E-mail a friendJerome Bettis
airdate September 6, 2007
One of pro football's stellar athletes, Jerome Bettis is now a commentator for NBC Sports. He finished his career after 13 seasons as the 5th leading rusher in NFL history and announced his retirement in his hometown of Detroit on the Super Bowl XL champions' podium. Bettis founded The Bus Stops Here Foundation to aid underprivileged children and is an advocate for asthma awareness. In his autobiography, The Bus—his nickname—he tells of his rise from a sometimes troubled childhood to gridiron hero.
Jerome Bettis
Tavis: I'm pleased to welcome Jerome Bettis to this program. The Detroit native became a stand-out in the NFL, earning six trips to the Pro Bowl and ending his career with a Super Bowl victory in 2006. His new book is appropriately called "The Bus: My Life In and Out of a Helmet." Bus, nice to have you here, man.
Jerome Bettis: Thank you, appreciate that.
Tavis: It's an honor to have you on the program, man.
Bettis: Thank you.
Tavis: So are you finding that there really is life outside of the helmet?
Bettis: It is. And it's life before playing football and it's life after playing football, and that I'm really starting to enjoy after football.
Tavis: Yeah, there's a lot of folk who have trouble making that transition. For you, other than the fact you got a nice gig doing commentary, you didn't have to wait two or three years to find what your next move was going to be. But how has the transition been for you?
Bettis: The transition's been good, and you hear so much about players that have a difficult time transitioning and I realize why that is. We played football all our life, and for the majority of the players, they've been playing since they were six, seven years old. So now you take the one thing that's been constant in their life for 30 years - you take it away from them and there's not much left. And that's the difficult part.
Tavis: I think maybe part of the problem is that while they're playing, enough players don't figure out what the plan is.
Bettis: No question, no question. And when I was playing I had a television show, I had a radio show, and I was very conscious of the next step. And a lot of times, players don't think far enough ahead to say, "You know what? When the game is over, what am I going to do?" Some guys take internships, but not enough.
Tavis: Tell me about growing up in Detroit. I want to come back to the end - Brian, my stage manager and I, were just discussing before you came out here whose career in any sport ended on the highest high. And we had a debate going between Jerome Bettis and John Elway. Elway was about to leave the league like Merino, with nothing, and this guy comes back the last two seasons and goes out with two championships. But you're doing it in Detroit in your hometown was just an amazing thing. But before I get to the end, tell me about the beginning - growing up in Detroit.
Bettis: It was tough. Growing up in Detroit was extremely rough. I was fortunate that my mother and father were at home. But even then, it was still difficult for me because I had a patch there when I truly was a bad kid. I was stealing things and it gradually got worse in the sense that I began selling drugs, and that was definitely the low point of growing up.
And I was fortunate enough to have people around me and my high school coach in particular who found out and came back and told my mom and dad, and they weren't very receptive to it, as you can imagine. And so they really kind of changed my life at that point and I had crossroads - I had to decide whether I was going to go this way or that way.
Tavis: With so much going for you as a young football star in Detroit, how'd you end up selling drugs? I'm trying to figure out -
Bettis: You know what, it was one of those deals where in my environment, in my neighborhood, that was the thing. If you wanted to make some money, that's how you made some money. And it was substantial amounts of money that was there. And so in the neighborhood it wasn't difficult to get it, and so that's what - part of the things that we did.
I had a couple guys, good friends of mine, and we decided that this was what we wanted to do and we went out there and did it. And it was definitely the wrong thing to do, and I think that's part of why I'm so adamant about doing so much for the community now, because I understand now that I was very, very detrimental to our community, where I grew up. And so I want to do so much to try to change that.
Tavis: To your point now about some of the guys you were hanging out with back in the day, is it - I don't want to miscall - is it Jamal, your partner?
Bettis: Yeah, Jamal.
Tavis: Jamal. So Jamal and you have been - Jamal is your - what's his role?
Bettis: He was my high school best friend, and now he's my business manager.
Tavis: He's your business manager.
Bettis: Yeah.
Tavis: I raise that because - not to put Jamal on the spot - hey, Jamal, what's up, brother? (Laughter) Not to put him on the spot, but I raise that because you think about Michael Vick and some of the other cats who you and I both know who hung out with these guys their entire lives, they become part of their posse, they become part of their entourage - you know the rule.
It's easier to put these guys on your payroll than it is to have them begging you for money all the time. How did you and Jamal end up being friends all these years and the relationship - and again, there are many examples like this - but we read about the negative ones all the time where your boys end up getting you in trouble.
Bettis: In trouble, right. Jamal really - a credit to him - was one of the guys that kind of pulled me away from that. He came from a great family, but he was from the streets, too, and so he understood what was going on, but he lived in a different part of town so I would kind of go with him and kind of leave from where I was at to just kind of go into a different environment, so to speak.
I wasn't around the guys who I grew up with, so me and him would kind of go places and do different things, and really kind of expand my horizon, so to speak. And so we would hang out at different restaurants and do different things, and so he really was very important in me going to the right and not going to the left.
Tavis: Let me fast forward now to your college days. I mentioned to you and people who watch this show regularly know that I brag about going - I love the fact that I went to Indiana University down in southern Indiana, but I grew up just down the road from a place called Notre Dame up in northern Indiana. So I grew up as a kid a huge Notre Dame fan, and you end up at Notre Dame. How do you go from Detroit to Notre Dame?
Bettis: It was a culture shock for me, because -
Tavis: To say the least. (Laughter) (Unintelligible) is nothing like Detroit.
Bettis: Nothing like it. It was a culture shock, and so I had to change. I was so scared of getting kicked out and having to go back home with my tail between my legs that I wanted to change - I wanted to do whatever I needed to do, and so that really - that's the start of my transformation into the person I am today. I think going to Notre Dame was the best thing for me, because it opened my eyes and the world doesn't work the way it works in Detroit, and it's a real world out here. And so having to integrate myself into the Notre Dame lifestyle was tough, but I managed it.
Tavis: We hear so much - and I love Detroit, got nothing but love in my heart for the city of Detroit, the cultural capital of Black America, the Mecca of Black America - and yet we hear so much about education or the lack of a quality education in Detroit public schools. Notre Dame is on the other end. Notre Dame is a real rigorous academic regimen if you're going to get through there. How'd you go from Detroit to the academic rigors of Notre Dame?
Bettis: You know what? It was really crazy, because I lived a double life in Detroit. I had one side of me that was very street, very hood, and then I had one side of me that was - my mother and father kind of beat an education into me. They sent me to a private middle school when I was a kid, then I went to a public high school, which is what kind of set me down a different path. (Laughter)
But going to the private middle school kind of gave me a foundation, so when I got to public school, everything was really easy for me, educationally, and so I was National Honor Society, all those things, but yet still it wasn't a lot of effort there. And then that kind of made me drift to do other things. So when I got to Notre Dame, I was behind. And so I had to really catch up, and so I knew it was important for me to stay there so I had tutors and I just made sure that I kind of caught up, educationally.
Tavis: This is an old story but my first time having a chance to ask you this personally. What did you make of the comings and goings of Tyrone Willingham? Because I was not happy about that.
Bettis: In my book, I talk about it. I was very disappointed and I was ashamed that university took those steps. If you look at the history of Notre Dame, they've never fired a coach. And so he's the first Black head coach at Notre Dame, and he doesn't get an opportunity to finish what eh started in terms of his contract and getting his players all the way through and seeing what he could really do.
Because early on in his career, he was playing with different coaches' players, and so he didn't get, I don't think, a fair shake, and I was very disappointed about that and the fact that everything got sloppy. They went after a coach, they didn't have him locked in, and they fired Tyrone and now they don't have the coach to replace him and automatically Tyrone becomes the number one candidate again. And I was very disappointed about that.
Tavis: From one Black coach to another, your old team, the Steelers, now have a Black coach. Is Mr. Rudy the coolest cat, or what?
Bettis: (Laughs) He is. He's incredible, and he kind of - he really fathered that minority rule.
Tavis: They call it the Rooney Rule.
Bettis: The Rooney Rule, yeah, and - which means that you have to interview a minority candidate. And not only did he champion that when he got an opportunity, he did it. And I think he put his money where his mouth is, and he let a man of color, Coach Tomlin, run the Pittsburgh Steelers. And I think that's a tribute to the man he really is.
Tavis: How's he going to do?
Bettis: I think he's going to do great, I really do. He's got a great nucleus of veteran players. He's not in a position where he's got to find players from all over the place. He's got a good nucleus of players, he just comes in and kind of insert his energy and the way that he does things, and I think they'll be fine.
Tavis: So back it up - that issue I raised earlier, which is a good place to close our conversation, and there's so much in the book we didn't get to - but is there any better way to end your career than the way you did?
Bettis: No, no better way. And it was such a big part of my life and a big memory - to be on that stage, to be at home where it all started, and then to lift the trophy and to have come back one more year for that chance and to do that, it was just - it was a dream come true. But with that, that's part of the reason I wrote the book, because I wanted everybody to see that a lot went into that moment.
It wasn't as shiny as everybody thinks it is; it was some rocky roads and I made some bad decisions along the way. And that hopefully I can inspire people that hey, you can make some bad decisions along the way as long as you try to right those wrongs and keep moving forward.
Tavis: You and I are not the best of friends, we've only met a couple times, but I feel so connected to you for a lot of different reasons - Indiana, Notre Dame, and Detroit, etc. That said, when I heard the news of your father's passing, I literally was in my car, pulled to the side of the road, and said a prayer for you. And I remember in that moment being grateful for the fact, having never met your father, that your father got a chance to see you make that entire transition. That's got to make you feel good now as a father yourself.
Bettis: No question about it. It makes me feel so good that he was able to enjoy the ride with me. So many times, you have the success of your life and the people that you love the most aren't there to witness it. And my father was there to witness it, and I made sure of it. I did everything that I could do to make sure that they were comfortable along the whole way. I made sure that they had a box - for the Super Bowl, I got a box for my family and that was - the numbers on that was astronomical. (Laughter)
But you know what? It was one of those things where they went the whole length of my career going to every game. This was their moment, as well as it was my moment. So I was so proud of that, and so for him to have seen that, it really eases me to know that he was there with me.
Tavis: It's a good read, it's a good read. Jerome Bettis' new book, "The Bus: My Life In and Out of a Helmet." What else would you call a book by Jerome Bettis other than "The Bus?" Jerome, nice to have you here, man.
Bettis: Thank you, appreciate it.
Tavis: Good to see you.
Back to September 6, 2007