In Their Own Words

The blog has been neglected. As is usually the case, it's not my fault.

Last year, the management at Sun Sports decided to cancel "Sports Talk Live" in favor of "Tailgate Overtime," a show designed to attract our core audience of hardcore college football fans. The steadily climbing ratings and internet chatter generated by the show leads me to believe that TGOT, as we call it, has found a foothold. I'm optimistic about next season.

But that's the problem -- next season. When college football ended in January, we were left with a gaping hole in our Monday night schedule until August. After kicking around several ideas, we settled on a formula that has worked in the past at other Fox regional networks: a half-hour, single-subject interview show called "In My Own Words." The idea was to find newsworthy sports figures with Florida ties and give them an uninterrupted, unedited thirty minutes. If the right questions were asked, the shows could live well beyond their original air date (in the TV business, we call that "evergreen"), which would prove to be a smart financial decision down the road. Everyone in the office was very excited about this idea.

Except me.

I felt that the studio presence of "Tailgate Overtime," the UF and FSU postgame shows, "College Kickoff," and the pregame specials needed to be reinforced. I pushed hard for a live, one-hour (or half-hour) studio show for Monday nights that would at least remind viewers that we were still here, and hopefully keep them interested until the college football season started again. We could talk about basketball, baseball, whatever -- as long as it was an obvious Sun Sports studio show, and as long as it happened every Monday night. In truth, I fought for this fairly aggressively. And I lost.

Know what? I'm glad I lost. Because the show that now fills that Monday night slot, "In My Own Words," has, in a very short time, become one of the most demanding, rewarding, intriguing projects I've ever been a part of.

I've already shared my experience at Don Shula's house in this space, but it's more than simply access. I've met some unbelievable people while working on this show -- and I mean "unbelievable" literally, as in impossible to believe.

Ever hear LeRoy Butler's story? He grows up in Jacksonville, in a housing project that sees death on a daily basis. LeRoy has club feet, bad. Doctors have to break his legs and reset them while he's a toddler. When he's not confined to a wheelchair, he wears bulky braces on both legs. The only thing that gets him through the day is his infectious sense of humor, which causes the neighborhood to rally around him, to protect him. Everybody loves LeRoy.

So one day, his sister comes running downstairs in his house -- on her way to the prom, according to LeRoy -- and trips in her high heels. She knocks LeRoy over and breaks one of his leg braces. He stands up, mad as hell at his sibling, and stomps his other foot, which breaks his other brace. One of his brothers looks over and screams, "LeRoy! You're standing up!"

At which point, according to the legend, LeRoy looks down at his legs, looks up at his siblings, and barrels out the front door to join a kickball game in the street. He was eight years old, and it was the first time he ever ran anywhere.

The rest is just too preposterous to be true, yet we know it's real. LeRoy Butler gets a scholarship to play football at Florida State. He becomes a consensus All-American defensive back as a senior. He runs the "puntrooskie," one of the most famous plays in the history of college football and, in my opinion, the play that put FSU football on the map for good. Butler gets drafted by the Green Bay Packers, plays all 12 of his NFL seasons there, makes the league's All-Decade Team for the '90s, wins a Super Bowl with Holmgren and Favre and Reggie White, invents the "Lambeau Leap" -- yes, invents it -- retires a hero, starts charitable foundations in both Wisconsin and north Florida, has four daughters, and will be inducted into the Packers Hall of Fame this summer.

That, friends, is a career. That is a life. And I met him last Thursday. As one of our cameramen said after the show, "Brother, the world needs more people like you."

Don Shula's grace. Randy Shannon's intensity. Fred McGriff's humility. Jeremy Foley's energy. These are the memories I will carry long after the show is off the air. Meeting these unique people has been a gift. Of course, it's also been a slog.

McGriff's interview was in Tampa. Shula lives in Miami. Foley met us at the 'F Club' on campus in Gainesville. I live in Orlando. The manager at the local Hertz office knows me by first name. My geographical knowledge of my home state has never been more acute.

The travel, in addition to the intense preparation and planning for these shows, is why the blog has been neglected. However, I'm not bothered by that, because I'm enjoying the interviews too much. It's like a weekly final exam, and I was always a great test-taker. The trick, as we in the Sun Sports studio have discovered, is to avoid the standard five minutes of career recap -- EVERYONE knows why we're interviewing Don Shula, after all -- and instead go directly into left field. Which is why my first question to Shula was "how much weight have you lost?", and an entire segment of the McGriff show is dedicated to breaking down the Tom Emanski videos. McGriff, you may be aware, gave them his full endorsement.

That's the rewarding part of these interviews, coming up with questions that compel the subject to say "that was really fun," as Butler, McGriff, Foley, Shannon, and Shula all did, in one form or another. They say that, we've done our job.

So anyway, I'm keeping one eye on the Magic, who appear to be stumbling like a drunken sailor into the morass that is the NBA's Eastern Conference playoffs, and another eye on the Florida basketball team, which is two wins away from joining Duke as the only college hoop dynasties of my lifetime. I even kept up with the women's NCAA basketball tournament, mostly because of Florida State, which was the most egregiously underreported sports story in the state this month. I'm on it, even if I'm not blogging it as often as I should.

Watch for "In My Own Words," Monday nights on Sun Sports, until college football returns. The shows repeat throughout the week. The stories, as you will see, are unbelievable.