Brooks Bollinger
Episode 249
6 NOV 2023
He was chosen by the New York Jets in the sixth round of the 2003 NFL Draft and spent time with four different organizations between then and 2009, to also include the Minnesota Vikings, Dallas Cowboys, and Detroit Lions. He went on to play for the United Football League’s Florida Tuskers, leading them to a perfect regular season won-lost record and to the championship game and was named season MVP and came back to start for the Tuskers the next season. He went on to two high school football coaching jobs and was the quarterbacks coach at the University of Pittsburgh. Back in his days as a student-athlete he was a four-year starting quarterback on a football scholarship to the University of Wisconsin, and in 2017 he was inducted into the University of Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame. Listen for a powerful story in the second half of the show when he describes a professional opportunity and the sacrifice he made for family reasons.
Notable guest quotes:
“I was born Catholic, baptized, and then I attended St. Michael’s Catholic School… that was K-6.”
“The first NFL game I ever went to, I was wearing a uniform.”
“I grew up being Catholic because I was born Catholic and I certainly, being the first born, wanted to do the right thing and enjoyed kind of learning about the faith and doing all the right things.”
“I prayed more probably to help me be a good teammate and help me play well enough to help my teammates be successful and for us to be successful.”
(In college) “My faith, I knew it was important to me, I knew what my values were, I think my values did help guide me.”
(In college) “I was also really lucky, we had a team priest in Madison, Monsignor Mike Burke, who was an amazing man that was kind of the rock for me.”
“There was a ton of failures and they hurt at the time, but as I look back, I think those are the things that’ve helped shape who I am today as much as anything.”
(regarding any spiritual direction during his pro career) “For me was kind of a mish mash of people, based on the different stops that I had, whether that be teammates or priests that were involved with the team or outside the team.”
“I think there’s so many great things that sports teach us and it’s such a great environment to learn about yourself and how you react under pressure and how you react in these moments and how you build trust with people and how to be selfless.”
“I grew up in what I call the Norman Rockwell era of college football. My dad and his staff, they coached to use football as a vehicle to shape young men. In my mind, that’s the only reason anybody coaches… I never coached to show how smart I was. I didn’t coach to show that I could out scheme other people. I coached to use that as a vehicle to shape young men’s lives.”
“Matt (Birk) sends a text out to, I don’t know, twelve or fifteen people, and said, ‘Hey, I feel like I need something right now. I’m going to do this Exodus 90, who’s in?’ And I didn’t even look at the thing, I just said, ‘I’m in. Like, I’m hungry for whatever you’re doing’.”
Related link:
Brooks Bollinger career stats from Pro Football Reference
