442: The Journey from NFL Athlete to Life After Retirement with Mike Golic Sr.

Casey Weade: Hey, I'm Casey, and this is the Retire With Purpose podcast. I'm really excited to be here with you today because it is my mission to deliver clarity and purpose and elevate meaning in your life. And we have someone here with us that's going to help us accomplish that. If you're new to the show, I want you to know what to expect. We get together with you week in and week out. We talk about financial topics, non-financial topics, all designed to elevate your life in retirement. We get together with you every single Friday in short form, where we discuss trending topics and a lot of those trending topics that come from our Weekend Reading for Retirees email series and I want to make sure you get this invaluable resource. We go out, we sift through blogs, we sift through articles, and we put in your inbox every single Friday four articles that can make a positive impact in your life.

We break them down with summaries and takeaways, but that's not all you're going to receive as a subscriber. We're going to keep you up to date on all of the newest things that are happening here around Howard Bailey and the Retire With Purpose podcast. We're going to be providing you with free webinars. We're going to have free questionnaires, book giveaways, and more. So, get yourself signed up by just simply texting us the key letters 'WR' to 866-482-9559 and I'll be sure to send you a free digital copy of my Wall Street Journal bestselling book, Job Optional, as well. And then throughout the year, we like to bring to you some world-class guests in long form. And that's what we're here to do today with none other than Mike Golic Sr. Mike is a linebacker, was a linebacker for Notre Dame in the early 80s.

He was drafted by the Houston Oilers and played NFL football for nine years from the Oilers to the Philadelphia Eagles to the Miami Dolphins. After retiring from the NFL, Mike was hired at ESPN, and this is where I really became familiar with Mike as he hosted the morning Mike & Mike show from 2000-2017. I remember listening to that in the car even in high school, if I show my age a little bit. My dad always had that show on whenever we were driving around, and he did that show alongside Mike Greenberg, becoming one of ESPN's most recognizable faces. And the pair are widely regarded as one of the most dynamic sports talk duos of all time. And most recently, now if you're watching the show right now, you'd see in the background a little DraftKings logos and a Golic and Gojo plaque behind Mike, where he has teamed up with his son, Mike Jr., to host Gojo and Golic, a morning sports talk show for the DraftKings network.

Today, we're going to talk about a lot of things. We're going to have a wide-ranging discussion. We're going to talk about Mike's past. We're going to talk about his experiences. We're going to talk about life transitions, what it takes to be successful in those life transitions, and how to elevate your purpose and impact and what that has done in Mike's life. I'm really excited to get into this conversation, so let's do it. Mike, welcome to the show.

Mike Golic Sr: I'm glad to be here, Casey. Look forward to it.

Casey Weade: Awesome, Mike. Well, you're not too far away from me right now. I know you're in South Bend, and we're going to get to see you in person real soon at the University of Notre Dame with a lot of our fans and clients, and really excited to do that. You know, prior to this conversation, though, we actually reached out to our Weekend Reading subscriber list and we said, "Hey, do you have any questions? Do you want to help me co-architect this interview I'm about to have with Mike?" And we received a lot of questions, which is really helpful for someone like myself who is not an avid football fan. Love football, not nearly as deeply as it seems our fans do. They know a lot about you and they had a lot of great questions they submitted. So, throughout this conversation, I want to bring those things in, and I want to kick it off with one of those questions.

And I think this is an interesting question, one that I actually haven't asked anyone before, and I said, "Yeah, let's kick it off with Bruce's question here." Bruce said, "I am an Eagles fan, and I've appreciated listening to your commentary over the years. If you were to describe your current self," and I like the way he said that. "If you were to describe your current self in three to five words, what would you say?"

Mike Golic Sr: My current self? I would say, wow, my current self would be more laid back and enjoying being a grandparent. I would say that that's where we are. Listen, we're all in stages of life, right? And I'm 61 years old. I started playing football when I was ten years old and finishing playing football when I was 32, and went right into the broadcasting business, which I'm still in now. But along those ways, you go through high school, college, pros, marriage, kids, and now grandkids. So, my oldest grandson is 21 months and then my youngest granddaughter is six months. I have the two. So, that's probably it right now is that I'm in the early stages of being a grandparent or pappy, as I like to be called, by my grandkids. So, that's really kind of the stage of enjoyment I'm in right now. My wife and I just celebrated our 37th wedding anniversary as well. So, we've been together a long time since meeting the first day at Notre Dame to now to be married 37 years and being grandparents to a couple of kids. So, that's kind of our stage right now.

Casey Weade: We had some great questions around family, being a father, being a grandfather, instilling that wisdom in the next generation. I also want to talk a little bit about marriage as well at this stage in your life. But let's go ahead and jump to that. I think this is a perfect segue because your father was a former marine, I understand, and he instilled a lot in you and your siblings when it came to the importance of hard work and reminding you that cutting corners is never an option, and you often have to make sacrifices to get ahead in life. These are lessons that I know my father instilled in me as well. How did this wisdom impact your life, and how is it impacting the way that you're raising your grandchildren and the way that you raise your children?

Mike Golic Sr: Well, I think it's like the times. Like, now, I don't want to be that old guy on the porch who says, "Get off my lawn," and the old man but it seems like the younger generation today wants everything now. They want the perfect job at 23 and they want all the money at 25, and they want to be that successful at that age. And while it's fine to have that goal, I mean, it's not a magic pill. It takes work. It takes sacrifice. And that's something from my parents' generation through my generation, that's what it was. It was hard work. You want something. Well, no one's going to give it to you. You have to work for it. You have to make sacrifices for it. And the first competitive sport we were in, me and my two brothers, I'm the youngest of three, was swimming, quite honestly. And it was my mom who kind of ran that show before we got into football and baseball and track and field and wrestling, and all the other sports that we did. And it was just instilled in you, you know, hard work.

My parents were very, obviously, pro-academics. Going to Notre Dame, that was one of the big things that they liked is the academic side but even grade school to high school so much my father when my father coached us in football when we were young in grade school and he bought a blocking dummy and he put it in the backyard, and basically, about a half hour before practice, we'd go hit the blocking dummy and then we practice, and then we come home and we'd hit the dummy and work on things for about 15 minutes or a half hour after practice. And he would also say, "Whatever chapter you're on in your work, go back and look at the previous chapter, look at the chapter you're on, and take a peek at the chapter going forward so you know what to expect." He kind of put it into life lessons. And I think that's one of the great things about sports, especially football to me because that's what I played the most.

It's a team sport to teach you a lot about life, a lot about there's not a football player has ever played that hasn't been knocked down and had to get up. There's not a football player who hasn't gotten his butt kicked, his eyes watered, his nose bloodied, something broken literally or figuratively, where you had to overcome that and you have to do that in life. I mean, there are so many life lessons learned, as far as I'm concerned, in team sports or any sport in preparing. And I told my kids that. My kids had goals at an early age. They saw I went to Notre Dame and my wife went to Saint Mary's and their two uncles, my brothers, Bob and Greg, played football at Notre Dame, and that's what they wanted to do. And I said, "Listen, obviously I can't do the work for you, but I can tell you what it takes and I can give you the equipment to work, but you have to put in the work.

You have to sacrifice. You may not be able to hang out with your friends as much as you want or go on here or go out there as much as you want because you got to worry about getting the proper rest and the proper food and training, whether it's in the morning or the middle of the day or at night, what you have to do to get where you want to go." And that's true. Think about it. I played football until I was 32 and I'm 61, so I've almost lived as many years, actually more years starting at 10 to 32, is 22 years of football. And I've been alive for 61. So, you're going to have way more life than sports. So, I use those things I learned in sports just like my kids have to go on to life.

Casey Weade: And I think as someone with young children, I've got a three-year-old, seven-year-old, nine-year-old, and I want to cultivate that. I mean, you, I can only imagine the pressure that your children could feel growing up with a dad that was just such a celebrity in the football world and the pressure that that could create. And while we want our children to be driven, we want to cultivate that drive, we want to cultivate it. We don't want to force the drive.

Mike Golic Sr: Yeah.

Casey Weade: And that can be a delicate balance to create. And we had a question from Fred that I believe really speaks to this. And I find that a lot of the grandparents that I get to spend time with, they struggle with answering this question as well. And that is, what is your strategy and your approach for sharing wisdom with your kids and grandkids? You want to share this wisdom, but you want them to be open to hearing it at the same time and really grasping it and internalizing it.

Mike Golic Sr: What's amazing how, listen, my grandkids aren't really old enough to start that just yet, but I can already tell you're going to definitely treat the grandkids a little different than the kids you coach. Listen, I coached my kids. I played, so I coached, and you coached your kids harder than a lot of times the other kids and sometimes that's good and sometimes that's bad. I think the biggest thing for any parent who's been a coach of their kids is the separation of church and state, right, is when to be a dad or when to be a parent, when to be a coach, and that bring that home all the time and bring it in the car and bring it into the house and be it nonstop. There has to be that separation or for just being a parent because, man, when my kids were young and they were getting ready to start T-ball and youth soccer and all that kind of thing. And I was going to coach them in that.

I coached them in a lot of that stuff until they got to an age where there were better people to coach it than I was. And I remember my father telling me because my father coached us in Little League football, Little League baseball, and all that kind of thing. And I remember him saying, he said, "It's going to be one of the great joys of your life to coach your kids in that." He said, "The biggest obstacle you're going to find is going to be the parents." And he was absolutely right. I mean, the Little League parent to me is a place where we really need a parent to grow up because this is supposed to be about the kids. I would get the team together, whatever I was coaching them in, and I would get all the parents together as well.

And I said, "Listen, your kids are going to learn the two Fs from me, fundamentals and fun, because they're young, they're eight years old, they're seven, they're nine, whatever they are. So, this isn't the World Series and the Super Bowl." I said, "If we win along the way, that's great but they're going to have fun. They're going to play multiple positions. They're going to learn the fundamentals." And I told the parents, I said, "If some of you don't like that and want your kid to be on the winning team, then you may want to take them and go somewhere else but this is what I'm going to teach your children. So, I'm telling you this upfront. If you still have an issue with what I'm doing, come talk to me and we can talk about it. But this is what the plan is. You got to let him have fun. Life's going to get way too serious as you know. As we both get older, life's going to turn into life."

So, youth sports, man, it's still got to be about fun. I know there's a lot riding on a parent want their kid to be the best. They want their kid to get a scholarship. You know, and I understand all that but there's a line you have to be careful of while it's fun and it can lead to some great things, it's not all of life.

Casey Weade: What I take away from that, more than anything, is the separation of dad and coach. I think it's easy to just lean into one over the other. Forget about one over the other. We really have to play both of those roles if we want our children to be successful someday, and we ultimately want them to come back and want to spend time with us at the same time and really enjoy the game, the fun part of that game. You wrote a book, Mike and Mike's Rules for Sports and Life, and you talk here about sports, creating life lessons, and that implies that those life lessons should lead to some degree of success in our lives. And that begs the question, how do we define success? How do you define success, Mike?

Mike Golic Sr: For me, it's a successful marriage and raising kids to be good kids. That, to me, is successful. Listen, all the stuff that I did from the accolades, football or sports, that's all gone. It was gone in the sense of I remember when we moved out of Connecticut and we were cleaning out the house after I finished at ESPN. You know, you don't even realize some of the stuff you save until you're cleaning out. And there were boxes of like high school and college accomplishments that my wife basically just threw in the trash. And for a moment I looked at her. I'm like, "You just throwing all that out?" She said, "It's been sitting in a box. What do you want it for? If you like it, take a picture of it. It'll be on your camera." And I thought she's right. You know, I mean, all that stuff is over. I talk about stages.

Now, for my wife and I, and it was when we had kids. It was like we want to raise our kids the best we possibly can and try and give them a good life, teach them what we think should be taught just like our parents did about hard work and dedication, how to treat people. Two of my kids are married, been married for a while. My third one, Mike, hopefully, someday. My wife keeps trying to say, "Mike, when you get married, you know?" But to me, that defines success. And again, it's in stages. When I was ten, I wanted to win the swim meet I was in. When I was in high school. I wanted to be the wrestling state champion and win a state championship. In college, I wanted to win a national championship. In the pros, I wanted to be an all-pro in the Super Bowl. Right? But then stages change. Coming to the latter part of my career, we started having children and your priorities changed. And as they get older, they change even more.

And for us, defining success is all about our kids, having a healthy relationship between my wife and I, which we have but then it's all about making sure the kids have the tools that they need to be successful and then teaching them the proper way to work with those tools to get where you want to be.

Casey Weade: Yeah. And you talk a lot about what you did not being important. However, what you did did teach you a lot of lessons that you're going to be able to pass on to those children, those grandchildren. And I want to talk a little bit about that history and some of these transitions that you went through, some of those experiences that you had specifically during your NFL career. And I want to start with the Oilers. And when you first got the call from the Oilers and they told you you were being drafted in 1985, what was that moment like for you?

Mike Golic Sr: Well, it was a weird moment because so my junior year, I was like an honorable mention All-American, looking forward to my senior year. The projections had me, you know, maybe in the second round of the draft and I got hurt the first game my senior year. And I played the rest of the year. I probably should have redshirted, but I didn't and I couldn't do anything at the combine when I went there because I had my shoulder operated on and I'm going into the 10th round. So, it's interesting. When you think it's going to be something different starting a season then in a matter of one play, it all changes. And with that, your perspective changes. And now like when I talked about either figuratively or literally getting knocked down, that was a knockdown. If I kept playing the way I was going to protect you was near the top of the draft, and now I get knocked down literally and figuratively and I had to get up.

And now it's, okay, now you're getting drafted in the 10th round of a 12-round draft. For you youngsters out there, the draft actually used to be 12 rounds. It actually used to be 18 rounds. And now it's seven, but 12 draft in the 10th round. So, now you have to, you know, how do you handle that? So, now I'm a 10th-rounder and the expectation isn't to make a team. It's you really got to fight to make it. So, your perspective on how you look at things changes. And so, how do you react to it? Do you dig in and work harder or do you feel sorry for yourself and blame somebody else? Or do you take ownership, pull yourself up, pull your pants up, put your shoes on, and get to work and do what you have to do? And even if you do all that, it still might not work but you have to give yourself the best chance to do it. And that was one of the first times that I was in a position where things didn't go how I thought they might go, and I had to kind of really pull myself up by my bootstraps.

Casey Weade: Well, you've done that a few times throughout your career. Things didn't quite go exactly the way you thought they were going to go. And I want to get into some of those different things that happened but I also want to ask about something that you wrote in Mike and Mike's Rules for Sports and Life about people saying that pro athletes, "Ah, they don't have a job." They don't have a job. They're just playing a game. They're having fun. You said something really interesting. You said you play the game all your life. What's that mean to you?

Mike Golic Sr: That I play...

Casey Weade: And maybe that's something that helps you get up through these transitions and these hard times.

Mike Golic Sr: Well, yeah, I mean it's how you look at everything. Right, it is a game. To the people watching, it is a game. They take time out of their life to turn on a TV for three hours or go to a stadium for three hours and escape what their life is, good or bad. Doesn't matter. That's a way for them to be entertained by a game. So, yes, I am playing a game but the game happens to be my job. The game happens to be what's paying my bills. What's paying your bills, you do. What's paying somebody else's bills, what they do. What pays my bills was football. And there is a transition. Listen, the last the most pure time I played football was in high school where the only question you had was where were you going after the game? Right? Who are you going to go hang out with? Where was the party? Football was while it was serious, it was just that. It was kind of an extracurricular activity, right? That's what it was considered. In college, especially a big-time college at Notre Dame, it becomes more of a business.

Now, you still have academics to go through and stuff, but there's more on it. And then in the NFL, now you're a professional. This is now what you do for a living. But I always came at it is I still get to play a game. While it's my job and I get paid for it and it helps my family a lot, I still treat it like this is still a game to me because the realness for me is now going to be life. Again, once I started having kids is, now what am I doing? I only played me and my first son, Mike was born in '89. I retired in '94. So, my first two were, and Jake was born in '90. So, they're four and three basically when I retired. Sidney wasn't born yet. So, now I'm just, you know, I quickly went into the next phase after playing of being a parent. But, yeah, to me, it is a game but it is now something that it is now my job. I would see a fan when I was playing in Philly and we'd lose on a Sunday.

It's Wednesday or Thursday and I might be in the grocery store shopping and a fan would come up to me and say, "How can you be out shopping? Shouldn't you be working on the playbook?" I'm like, I said, "What are your job hours? Are they 9 to 5?" I said, "I don't work 24 hours a day." I said, "You get to go to a game Sunday and if we win or lose, you get to wait until next Sunday for the next game." I said, "I got to forget that game we just lost and prepare for the next one but it's not 24/7 just like your job isn't 24/7. Your job isn't 24/7, neither is mine." I do it well enough to prepare to think I'm prepared enough to play, you know? And then I spend time with my family. That's probably one of the biggest misconceptions of a pro athlete by somebody who's not into the sports or being a pro athlete is the belief that we spend all our time doing that. And it does take up a big chunk. Listen, during a football season, I spend more time with my teammates and coaches than I do with my family, but it still isn't 24/7 all-consuming.

Casey Weade: And I think it's easy to look at somebody like you who get to play football and then get to play football, got to play football, got to do all these things that it seems from the outside in, you're always living your dream. You're always doing all the things that you wanted to do. And is that true that you're always having fun in whatever job you found yourself in?

Mike Golic Sr: Well, I mean, that's something again I got from my parents is you have to find a way to enjoy what you're doing. Listen, not everybody has the perfect job that they want. But if that's the job you're in, the best thing to do is make the best of it. Now, I've been extremely fortunate to get to play football for as long as I did and then to go into broadcasting the way I was able to. And that wasn't the plan. Notre Dame didn't have a communications degree or broadcasting. They do now. It's called film, theater, and television. My son, Mike, and my daughter, Sydney, both are majors in that. I was a business and finance major. They didn't have that. So, I didn't know I was getting into broadcasting until I actually started doing some things with ESPN while I was still playing in the off-season. And then when I retired, they called me.

They said, "Hey, do you want to call games?" I never call games. I never thought about going into the media at all. But I thought, "Yeah, sure. Why not? I can do this." And one of the things my dad taught me and my parents, I should say, is if somebody asks you to do something, tell them you can do it, right? Say, "Oh, yeah, I could do it," and then figure out a way to do it. Don't say, "No, I don't think I could do it." When I got I got cut by the Oilers on a Tuesday in '87 and picked up by the Eagles on a Thursday. So, I got there on a Thursday and really started my first practice with them was on a Friday. And I think we're playing the Cardinals on that Sunday. So, Friday there's really no padded practice. I just gotten the defensive playbook. I barely had gotten my feet wet. And Sunday rolls around and I'm dressed but I'm not playing. And we had a horrible first half. Horrible. Buddy Ryan is going nuts in the locker room and he's pissed at all the starters.

And he looks at me and said, "Go like you're going in. You're ready to play?" And I'm like, "Yep, got it all. No problem." And I didn't know 75% of the plays yet or the defensive calls but I said, "Yep," and I thought to myself, my dad came ringing in my head, "Figure it out. Get out there and figure it out." And that's what I did. So, I do kind of live by that the first time I got into radio and I had to cover other sports and cover the middle rotation of a baseball team and the third line of a hockey team. I was like, "Figure it out. Find a way to figure it out." You know, I played pro sports, so I called people who would take my call who were in other sports and ask them questions. I did the legwork that was needed to be done. Figure it out. Don't just say, "I don't think I'll like that or I can't do it." If that's going to be part of your job description, you damn well better figure out a way to do it and learn it.

Casey Weade: Yeah. And you had to figure it out quite a bit, especially towards the end of your career. Miami Dolphins ended in '94 quite abruptly as it appears after that injury, not an injury, signed a document, and now you're gone. Did that feel a bit like a betrayal? I could see how that could feel a bit wronged and that could lead somebody down a negative path. But it didn't for you.

Mike Golic Sr: It can but see it's all how you take things, right? And it's the one thing now it was a do as I say, not as I do. The one thing in pro sports or even in a lot of things in the professional world out there is don't take things too personally. And it's so much easier said than done, right? You're in a business and you have to think of it as a player. I'm trying to get the best deal for me. As a team, they're trying to get the best deal for them. I was a free agent in Philadelphia and they basically said, "Go find an offer from somebody else," and I did. I got an offer from Miami, and Philly was like, "Oh, we're not going to pay you that much because you do so much off the field. You can make up the money there." And I got ticked off. I said, "That's not right. You pay me for what I do on the field." And I took it personally and I went to Miami. I didn't want to leave Philly. I took it personally and that was bad on my part. Believe me, as I'm saying all this stuff, I made plenty of mistakes along the way.

So, I go to Miami and the first game of the season, I caught a shot to the side of the knee and tore some cartilage in there. So, I ended up taking the needle basically for the rest of the season because I didn't want to sit out. I wanted to play. So, I played and I got it operated on after the season. And I was trying to come back, trying to come back. And the first time you really back then that you get together is for a ride around a mini camp in May. And I had surgery in January. So, I went there and I was in the doctor's office at the facility and he was checking my knee out and he said, "How's it feel?" I said, "You know, it still hurts some." I said, "But I want to practice in minicamp. I want to see how it feels. I want to go out there." Again, I always had that 10th-round mentality that I have to prove myself to you at all times. So, even though my knee was still hurt, I said, "I'm going to practice to show you that I can practice and I can still go get it done."

And they said, "Okay. So, you want to practice. So, you got to sign this piece of paper that says you're good to go." I signed the piece of paper that said I'm good to go and it was, yeah, it was something. Literally, opened the door and there was someone standing right there that said, "The GM wants to see you." And I just thought, "Oh my God, I just signed my release." It hit me that quick of what happened. So, I'm like, "Okay. So, what do I do? How do I, you know? What do I turn this into?" So, the first thing I did was as I walked into the GM's office, as he was walking around the desk to sit down, I saw a list on the desk of players to be cut, and I saw some of the other names. So, I knew I was being cut. He cut me. I went into Don Shula's office, told me blah, blah, blah. At that point, I didn't have that on mind. I was already spinning for what's the next thing I'm going to play for and I want to get back to the locker room.

So, I said, "Yeah, yeah, whatever, whatever. Okay. Thanks for the whatever." Went in the locker room and found those guys on the list. I said, "A, you're on the cut list. B, if you have an injury, don't sign a piece of paper like I just did where I got cut. So, if you're in an injury situation, stay injured where they have to keep paying you." And then I left the facility and that was it. You know, ran for a couple of teams the next year, still wanted to play. But it's interesting because people will ask, "When did you retire?" And it's a fair question for probably 5% to 10% of the league. For the other 90% of the league, the question is, when did the league retire you? Because that's what happens to guys mostly like me, I was an average to above-average player at best, is teams just don't call anymore, right? So, then you're retired because nobody wants you.

So, I retired and ESPN gave me a chance. But I guess the best thing I can say, the best part of my upbringing was learning the value of hard work but also understanding what's written on the wall. Okay. Don't try and pretend it's not there. My career is over. I have to go to another career now so I have to throw everything into that career. I can't sit here and play, "The woe is me," and blame someone else. It's over. End of story. Move on. What's next? What do I have to do to get to the next level?

Casey Weade: Well, You say that most individuals that are playing professional sports, they are not retiring. They're forced into retirement. And that's the same thing the majority of retirees go through, but they don't see it that way. The majority of retirees, more than half, will be forced into retirement. They all think they're going to retire on their own accord, but the statistics say otherwise. And that leads many down a pretty difficult path where there's struggles with identity, struggles with purpose and meaning. Did you face any of those struggles? Or was it just on to the next thing?

Mike Golic Sr: So, there's a couple of things there. There's the personal, how you feel, there's the financial part of it. I didn't make a ton of money playing football. Again, I was a 10th-round draft pick. My first salary as a rookie was $62,000. I didn't make over $100,000 until my fourth year, so I didn't make a lot of money playing football. I made just about all my money at ESPN. But there's certainly the, "Okay. If this is over," there's the financial aspect of I retired in '94, my wife's pregnant with my third kid, and I have two kids, four and three. What the hell is going to happen now from a financial standpoint to take care of my family? And then there is the personal side. I've been doing that since eight years old. I have been preparing to play football, and now at 32 years old, I was done. So, what am I going to do? The toughest thing, I'm looking at it from a professional athlete's side of it now, and I would imagine this is for anybody who gets up and has their daily routine of going to work, and now that's over.

What are you filling your time with? For me, as an athlete, it was what was I going to next? I signed with ESPN right away, so I immediately had college games to call, and I went to Arizona to do morning radio. I mean, I'm sitting there in my house in Orlando, after I got cut from Miami with a house in Orlando, which obviously we're paying on, and I got an offer from ESPN to do college games, but it was for barely any money. And then an offer to go do morning radio in Arizona for $52,000, less than I was making in my rookie year, and this is ten years later. And my wife's like, "We have to go. We have to go to Arizona. If you're going to start in this business, get started. Get a track record, get on tape, get things going." you know, to do. I mean, that's another thing that we haven't even gotten to, the backbone of a family, which was clearly my wife and the support there.

So, we moved on $52,000, had a house we're paying for in Orlando. As we're trying to sell it, we had to get another place in Arizona. Now I have three kids just starting into this business. So, you find a way, right? You do the work as best you can to, hopefully, you grow from there. But for me, the best thing about when I retired was I had something to do right away to fill my time. And I can speak about athletes when you don't, when all of a sudden off-season you're not working out anymore. Minicamp, you don't have a minicamp to go to anymore. Training camp, you're not going to training camp anymore. And you don't have something filling your time, you're just sitting there going, "I could still be doing that. I should still be doing that." Then you start to woe is me, "Why am I not doing that anymore? What happened? I should still be out there. Maybe I can still do that," if you're not doing anything else with your time.

So, one of the biggest things I tell players now, outside of be smart with your money and financial security because the money is way different today is make all your connections while you're playing. I would say the same in any line of work, anytime you can meet somebody or that can take you somewhere after. So, for an athlete, people love you when you're an athlete. But let me tell you what, once you retire, they don't love you as much anymore. But if you make those connections and relationships while you're playing, that can carry you when you're done playing. But that was, That's the biggest thing for an athlete is, how do you fill that time? Forgetting the you're getting cheered by 80,000 people every Sunday. Where do you get that rush again from?

But for me, in all honesty, I had no problem putting that aside. When I was done with football, every competitive juice in my body was gone. I had done enough. I had been competing since I was eight, six from swimming, eight from football. I'm cool. I got three kids, man. I'm going into that. I'm raising them. I'm not looking for basketball leagues or any kind of flag football leagues to show that I can still compete. I didn't care about any of that. Now, the whole focus was, "Okay, what's my next line of work? How do I get into that? How do I become as great as I can be at that? And how do I keep my family financially secure?"

Casey Weade: You know, I think for people that are professional athletes, people that are entrepreneurs, people that are those that have a big drive, they tend to be highly disciplined. If you're in a career that required a lot of discipline, that meant that you followed a pretty strict routine. Simultaneously, you spent 20 years on the Mike & Mike Show, almost. And then all of a sudden, that routine of getting up early, being on that show, and doing that same thing every day, it's gone. And how do you fill that? What is it to you when it comes to routine, the importance of routine and maintaining routine through all of these transitions, and the loss of that routine? What did that feel like and how did you recreate that?

Mike Golic Sr: That's tough. It is. I mean, as a football player, I always say you live an itinerary life. Somebody hand you an itinerary, tells you where to be, when to be, what to wear, the whole deal. So, now then I go into broadcasting and actually, it didn't start with Greeny. It started with Tony Bruno first and then it went to Greeny. And then it went to me and Trey Wingo and my son, Mike. So, from 1998 to 2021, I have been getting up at 4:15 every morning in that schedule of getting up. So, yeah, when that's over, all of a sudden, you're not doing it anymore. It's wild. I woke up at 4:15 for more than a few months just because I'd been doing it for a couple of decades until you kind of get out of that. But then there's the thought process of, "Okay. Are you retiring from work or are you looking for the next thing?"

Because as I was looking for the next thing, people are always like, "Well, how do you feel about you leaving ESPN?" And it was another one. I didn't get to retire the way I wanted to on the NFL and I certainly didn't get to leave ESPN the way I wanted to leave ESPN. But so what? That's the way it goes. Deal with it, right? So, what's next? And people say, "Well, did you think about that?" I said, "Listen, when I was with the Houston Oilers and I got cut by them and I went to the Philadelphia Eagles, you know what I didn't do? I didn't think about the Houston Oilers anymore. And then when I left Philadelphia, I went to Miami, you know what I didn't do? I didn't think about Philadelphia anymore. I was on to my next team, on to my next challenge, on to my next adventure." So, I defined what that was going to be. Called college games, called pro games. I did some radio here and there, trying to find out I had a lot of really nice people giving me offers of things to do.

And at that point, I wanted to try and figure out what I wanted to do. I never thought I'd go back to a daily show again because it certainly was a grind. But then I had the opportunity to work with my son, Mike, and Trey Wingo for the last three years at ESPN for the morning show, and then had the offer with DraftKings to work with Mike again, my son, Mike, in the morning show, and I'm not passing that up. I mean, you don't pass that up to be able to work with one of your kids. So, I started doing that. I call NFL games, still the Sunday night game for the national radio rights holder in Westwood One. And that's cool. I enjoy doing this. I figure I got a few more years in this until maybe I downsize it even more and maybe just calling games in another few years. I don't know. We'll see. But all I know when I left ESPN in '21, even my wife said, "You're too young to all of a sudden not do anything." So, I'm still in it. I still enjoy it. I still love talking about sports. And like I said, I get to do it with my kid now, so it's pretty cool.

Casey Weade: Yeah. Well, I think there's a couple of themes that I hear that have kind of happened throughout all these transitions for you. And the biggest of all of those being saying yes. And one thing that one of our past podcast guest, Dean Niewolny, talks about is low-cost probes. You just keep signing up. You try something else. You try the next thing. And if an opportunity comes your way, you say yes, knowing that you don't have to do it forever. But you always say yes. And you keep trying new things. And I know one of the important things for you that you've always talked about that's cultivated a lot of your well-being, as it seems, is something you talk about is camaraderie and the sense of camaraderie that you had being on a team and even being at ESPN. How do you cultivate that camaraderie once you leave a team? How do you recreate that in the next phase of life?

Mike Golic Sr: It can be difficult because now you're working with people that have never been on a team, right? So, obviously, I'm playing sports and playing team sports. So, you're around people that have kind of that same attitude. You get knocked down, they help you up. They get knocked down, you help them up, you know, rely on the guy next to you. I had a guy come on my show. The younger generation will not know him but you can look him up. He is one of the greatest offensive linemen to play the game. His name is John Hannah. He was an offensive guard for the New England Patriots. Big, strong, again, one of the best ever. He's in the Hall of Fame. He has a gold jacket, so that signifies he is one of the best to ever play the game. We had him on the show one time when I was at ESPN and I said, "You know, how big and strong you are. You ever scared or ever worried out on the field?"

He said, "Oh yeah." He said, "Yeah, I would be scared and worried on the field." I'm like, "Why? What could you, you know, one of the greats to ever play be scared or worried about on the field? He said, "Of letting down my teammate." He said, "That was my number one fear. I don't want to let down any of my teammates." And I thought, "Wow." I mean that to me and that's kind of how I had been raised but to hear someone who was one of the greatest to ever do it at his position say that was his biggest fear on the football field was letting down his teammates. So, you're used to that and you can find somebody, you can always tell somebody on your team if they're not in it for the team, if they're there for themselves. But then you go out into the world into a different job and you find out there's more than a few people out there that don't have a team concept at all, and you have to find a way to work with them.

And I've never been afraid to speak my mind, so I will try and encourage them to be more of a team player. But you can't just snap your fingers and somebody becomes one. So, like anything else, you have to adapt. You have to adapt to the different people that you work with. You have to adapt to your situation. There is zero perfect situations anywhere, job, life, anything. There's nothing that's going to be perfect. So, how do you adapt to it to still make the best of it?

Casey Weade: Right. Talking about teammates and the importance of having a teammate that really has your back, I'm sure you'd say your best teammate was your spouse. Your best teammate was your wife. You talk about her being that backbone. And unfortunately, today, the only segment of the population where we see increasing divorce rates are those over 65, tends to be those that have stepped into retirement. What would you say to that spouse that wants to be that backbone, that wants to be that supportive spouse? What is your guidance and advice to ensure that when you step in through these different phases, these transitions, these retirements, that it's still solid and you're really growing and helping each other?

Mike Golic Sr: Well, I mean, there's a couple of things. One phase can lead to the next phase. But how you did in the phase before can certainly dictate what's going to happen in this phase. My wife and I have been in, you know, in sync on everything we've wanted to do. Again, we met literally the first day of school. We didn't start dating until senior year, but we were friends. And then we got married my third year into the league and we have always been in sync. Listen, everybody has issues that they deal with, but we always lived by the never go to bed angry and we didn't. But you have your share of fights but you know another phase is coming. I mean we know everybody, well, I wasn't playing football forever, so it's not like I had a job that I could have for 50 years until retirement. Right? My job was going to change.

So, what was our relationship like when it changed? Well, she ran the show and she had always been, "I'm going to take care of the house and the kids if you have to go out and look for something." Now, I was very fortunate in the fact that my two decades at ESPN led me to a morning show, which led me to have time at my kid's school to be the lunch dad and to coach my kids at the end of the day in some of their sports. So, I was very fortunate and I completely understand that a lot of people aren't as fortunate as that and can't be around for lunch at their kids' grade school or coach their kids and stuff because they have to work. So, I get that. But I think from what at least I read anyway, is the biggest issue for people that go into retirement or there's a couple. It's when all the kids leave the house and all of a sudden everything you did was for the kids, and now the kids are gone and you're empty nesters.

And then it's like, okay, it's just you and your spouse. What do you have? Oh, I think a lot of that is what did you have leading up to that, right? I mean, and if people need work on that then, by all means, get work on that. But if you have something that just continues, okay, the next phase has all the kids living out of the house now. We just continue on, right? We just keep going as we're going. And then you get into retirement when you truly now are done working, whether it's one person or both people, when you're done working, now you're literally sitting there together all the time unless you have other things to do. Listen, I can't tell other people how to live their lives and what they do in that situation. That's between you and your spouse. Do you need hobbies together? Do you need... I don't know. It would be wrong for me to try and get into somebody else's life to tell them what to do.

All I can say is, for me, one role led to them not to say there weren't some dip like, "Oh wow, okay, we have no kids to worry about anymore," or, "Okay, you're done at ESPN. Are you done for good? We're going to find something else doing some things we never had to do before," but we had always done everything together with the same mind, with the same purpose, would have conversations about what we were going to do. So, nothing ever really caught us off guard or if it did, we were always able to work together to go to the next phase. It's been one of the greatest things about her. You know, like I said, 37 years of marriage, we love each other as much as we ever have and we're best friends. And I think that's such a huge part of it as well that our best friends we're just kind of in sync on everything to go to the next step.

Casey Weade: You mentioned that word 'purpose' and you're on the Retire With Purpose podcast so we have to talk a little bit about that specific word. What does purpose mean to you or how would you define purpose in life?

Mike Golic Sr: Well, I mean, it can be a few things. You can have a few purposes, right? What is it? Is it for you individually? Is it for you with your spouse? Is it for you with your family? To me, if I had to lay an overlying purpose, it's still to make sure as the family is growing that everybody is good. Okay. That is my wife and I's goal. Whether it's with Mike, Jake, Sydney, Jake's wife Jenny, Sydney's husband, Ben, their daughter Alex, my son Jake and Jenny's son, Jaxon. I mean, the parts keep growing, right? There's more and more. So, for my wife and I, our purpose is to make sure that the other thing we want to do is make sure the family stays close. We talk every day with all the kids. We're on FaceTime with the grandkids all the time is I just hate seeing families that grow apart.

So, if you want to nail me down to one purpose, it's this family staying a cohesive unit. We're a very cohesive unit, and we want it to stay that way as it gets larger and as it gets more difficult for everybody to get together because they all have their own lives. It becomes harder and harder to do but our purpose is to make sure that we keep it that way.

Casey Weade: You know, a lot of the people that are listening, they're thinking not just about purpose, but they're thinking about legacy as well. Do you differentiate between purpose and legacy?

Mike Golic Sr: Oh, sure. Legacy is how I lived and what you pass on to your kids on how you want to see them grow up, right? Purpose is what you're doing now. What's my purpose now? As I said, to keep our family tight and close. Legacy is this is how I lived. Was it a good enough way for my kids to follow some of the things that I did, just like I did with some of the things my parents did? Nobody's a perfect parent. My kids just say I'm not going to look at my parents and say everything they did was perfect, and my kids aren't going to look at me and say everything I did was perfect. But you hope the legacy, they could take some of the nuggets to where you go through the phase of, "Oh my God, dad's so dumb. Dad doesn't know what he's talking about," to, "You know what? Dad had some pretty good insight on this or maybe on that." And that would make me happy. And every now and then I'll catch him saying something that I said and I say "See, you're turning into me." You mock dad.

Casey Weade: They love that.

Mike Golic Sr: And now you're turning into me. So, yeah, I do separate legacy and purpose a bit.

Casey Weade: Yeah. Now, I'm going to wrap it up with a fun question here. If you had the opportunity to put up a billboard on the busiest highway in the country, what would be on that billboard?

Mike Golic Sr: Oh my gosh. What would be on that billboard? You know, I guess, we talk about stages in life. And one of the things we're doing now, and probably because you're catching me right at this time, is we are very big into our Golic Family Foundation here in South Bend. You know, we have a house in South Bend because we love South Bend. Both my brothers went to Notre Dame. I went to Notre Dame. My wife went to Saint Mary's, which is connected to Notre Dame. Her sister went to Saint Mary's as well. My three kids went to Notre Dame. My niece is about ready to go to Saint Mary's. So, this has been a home for us from 1975, when my brother, Bob, first went there to now, and we loved Notre Dame. And along with Notre Dame comes the South Bend area. And one of the things that we wanted to do, because all the kids love coming back to school here and hanging out at this house, is we wanted to start a foundation that was everything South Bend.

So, we have a golf tournament on the golf course at Notre Dame. Big party. You know, a lot of people have golf tournaments, but we wanted to raise a lot of money. It's important to us to help the different foundations in the South Bend area, smaller ones even, where 5,000 is going to help them. You know, and we'll give out as much to 25,000 to some, 5,000 to others, but we'll spread it around. That's the one thing we wanted to do. It wasn't going to be just a one organization. And I think we've only had the tournament up for two years, and we've helped over 18 different organizations averaging about $13,000 per organization. So, that's something right now that is very and all the kids are involved. We have someone who helps plan the whole weekend but we're all in on the planning as well.

So, you caught me at a time where my billboard would probably have something, say something about the goal of a family foundation to help this area, because all my kids, they're all doing well. Everybody is doing fine. Their lives are going pretty well. And we know there's a lot of people out there that need the help. So, it's nice. It's another way that our family stays connected by doing this as well. So, that would probably be the billboard so we could even try and help more people in the area here.

Casey Weade: I see “Help others make an impact with the Golic Family Foundation.”

Mike Golic Sr: Yeah, that sounds good. All right. There you go. You're going to be my billboard writer.

Casey Weade: All right. We're going to find it. We're gonna find it. Mike, thanks so much for joining us today. This was a fantastic time and can't wait to see you in person in a couple of months.

Mike Golic Sr: My pleasure. Thanks.