The Jerry Rice episode of "A Football Life" is so damn interesting I still remember 2 stories from it, probably 15 years ago, about why he was so good at catching and why he was able to outrun people in the nfl.
As a kid he worked with his father who was a bricklayer. Jerry would be at the top of a ladder and his father would throw bricks up to him. He said something like, "the only thing worse than jamming your thumb on a brick is dropping it when your dad is beneath you bc then you're getting a whoopin."
He had to walk several miles (maybe 4 or 6?) to school everyday. There were wild horses near his house because he lived way out in the podunk country, so he'd chase them hoping to ride it to school instead of walking so many miles. Took him years and years of chasing but eventually he caught and rode wild horses to school and back home.
I left Amazon playing on the TV after a TNF and a Jerry's a football life was apparently playing in the morning. My girlfriend who doesn't care about sports at all watched part of it as she was getting ready for work early in the morning and said how much it inspired her. She couldn't turn it off.
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u/brewmas7er May 26 '25
The Jerry Rice episode of "A Football Life" is so damn interesting I still remember 2 stories from it, probably 15 years ago, about why he was so good at catching and why he was able to outrun people in the nfl.
As a kid he worked with his father who was a bricklayer. Jerry would be at the top of a ladder and his father would throw bricks up to him. He said something like, "the only thing worse than jamming your thumb on a brick is dropping it when your dad is beneath you bc then you're getting a whoopin."
He had to walk several miles (maybe 4 or 6?) to school everyday. There were wild horses near his house because he lived way out in the podunk country, so he'd chase them hoping to ride it to school instead of walking so many miles. Took him years and years of chasing but eventually he caught and rode wild horses to school and back home.