Sept. 2, 2025

Curtis Conway — Lessons from South Central to the NFL (Part 1) [Best Of]

Curtis Conway — Lessons from South Central to the NFL (Part 1) [Best Of]
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What does it take to grow up in South Central Los Angeles, avoid the pitfalls of gang life, and rise to a 12-year NFL career? In this best-of edition of No Wrong Choices, we revisit our conversation with Curtis Conway — former wide receiver for the Bears, Chargers, Jets, and 49ers, and later a broadcaster with the NFL and Pac-12 Networks.

But this isn’t just a football story. In Part One, Curtis offers a deep and honest look at growing up in South Central at a time of intense violence and uncertainty — and how he found ways to learn from that environment rather than be consumed by it. He explains how the lessons of the street — toughness, leadership, resilience — became the foundation for his career and his life.

From his first love of basketball to his unexpected transition from quarterback to wide receiver at USC, Curtis’s story is about far more than the game. It’s about mentality, perseverance, and finding what you truly love — even when the odds are stacked against you.

👉 Want more? Part Two of our conversation with Curtis Conway is available right now wherever you’re listening, or on our website at NoWrongChoices.com.


To discover more episodes or connect with us:



00:00 - Introduction to Curtis Conway

02:15 - Family First After Football Career

03:45 - Childhood Sports and Street Football

09:32 - Growing Up in South Central LA

18:03 - From Quarterback to Wide Receiver

30:05 - The Inner Drive That Defines Success

47:30 - How Champions Handle Losing

WEBVTT

00:00:02.866 --> 00:00:06.554
Hello and welcome to a best of edition of no Wrong Choices.

00:00:06.554 --> 00:00:20.972
With the NFL season kicking off this week, we thought it was the perfect time to revisit our conversation with Curtis Conway, a wide receiver who spent 12 years in the league with the Bears, chargers, jets and 49ers before moving into broadcasting.

00:00:20.972 --> 00:00:26.032
I'm Larry Samuels, soon to be joined by Tushar Saxena and Larry Shea.

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In the first part of this two-part series, you'll hear how Curtis's upbringing and inner drive shaped his career.

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Tushar will ask the first question after my brief lead-in.

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Let's get started.

00:00:36.993 --> 00:00:39.145
Curtis, thank you so much for joining us.

00:00:39.485 --> 00:00:40.570
Thanks for having me, guys.

00:00:40.960 --> 00:00:44.384
So, curtis, I'm going to ask you know you spent so much time in the league, right you're?

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You had 3 000 yard seasons.

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You were considered one of the one of the toughest guys in the league.

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What is curtis conway doing now?

00:00:52.503 --> 00:01:01.432
Man, uh, right now, today, or just postseason, after I retire well, I mean, we could probably go with today if you'd like, but post career, we'll go with post career

00:01:02.981 --> 00:01:07.284
If somebody were to meet Curtis Conway for the first time, what would you tell them?

00:01:07.284 --> 00:01:08.707
or who would you tell them?

00:01:08.707 --> 00:01:09.409
You are.

00:01:09.939 --> 00:01:12.563
I'm a little bit of everything you know at this age.

00:01:12.563 --> 00:01:19.588
I'm a dad, I'm a coach I mean you name it businessman so many different hats that I put on.

00:01:19.588 --> 00:01:36.204
It's just a matter of what day and time I'm in, but for the most part I would say, um, I've kind of dedicated myself to uh just being a husband and a father until, uh, until my kids are out of school.

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You know, I was broadcasting and I really enjoyed that.

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But, um, me and my wife, who's really busy, uh, before we had kids, we sat down and talked and we said, you know, we're both going in our second careers Once we have kids.

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We don't want to, you know, do the nanny and babysitting thing all the time.

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So somebody is going to have to, you know, shut it down.

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To be quite frank, I didn't think it was going to be me.

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I'm like oh, I'm going to have kids, you know I'm going to be me.

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I'm like, oh, I'm going to have kids, you know I'm going to be right here in my broadcasting career or coaching or doing something, so the wife is going to be the one staying home.

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But it didn't turn out that way.

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But I enjoy it.

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You know, I enjoy being a father and being able to help my wife with.

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You know a lot of the things that she's doing.

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I feel like God blessed me with what I really wanted to do in life, and that's play football and be able to give back to my community, and I was able to do that at such a young age to where I feel like now I can enjoy the fruits of my labor.

00:02:37.841 --> 00:02:42.830
We love that answer and, by the way, his wife is a household name, layla Ali.

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Let's put that right there on the table.

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But we love that answer that you're a family guy and that comes first.

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Let's bring you all the way back to the beginning, though, because we want to start your journey from the beginning and make it linear.

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So we know you were an athlete as a kid, but from just reading your bio, reading about you, learning about who you are, you were more of a track guy, were you not, than a football player.

00:03:06.471 --> 00:03:08.272
No, they get that wrong all the time.

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They think because guys are fast at football, track was the thing.

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I didn't start running track until I was in high school, so I'd already had five years of Pop Warner football up under my belt before I put on spikes.

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So you started as a football player.

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When did you get into sports as a kid, when did it start to have meaning to you?

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Take us through that progression.

00:03:30.599 --> 00:03:39.187
Well, since I was a kid I'm talking like six, seven, eight sports was always important because that's what we did as kids.

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Saturday morning, elementary school, when recess, we played basketball, we play kickball, we play football.

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So sports was always important.

00:03:53.284 --> 00:03:58.338
We always looked forward to doing something sports oriented as kids and of course you know, once you start playing organized sports.

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As a kid I played Pop Warner football for Inglewood Pop Warner, starting at nine years old, and it was so fun.

00:04:08.709 --> 00:04:15.893
My mom didn't want me to play but I bugged her enough to where she couldn't deny me from playing.

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And then, once I got out there and she saw what I was able to do my first year, the rest was history and I don't think the coaches wouldn't allow me to stop playing.

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If my mom would have tried to.

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They made sure.

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I was-.

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What happened in that?

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first year.

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What did you do?

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Well, I was really good.

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I will say that my mom, of course, never saw me play football.

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Of course I'm just playing in the street with all the kids and all the older kids.

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But I was always fast.

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So the older kids would always pick me and we would play in the street and we had this rule called sideline tackle, which meant it was a little strip of grass by the curve and if you're on that sideline you got tackled onto that grass from the street.

00:05:02.180 --> 00:05:07.519
Well, I was probably the smallest kid but I would get picked all the time because I was pretty athletic and I was fast.

00:05:07.519 --> 00:05:12.531
So the bigger boys, you know, they used to punish me pretty good on the sideline.

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But it made me tough mentally, physically to.

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When I got to play with kids my age in my mind and this went throughout high school and even throughout college my mindset was always these guys that I'm playing with is my age or either three or four years older than me.

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So my confidence level was so high because of what I experienced playing in the street with the teenagers as a kid.

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So is that that confidence that you took then when you played more organized sports, whether it be or not, I shouldn't say organized, but when you were able to play on the high school level, let's say when you got to, when you got to LA and you're playing, you're playing more, you're playing more varsity and you're you know, you're obviously excelling on the field, you know.

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I want to talk, to talk to us a little bit about how important it is to have a coach who is influential on you or is a good influencer, how influential a coach can be on a young athlete.

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You know, I'm going to be very honest in this interview, or whatever we want to call it.

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A coach didn't have to influence me.

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It was never a coach, it was no one.

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I naturally was a natural competitor and I really got it from the guys in my neighborhood.

00:06:34.220 --> 00:06:41.430
Like, really it was that mentality that I developed, was my surroundings growing up.

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I say this all the time and it's funny People think I'm crazy when I say it, but when I was playing Little League, pop Warner, my coaches were so tough on us to where, when I got to high school and college, when coaches would try to get tough on me, it was like a joke.

00:06:59.220 --> 00:06:59.399
Like.

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I done already been through the worst that you can be around because we had a certain standard that we had to live by growing up in South Central LA.

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So you know hard work and being tough.

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Once I got to high school and college it was already built in.

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So if anybody that I would give credit to, it would be the teenagers and the guys that I grew up around that were older than me, who and it wasn't verbal, it was by action.

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You know you had to be tough, you had to have a competitive mentality.

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Growing up.

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Where I grew up so it was like competing was easy, being tough was easy, motivation was easy.

00:07:39.581 --> 00:07:49.447
I was always self-motivated, just based on what we went through playing in the street, and so that translated over into organized ball right.

00:07:49.649 --> 00:08:00.427
You get to what the high school level and you start taking it a little more seriously Describe serious, because I know some people when they say serious, it's like I started training.

00:08:00.468 --> 00:08:01.971
I started thinking about the NFL.

00:08:01.971 --> 00:08:04.221
I started working on my body and all I did none of that.

00:08:04.221 --> 00:08:04.783
I love to play sports.

00:08:04.783 --> 00:08:05.663
It started thinking about the NFL.

00:08:05.663 --> 00:08:07.346
I started, you know, working on my body and all, I did none of that.

00:08:07.365 --> 00:08:11.810
Like I love to play sports Like it wasn't about okay, let me get a trainer, like everybody got a trainer now.

00:08:11.810 --> 00:08:22.685
Uh, everybody wants to lift weights and look a certain way, it was really just kids playing sports.

00:08:22.685 --> 00:08:25.059
It wasn't like on the off season of football in high school, for example, I was a varsity quarterback.

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Uh, as a sophomore, um, when football season was over, you couldn't get me to talk about football because it was track season.

00:08:31.622 --> 00:08:33.846
So I wanted to, I was running track.

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I wasn't trying to run track to get fast to play football, I was running track because I was fast and I wanted to win races, right.

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So, uh, it was.

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It was really like I always just lived in the moment, if that makes any sense.

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It was never like okay, I'm taking this serious.

00:08:52.191 --> 00:08:56.171
Everything that I did competitive, I took serious.

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I'm a sore loser and what I mean by that is I hate to lose and if I lose I'm going to figure out a way to come back and win.

00:09:03.990 --> 00:09:17.432
So, to be honest with you, I can't say there was a time where I was like, man, let me get serious about this sport stuff, because I was always in that mindset once I started playing organized sports.

00:09:17.432 --> 00:09:31.450
Like you know, I play for a really good Pop Warner organization where they won, and so I was a huge part of it when I got there also, and you know losing wasn't an option.

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So we competed, man, and you know I tell my son this all the time.

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You know I had friends when I was at SC, when I moved from quarterback to wide receiver.

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I had friends that were playing the position.

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Oh well, you know they got me here I'm here now.

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Oh well.

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I'm here now, so you in my spot.

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So that was always my mentality.

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So I want to ask then, because you know, actually you brought up a really good point about the idea of you know, season to season, once football ended, then it was track season and then when track season ended, it was another sport.

00:10:09.711 --> 00:10:21.581
Now you know full disclosure, you're not the first athlete we've had join us and the one thing that we've kind of noticed when it comes to like great athletes, that great athletes are great athletes and they're great at athletics.

00:10:21.581 --> 00:10:25.461
So obviously you had a love for sports and you had a love for competing.

00:10:25.461 --> 00:10:31.779
Was football always your first love, or did you have other sports that you really enjoyed Like?

00:10:31.779 --> 00:10:35.490
Randy Moss always said that he actually he thought he'd be a better basketball player.

00:10:35.490 --> 00:10:40.982
Dave Winfield often said that he he wanted to be a, he wanted to be a football player and was actually drafted by the Minnesota Vikings.

00:10:40.982 --> 00:10:45.351
Um, so was football always the sport that you wanted to play?

00:10:45.351 --> 00:10:49.086
I mean not say you want to be a professional in it, but was that always your sport?

00:10:49.948 --> 00:10:50.850
No, not at all.

00:10:50.850 --> 00:10:54.004
I was a hoop, I was a basketball player man.

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You know, you couldn't have told me back in the day I wasn't a little Magic Johnson.

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Especially in LA.

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Yeah, especially in LA.

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I grew up right down the street.

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If, if everybody, anybody knew the park that I played in and pop Warner is literally probably 200 yards from the Los Angeles farm in Inglewood.

00:11:13.192 --> 00:11:18.470
So, uh, you know I was magic Johnson, and so it it the funny story.

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I played basketball up until my sophomore year.

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Uh, in high school, and I stopped because our basketball team wasn't that good and everybody was saying, man, you should run track.

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We travel, we go out of town, we compete on a whole different level, the basketball team not that good.

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So my coach, my football coaches and track coaches didn't know.

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But by basketball season and track season being at the same time, I was still young enough as a sophomore to play rec ball.

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So I was running track in the ninth grade and the 10th grade and still playing rec ball when I was in high school.

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So once I got to the 11th grade I was too old to play basketball rec.

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So that's when I ended up stopped playing basketball.

00:12:06.645 --> 00:12:08.988
But, man, basketball was really my first love.

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Like on Friday nights after a game in high school and I'm talking about all the way up to my last game of the season, you best believe Saturday morning I was in the neighborhood playing pick up basketball somewhere either at the school or at the gym.

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So it's funny because people will be like man, you was just balling last night on the football field and here you are in the neighborhood playing with a bunch of dudes that could possibly hurt you out here.

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That's great.

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But again, it wasn't like today, where I can't do this because I might get hurt.

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It was like, okay, we're playing against this neighborhood, we're playing against these guys.

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It's a different world, man.

00:12:48.811 --> 00:12:51.448
It is a different world, yeah.

00:12:51.721 --> 00:12:56.585
So rec ball was like the why or something like that, or was it organized?

00:12:56.585 --> 00:12:57.548
Yeah it was organized.

00:12:57.587 --> 00:12:59.957
It was park leagues, it was the park league.

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So I continued to play with the park league.

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Got it Now when you were playing at the playground on a Saturday and you're going down there and it's pickup basketball.

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You know in LA, you know in the area you're describing, like what were those games?

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Like how rough were those.

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It was real rough.

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It was like again.

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So just it's growing up in the hood of South Central LA at a time where gang violence and drugs was at an all time high.

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So this is, this is the type of atmosphere I'm playing in, but I grew up in that, so it was normal for me.

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It wasn't like an outsider looking in.

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This was normal life.

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So again, you don't think twice about oh, I'm a high school football star, I might get hurt.

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It's like nah, it's game time, I'm at the park, I'm going to dunk on you.

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If you try to block my shot, I'm going to steal it.

00:13:51.951 --> 00:13:54.700
You know, it was that atmosphere.

00:13:54.700 --> 00:14:07.289
So when I think back on it, it's just like getting hurt and worrying about the things that could happen never crossed my mind.

00:14:07.289 --> 00:14:09.605
Like I said, I always live in that moment.

00:14:09.605 --> 00:14:14.765
So if I'm playing basketball at the park Friday night after a game or at the school, guess what?

00:14:14.765 --> 00:14:21.100
I'm trying to stay on the court, because if you lose, well, you might get picked up if you're a good athlete, but if you lose you're not getting on the court.

00:14:21.120 --> 00:14:24.187
So once you get to, five it's like we out here to win.

00:14:24.187 --> 00:14:27.860
We're not out here worrying about almost stay in the corner and shoot jumpers, cause I don't want you to.

00:14:27.860 --> 00:14:31.268
You know, foul me and I hit the pole or I hit the concrete.

00:14:31.268 --> 00:14:33.232
Like no, we playing ball.

00:14:33.879 --> 00:14:34.523
That's awesome.

00:14:34.523 --> 00:14:48.034
Now, curtis, I have to ask this question Cause cause you brought it up and sort of went down this path growing up in the neighborhood that you were in at that time, you know, with the gang life that you know we would see on the news and everything else.

00:14:48.034 --> 00:14:52.850
I mean, clearly, that was close to you, that was around you.

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How did that impact you?

00:14:55.001 --> 00:14:57.003
Uh?

00:14:59.527 --> 00:15:00.711
You know it was a way of life.

00:15:00.711 --> 00:15:07.496
Man, I can go in so many directions with this.

00:15:07.496 --> 00:15:10.754
You know, as crazy as this sounds, I survived it.

00:15:10.754 --> 00:15:12.909
So I could take a lot of the positives.

00:15:12.909 --> 00:15:16.738
That most people that didn't survive would say it was a negative for them.

00:15:16.738 --> 00:15:20.475
I would say the best thing for me was I was always a leader.

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I was always a leader.

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So it didn't matter if my friends at eight years old playing football at 13 decide they wanted to tote guns and gang and gangbang.

00:15:30.274 --> 00:15:34.567
I was still Curtis and I still hung with those guys.

00:15:34.567 --> 00:15:37.293
It's just when they decided to do certain activities.

00:15:37.293 --> 00:15:44.278
I would you know I wasn't involved in it and I never had to be involved in it because I guess I mean, we were friends.

00:15:44.384 --> 00:15:48.254
A lot of people don't really understand that culture, especially back then.

00:15:48.254 --> 00:15:50.288
We grew up in that situation.

00:15:50.288 --> 00:15:55.364
So these are the same guys that's in and out of jail that I'm talking about.

00:15:55.364 --> 00:15:57.128
We were playing football on the street.

00:15:57.128 --> 00:16:16.038
So I don't look at the drug dealers and the gangbangers the same way outsiders may do, because I really know who they are deep down inside certain circumstances and situations and decisions that they may, based on our environment and choices that they may, went that direction.

00:16:16.038 --> 00:16:23.076
So I never I'm not that one who who say I'm better than the guys that made it out of my neighborhood.

00:16:23.076 --> 00:16:28.255
I just love football, so there was nothing going to deter me away from the game.

00:16:28.255 --> 00:16:29.951
They didn't love football.

00:16:29.951 --> 00:16:32.594
They were talented and they could play football, basketball.

00:16:32.594 --> 00:16:34.091
They were just as athletic as I was.

00:16:34.091 --> 00:16:42.477
They just didn't love it as much as I did to where gangs and selling drugs and doing all these things would take them away.

00:16:42.477 --> 00:16:47.850
I was okay with not having a lot of money and not having the nice clothes and not doing all those things.

00:16:47.850 --> 00:16:49.129
For some reason.

00:16:49.129 --> 00:16:50.711
I can't take credit for it.

00:16:50.711 --> 00:16:52.592
It was just who I was growing up.

00:16:52.592 --> 00:16:54.028
It's still who I am today.

00:16:54.028 --> 00:17:03.908
So, um, I will say this I'm not, I'm not Curtis Conway the man, uh, as a father.

00:17:03.908 --> 00:17:08.115
Um, I'm not Curtis Conway the man, as a father, as an athlete, I'm nothing.

00:17:08.576 --> 00:17:22.380
Without growing up on 56th and Central and South Central LA, I draw everything from those experiences, even today, my mentor he was a really good dude but he was a drug dealer.

00:17:22.380 --> 00:17:31.305
He was a really good dude but he was a drug dealer and he sold drugs, but watching him, he was a family man.

00:17:31.305 --> 00:17:35.075
He's married still married to the girl he was with in high school.

00:17:35.075 --> 00:17:38.193
Today he just did what he had to do to make a living.

00:17:38.193 --> 00:17:46.707
But I know the man and so he's the reason I'm the father I am and the husband I am, because I saw how he treated his wife.

00:17:46.707 --> 00:17:50.616
But on the outside, looking in, you would think this criminal, this guy.

00:17:50.616 --> 00:17:56.855
But I knew who he was inside, but I knew what he had to do to provide for his family.

00:17:56.855 --> 00:18:01.611
So again, I mean I can take a lot of the things that people see as negatives.

00:18:01.611 --> 00:18:06.479
I can take them as positive because I experienced them and I can speak on it.

00:18:06.479 --> 00:18:16.700
And so, man, it's, you know it's, I wouldn't trade anything for what I experienced growing up in South Central.

00:18:17.746 --> 00:18:22.192
I love that you say that it defined you, it made you who you are and you wouldn't change a thing.

00:18:22.192 --> 00:18:23.154
That's that's important.

00:18:23.154 --> 00:18:26.394
I guess my question would be it built your mental toughness.

00:18:26.394 --> 00:18:29.575
Obviously, the streetball built your physical toughness.

00:18:29.575 --> 00:18:37.195
I think toughness is probably one of your best professional qualities, but I would say, how easily could it have slipped away?

00:18:37.195 --> 00:18:46.334
I mean, you're with these people all the time and they're friends, like is it possible that it could have gone in a different direction?

00:18:46.334 --> 00:18:48.565
Or you were just never going to let it happen because football was too important?

00:18:48.984 --> 00:18:51.752
Yeah, I mean because this is your everyday life.

00:18:51.752 --> 00:18:57.429
Like it's been plenty of moments in my life where my life could have been taken.

00:18:57.429 --> 00:19:09.319
It's been plenty of times in my life where I could have been set up by the police because I'm around the wrong crowd and they just want to plant drugs on you to get you to talk about who's the big drug dealer in the neighborhood.

00:19:09.319 --> 00:19:10.769
Like it was.

00:19:10.769 --> 00:19:11.130
It was.

00:19:11.130 --> 00:19:13.115
You know we call it a concrete jungle.

00:19:13.115 --> 00:19:14.912
You had to experience like every day.

00:19:14.912 --> 00:19:15.986
You know this was, this was.

00:19:16.067 --> 00:19:27.634
If you go back and you look up the 80s and the 90s in South Central LA, just wearing a red shirt or a blue shirt in the wrong neighborhood can get you killed not beat up, not shot, but killed.

00:19:27.634 --> 00:19:30.354
So my high school was red.

00:19:30.354 --> 00:19:45.951
So if I'm wearing my red sweatpants on the bus going to school and the bus is going through another, a rival neighborhood, someone gets a kid gets on the bus, or a teenager or a young adult get on the bus with a gun.

00:19:45.951 --> 00:19:48.451
He had no problem with shooting.

00:19:48.451 --> 00:19:50.448
Like shooting was fundamental back then.

00:19:50.448 --> 00:19:51.951
So it wasn't.

00:19:51.951 --> 00:19:55.459
It wasn't, but to us it was.

00:19:55.459 --> 00:19:59.615
We understood how to for lack of better terms.

00:19:59.615 --> 00:20:04.525
We understood how to move and what to do in situations.

00:20:04.525 --> 00:20:06.671
We knew all this because we were.

00:20:06.691 --> 00:20:08.296
I was a, I'm a product of that.

00:20:08.296 --> 00:20:15.367
I just chose not to do that, but I'm around it every day, like I.

00:20:15.367 --> 00:20:17.173
I mean I've seen it all.

00:20:17.173 --> 00:20:20.873
I mean I've seen guys get shot right next to me.

00:20:20.873 --> 00:20:25.372
I've seen, uh, friends get in, go in and out of jail.

00:20:25.372 --> 00:20:33.798
Uh, I've seen the, the, the, the good, the nicest kid at eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16.

00:20:33.798 --> 00:20:35.299
He's a murderer.

00:20:35.299 --> 00:20:39.795
It has no problem with, you know, going to kill somebody for the neighborhood.

00:20:39.855 --> 00:20:46.205
So, um, you know, growing up in that environment, like I said, um, we don't look at it.

00:20:46.205 --> 00:20:47.367
No, we didn't.

00:20:47.367 --> 00:20:49.311
It just it was different for us.

00:20:49.311 --> 00:20:50.233
That was life.

00:20:50.233 --> 00:20:53.385
So it wasn't a wow situation, it was.

00:20:53.385 --> 00:20:54.648
This is what it is.

00:20:55.150 --> 00:21:01.849
You either choose to be or choose not to be, and you live your life and you try to survive as you were.

00:21:01.849 --> 00:21:07.868
You're growing up and, and you know, luckily, um, I made it out.

00:21:07.868 --> 00:21:13.306
But trust me, man, I didn't got hit by you know, I didn't got hit with billy clubs, by the police.

00:21:13.306 --> 00:21:26.356
Oh, man, uh, just being a kid walking down the street with my friends and they think we're gang members, but we just kids that live in the neighborhood, and you know who's going to believe us versus the police.

00:21:26.356 --> 00:21:35.576
Right, you know so we had to, but we understood that it wasn't like, oh man, like we understood that the police had the upper hand and they didn't care.

00:21:35.576 --> 00:21:46.445
And because we've seen it so many times that it became normal to us, you know what I mean we just had to.

00:21:46.445 --> 00:21:48.950
Again, we didn't, it was just, it wasn't a second thought it was life.

00:21:48.970 --> 00:21:52.296
Did you have a burning desire to get out?

00:21:52.296 --> 00:22:03.007
Was that part of sports and looking towards junior college, looking towards what eventually became USC, or like what was that dynamic?

00:22:03.207 --> 00:22:04.230
You know what I love?

00:22:04.230 --> 00:22:04.951
My, my community.

00:22:04.951 --> 00:22:10.473
I loved it to the point to where I went to the closest university to my house, usc.

00:22:10.473 --> 00:22:15.726
Yeah, like USC is right in the heart of South Central.

00:22:15.726 --> 00:22:18.012
It's probably eight minutes from my driveway.

00:22:18.012 --> 00:22:25.775
Um, there was nothing about my community and it was bad, but that was my community.

00:22:25.775 --> 00:22:26.175
It was home.

00:22:26.175 --> 00:22:29.270
It was home, you know, my friends was there, my family was there.

00:22:29.270 --> 00:22:32.377
Um, so I never.

00:22:34.101 --> 00:22:36.307
My story is not the typical man.

00:22:36.307 --> 00:22:39.538
I gotta make it out to buy my mother a house and all that I.

00:22:39.538 --> 00:22:47.291
It happened because it happened organically, because I love to play football and I did whatever it took to play football and get better.

00:22:47.291 --> 00:22:52.700
So, okay, I'm a senior, I got to do all these things to get to college.

00:22:52.700 --> 00:23:28.810
So if this is going to prevent me from playing football, then I'm going to do it, whether it's get good grades, pass the SAT, which was a huge pivotal point in my life, my senior year, not passing the SAT, but I did whatever I had to do to play the game and it just kept going from one year to the next to being the best on this, being the best at this position, now getting drafted to the Chicago Bears, um, you know, at that point the love for football was my driving point of everything.

00:23:28.810 --> 00:23:29.753
I did all right.

00:23:29.773 --> 00:23:34.494
So I was going to ask you a bit about the notion of and I understand that.

00:23:34.494 --> 00:23:44.758
You know, I understand that USC is in Compton and it's very close, obviously, to where you grew up, so but I was still going to ask the question of was usc something of an oasis?

00:23:44.758 --> 00:23:46.710
Uh, from from where?

00:23:46.710 --> 00:23:47.795
From your neighborhood that you grew up?

00:23:47.795 --> 00:23:53.252
But maybe that's maybe that's the wrong question to ask, because in many senses it didn't really matter.

00:23:53.252 --> 00:24:00.501
Let me ask you this your two years, two years at your juco, was that more important to you than your two years at usc?

00:24:00.823 --> 00:24:02.652
let me explain that situation just so a lot of people don't know that story.

00:24:02.652 --> 00:24:03.356
Uh, I didn't spend two years at USC.

00:24:03.356 --> 00:24:05.365
Let me explain that situation just so a lot of people don't know that story.

00:24:05.365 --> 00:24:08.432
I didn't spend two years at a JUCO.

00:24:08.432 --> 00:24:11.338
I didn't even spend a year at a JUCO.

00:24:13.607 --> 00:24:18.018
How much time you got no as much as you're willing to give us.

00:24:18.105 --> 00:24:19.448
Nobody knows the truth.

00:24:19.448 --> 00:24:25.326
People that know know, but the media, they, they mess the story up all the time because they don't really know.

00:24:25.326 --> 00:24:28.867
They just take bits and pieces and I never really talked about it publicly.

00:24:28.867 --> 00:24:31.055
So you guys are basically getting this firsthand.

00:24:31.055 --> 00:24:36.568
Okay, um, out of high school, my senior year in high school, I took the sat.

00:24:36.568 --> 00:24:42.538
I didn't take the sat until the second semester of my senior year.

00:24:42.538 --> 00:24:46.983
Now, mind you, I'm an All-American as a track guy.

00:24:46.983 --> 00:24:50.153
As a ninth grader, I'm a starting quarterback.

00:24:50.153 --> 00:25:02.931
As a 10th grader, I'm getting letters all over the country since my 10th grade year and the SAT wasn't presented to me in a serious manner until the second semester of my senior year.

00:25:02.931 --> 00:25:06.986
With that being said, I'm running track Every Saturday.

00:25:06.986 --> 00:25:08.188
We got a big track meet.

00:25:08.188 --> 00:25:10.952
Every Saturday is the SAT.

00:25:12.955 --> 00:25:18.589
I failed the SAT three, four times and didn't go to USC.

00:25:18.589 --> 00:25:25.861
I signed a letter of intent in January for USC and didn't pass the SAT.

00:25:25.861 --> 00:25:31.678
So my first year out of high school I was back in the neighborhood.

00:25:31.678 --> 00:25:33.608
I didn't go to JUCO.

00:25:33.608 --> 00:25:36.410
That September I didn't go to junior college.

00:25:36.410 --> 00:25:39.310
That September after I graduated, I was working construction.

00:25:39.310 --> 00:25:45.798
I was working construction that first semester while studying for the SAT.

00:25:45.798 --> 00:25:50.509
I passed the SAT the first time.

00:25:50.509 --> 00:25:55.578
I took it because I finally got an opportunity to study for you.

00:25:55.578 --> 00:25:56.626
I remember back then.

00:25:56.626 --> 00:26:01.897
You know you had to pay to to go to an SAT course.

00:26:02.005 --> 00:26:04.030
Yeah, and I went to Princeton?

00:26:04.553 --> 00:26:05.295
Yeah, prep course.

00:26:05.295 --> 00:26:08.932
They didn't have it at the high schools, so it wasn't available.

00:26:08.932 --> 00:26:20.569
The preparation wasn't available to me, and once I got out of high school, I got a job and I was able to afford Princeton review, which was like an incredible story.

00:26:20.810 --> 00:26:26.460
Yeah, it was like an eight-week course and after eight weeks, that Saturday after the eight weeks, you go and take the test.

00:26:26.460 --> 00:26:30.135
So I did that and I passed the test.

00:26:30.135 --> 00:26:38.229
A lot of people don't realize I went to Nebraska that summer when Nebraska was actually better than USC.

00:26:38.229 --> 00:26:58.916
They wanted to Prop 48 me, so out of high school yeah, you know, I couldn't go to SC because I didn't pass the test I went to Nebraska because they was willing to bring me in on the Prop 48, which meant that I couldn't play football, I couldn't be around the team, but I can go to school and I lose my red shirt year and my medical year, but I still have three years to play.

00:26:58.916 --> 00:27:02.622
So because of my ego, I went, you know.

00:27:02.622 --> 00:27:06.428
But being a Trojan was always in my heart and so the day I had to.

00:27:06.428 --> 00:27:12.286
So I'm in Nebraska, lincoln, nebraska, and I don't know if you guys remember a running back by the name of Derrick Brown.

00:27:12.326 --> 00:27:14.292
No, I don't, I don't, yeah.

00:27:15.256 --> 00:27:18.144
Yeah, he played for the Saints for a minute, went to Nebraska.

00:27:18.144 --> 00:27:20.414
We both go there on a Prop 48.

00:27:20.414 --> 00:27:28.710
We were like two of the highly ranked athletes coming out of California that year and I'll never forget.

00:27:28.710 --> 00:27:39.000
We were in line to turn in our classes and he went first and it was my time and as I was getting up I went to him and I told him I said, man, I think I'm going back home.

00:27:39.000 --> 00:27:40.424
And he's like what?

00:27:40.424 --> 00:27:43.060
Like bro, we're here.

00:27:43.060 --> 00:27:44.085
We've been here like two weeks.

00:27:44.154 --> 00:27:47.464
Long story short, I went back to the dorm.

00:27:47.464 --> 00:27:52.446
I called my uncle and I told him I didn't want to play here.

00:27:52.446 --> 00:27:55.865
I wanted to come back and try to study for the SAT, to get into USC.

00:27:55.865 --> 00:27:57.078
I'm like I'm a Trojan.

00:27:57.078 --> 00:28:01.315
I always wanted to go there, not because of no other reason other than I wanted to go there.

00:28:01.315 --> 00:28:03.521
It wasn't the coach, it wasn't the players.

00:28:03.521 --> 00:28:04.806
I wanted to go to SC.

00:28:04.806 --> 00:28:10.795
Everybody tried to talk me out of it because, like you, about to come back to the neighborhood, are you crazy?

00:28:10.795 --> 00:28:12.401
You finally got out of here.

00:28:12.401 --> 00:28:13.999
So I end up.

00:28:13.999 --> 00:28:15.605
You know they end up getting me a ticket.

00:28:15.674 --> 00:28:18.875
I went to talk to Tom Osborne and told him that I wanted to be released.

00:28:18.875 --> 00:28:24.260
He released me and I went back home and I got a job, and that's when I started studying for the test, studying for the test.

00:28:24.260 --> 00:28:26.747
I passed it on the first one in September.

00:28:26.747 --> 00:28:35.411
Now I'm thinking because I was a dual sport guy and I was going to do both of them at USC that they would at least bring me in in the spring for track.

00:28:35.411 --> 00:28:40.266
They was like USC said no, they wasn't going to bring me in.

00:28:40.266 --> 00:28:43.844
So now I passed the test in September.

00:28:43.844 --> 00:28:53.989
I'm working construction, and so what happened was the second semester I started taking courses that would transfer into USC at El Camino College.

00:28:53.989 --> 00:28:59.604
Okay, so that was my little stint into junior college.

00:28:59.604 --> 00:29:03.692
I didn't play ball, I wasn't training, I wasn't running track, I wasn't doing nothing, I was working.

00:29:03.692 --> 00:29:07.442
You were just trying to get credits, just getting credits, gotcha.

00:29:08.375 --> 00:29:08.715
Gotcha All right.

00:29:08.715 --> 00:29:09.278
So how wasn't doing nothing?

00:29:09.278 --> 00:29:11.164
I was just trying to get credits, just getting credits, gotcha, gotcha all right.

00:29:11.164 --> 00:29:13.172
So how important, how important to you was, was the usc experience?

00:29:13.172 --> 00:29:14.856
Forget, forget the football part of it, forget the.

00:29:14.856 --> 00:29:17.303
How important was it being at usc?

00:29:17.784 --> 00:29:20.115
it was, it wasn't what I thought it was going to be.

00:29:20.115 --> 00:29:24.105
To be quite frank, you had to grow up a lot.

00:29:24.105 --> 00:29:24.987
You know you.

00:29:24.987 --> 00:29:28.480
I learned a lot in terms of, like, just time management alone.

00:29:28.681 --> 00:29:31.844
Yeah, that's college Trying to shuffle football around classes.

00:29:33.769 --> 00:29:36.423
We had to schedule our classes around football practice.

00:29:36.423 --> 00:29:37.640
It wasn't the other way around.

00:29:37.640 --> 00:29:41.038
You might be from 8 o'clock to 10 o'clock.

00:29:41.038 --> 00:29:45.422
You might be at the school going to class, practice, weightlifting, watching tape.

00:29:45.422 --> 00:29:49.585
That was a crazy experience because in high school you go to school, you practice, you go home.

00:29:49.585 --> 00:29:51.279
You had to grow up a lot.

00:29:51.279 --> 00:29:52.479
You have nobody telling you.

00:29:52.479 --> 00:29:54.065
You know you had to get up and go to school.

00:29:54.065 --> 00:29:57.544
If you didn't want to go to class, you didn't have to go to class.

00:29:57.544 --> 00:29:59.601
You had to go to class, but you didn't have to go to class.

00:29:59.601 --> 00:30:00.644
If that makes any sense.

00:30:03.538 --> 00:30:05.762
No, that makes perfect sense.

00:30:05.762 --> 00:30:06.763
College once too.

00:30:06.763 --> 00:30:07.766
You guys know what I mean.

00:30:07.766 --> 00:30:10.955
How many hours a week did you have to put into football?

00:30:10.955 --> 00:30:11.778
Like, like, like.

00:30:11.778 --> 00:30:13.442
What was that commitment?

00:30:13.722 --> 00:30:15.026
Um, I don't think it was.

00:30:15.026 --> 00:30:16.557
It was a normal practice.

00:30:16.557 --> 00:30:17.619
You know you go to practice.

00:30:17.619 --> 00:30:28.038
I think practice was like an hour 40 minutes, um, film was probably 30 minutes before practice and you probably had to lift at some point during the day.

00:30:28.038 --> 00:30:32.864
Um, um, you had to find time between classes to go lift and that was probably 30 minutes of lifting.

00:30:32.864 --> 00:30:34.548
It wasn't so much.

00:30:34.548 --> 00:30:39.766
It wasn't a lot of time that we had to spend with football.

00:30:39.766 --> 00:30:40.386
That was hard.

00:30:40.386 --> 00:30:49.894
It was juggling the schedules because, like, say, for instance, you have a class that you need to take, but it's during the time you got film, or you have football practice.

00:30:49.894 --> 00:30:52.924
Now either you can't take the class or you got to.

00:30:52.924 --> 00:31:02.605
I mean, those were the hardest things, is, you know, and at that time you're thinking school is supposed to be so important and yet, and still, we have to schedule our classes around football.

00:31:02.605 --> 00:31:05.102
And I mean, being honest, the coach don't.

00:31:05.102 --> 00:31:11.885
He don't, he don't want to hear that he's trying to win football so you know the notion to think that a coach really cares about school.

00:31:12.207 --> 00:31:17.865
Trust me, let one of the star players say well, my class is doing practice.

00:31:17.865 --> 00:31:20.276
You won't be missing practice, that's for sure.

00:31:20.276 --> 00:31:30.980
So I think that was the hardest part is is, you know, having to go from class to practice, to film and and just do all these different pockets, whereas in high school you went to school.

00:31:30.980 --> 00:31:31.942
School was out the way.

00:31:31.942 --> 00:31:35.038
You go to practice, you practice and then you go home and you do homework.

00:31:36.362 --> 00:31:36.903
It's so funny.

00:31:36.903 --> 00:31:43.767
As you're talking about this, it sounds like playing football was actually the easiest part of this time of your life.

00:31:43.767 --> 00:31:50.803
The other stuff was hard the organization, the independence, the becoming a man but you're obviously plying your trade.

00:31:50.803 --> 00:31:52.080
You're getting better every day.

00:31:52.080 --> 00:31:57.478
At what point do you say to yourself I think I could play on the next level?

00:32:00.203 --> 00:32:06.080
Never, never, never and it sounds crazy, man, anybody that knows me.

00:32:06.080 --> 00:32:07.920
No, I never talked about the NFL.

00:32:07.920 --> 00:32:08.903
I never talked about.

00:32:08.903 --> 00:32:09.766
I'm going to do this.

00:32:09.766 --> 00:32:10.336
I'm going to do that.

00:32:10.336 --> 00:32:12.843
I always lived in the moment I went to.

00:32:12.843 --> 00:32:14.507
I went to USC as a quarterback.

00:32:14.507 --> 00:32:16.518
I went to USC.

00:32:16.518 --> 00:32:19.926
So my first year I was in the quarterback room and I was returning kicks.

00:32:19.926 --> 00:32:23.434
Tom Marinovich was the quarterback.

00:32:25.559 --> 00:32:28.567
I haven't heard, my God, he was an amazing quarterback.

00:32:28.567 --> 00:32:42.887
That's a whole other story, but you couldn't have told me by my sophomore year that I wasn't going to beat him out and I probably wouldn't have, but you couldn't have told me that I wasn't.

00:32:42.887 --> 00:32:44.442
So I was playing quarterback.

00:32:44.442 --> 00:32:47.718
What happened with Todd ended up leaving.

00:32:47.718 --> 00:32:56.038
So, um, I was talented enough where they was like we gotta put him on the field, so they allowed me to return kicks as a backup quarterback.

00:32:56.057 --> 00:32:59.626
wow, how crazy is that, right, that's how much I love playing football.

00:32:59.626 --> 00:33:07.079
I told the coach like man, I'm not sitting on the bench, there's too many things that I can do, so if I'm not the starting quarterback, I got to do something.

00:33:07.079 --> 00:33:16.159
And so again, I was fast, they allowed me to return kicks and I was in the quarterback room my sophomore year.

00:33:16.159 --> 00:33:17.914
Todd left for the draft and ended up getting drafted in the first round by the Raiders.

00:33:17.914 --> 00:33:27.784
And so now me and a guy, we're competing for the starting job in the spring and in the summer, but what ended up happening was SC, because we were both athletic, for the starting job in the spring and in the summer.

00:33:27.804 --> 00:33:35.740
But what ended up happening was SC, because we were both athletic, they wanted us to run the option.

00:33:35.740 --> 00:33:44.051
And everybody just assumed, because I had a lot of rushing yards, I was an option quarterback, and you can't go anywhere in my high school film and find me running the option.

00:33:44.051 --> 00:33:48.124
Right, right, I was the modern-day quarterback.

00:33:48.124 --> 00:33:54.185
Now I was the guy that dropped back and I was fast enough and had the mobility enough to break the pocket and make things happen.

00:33:54.185 --> 00:34:02.378
And so when I got to SC, of course my sophomore year they wanted to run the option and true story.

00:34:02.378 --> 00:34:07.115
I remember after the Arizona State game I scored on the option play.

00:34:07.115 --> 00:34:07.915
That kind of solidified me.

00:34:07.915 --> 00:34:10.057
I remember after the Arizona State game I scored on the option play.

00:34:10.057 --> 00:34:14.619
That kind of solidified me and I went to the office of coordinator and I told him I didn't want to play quarterback.

00:34:15.760 --> 00:34:16.460
Oh, that's interesting.

00:34:16.481 --> 00:34:19.623
And he said why Like you could be an all-PAC-10 quarterback.

00:34:19.623 --> 00:34:24.465
And I said, well, I've seen the likes of Jamel Holloway Turner.

00:34:24.485 --> 00:34:25.726
Gill Right, right, yeah, I remember those guys.

00:34:25.726 --> 00:34:27.188
Major Harris, yeah, I remember those guys Major.

00:34:27.248 --> 00:34:27.768
Harris.

00:34:28.288 --> 00:34:28.509
Yeah.

00:34:28.568 --> 00:34:33.552
I saw these guys be man amazing, and they didn't get a shot at the pros.

00:34:33.552 --> 00:34:35.532
I'm like that's not going to be me.

00:34:35.532 --> 00:34:38.596
And he was.

00:34:38.596 --> 00:34:42.527
So you know, of course, at this point your quarterback is telling you he don't want to play, he want to do something else.

00:34:42.527 --> 00:34:49.958
And so for weeks he kept trying to get me to play.

00:34:49.958 --> 00:34:57.998
Of course I was playing, but I was uh reluctant and uh, finally, by mid-season, um, and mind you, we're still me and the other quarterback, we're still going back and forth.

00:34:57.998 --> 00:35:00.907
Nobody has solidified the job, but I was.

00:35:01.106 --> 00:35:07.161
I was out there and they wouldn't put me in other positions, but I was still able to return kicks because I was really good as a freshman.

00:35:07.161 --> 00:35:10.050
So you couldn't take me off a kickoff return or punt return.

00:35:10.050 --> 00:35:22.364
So, long story short, I run back a punt return for a touchdown against Stafford and you know, all of a sudden I go in the meeting room and I was like I want to play.

00:35:22.364 --> 00:35:26.300
Wide receiver Coach was in denial, like no, no, no.

00:35:26.300 --> 00:35:29.657
And so so I told him I'm gonna transfer if I don't, if I don't move.

00:35:29.697 --> 00:35:33.815
Oh wow, I was wondering what leverage you had for these conversations, so you?

00:35:33.835 --> 00:35:41.677
pulled that you're gonna transfer to nebraska well, I told him I was gonna transfer and, uh, he thought I was playing.

00:35:41.677 --> 00:35:48.204
So, uh, he ended up calling my grandmother and my grandmother said man curtis has been making his own decisions since he was 14.

00:35:48.204 --> 00:35:49.481
You're talking to the wrong person.

00:35:49.481 --> 00:35:53.505
If he decides he's going to leave, trust me, he's going to leave.

00:35:53.795 --> 00:36:04.621
And what ended up happening was, two weeks later, they moved me to wide receiver and I was probably like the fourth or fifth wide receiver, and you can tell that they were trying to make it tough on me.

00:36:04.621 --> 00:36:09.269
Oh, interesting, yeah, because it would have been easy for me to go back to quarterback and get on the field.

00:36:09.269 --> 00:36:12.003
But again, I'm the ultimate competitor.

00:36:12.003 --> 00:36:23.762
And that's when I had friends in front of me, that you know, and I was just like, come on, man, in my mind these guys are not better than me, even though they've been playing receiver in high school and this is my first time playing wide receiver.

00:36:29.135 --> 00:36:31.523
And first time playing wide receiver, and you know a couple weeks, I was a starter.

00:36:31.523 --> 00:36:32.005
Wow, how are they making?

00:36:32.005 --> 00:36:32.989
Making it difficult for it for?

00:36:33.009 --> 00:36:33.068
you?

00:36:33.068 --> 00:36:34.353
Were they sabotaging you somehow?

00:36:34.353 --> 00:36:36.581
Well, you know that wide receiver is up for the.

00:36:36.581 --> 00:36:38.286
The quarterback has to get you the ball.

00:36:38.286 --> 00:36:42.498
So they, you know, I I don't think they were trying to sabotage me.

00:36:42.498 --> 00:36:50.190
I I think in my own mind because I felt like if they wasn't throwing me the ball, oh, they want me to play quarterback.

00:36:50.190 --> 00:36:52.440
That was my mindset.

00:36:52.440 --> 00:36:58.719
But it was a lot of times I was opening, I wasn't getting the ball and I was like, come on, and I'm a quarterback, so I know where the ball should go.

00:36:58.719 --> 00:37:04.862
I was just back there, right, you know.

00:37:04.862 --> 00:37:11.806
So I was a little I, I was a little menace for a second, I would say that, but it ended up working out.

00:37:11.806 --> 00:37:16.264
You know, a lot of people don't realize, man, I only played wide receiver a year and a half at USC.

00:37:16.364 --> 00:37:25.219
That's amazing and I was just showing my son the other day that somebody sent me something where they were talking about me.

00:37:25.219 --> 00:37:29.565
If I would have stayed in school, I definitely would have been up for the Heisman going into my senior year.

00:37:29.565 --> 00:37:38.648
So you know, I played a year and a half I ain't going to say a whole year and a half, I'll say a year and a couple games at wide receiver and left school as a true junior.

00:37:38.648 --> 00:37:42.195
And you know, was a top ten pick, number one wide receiver taken.

00:37:42.195 --> 00:37:45.686
So again, it was just football.

00:37:45.686 --> 00:37:48.461
It had nothing to do with the NFL.

00:37:48.461 --> 00:37:50.335
It was like okay, you think this guy is better than me, let's compete.

00:37:50.735 --> 00:37:56.764
When we got on the field, it didn't matter who we were playing in, it didn't matter Like I didn't even take a lot of stock in.

00:37:56.764 --> 00:37:59.960
Oh, this guy is an All-American cornerback, we're playing against this defense.

00:37:59.960 --> 00:38:01.277
None of that ever mattered to me.

00:38:01.277 --> 00:38:02.378
You got to remember.

00:38:02.378 --> 00:38:07.248
My mindset was these guys are my age or maybe three or four years older.

00:38:07.248 --> 00:38:13.635
They didn't.

00:38:13.635 --> 00:38:17.385
My mind was my conditions as a kid was way worse than any organized football game could ever be.

00:38:17.385 --> 00:38:30.302
So I was never afraid of anything and I've always, in my mind, felt like I was going to succeed because I had that competitive drive and I felt like I've already been in the worst conditions that I can be in.

00:38:30.302 --> 00:38:31.704
Like I said, there's no cement there.

00:38:31.704 --> 00:38:33.695
I got a uniform on this guy.

00:38:34.077 --> 00:38:37.844
Yeah, this guy is my size and I'm 19,.

00:38:37.844 --> 00:38:38.405
He's 20.

00:38:38.405 --> 00:38:48.829
Like that's how I approach things, so it didn't really matter if you were all American at my age, you my age and I'm an all-American, so good luck for you.

00:38:49.592 --> 00:38:50.293
You're built for this.

00:38:50.293 --> 00:38:50.954
Somebody better pray for you.

00:38:51.235 --> 00:38:52.561
Yeah, somebody better pray for you.

00:38:52.581 --> 00:38:53.043
That's right.

00:38:53.894 --> 00:38:54.155
All right.

00:38:54.155 --> 00:39:04.717
So I mean, obviously this podcast is about trying to give advice to others, and all we've done thus far is talk about your life, which is just unbelievably fascinating, beyond belief.

00:39:04.717 --> 00:39:39.594
So the one thing that I think we can all kind of take away from this is just your pure determination, like your inner drive, and your pure determination, no-transcript.

00:39:42.454 --> 00:39:43.237
That's.

00:39:43.237 --> 00:39:43.918
There's nothing other than that.

00:39:43.918 --> 00:39:46.525
What does Kobe always talk about?

00:39:46.525 --> 00:39:49.202
The Mamba mentality had nothing to do with his talent.

00:39:49.202 --> 00:39:57.802
Remember Kobe said I remember something where I saw Kobe said that in high school they had him ranked 50-something.

00:39:57.802 --> 00:40:00.201
So in his mind he was like who are these guys in front of me?

00:40:00.201 --> 00:40:03.563
And every time he played against him he went at him.

00:40:03.563 --> 00:40:06.242
Think about the mentality that Kobe had.

00:40:06.242 --> 00:40:09.297
Rememberordan got cut in high school.

00:40:09.297 --> 00:40:10.099
Yeah, he wasn't.

00:40:10.099 --> 00:40:12.485
So look at his chip on his shoulder.

00:40:12.485 --> 00:40:19.192
Remember tom brady was a six-round draft pick so everybody just assumed a great athlete as a kid.

00:40:19.192 --> 00:40:22.480
Because he's talented, it's gonna be that man.

00:40:22.559 --> 00:40:23.021
No like.

00:40:23.021 --> 00:40:25.565
If it ain't in you, it's just not in you.

00:40:25.565 --> 00:40:28.762
I've seen I mean I've grew up with some of the most talented athletic people, but they didn't love it.

00:40:28.762 --> 00:40:29.644
If it ain't in you, it's just not in you.

00:40:29.644 --> 00:40:29.885
I've seen.

00:40:29.885 --> 00:40:31.913
I mean I've grew up with some of the most talented athletic people but they didn't love it enough.

00:40:31.913 --> 00:40:32.112
It wasn't.

00:40:32.112 --> 00:40:33.097
It didn't mean enough to them.

00:40:33.097 --> 00:40:35.023
You know it meant a lot to Tom Brady.

00:40:35.023 --> 00:40:36.809
It meant a lot to Michael Jordan.

00:40:36.809 --> 00:40:37.976
It meant a lot to Kobe.

00:40:38.295 --> 00:40:40.057
Had nothing to do with our physical gifts.

00:40:40.057 --> 00:40:44.503
God blessed us with some physical tools that we were able to work with man.

00:40:44.503 --> 00:41:00.565
But everything you do is about mentality and how you approach it and the will and what are you willing to do when the chips are down, because in everything you do in life, you're going to have some times where things are not going good.

00:41:00.565 --> 00:41:05.601
What keeps you in, that keeps you in that field, is the fact that you love it.

00:41:05.601 --> 00:41:07.887
I tell people all the time.

00:41:07.887 --> 00:41:09.817
I can tell if you love it or not.

00:41:09.817 --> 00:41:19.858
Like everything I told you, everything I did centered around if I had to build a house and you said I couldn't play football if I didn't build a house, I was going to build that house.

00:41:19.858 --> 00:41:22.206
That's how much I love.

00:41:22.206 --> 00:41:24.052
Like you couldn't keep me off the field.

00:41:24.052 --> 00:41:29.807
That's just what it was If you were like and that I believe that is the driving force.

00:41:29.875 --> 00:41:39.045
Some people will get away with talent, but the ultimate goal, the ultimate, the real dudes man, trust me, they got something in them.

00:41:39.045 --> 00:41:39.757
You can't teach.

00:41:39.757 --> 00:41:53.547
It has to be in there already and unfortunately, a lot of people can can say a lot of things and try to motivate people and if you train hard I know people who train harder than most people and still didn't make it.

00:41:53.547 --> 00:41:56.905
The advice I would give people is find something you love.

00:41:56.905 --> 00:41:58.400
Don't find something you like.

00:41:58.400 --> 00:42:08.585
Don't find something that make a lot of money, because in this country we're so that the rich is the way of life, so everybody's trying to like.

00:42:08.626 --> 00:42:13.585
In my community, everybody wants to be the athlete, everybody wants to be the rapper, everybody wants to do these things.

00:42:13.585 --> 00:42:35.894
Man, find out what you really love and be the best at that, because everything else, man, there's going to come times where, if you in it for the money or if you in it for the fame, man, it's going to be times where it man, it don't feel too good and you know you're going to have to be able to fight through it, and that's just spirit and mentality right there.

00:42:35.894 --> 00:42:44.342
It has nothing to do with how fast you can run or how you can jump, how many touchdowns you scored, man.

00:42:44.342 --> 00:42:46.663
Or can you go out there and play when you're injured, you know?

00:42:46.663 --> 00:42:54.266
Can you go out there and play when a coach is telling you you know we just drafted this guy at wide receiver, we need you to help him out Like people don't really understand that about.

00:42:54.726 --> 00:42:57.987
You know professional sports, especially football.

00:42:57.987 --> 00:43:04.891
You know you're supposed to have this mentality of oh, we're a team sport, okay, they draft the receiver, and then the coach is telling you, curtis, you got to get him up to speed.

00:43:04.891 --> 00:43:09.554
So you're teaching a guy to take money out of your pocket.

00:43:09.554 --> 00:43:11.994
Think about that for a second.

00:43:11.994 --> 00:43:14.797
We need him to help the team, curtis.

00:43:14.797 --> 00:43:17.617
So you got to bring him up to speed, you got to teach him the ropes.

00:43:17.617 --> 00:43:27.601
So after you show the guy everything you know, you look him in the eye and say, bro, you're still not going to take my job, I'm still competing, which?

00:43:27.681 --> 00:43:30.128
theoretically makes both of you better, I guess.

00:43:30.248 --> 00:43:31.824
Yeah, again, pray for me.

00:43:34.161 --> 00:43:35.686
You're not getting my job.

00:43:35.706 --> 00:43:38.407
You know what I'm saying, so again that was my mentality.

00:43:38.500 --> 00:43:47.028
So it still comes down to a mentality, because you always got young talent coming up trying to take your job and you know you got to be willing to go out there and fight through a lot of stuff, man.

00:43:47.028 --> 00:43:47.652
So Will, for me, is number one.

00:43:47.652 --> 00:43:49.460
And you know you got to be willing to go out there and fight through a lot of stuff, man.

00:43:49.460 --> 00:43:55.028
So, um, will for me is number one, will for me is number one.

00:43:55.028 --> 00:44:01.389
Um, I like to tell people, you know, get in a quiet space and just find what you like.

00:44:01.389 --> 00:44:02.793
What do you love to do?

00:44:02.793 --> 00:44:08.869
Naturally, take the money out of it because, again, like I told you guys, it was never about money, it was never.

00:44:08.869 --> 00:44:12.186
I played more basketball, I watched more basketball.

00:44:12.186 --> 00:44:16.210
I had more, I liked more basketball players than I did football.

00:44:16.210 --> 00:44:24.132
I didn't even really watch football, I was always about basketball, but I love to play football, if that makes any sense.

00:44:24.260 --> 00:44:25.545
I just love to play football.

00:44:25.545 --> 00:44:27.121
I didn't care, Absolutely yeah.

00:44:27.400 --> 00:44:30.067
I didn't care about watching it, I wanted to play football.

00:44:30.067 --> 00:44:30.568
I didn't care.

00:44:30.568 --> 00:44:31.510
Yeah, I didn't.

00:44:31.510 --> 00:44:33.172
I didn't care about watching it, I wanted to play it.

00:44:33.172 --> 00:44:42.240
If I watched one series of football, I'm going outside with my football trying to round up everybody.

00:44:42.240 --> 00:44:42.621
I loved it.

00:44:42.621 --> 00:44:43.163
You know that was in me.

00:44:43.163 --> 00:44:46.869
So, um, I can sit up here all day and fluff it, man, but I know for me, I can speak for myself and a lot of guys.

00:44:47.650 --> 00:44:49.813
Man, you got to have some kind of mentality.

00:44:49.813 --> 00:44:59.110
You got to have some kind of mentality, you got to have some kind of drive and ultimately, you got to love what you do, to be the best, and only because there's going to be times where you fail.

00:44:59.110 --> 00:45:01.706
What are you going to do in those moments when it's not good?

00:45:01.706 --> 00:45:04.476
And most people you know, everybody, say everybody.

00:45:04.476 --> 00:45:08.909
I tell people this all the time everybody want to make it to the NFL, aspn.

00:45:08.909 --> 00:45:09.871
They show highlights.

00:45:09.871 --> 00:45:15.552
They don't show the guys training on the offseason, throwing up on the sideline while they're training.

00:45:15.552 --> 00:45:18.108
Nobody gets to see none of the hard work.

00:45:18.108 --> 00:45:23.731
You know, thank God for the cameras now so you can see these guys, the work that they put in on the offseason.

00:45:23.731 --> 00:45:26.728
But, man, this stuff it's not easy.

00:45:26.728 --> 00:45:28.222
It's not easy at all.

00:45:28.222 --> 00:45:36.309
And again, you know, as talented as you can be, if you don't have that inner drive to say man, I'm going out here no matter what.

00:45:36.309 --> 00:45:37.945
Oh, you trying to take my job?

00:45:37.945 --> 00:45:42.251
Okay, these are your teammates that you're still competing with every day.

00:45:42.659 --> 00:45:43.925
Iron sharpens iron right.

00:45:43.925 --> 00:45:45.726
I mean, that's the way it is.

00:45:45.726 --> 00:45:52.822
This seems like a great time to talk about losing, like not succeeding.

00:45:52.822 --> 00:46:06.612
I mean, you know you're talking to three hosts right here who just had our fandom football team's asses kicked this past weekend, so we're all licking our wounds a little bit and it's hard, like as a fan, to like lose and watch your team lose.

00:46:06.612 --> 00:46:09.885
How is that, as a player, Do you get over it?

00:46:09.885 --> 00:46:11.021
How long does it take?

00:46:11.021 --> 00:46:11.922
What do you do?

00:46:11.922 --> 00:46:14.548
I mean, this is your livelihood, or is it?

00:46:14.548 --> 00:46:15.510
Hey, this is a job.

00:46:15.510 --> 00:46:18.826
I got to turn the page, get better and move on and try.

00:46:18.826 --> 00:46:21.532
Try a different way or work a little harder.

00:46:21.532 --> 00:46:23.282
Like what is the mentality there?

00:46:24.965 --> 00:46:26.588
Um, I can only speak for myself.

00:46:26.588 --> 00:46:31.264
Um, without putting any names out there, I've played with players that really didn't care.

00:46:31.264 --> 00:46:33.650
Man, they're getting a paycheck.

00:46:33.891 --> 00:46:34.112
Yeah.

00:46:34.860 --> 00:46:39.226
You know, a lot of people drive is the money, like I said, and they're talented enough to make it.

00:46:39.226 --> 00:46:44.909
Like I said before, I'm a competitor and I'm a sore loser, so I always wore it on my shoulders.

00:46:44.909 --> 00:46:49.050
If we lost to a team, you best believe I was trying to get them back.

00:46:49.050 --> 00:46:58.463
I would even develop some kind of hatred in my own mind because I know it's just a game and we shaking hands afterwards, and you know.

00:46:58.463 --> 00:47:09.110
But for me, you know, I had to develop some kind of negative something to you, um, because you beat me yeah, that was.

00:47:09.150 --> 00:47:10.132
That was the Jordan thing.

00:47:10.132 --> 00:47:14.351
Right, he used to get mad at someone on the other team and make a story up.

00:47:14.500 --> 00:47:20.911
Whatever it was didn't have to be true, yeah exactly, I didn't know that, but man, that's, that's what it is.

00:47:20.911 --> 00:47:27.405
It's like, wait a minute, they beat us, they got the upper hand, like I, you know, and I had some pretty bad seasons in Chicago.

00:47:27.405 --> 00:47:30.250
But, man, you don.

00:47:30.250 --> 00:47:36.880
Man, you start to hate the other team, no matter who's on the team, you hate them.

00:47:36.880 --> 00:47:40.844
It's not until the offseason where you can kind of digress a little bit and get over it.

00:47:40.844 --> 00:47:49.431
But especially when you're playing teams in your division, if you lose to them the first time and you've got another opportunity to play them, man, it's like the Super Bowl, of course.

00:47:49.632 --> 00:47:50.552
It's like the Super Bowl, Of course.

00:47:50.572 --> 00:47:51.614
It's like wait, y'all beat us to laugh.

00:47:51.614 --> 00:47:55.177
Oh man, y'all not doing it, I don't care, I got to play against everybody.

00:47:55.177 --> 00:47:57.461
You know it's that mentality.

00:47:57.461 --> 00:48:00.711
So I will say, man, losing it's tough man.

00:48:00.711 --> 00:48:08.369
And I've been on teams where our leaders, some guys, would be on the back of the plane laughing and talking like we didn't lose.

00:48:08.369 --> 00:48:20.130
And you know, you got some players that go back in the back and have a word or two and maybe a hand or two Like how are y'all back here acting like we didn't just lose?

00:48:20.559 --> 00:48:21.001
And you know.

00:48:21.001 --> 00:48:24.250
So you're talking 53 different personalities.

00:48:24.250 --> 00:48:28.110
You know, on a plane ride, after a loss, everybody is different.

00:48:32.599 --> 00:48:36.391
So, like I said, for me, man, it you know, don't call me, don't talk to me, you know and don't let me have a bad game.

00:48:36.960 --> 00:48:39.389
Yep, and that's why you became a great player.

00:48:39.389 --> 00:48:44.110
That wraps up this best of edition of no Wrong Choices with Curtis Conway.

00:48:44.110 --> 00:48:45.092
What a story.

00:48:45.092 --> 00:48:52.469
If you'd like to hear the rest of it, part two is available right now, wherever you're listening, or on our website at norongchoicescom.

00:48:52.469 --> 00:48:57.346
On behalf of Larry Shea Tushar Saxena and me, larry Samuels.

00:48:57.346 --> 00:48:59.206
Thank you so much for listening.

00:48:59.206 --> 00:49:06.387
If you liked what you heard, please support the show by following us on your favorite podcast platform, while giving us a five-star rating.

00:49:06.387 --> 00:49:14.068
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00:49:14.068 --> 00:49:16.005
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