Terry Bradshaw: Playboy Interview

The boots are made of elephant skin. They are almost pure white and in the middle, where they shelter his shins, there is a big black number 12 made from the bellies of a lot of little lizards. Terry Bradshaw lifts the boots up on the coffee table and leans back on the crimson soft velvet couch. "Sometimes," he says, tilting his suede Stetson back on his balding blond head, "I worry about comin' off like a dime-store cowboy."

And with that, Terry Bradshaw, who, at the age of 31, makes about a quarter of a million dollars a year for throwing a football very straight and very hard, starts plunking his $75 guitar. "Y'all join in if you know the words," he tells his two city-slicker guests. He sings alone:

"'The heart is a funny thing with a mind all its own. It withers like a garden left unattended and alone. And the thorns of loneliness invade and destroy what they can't steal. So easy to hurt. But oh so hard to heal.'"
He looks out of place here, his back to a full-length picture window of this sooty steel town of Pittsburgh, a sullen city where the air is grayish brown, the rivers polluted by tiny tugs and the hills alive with the sound of belching smokestacks.

Here, in this unlikely city of champions, the most valuable player in the single most important game in sports sits still in his 17th-floor apartment overlooking the Monongahela River and rests from a long day of hard practice. The stadium where 50,000 fans cheer him is just over his right shoulder, not more than a fly pattern away.

He is sharing the apartment with a dog named Sugar. His wife, known to most people as JoJo Starbuck, the ice skater, is on a nationwide tour for a noodle-soup company. His folks are down home on his ranch in Louisiana, right near where, as a child, he hopped up the hills and slid down the slop.

Bradshaw grew like a Louisiana weed, to over 6'3" and 200 pounds. When he finished at Louisiana Tech, a neighborhood college he went to because he didn't think he was good enough to make it at the bigger schools, the people who scout and tout for pro football were calling him the next Joe Namath, a country kid with an arm like a howitzer. They thought so much of him that he was the number-one pick from the college crop that year. But that was a decade ago.

It didn't come easy for Bradshaw. He came to a team that had played 14 games the year before and won one of them. Many people thought that, as a new quarterback playing in a new stadium, Bradshaw would immediately turn things around for the Pittsburgh Steelers. But that wasn't the case.
"Bradshaw may have a lot in common with this stadium," owner Art Rooney said that first year. "He'll be beautiful—when he's finished."

Bradshaw played erratically those early years. He was an occasional hero and a frequent goat. Some of his frustrated teammates complained very loudly that he called dumb plays. Dumb was a label that would be picked up by the press and branded on Bradshaw. The country bumpkin. Li'l Abner in football shoes.

It all started to get to him, that and a bad marriage to a teenage beauty queen. By 1974, he had lost his starting quarterback job to a black player who, it was later revealed, was a heroin addict. But he kept believing in himself and, most of all, he kept the faith. He became an avid Christian, a belief that would come to rule his very being, a persuasion that would help him pull himself up by Tony Lama's bootstraps, win back his starting role and take his team to the Super Bowl that year.

His victory over the Minnesota Vikings would lead to consecutive conquests of the Dallas Cowboys. In January 1979, Bradshaw would lead his team to victory in a game that many called the greatest Super Bowl ever. And, in the greatest of games, he'd be named the best player.

But the problems were not over. His three-year-old marriage to JoJo was almost sacked. She wanted to pursue her career, he wanted her to stay at home. Only their faith kept them together. (He has since published two ghostwritten books attesting to that faith.) There is evidence of that all over their Pittsburgh home. Prominent among all the game-winning footballs and trophies are drawings of Jesus and simply stated prayers. Like the one in the kitchen that gives the recipe for a happy marriage. The biggest ingredient listed is "one gallon of faith in God and each other."

As Bradshaw answered his detractors by leading the Steelers to another probable Super Bowl this year, a lot of questions remained about his life both on and off the field. To get the answers, Playboy sent Maury Z. Levy and Samantha Stevenson to talk with America's latest football hero. Levy and Stevenson had just finished a bout with Pete Rose for last September's "Playboy Interview." This time, their subject wasn't hostile. The three of them got along very well. The interview sessions turned into marathons of singing and talk about philosophy and football. Bradshaw related immediately to Stevenson, herself a newborn Christian. It took longer with Levy, a once-born Jew. Levy reports:

"Terry's biggest concern was not to offend me when he talked about his Christianity. Once I assured him that I had a good alibi for the Crucifixion, we became fast friends.

"It quickly became clear that Bradshaw was one of the most honest, down-to-earth people I'd ever worked with. That first day, when we left the stadium to head to his apartment, we walked out to a parking lot full of Caddies and Corvettes. Terry walked by them all as we climbed into his Ford Bronco wagon.
"Once we got to know each other, he shared more than just his thoughts with me. We wear about the same size in athletic shoes and shirts, and he insisted on giving me some of them to take home. We finally settled on a trade. He gave me a pair of white Spaldings. I took him a pair of blue-and-green Ponys. 'The ugliest guldarn shoes I've ever seen, he said, accepting them graciously.

"Our talks were somewhat scattered. Once, we stopped to go down to the lobby of his apartment building so he could throw some footballs at me. I still have the black-and-blue marks on my chest. That lesson finished, we went back up so Terry could give me some even more important instruction. He didn't want me to leave until I'd learned all the words to ' Amazing Grace.' Samantha went into the kitchen to make us dinner while he did that. He wasn't worried about her. She already knew the words." Stevenson reports:

"I think Terry felt more comfortable explaining his faith to me. It was our mutual faith that allowed me to push him on some of the harder questions—like who is Jesus Christ and how could he help him throw a touchdown pass?

"To be a touchdown hero in my book, you have to really be something extraordinary. I grew up around professional football players and learned early on what most people never realize: that they are very human. And Terry Bradshaw was one of the most human of all those I'd met.

"My impressions of him were immediate. I thought he had a good heart and a great sense of humor. He kept telling JoJo on the phone that I was a Playboy Bunny. 'Gor-gee-ous,' he lusted. I'm afraid she believed him for a while.

"But through all the fun, we ended things on a very serious note. After baring his soul, Terry took my hands and we sat—knee to knee on the couch. 'I'd like to pray about this,' he said.
"And so we prayed together—both for a Steeler Super Bowl and for this interview. Terry prayed that the interview would come out funny, that he be shown to be intelligent and honest. He prayed that all people would understand. I said amen."