all right, you imagine working with somebody a few weeks, and then you get a call. I got a call from two people, boss and coworker. Hey, what's going on with your show? I was like, what do you mean? I chose trying to do another show with his brother and all these other cats and trying to get you out. Man, we good. I tucked that away because that's who I am. I'm not going to hold that against you, but I'm a watch.

Remember, I just went through this with Whitlock. We basically went almost two years of him giving me the dab in my face, but behind working. I didn't put up any resistance because we weren't fighting for the same thing. So when it was time to move on, I wasn't mad at what he did because I was like, I can't go to Coach and say, Hey, Coach, give me the ball more. If you want to give him the ball more. It wasn't that dynamic. He wanted what I had, what we had. Now, if he were to win about it like Max did with first take, soon as Max got the call from Stephen A, Max like, Marcellus, what's up? I was like, Dawg, what you think? I was like, What you think? And we went back and forth many a times. That's what I wanted. I didn't get that out of Whitlock. I didn't get that out of and I wasn't mad at either one for what that was or just how it was.

That leaves you feeling that you've arrived in a place in broadcasting where you have to make a choice now, right? The things that have happened in your career, you're saying, The game is not for me anymore. I'm not willing to fight over jets patriots who's going to have the strongest take. I want to do something else with my life. But now this, I would say, is hard. But you're telling me it's not that hard because you've been calling like you've been the whispers. You can no longer ignore the whispers or.

The shots. Yeah. My deep spirit is just telling me, why would you want to fight Whitlock? I'm under contract then, so it was like, whatever. Why would you want to fight Acho for something you don't want to fight for? So you're going to get into this tussle with them, and it's not that serious to you. Now that's just your ego. Or you're just scared to really take the challenge of being who you're really supposed to be. So in a lot of ways, I thank both of them for what they did. Now, the ultimate thanks is going to be in my success in the next endeavor, which I'm a part of now. I would never shut up and bring reach TV, etc. But the point of it is it took me back to my Colombia moment when there were a lot of naysayers and there was a lot of craziness going on with my decision. I was like, I'll come back and prove it in success. I wasn't bitter because they just gave me a jet pack in the way I was going anyway.

But I would say, and I do not underestimate what your life has been because you have learned a lot of things. But I would dare say that the challenge presently in front of you is almost as challenging as any of the challenges you've had in front of you because doing it yourself at this point in your career because your heart demands you.

Must.

It's made easier by the calling, but it's hard.

It is beyond hard. I'm used to it. I'm like, why am I back here again? I'm 48 years old taking on these type of challenges, like walking in the weight room, trying to bench press 500 again. I'm back there again. And it's like, why? I was like, because there's still game to play, and I still haven't conquered it like I know I can. And it's crazy as this is going to sound then. I wasn't the smartest kid, but obviously I was smart. I wasn't the best football player, but obviously I could ball. I wasn't the best broadcaster, but obviously I could talk. But what I'm on now in terms of impact and trying to help people, I got a chance. That's where my thousands, that's what I've been ultimately designed for. So with that, thankfully, I'm not doing this by my damn self, having a partner. When the contract talks were going on, I'm talking to all the different outlets out there, everybody. Even some of the other major. I got an opportunity. So John Brinkus, former sports science host, we partnered in Brink's TV. What that allowed me to have is ownership, equity, something that I can give to my kids.

Something that is very important to me is to not tell my kids that here's your money or find out, figure out who you are without anything of legacy, without anything built into it. So you know how it goes at working at Fox ESPN, which is amazing. But once you're done talking, all you can do is, hey, kids, I hear you. This is what Daddy saved from you. I'm all saved for you. And I was like, godly, I want my kids to be a part of a legacy, be part of something of ownership that Daddy gave them to start off with, not just, okay, go figure it out what Daddy has left over. It was just a different mind play. It was a different skill set that I knew that I had to start to activate or else, frankly, I was going to take my kids back to the same situation I was in, just dressed up differently.

Well, tell me, because I'd like the vantage point of what you saw. And if you remember the look in the eyes of your children when you recognized that what was looking back in their eyes is our dad is fat and happy.

Yep. And you know what? Now let's have some therapy. It takes me back to those challenges I have with my mom, where I'm like, Mom, you could do more. And I didn't want my kids to see me in a position where, Daddy, you could do more. Daddy, you don't care if Doc is top five, top 10, do you? I was like, No. He top something. He got a football field in his backyard. He got $200 million. He's top something. And I was just looking at my kids and looking at my reality and looking at the fact that I have not yet fully flexed my muscles. And people don't understand what that means, but you got to know what that feels like. Imagine people are giving you cheers and love, and you're like, That's 70 % of me, 80 % of me. I'm like, What if they saw all of me? How would they take that? And that challenge is ever present. You right now, you're building your own company. Tell me your challenges. You had to confront the same moment, the same conversation you had to have. What are those challenges?

I can give you an endless, unspooling of challenges that I did not expect that include the idea of having 44 employees and feeling a real and genuine responsibility to build. I don't have kids to build something for people that I care about that can exist as a media thing in Miami that the whole thing's collapsed. The whole media shit is collapsed. You've seen it. You've seen how few seats there are. Absolutely. And so in Miami, there exists a thing that can have some vibrancy and some love in it. But the challenge is I can give you a thousand of them, but I don't have a greater one than this. I've seen it in myself in the couple of times that you've hit the word present, needing to be present. I love my wife. My wife has taught me all of these things. I want to be the best man for her, and I want to love her the best that I can. I want to be with her. I want to be present all the time. I want to be there. It doesn't mean I don't want to work. It doesn't mean I don't get identity in my work.

It doesn't mean like, yes, I'm proud that I've built something that is good, but I wanted to now live in service of me, not me in service of it.

Yes.

And I don't know, how do I entangle that one? Because I want to entangle that one. I think the greatest joy is to be able to share this with everybody, all of it, all of it. But with her, I want to be with her. She's done all this with me the last three years. She knows the battering I'm taking.

Yeah, talk about that. Untangling it is... That hit home. I ran this simulation.

Because.

I was trying to untangle it as well. One, I was trying to figure out, do I go forward? Do I stop? Do I just accept it as is? This is a lot of mailbox money, direct deposits that are just going to cease. In the process of entangling it, I had a simulation at home. One of the offers for me was to go to New York City. I was like, All right, do a show in New York City. First things first. I was like, All right, let me run the straight-hand plan in my life. Now, I'm not straight-hand, right? I'm like, All right, I have three little ones here.

You could pull off... You could pull off all of the things straight-hand and with real depth, with Oprah, real depth.

Yeah. I meant in terms of his family dynamic, like not married, older kids and the teenagers, whatever may be, I was like, I'm not that. I get where he can go cross country every week during football season. I'm not that. But let's see. I call it the straight-hand plan. That's the homie. I'm like, Let me see if I could do it. Literally, Dan, the next day after that opportunity was presented, I was like, All right, go downstairs at six o'clock in the morning. My wife wakes up at 4:30 every day, works out by six o'clock. I was like, This time, I'm just a fly on the wall. Three little kids and her, potentially I'll be going all week, and then I'll come back home with the money. Let's see how this goes. At six o'clock, my daughter's tripped on the stairs. Then my boy comes down. He wants breakfast early. Literally, my wife is on her spinbike. Then my other daughter's asleep upstairs and I'm like, Oh, no.

You lifelong overachiever have a mess on your hands that you can't handle. It's too much for you.

It's overwhelming.

I'm like- You can't do it.

I was like, There's no way I could leave this family. Be present. Can't leave this family, leave my wife, leave this, and scratch that scab that I have for my oldest, my 24-year-old, and once again, not be there in those intimate moments. So what helped me untangle it, as you were talking about your challenge, is I just dropped the rope. And that's when I was like, I'm leaving broadcast media. I'm still talking. I'm still listening. I'm still going back and forth, engaging, but I'm leaving that. I am going to do this on my terms and at least in terms of locale and make sure I could stay still and do this and be present for my family.

Scratch that scab. I don't know the depths of what you're feeling there. Do you feel like you were not ready as a father to be a father when you had to be a father?

Oh, no. No. Compared to me now, that guy, he was good then, but boy, he's a whole different animal now. But I mean, look, I was 24 in Buffalo playing football, still had seven, eight years to play. By schedule alone, you're not there. By our relationship status, because we broke up, I'm not there. She moved cross country. I'm in L. A. No matter how much I was there in the and she was here in the summers and breaks and holidays, it doesn't add up because there are a million decisions needed as a parent every single day, and I missed so many of those millions of decisions. So that's the scab. And that's my regret is that I couldn't make that work where I could be there with her. And I know that's something that's really a telling story of today's society of so many people in broken homes or both parents not there, single-family homes. And I just really want to highlight not from the parents perspective, because I looked at it that way forever. Like, oh, man, her and I and then my baby. Think about that kid. How many times they can't call out your name because you're not there, or they know not to call out your name because it won't be received well in that same home.

Look what that does to a kid with a blank canvas and how it colors it darker than what it should be. And that's what I was like, the last thing I want to do is send me a video of MJ and the game. How did he do? When I had an opportunity to not do that. And it was tough because I had to give up a lot, but I'm investing in myself. And I think that's going to be my greatest reward.

You blame yourself there. Is there shame for you there? Because the standard you have is an exacting one. I don't know how forgiving you are of yourself.

It's like, damn, you know me. I'm not forgiving, but I don't blame myself either. It took us both to get to that reality. And we're on great terms now. We just missed a lot of her 18 years growing up, you add up the days and the moments, and they all seem like they seem like I was always there. But there was a lot that I wasn't. I'm regretful of that. But no, I don't blame myself because I've always been a good guy. Even when I was in the league and I was just the love doctor, those antidotes, all those experiences came from me being so cool that I got to meet everybody in the room, every girl in the room. No matter what, no one's ever throwing a drink in my face or whatever, curse me out. No, no, no.

Well, you navigated both worlds very well, very expertly. Which one do you regard as stranger, broadcasting or football?

Broadcasting, by far. Look, neither one is a meritocracy. We like to say sports is. It's the closest thing we have to it maybe now, but it's loose now, even sports. And certainly, broadcast is like, untethered now. It's almost like, forget it, whatever. If you know someone, if your agent is so and so, you know so and so, you willing to go there, it's pretty much triple sevens.

Wow. You know how Hollywood all of this is. Your take on what the take industry has become is you're looking at it as rotted at the core like, Oh, that's ugly how Hollywood took that over. And now it's just all professional wrestling.

Yeah, it totally is. I was there from Hello, 2008, first meeting. I remember us getting into about this new thing called Twitter, and it's all the executives and all the hosts and all the analysts. We're sitting there and they're like, All right. Okay, this Twitter thing, we got to be careful with it. We can't give away all our information. We can't tell them everything what's going to happen on the show. Be very protective, be private, but just try to gain audience. Then literally, like a year or two later, they're like, Okay, tell them your whole show. They'll still come watch. We need both audiences. I was like, Do you all know which way is up? Do you all have any projections, any forward thinking? I was like, All right, whatever. I saw the same thing happen when I was leaving the industry. I literally left ESPN and wanted to go to Fox and wanted to do a radio show. I love radio. I love how you get the intimacy and the response from the audience. They were like, No, just TV. I was like, All right. Then my boy kept bugging me, and this is 2018.

He's like, Do a podcast. Do a podcast. At the time, I looked down on podcasts. I was like, What is.

A podcast? That's where you get old.

That's where you get old.

It happens that fast. You thought you were the cool guy, and then you look up and, yes, it happens that fast. It's a very competitive, stupid game, the one of broadcasting. I can't even imagine. You've seen a lot of life. Have you met a less impressive swath of people anywhere in life than television executives?

It's unreal. But it's like television executives, movie producers. It's the same like-.

How are they allowed to run everything?

Yeah, because it's really tough because in football, there's a coordinator who sees the field and has assistants, and they're doing all these projections, and they're trying to figure out all the strategies. And they're like, all right, let's find their tendencies, and we could come up with a calculated formula and attack. But then you get the TV exec. Look, I have benefited from this ignorance as well. When they're like, Yeah, we should try that. I'm like, Wow, that easy? You think you got to go to Syracuse Media School and get your PhD and you got to have all these... The resume. And there's like, no, it was a nice brunch. I think what you said makes sense. Let's try it. And literally, we'll create a show just like that. And it's like, wow. I just went through that industry, and I was like, at the end, the same things that they were saying no to, they were saying yes to. And so literally, my next deal, they're like, Podcast? You want to do radio again? I was like.

That was just four years ago. Yeah, well, you were ahead of the game without realizing you were ahead of the game is what happened. You didn't understand what was being whispered to you about the profession that, yes, you needed a support system in place to grow the person you would become on American cable, television, and everyone's homes. You value that platform. You being maximum you on that platform would educate every day in a way that's necessary now, not just so you're arguing with somebody across the table, but you're unspooling real wisdom because people need to hear some shit now that's more meaningful than the God we've been serving for a long time.

Yes, that's exactly it. I still was scared. Even though the universe was whispering to me, maybe starting to yell, let's go. Whitlock leaving in midnight hour, Acho, wanting it all. I'm like, okay. I'm like, this is all pointing in one direction, but I still don't know. I got little kids here. I got people to feed. I got a life to live. Then, Pat McAfee. I remember being in my driveway. I don't know what day it was. He had some video where he was giving out a million dollars to everybody. He just signed that fan duo deal. I was like, hes a... At that time, I never watched this podcast. I was like, That's a podcast? Then all of a sudden you start to do your research. I'm going backwards. I'm like, 2017, he couldn't work at ESP. The same ESP and I got two jobs at, and he can't get in the door because he's the punter. Now he's coming back with a vengeance to lap everyone in the industry 18 times over. Oh, I got the wrong car. I could say I'm the bad driver, but I'm going to say I'm going to switch cars first and switch lanes and see how I roll.

What an amazing thing for you to realize like that. You thought you were ahead of the game, ahead of the game, ahead of the game. And then you turn around and you're like, Oh, my God. I didn't see that coming at all. Iyou that well. I could have built all that. I could have built what Shannon Sharp is building right now. I could have built all of that if I had somebody... I think you could work within the system. You could. You could do the show you want to do within the system if you just had similarly minded people around you. I don't know how many of those you encountered along.

The path. There you go. That's the thing. It's like, Max and I used to always say this is so funny. We were like, we should just throw a camera in here and just go at it. This is like 2014, 2030. Just throw a camera here because it was like, hilarious all.

The time. You were doing a lot better show than just about anybody in radio because your dynamic was so... I mean, like that, there was nothing. If you had put that on a similar cast every day, real friendship, real brothers growing up together, learning things about each other and being more vulnerable at microphones than most men like you are willing to be- Yeah.

And that's what we were doing. And we had so many funny comparisons and contrasts. It was like, billboards won the rapper and won the national typewriting champion. But he was the rapper.

That's right. You're that'sthat you're the one who won the typwriting championship. I'm the nerd. You're the champion. Yes, you guys had the perfect chemistry for spending three hours together laughing. And furthermore, that platform would have been or it was something. How many people got to know you through that? Know you for real. Know you in ways that Los Angeles never knew you before that because there's something different about you're that big ass voice and everyone is impressed with his credentials. Everyone knows who and you were extended to, Max. We're peers. We are equals. I'm the athlete and you're the journalist, but we're brothers.

Yep. And that's how it was, man. Thankfully, it was in L. A, even though we were doing great national numbers and we were a local show, we were keeping up with the big dogs, being home everywhere I go to this day, there's not going to be a post or video ever of me without someone saying, Max and Marcellus, come back. And Max and I have talked about that. It's like, all right, in your back pocket, you know you got something there. When do you play it? Do you play it? So we've had those conversations, but they have been 30,000 feet up in the air. We have not tried to nail down particulars. And that's part because that's my boy. And it's like, dog, ESPN is paying you for another year or so. Don't even think about anything else, but think about what's next in that year or so. But do not rush to do something else. Why would you ever? And so-.

But the two of you being able to do anything together with the wisdom you've accrued about real life shit. I mean, Max, you talked about helping him with his brother's death. You can try to help somebody with that. But I've been avoiding people for two months because I don't want anyone rummaging around too much in that bin right now, someday. But at the moment, it moved me when you said that you've been there for him in times of, and each other in times of crisis.

Yeah. So right now, your stage of grief, if you wanted to label anything, is just the distance, the avoidance.

Right now, I can't. It hurts me to admit that because I'm a bit ashamed of it. But it's just I can't. I know I need to hurt in order to heal it. I know I need to feel it in order to heal it. I'm not trying to talk about psycho, babble. I just have never felt anything like this. I don't know what it is. I don't know how to manage it or cope with it. It's just a daily weight that you asked me about challenges before, and I maintain and will maintain that the greatest one is that I want to be present in all the loving moments with my wife. Yeah, because of where we went through all of this. I'm sorry. This happened. It's been happening too much.

It's okay. It's okay, man.

But one of the challenges has been trying to do this every day, the grind of what this is every day when I'm not quite emotionally in the space where you have to be to do it correctly. That's real difficult for somebody who's trying to do this well because it's a lot of responsibility.

Yeah. I mean, can't feel or heal for you. I've always challenged this. Tell me, my mother died in 2005, and to this day, I have not dealt with it. My sister dealt with it immediately and still deals with it to this day. She goes to the gravesite, I rarely do. She has my mother's birthday. She confronts the pain. She looks at pictures. I rarely do. And I would say this because the way I've been able to heal from it is one, I let her death and her live through all things I do. But that's just high level thought. In reality, I live to avoidance. I had gotten to a place where whether it was football, whether it's NFL, college, I wouldn't see my mother for three months, four months. You're away. I'm in New York City, and she's in L. A. And do you know to this day, the story I tell myself to heal is I'm just away at school. I'm just away at camp. And I'll see her soon. And that used to be two months, three months, four months. Now it's forever. But that's how I deal with it. And it's loosely avoidance.

It's of that pain. But I don't know if we're all designed to about face and confront those moments to say.

Yeah. I mean, that's why they say everybody grieves differently. But I would say it's one of the few places where I could take some pride in my strength because even though I've avoided this with others, I haven't with my most intimate partner who makes me feel most loved so that I can carry on the lessons of what my brother taught me because he wanted me to live a shared, joyous life. It's the only way to honor him. But to learn the lessons of that, to love like that risks that you can't avoid the pain. You're telling me you're one of the toughest people I've ever heard of. And you're telling me, No, that one, I figure out ways to rationalize around it because that one is too big for me. I don't like the mortality in that one.

Yep. You heard me loud and clear. And it's only because of this. Other than being a mama's boy, and look, I did everything for my mother. I felt cursed for a moment there. You mean to tell me I do all of this and then my mother dies when I'm finally here? She couldn't just enjoy all this work and it coming to fruition right now. And I felt that. But the moment that it really said, it told me that is a weight in the weight room you would never try to lift. That is the amount that I'm never going to put on the bar was my mother at her funeral. And I've never seen this before. It was the fact that it was time to close the casket. And the pastor comes to me and grabs my hand and says, Can you do it? And that toughness kicked in and that put on the spot. I was like, Yeah, I can do it. Never even thinking what I was about to do. And having to walk over there and then literally having to close the casket on my own mother, powerless. Think about it. Close it.

That means gravity is going to help you. All you got to do is touch it. It'll let alone close it. I couldn't move. I couldn't do anything. I think that was my activation to avoidance. I can't. I want to because I know the therapist will say you should, you need to. But the realist in me is like, some things you just can't do. And that's one of them for me.

Where else would I find avoidance from you that's that self-aware? Because I don't imagine there are a whole lot of things like that where you're saying, I can't do it. That's a bridge too far for me. I'm this level of tough over there. That's an emotional landscape. I'm not even going to touch it. I'm not even going to try.

Yeah. You know what's funny, Dan? Because of that, because the only thing that scares me is death, that I'm not scared of anything while I'm alive. I'm not scared of anything living like, you put a gun on me. I'm like, oh, don't shoot me. Not that I'm saying no challenge, no obstacle, no discussion. And that's what's empowered me to just take on all things and really try to right my wrongs and right some of the wrongs that are going to be inherited for this next generation if we don't decode and fix what's in narrative and message. So not scared to talk about anything, confront anything because there's that one thing. Superman could do it all, except go to Crypto and deal with some Crypto Night.

And that's my Crypto. I'm stunned to hear it from you, honestly, because maybe I shouldn't be, but I had not regarded, I mean, as painful as this is, I had not regarded it as something that someone of your self-awareness and acumen wouldn't force himself and challenge himself to do under the idea that there is growth on the other side of pain.

I know. It works for everything. And I know that that's the same mechanism at play for all of my, your, everyone's success right behind that obstacle. That adversity is that gain, is that success. And there's no way, at least in the 18 years so far, there's been no way, no thought of even confronting it. Crying? Yes. Of course, missing, but confronting. And when I say that, I mean deeply swallowing the reality that that was it. I take on all other challenges.

I think of you as a bit immortal in some of the challenges that you have conquered. I know it might sound like hyperbole to some, but the degree of difficulty on the things that you achieved, I think you're proud of yourself. Even as hard as you may be on yourself, you know that you conquered some things, correct? But I'm just not sure along the path from the way that you described it, and I might recognize some of this, how much joy you've had along the path because so much of it must have felt like relief. So much of it brought problems that you were not expecting that were so much different than the original problems that you thought you'd be inheriting. I understand succumbing to temptations when you're young and a fool and arriving at what everyone else thinks is what should bring you happiness. But I don't know the man who's looking inside himself and saying, I still feel empty here. These things, what everyone else is telling me I should be, I expect something better from myself. Yeah.

We're all given this value system, whether you understand it or agree with it or not, it's placed on you, whether it's culturally to your family relationships, expectations, community, whatever. It's just like these messages. You just hear them and it's this outer course. And that outer course gave me a checklist. And I checked it. I was like, Oh, excuse me. That was deep. And then I checked that list. And once I checked it, I was like, Now where's my list? And my list didn't... It wasn't congruent with that. Some of that, but not all of that. And the same guy that wanted to enjoy and did enjoy NFL riches is the same guy that also wanted to grade papers for fifth graders.

It sounds like you were a bit trapped in a football player's body. You had to choose and construct this particular prison to get out of your circumstances, right? Because football doesn't choose you. No. Or you don't choose football.

Football chooses you. Yeah. I mean, in simple, it was the way out. And I felt so damned that I was as good, if not better in the classroom. I was an academic decathlete in fourth grade, just nerded up. And I was like, okay, where is this going to take me? And they're looking at me like, I don't know where and not as far as that football wheel. Here you go. And I love football, but I was like, what else? This is the time where you had to be a rapper, entertainer, or baller, or good luck, even though we knew education was the key. I was like, What? I was like, Once again, do not fight the model. Do not fight the beast. Get there, get in there, and then change it from the inside out.

Good luck with that. God, no. I put.

In a lot of years and realized, get out. What a fool.

Are you? Change it from the inside out.

I tried, dad. What the hell are you talking about? I tried, dad. I literally went from jets, patriots.

You're not a fool. What idiot are you? Changed the television machine from the inside out because of the strength of.

Your voice. Look, we all know real from fake. I was like, once they see it real, they're going to love it. They were like, Yeah, we want lighter.

What a.

Fool you are.

I admire you so much as a master intellect.

No, no, no. Once again, McAfee hit me in the back of the head like, Whoa, where did you come from? Same thing with this. It was the realization.

You thought you were going to change the industry with the strength and power of your voice because why wouldn't you? You've already overcome all the other odds.

Yeah, that's part of it. And the other part was we all get it, but we all don't want to get it. And it's weird. It's education versus entertainment. It's this education, blend that I thought I was going to be able to strike the perfect balance to do it. I swear I was. And I was like, maybe I still will in a different way, but I have to go away. Because our industry now look at the Kings. And then you look at them with the Kings are doing, you're like, Can't do that and get what I'm trying to do. So let them do that. Let me go around. Let me pull a McAfee, come back in five years and say, I told you guys, this is it.

What's the plan for that before we get you out of here, and I'd like to figure out a way to continue these conversations, tell the people what it is that you're doing, how it is that they find you. Because I will tell them again, you've been an important voice, a neglected voice, I would say. Even with the opportunities that you've had, you've been an important voice for a long time. I want people to hear the full wisdom that you have to share now that you seem to be your most balanced, adult, and happiest self.

I appreciate it, Dan. So I have a daily show Monday through Friday, Never Shut Up. And that's on Brinks TV, Reach TV, and YouTube TV. And I do that daily show every day, really just the intersection of sports, entertainment. And we learn life lessons. So you check me out there at Marcellus Wiley on all socials, and it's going so well. The biggest fear is when you leave somewhere, you're like, Was it the machine or was it me? And to be able to grab audience and come with me and people that rock with me, we've been doing it for eight months. I got a hundred and thirty thousand subscribers, really excited because I know I'm not the hair. I'm the tortoise. But I always watched that cartoon too. The tortoises will win. So I'm like, all right, I'm going to win. But I'm going to take it the right approach, the right way, and just make sure that I can help as many and inspire as many on the way. So you can check me out there. We're doing amazing. Like you said, it's hard, it's challenging.

But so rewarding. But you're proud of it. It's your way. It's the most complete you trying to do it as the best you in service of you and the things that you believe in. You got there.

The path wasn't what it should have been. It could have been just all supported because you had all of the wisdoms that you needed to have. You didn't understand that the hard part was once you get in the machine, not getting to the machine.

Yeah. Say it again, man. I did not. I mean, it was a smack in the face. And I was like, Wow. It's so funny because I have so many great relationships with people in the industry, executives included, and they literally text me all the time. This is one thing I know you get this, too. A guy would be on Air or at a place, and he'd be like, Can't say this on air, but let me hit Wally up. Keep going. Say that again. Oh, I agree. But then they have to go on there and do the persona, the song and dance.

You sound like you're legitimately disgusted by it. I've been gentle. I've been arguing with Stephen A about this, and I don't want to head back into that hornet's nest for you. There's no need. But I've been having the argument of this could be so much better and so much more impactful, all of it as the platforming. And there is a place to get your nutrients and your funny. It doesn't have to be the cartoonish thing that it is now.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of that flavor. I think there are a lot of other attributes to Stephen A or to any of those Kings up there that are doing amazing. And when they lean into the ones that are just low frequency, everybody... Right now, I can post for my foundation, projecttransition. Org, go there. I can post something for my foundation that is positive for the community, giving out kids, giving out scholarships, I know I can get 50 likes. You know what I mean? Just to throw a random number out there. People are like, oh, boring, whatever. Then I know also, oh, I could go out right now on Sunset. Take it off, act a fool and get 500 thousand likes. I'm like, okay, so we all know that. That's the formula, right? Why do you keep trying to get 500,000 likes? Why don't you talk about the things that are more important than just the like, the love, the deeper parts? But I get it. Everyone is not the same, so I allow them to do what they do. I'm going to do what I do, and we'll see how this game goes.

I respect it. I admire it. I have for a long time. Thank you for spending so much time.

With us. I appreciate you, Dan. You're the man, brother.