In this episode of the SLN Podcast, Mike Gugat speaks to his friend George Wrightster. George is a husband, father, entrepreneur, radio & tv broadcaster, and podcaster. Born in Memphis, George grew up in the San Fernando Valley, having gone to The Buckley School with Kim Kardashian. George would go on to be a standout student and tight-end at the University of Oregon yet shares season tickets for UCLA Football with his wife Danisha, a Bruin alumnus. After being a celebrated Duck, George would go on to play several years for the Jacksonville Jaguars in the NFL. The interview took place on August 27th, the day after the Milwaukee Bucks and Brewers refused to play in protest of Jacob Blake having been shot 7 times by a Kenosha police officer. George and Mike spoke at length about this pivotal moment in sports.
References
Podcast Highlights
1:15 – How does a University of Oregon Hall of Famer have UCLA season tickets?: “Cause you live in Los Angeles and you have a wife who’s a diehard Bruin.”
6:15 – Loving America when America doesn’t love us back: “It’s amazing how difficult it is for some people to have conversations about race in this country because you can simultaneously say, alright, I love America, I wouldn’t want to be born anywhere else, there’s a lot of freedom, a lot of opportunities, all of that. But at the same time, the racist history also has put into play systematic things, systematic oppression that still rears its ugly head today.”
12:05 – Tearing down statues: “I’ve never been a person who said that these statues should be torn down and just thrown away in the trash. No, this was a part of history. And if you don’t know your history, then you’re doomed to repeat it on some level.”
18:20 – Being a basketball player before football: “I was a hooper and I actually really didn’t like football as much, but I was really good at it. And my plan was to go to college, play both, and coach tricked me at Oregon. The rest was history cause I fell in love with it when I was at Oregon.”
22:40 – Getting energized from business classes: “I felt the energy when I went to go take the business classes. There’s like an energy, like magic that I could feel on campus.”
26:30 – Moving from the West Coast to Jacksonville: “All the rest of the guys that I had trained with and became close with, they were all super close to their family. And then I went to Jacksonville.”
33:20 – Showing others your commitment: “When people are making decisions about you and your future, you have to make sure that they understand how important something is to you.”
42:20 – Approach with love and honesty: “If I approach things from a place of love and honesty, then everything will be okay. So I say things sometimes on my podcast or on the radio show on Fox that sometimes people disagree with, but there’s never a point in time saying that this is mean-spirited that this is just hateful, you know?”
44:51 – Overcoming Stuttering: “I always wanted to be an entertainment. I didn’t know whether I wanted to act or be in broadcasting, I just knew that I had that calling in my heart to do it. And it was so frustrating because when I was in college and the pros, I didn’t get a whole lot of interviews even though I was one of the best people because I stuttered so badly and it was so frustrating because I was like, God, why would you put this on my heart to do, if I can’t do it?”
49:40 – Difference between quitting and pivoting: “There’s a difference between quitting and pivoting and saying, okay, this way is not working so I am going to keep going, but I’m going to pivot in this direction and just stick with it as long as possible.”
