Staying Fit
VIDEO: NFL Star Terry Bradshaw on Fame, Faith and Football
NFL sports analyst Terry Bradshaw, 74, won four Super Bowls as the quarterback of the Pittsburgh Steelers. AARP caught up with the sports legend, who recently overcame skin and bladder cancer.
Barefoot in Louisiana
Me as a child? Rambunctious, never still, always in trouble, always dirty, never could keep my clothes clean, didn’t even like to wear clothes. Used to take my shoes and socks off on the way to school and hide them in a culvert, so I could go barefooted. Not a good student, didn’t like school — and then, of course, later on in life, you find out that you’re an ADD guy, so that helps explain why you weren’t a good student.
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Praying and fishing
My dad worked all the time, six days a week, and then on Wednesdays and Sundays, we were in church — I had that foundation. I fished with my father, but he never played catch with the football. He wasn’t an athlete; my mother was the athlete. My Uncle Duck was my biggest sports fan, and we bonded over sports and fishing. If I screwed up in life, I can’t blame it on anybody but myself because I grew up with a lot of love and a lot of fun.
Working the land
We had an acre of land and enough room for my dad’s garden. My dad loved to garden, that was his passion, and my brother and I, we’d dig what looked to us like a thousand acres with a shovel. Then my dad would come home for lunch and come down and inspect while we were doing it, and if the lines weren’t right, if we hadn’t shoveled straight, we got in trouble. Aw, I hated that.
The early lure of sports
I got my first football when I was 11, and I was hooked. I wasn’t a good athlete at first, but I worked hard to be good at it. I remember figuring out how to snap my wrist and make a spiral, and then throwing the ball into a snowbank — we were living in Iowa then — over and over, because I didn’t have anybody to play catch with. And I said, “Oh my God,” and went and begged my mother to come watch me. That was it.
Coaches as mentors
I’ve said it a thousand times: By far the greatest impact on my professional career was Mickey Slaughter at Louisiana Tech. I wasn’t highly recruited from high school, but my body really caught up my junior year in college. Mickey was the one who always said, “You’re gonna be the best,” just pumping me. He saw in me someone with tons of talent, and then he figured out how to handle me, how to encourage me.
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