MIKE & MIKE

MIKE GOLIC THE ATHLETE AND MIKE GOLIC THE SPORTS RADIO HOST REFLECT ON A LIFE IN FOOTBALL

Luckily for Mike Golic (’85), the body parts he wrecked on the football field aren’t the ones he needs most these days.

The management major wasn’t giving a conscious thought to protecting his brain during his nearly two decades of bashing heads with other large men. Simply put, other parts failed first. He’s had 12 surgeries in all — six on one shoulder, three on the other and three more on a knee.

Golic is the youngest of three brothers who played football at Notre Dame between 1975 and 1986. He was a linebacker during the Gerry Faust era, serving as a team captain as a senior. These days, he’s better known as part of the Mike & Mike sports talk program on ESPN. He and co-host Mike Greenberg share information and opinions with 4.6 million TV viewers and 4.2 million radio listeners during an average week.

If you ask the audience, people listen because both Mikes show up every day with fresh facts and opinions. Golic, in particular, is amiable, authentic and informed. He doesn’t just spout off. He gives his reasons, and you’re welcome to disagree.

Golic’s love of Notre Dame goes back to his pre-teen years when oldest brother Bob was a freshman linebacker on a Dan Devine-coached team. Bob was a captain on the 1977 national championship team, winning most-valuable-player honors in the title game. Greg, an offensive lineman, was the second Golic brother recruited by the Irish, and he competed under less of a spotlight than Bob. Having those two older brothers playing at a powerhouse like Notre Dame gave Golic a lot of confidence when he arrived on campus.

He was the No. 1 recruit by new coach Faust. In Golic’s first practice as a freshman against the varsity regulars, Faust’s staff decided it was time to see how Golic would measure up.

“I got my ass kicked,” he said. “It might have been Tom Thayer (who later played in the Super Bowl for the Chicago Bears). Here I was the top player coming in. Now I’m on the bottom.

“You’re not expecting to go into those battles and never lose. But as we all know, in life, after you get knocked down, it’s a question of how you do the next time.”

Golic’s first three seasons at Notre Dame were solid enough that he received some all-American mention before his senior year. But things changed in the second quarter of the 1985 season opener against Purdue.

“The pulling guard caught me under the shoulder, and I knew I was hurt,” he said. “I just kept playing. At halftime, I couldn’t raise my arm and I told the doc. He said, ‘You’re not going back in unless you can raise your arm over your head.’”

When the trainer turned away, Golic used his good arm to pull his bad arm up. “I said, ‘Doc,’ and he saw my arm up and I went back in.”

That was the mindset then. If you were a team leader, you played through the pain. As weeks went by, playing with just one good arm, he wasn’t nearly the dominant player he had expected to be.

Pro scouts were wary. Instead of being a second-round pick like his oldest brother, Golic slipped to Round No. 10. Tenth-rounders weren’t a shoo-in to make the team. He needed every bit of his guts and guile just to make the Houston Oilers squad. He eventually played for nine years in the NFL — two with Houston, six with Philadelphia and one with Miami. “I am very happy with that. I was never an upper-echelon player,” Golic said. “I started maybe half the games and rotated in on the others.”

Sports writers noticed he was good for a memorable quote after every game. During his time with the Philadelphia Eagles, he started showing up as a guest on Randall Cunningham’s TV sports show. “I would give kind of a light-hearted look at the next game,” he said. “We were playing the Cleveland Browns, so I went to the dog pound. We were playing at Arrowhead Stadium, so I would bring a bow and arrow. It ended up winning some sort of a regional Emmy.”

Golic retired from the NFL in 1994 and began working as an analyst for college games and studio shows. Just as with football, he knew he had talent, but he would have to work smarter in a viciously competitive field.

He wasn’t an overnight success. He did a lot of grunt work before ESPN decided in 1998 to start its own drive-time sports talk show. He and talk radio host Tony Bruno did the show from ESPN headquarters in Connecticut for about a year, but only one of its affiliates, a Chicago station, picked it up.

Because the show wasn’t broadcast by any of the East Coast radio stations, none of Golic’s bosses were listening in. “No one thought this was going to be a monster show, so we could do whatever we wanted,” he said. “We made a lot of mistakes, but no one heard us.”

Listeners loved the show, advertising dollars rolled in and affiliates began signing up to carry the broadcasts. “Somehow, we took it from one affiliate to 400 or 500,” he said.

In January 2000, Golic teamed up with Mike Greenberg for what would be an 18-year broadcast partnership. They worked together from 6 to 10 a.m., five days a week, building a loyal following. In 2004, the show was aired on TV, as well.

One of the side benefits for Golic was the stability and time he had when his three children were growing. “My show ends at 10 o’clock in the morning,” said Golic, who continued to work college games and studio shows until Mike Jr.’s freshman year of high school.

“If I’m doing NFL Live, it’s at 4 p.m. I was the lunch monitor for all their schools. I coached them in everything they did. I got to be with them all the time. It worked out very, very well,” he added, especially since Mike Jr. (’12), Jake (ND ’13) and Sydney (ND ’16) all graduated from Notre Dame.

Earlier this year, ESPN offered Greenberg his own show to start in January. For his part, Golic received a three-year contract for a show on ESPN2 and eventually ESPNU, where he will be paired with Trey Wingo and Mike Jr. Details are still being worked out.

Sitting across from Golic today, it’s evident that he’s happy. Sixty pounds lighter than he was as a professional football player, he figures he’s in the best shape of his life. And he cherishes his past.

He remembers his first day as a Notre Dame freshman, walking with his Dillon Hall roommates to a freshman mixer at Saint Mary’s College. That’s where he met his wife, Christine.

Golic is grateful that he had enough awareness to take his studies seriously and that he recognized that his real goal was to become a Notre Dame graduate, not just a professional football player. Over the years, he’s met plenty of good athletes who weren’t prepared for life without football or whatever sport carried their dreams.

“You’ve got to be ready to do something else,” he said. “One percent (of college football players) are going to the NFL, but 90 percent think they are.”

When he thinks about his own future after ESPN, it likely will include helping former football players who have fallen on hard times. It may just be a matter of coordinating existing programs, eliminating red tape and making sure people are aware of the need.

Golic also is concerned about football’s future, as more evidence emerges of the long-term brain damage athletes suffer. In an average NFL game, there are 128 plays from scrimmage. On each play, linemen crash into each other, shoulder against shoulder and often helmet against helmet.

The NFL reported 275 players suffered concussions in 2015 and another 244 in 2016. These commonplace head-on collisions have been linked to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease increasingly common among football players later in life.

Golic and his family launched their careers thanks to the sport, and were able to walk away with just scar tissue. But he realizes how close he was to ending up like Dave Duerson, a 1982 Notre Dame graduate whose chronic concussions led to his death in 2011.

Christine is involved in the Heads Up Football program, which is looking for ways to protect players, particularly those just learning the sport. Golic supports that effort.

“We’re finding out so much more about head injuries that we have to be smarter,” he said. “Sometimes at the high school level, a coach doesn’t want to pull his best player out. That’s one of the hurdles that we’re talking about. We need better equipment, better technique.”

The emphasis on “heads up” means that players tackle more with their shoulders and arms instead of using their helmets as a battering ram.

“It’s a violent, physical sport on almost every play. There’s no way to prevent injuries,” he said. “It’s the job of coaches to put kids in the best position possible to play the game without injury.”

Still, Golic has to acknowledge those scars from the 12 surgeries and recognize that violence and pain are at the very root of the game he loves: “You’re never going to make this game safe,” he said. “We’re going to make it safer.”

Mike Golic is the youngest of three brothers who played football at Notre Dame between 1975 and 1986. He was a linebacker during the Gerry Faust era, serving as a team captain as a senior. These days, he’s better known as part of the Mike & Mike sports talk program on ESPN. He and co-host Mike Greenberg share information and opinions with 4.6 million TV viewers and 4.2 million radio listeners during an average week.