Merril Hoge| Former NFL Running-Back

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Additional terms apply. It's a place where friendships are forged, football is revered, and food is enjoyed. Solo Stove, the perfect flame for the big game. Had a chance to sit down with former Steelers and Bears running back Merrill Hodge for the first time since we both worked together going back, oh gosh, more than a decade ago at my previous network and he's always animated. He always seeks to inspire. His career has seen multiple iterations from football player to broadcaster.

He also got let go and laid off and he's gone through so many different health challenges that he seeks to share those experiences so that others know they're not alone and that's one of the things I love about Merrill. I think you'll enjoy our conversation. I asked him how much has Radio Row and the Super Bowl changed since you were in the league and maybe even since you were in broadcasting? Okay, from, you know, I helped launch ESPN too. That's when I first started working at ESPN and then in 21 years of being there, just this experience of Radio Row, how enormous it has become, the platforms that exist now is just, it's somewhat, I don't think you could have comprehended that when I started 25 years ago.

You know, I couldn't, but to be a part of that growth and that initiation process and grow with it, I think it's always exciting and interesting in this world. You played in the 80s. Are you ever blown away by the exponential growth of this league to a place where it is year round and people can't get enough? Well, I call myself a bridge player because I came in, like you said, I got drafted in 87, but I left in 94. I left as a, I became a free agent and that's why I went to Chicago to play.

So I was a part of free agency. In 87, we went on strike. We went on strike. It ended up being Jean Upshaw made this announcement.

It was incorrect, but he made the announcement. We were unified on free agency and no, we were not. We were fragmented on free agency because free agency was only going to benefit a few people. What we really wanted to go on strike for what the players voted for, but Jean Upshaw failed to acknowledge that because him and his posse chose a different route was that we were healthcare benefit and retirement that helped everybody.

And he chose to neglect that. And I've had this conversation with Jean Upshaw and Jean Upshaw did do some good things. I'm not saying that, but our overall 87 strike was an absolute train wreck. We didn't rectify that to some 20, 25 years later. Now that being said, when I leave, I'm a free agent.

Okay. So I know what free agency is like. I know how the game was starting to change and how it is today. You know, that changed a lot of things with just a few players, which is true today. It only helps a few players. People only hear about those few players. A lot of people are free agents.

Okay. Only a few players get to change and there's a certain level of money. Jean Upshaw and his group came in and showed this pie chart one day about all of the increased salaries they had made for all the starting players. And I was sitting in the back. I said, Jean, do you have a graph, a graphic for all of the special teams players and backups that were going right down in the toilet? They were going south. Okay.

They're going down. And I was like, that's just, don't walk in this room and present one thing, present it all. If you're going to be a leader of men and have integrity, present it all.

And it is true. So this day, you know, I don't bend if it's a few, we've done a better job with healthcare and retirement for players, but it could have been done so much better. It should have been so much better had we done it right and had better leadership at the beginning. Do you think not enough of the growth of the NFL and the revenue is either shared or it gets down to the let's call the rank and file players, the majority of the league. Right. Well, listen, every player is responsible for having built this league to where it is today.

Okay. And for every one star player, there are five role players. There are more role players than there are star players and more role players have done more for this league as a whole than everybody.

Although everybody's a part of that. Now I do think, you know, and I think in the last collective of a bargaining agreement, they made an incremental jump for all of the players in their healthcare and retirement that was advanced. Is it where it really clearly needs to be? There's a lot of things, which the shows we don't have enough time in the show.

This takes two hours to talk about all of this. It still can improve based on the revenues that do exist and the things that could be done for the overall benefit of players who built this league and the value that in giving back. So Meryl Hodges with us here on radio row. It's great to be in person with you, a former NFL running backs been eight years in the league broadcaster too, and now working in a different capacity, which we'll talk about.

It's after hours here on CBS sports radio. You're talking about the kind of negotiations or the balance, I guess, between the league and the players. One of the big debates the last year has been about running backs and being devalued. Derek Henry's a free agent now, but very often we see the league cycle through Mark Ingram was here yesterday and he blasted the league for the way that it treats running backs.

What's your perspective? Who blasted him? Mark Ingram.

Mark Ingram. Well, okay. Well, basically says devalued.

They will have to explain that to me. So you're devalued at $9 million a year. You're devalued at 9 million.

I just want to make have clarity of what you're devalued at. I know a lot of people would like to be devalued at $9 million. Mark Ingram's of the world clearly don't understand the business, even though he's been in the business. If he had his own business and he had to invest and do the proper investment, what's best for the team, and how you need to go about it from a structure of money? You're not going to invest $20 million into a running back once they get beyond, say, 8 to 10 years.

Once you start to get into that, because you're probably going to get stuck with it. And that's coming from a guy who played running back for 22 years, okay? And I played in this league for nearly a decade as a starter. So, I understand the business side of it in the position itself. Yes, it is the most physically challenging position in the game, period.

There is no other position. There's more chance, especially if you touch the ball, okay? And there was time, the first five years of my career, I led the team in rushing and receiving.

So, I touched it well over 200 times. I know what it feels like at the end of the year. I also know what it's like to be looking at being in the league for 10 years and how much is left in you, okay? So, I can see that why nobody's going to invest some extraordinary amount of money like they are going to do a quarterback or even maybe receive a perimeter player, if you will, based on the environment that we play in.

So, I completely get that. And so, I don't know what everybody is going... The league isn't going to all of a sudden go, teams aren't going to...

Forget the league. Teams aren't going to go, you know what? You're right. We need to start paying you guys more and I need to eat it.

They're not going to do that. It's a business, okay? But I don't know how you get devalued at 5 million and 7 million and 8 million. I don't know how that's devalued, okay? Is it what everybody else... And then change positions, okay? Then change positions. You have that right.

You have the opportunity to do that. I just find it hard to go, how it can be so devalued at even $5 million. I just don't know how that's being devalued.

It's actually been like this forever. And with the salary cap, go back to when we went on strike. We want it free agency, okay?

Obviously, he needs to go back and check out the collective bargaining agreement and what players fought for, okay? You asked for this. You asked for this. The league didn't ask that you asked for this. NFL players asked for this.

So, you get what's coming your way. Unless they just don't want to take ownership and realize that is just the fundamental facts of this business and how it is going to be and that is not going to change. They can cry all they want. They can blast the league. They can blast teams.

It ain't going to change. Nobody's going to bury $20 million in a player that's in his 10th year as a runner unless there's something uniquely gifted about that player. And when I think about that, the only guy I can even think about would be Walter Payton, okay? That would have that kind of value.

And even that you have to consider, okay? His better time is over. It's over. I can't put where I got him.

I'm going to have to eat $10 million because I'm probably not going to get production out of him and or he might retire or can't really play. And I just, it's never going to change, you know, but. A point of diminishing returns.

And at some point they, that the stats are clear that running backs reach that. Exactly. And I'm just going to go back to we, because I have to say we, because I was a part of, even though I didn't vote for it, even though I didn't want to, I didn't want that from a collective bargaining agreement, what I thought was more important for us. You know, I remember Mike Webster made the, I'm a rookie, it's 87. It's the last meeting we're going to have before going on a strike. And he stood up.

Mike Webster had been in the league for about 15 years at that time, roughly 13, somewhere in that area. And he said, Hey guys, listen, I'm not going to strike, but if you do, do it for healthcare, retirement and benefits. Benefits is all. Don't do it for free agency because it only benefits a few of us. And when he walked out, I'm like, that's the smartest thing I've heard since I got here, but I'm a rookie.

I haven't been here a few months. And it is true today. So, you know, all of these things and the money and listen, owners were making more money and you still could have created that leverage of 49%. You know, you just have to play it to your players. Players wouldn't have had say leverage to go to another team, but not only as a few, a select few, and they're going to be your more than likely your elite players. And you got to pay them anyway, because if you don't pay them, they take it. So it's going to go one way or the other. You might as well pay your players, you know, so you're going to get that money and the best players are going to get that money.

You didn't need that, but we, we set that structure up back in then, back then that now teams are going to have to look this. Okay. How can I be my wisest with my money?

Where is the money going to work the best for me? And I still go back to when I see what Derek Henry make last year, was it 9 million? So McCaffrey made 16. Okay. Henry was around 12.

I think Chubb was around 12. Right. Okay. So, you know, I could go back to those, how devalued that is. That is just terribly devalued. I know, I bet you, I know about 99.99% of the United States of America, that would be devalued like that.

And it would be loved to be devalued. Right. I mean, just for one year, forget five year run or a nine year run, you know, just like, you know, just, and it just, the ignorance is, the ignorance is almost appalling. That a player is that, that ignorant that they're going to say stuff like that. And they think for one second, blasting somebody and saying something that the league or whoever is going to change, it ain't changing a thing. It'll never change it. You ask for it, go back and look at the history in 1987, we should have done some things differently then.

Okay. And we wouldn't be in this spot, but we're in that spot because a lot of things that were done there and teams now have to budget wise and make sure financially, they're not going to be exposed for making us a poor decision. I'll give them Cleveland Browns. They got, they did one of the most financially structurally dumbest things you can do in the history of football by guaranteeing umpteen million dollars to a quarterback who was, who had not played for two years. That means not just played for two years, had lost thousands and thousands of reps to become a better and better player and evolve as a player. He lost two years of seasoning. He is lost now almost four years of seasoning.

You will probably never see him play at the level he played when he was at Houston, Texas. Okay. And they keep pushing money back and pushing money back at some point. They're going to have to pay the piper. It's coming it's coming their way. You know, they'd like to do that thinking that was going to bring you, be your super bowl winner and it's going to backfire on them.

They're going to pay the price for that, you know, but they made that choice. That position gives you a little better chance to have some longevity with it based on how it's, how it's played. But you would never do that to a running back and players that just don't understand that is it's mind boggling.

Usually it's the position itself. Meryl Hodge with us on Radio Road. Before we talk about your new project, I asked you about the Steelers because that's the team that you're most identified with. What should they do a quarterback?

Well, I think, you know, I've been asked this several times and having, you know, really, I mean, been a part of that organization, studied that organization. You like, you never know what's going to happen with Mason Rudolph. He's a free agent. So he may, he may be gone if he does come back.

I just think that there's a great environment there for great competition. What I think happened to Kenny Pickett. I don't like to see anybody get hurt, but there is no way they were going to bench Kenny Pickett and Kenny Pickett was playing way too fast. His head was spinning. I'd never seen, I'd studied him in college.

I'd seen him play in the national football league. I'd never seen him playing that fast. His fundamentals were eroding. He was eroding as he was not evolving. So to remove him, I'm telling you, he probably killed Kenny Pickett, but I will guarantee you that at some point he would come back and say that was one of the best things ever happened to him because now he could remove himself. He could slow down.

He could learn, watch, absorb stuff. And then Mason Rudolph to his credit, the one thing that stood out to me is how well he played, how poised he was in the pocket. His pocket presence was ignored because he didn't really play like that in the times that he had played. He played a little faster and having a guy hadn't played for two years and yet developing that and having that composure there and functioning from processing accuracy and throws and making big time throws in big time situations. You know, it wasn't like first and 10 throws.

I mean, it was like third and fives, you know, for first downs and touchdowns. And I just think that there's enough there that warrants a competition. Cause I think then you get, you're going to get the best quarterback. You're going to get the very best player. And especially if you do it fairly, you know, you give everybody the fair title is as fair as you can from making apples to apples. And I think they'll get, they'll get a better, they'll get the best quarterback and that will help the team. So, uh, it'll be interesting if they, if Mason does come back and somebody doesn't take him, but it'll all start with that. Right. Right.

Love the organization, the Rooney family, Mike Tomlin gets so incensed, but I think he's amazing. So I don't want to keep you too much longer, but your story, your health journey has been well documented. You've spoken about surviving cancer and some of the other challenges and you look great by the way. Well, thank you. I know you've got a new product that you want to share with us, a new partnership. You know, um, it's called breather fit.

So breather fit.com is where you can find out all the information, but I hope I spark a few things that might interest people to invest in their health. So I'll give you an example. I have open heart surgery, chemotherapy that I went through. I created a deficit, a bubble in my a order. So I had to go be repaired when I had to leave the hospital. I remember I had to come in cause this one is presented to me.

I'm like, wait a minute. I did this. I did this to leave the hospital that your respiratory system is, can be isolated and strengthened. I didn't know that. I thought you had to do cardio, some type of cardio to strengthen it. I thought, you know, if you're training the heart, then you're training everything, your respiratory system, which is true, but I didn't realize they're separate. So you can train the rest sources. So that's what I had to do to leave the hospital. I had to train my respiratory system to strengthen it, get all of the, um, my fluid out of my lungs, strengthen it so I could leave the hospital. So when they brought this to me, I was like, well, you know what?

It makes a lot of sense. And I'm like, I'm always into like, what little things can you do better to improve your overall health? So I'm going to try it. So I do try it and it's five minutes. It takes two times a day for five minutes. You don't have to get into a gym.

You don't have to drive anywhere. You can do it at your office table. You can do it in the kitchen. You can do it on the couch. You know, you got to have a certain posture you do it with, but it doesn't take that long. This also struck me after age 30, everybody starts to decline their respiratory and oxygen starts to decline as far as how much oxygen you're producing.

One of the leading causes of like overall decay of body and brain health, too much sugar, inactivity, poor blood flow and poor oxygen. So one of the great ways to stimulate your respiratory system would be with this tool. So I do use it and I'm still doing cardio. So I could feel a little bit of the challenge of how it isolated my system. Well, I did this on accident and then I tell them about it.

And they're like, oh my gosh, that I never thought of that. I go on a trip. I got to go to Pelby, Santa Barbara, Arizona. I was gone for like 10, 12 days. I lifted, I stretched, I did all that, but I never did cardio. So I come home.

So I have 14 days off. And so when I go back to my first day of cardio, I was going to do my intense cardio, which is my hardest day. And I'm like, I could watch my heart because when I do cardio, I watch my heart.

That tells me everything. And I could tell my heart had been off for two weeks. What I couldn't tell is I was breathing so easy. I could feel the difference. Like my breathing hadn't been off. I know I was like, oh my gosh.

As accidentally, I've even verified it a little further. And so let's say you're doing nothing for your body. It would be a great way to start just because it'll help oxygen in your body. The better oxygen, the better you breathe, the easier you breathe.

Here's going to be the results. You're going to be happier. You're going to be healthier.

And it might help you live longer. Okay. That's the worst case scenario. Bottom line. That's all you have to mean.

So just little things like this. Just to learn the difference between your respiratory system can be isolated and strengthened and trained. And that value of the oxygen that comes into your body will prove not just your overall health, but your brain health is something I did not know. And I was like, holy cow. And I've made it a part of my lifestyle now and what I do.

Breather fit.com. Yes. I like it. Check it out. It's not hard either. And maybe that will spark people that are not doing anything that, you know, reinvest in their health. Well it's great to connect with you.

Thank you so much for your insight. I hope you're having fun. Is this still like a fraternity when you run into old players and teammates? Yeah.

And people that I've worked with or the paths across. I mean, that actually probably has been the most enjoyable thing about the whole day. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for a couple minutes. Good seeing you.

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A peanut butter M&M's production. In a world where Super Bowl winners get the world's admiration and a fancy ring, but the runners up get nothing. One retired cop returns. That's one retired quarterback. Read the script.

Oh, sorry. One retired quarterback returns to claim what's his. Um, that's claim a ring with diamonds made from M&M's peanut butter, but you're on a roll.

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