Heroes and Icons with Greg Randolph and special guest Howard Kindig

GR: What are a couple of life lessons that only football can teach?

HK: You can't get in there and shortcut. You can't shortcut.

GR: Right.

HK: You know, when the whistle blows there ain't no faking it on Sunday afternoon.

GR: That's right.

HK: It ain't no reruns. It all comes out right there.

GR: Yep.

HK: So, you can be as prepared as you want to be and you can do all this, but when that whistle blows, that's it. Yeah. And you can't cheat.

GR: Right.

HK: You can forget about cheating. I mean, if you think you can cheat your way through, you're a fool. And so that's really a good, uh, one of the best lessons I've ever learned, I guess. Come from Coach Shula. And this pretty much sums me up from where I am. My basic philosophy is that.

HK: We went to play Oakland in Oakland in 1973. We had a 19-game winning streak on the line. You know, and at that time, John Madden was the coach and all that stuff. Kenny Stabler was the coach. Anyway, Oakland was a great football team. We get out to Oakland and we, for a Saturday workout, play on Sunday. We got out there and they were doing some work on the visitor's locker room. So, we had to dress in Oakland's locker room, which Oakland had, they worked out earlier that morning.

GR: Okay.

HK: So, we're in there and Csonka, the guy who dressed in his locker, left his game plan, Oakland's game plan in his locker.

GR: Right.

HK: People don't understand what a game plan is. It's like a battle plan.

GR: Right.

HK: You know where they're going to be, you know where they're coming at you, you know where they're hiding, you know, you got to help it up, you know, it really enhances everything. So Csonka could give it to our offensive line coach, Monte Clark said, look, give this to the old man and see, you know, I'm not, I didn't even see it. It was here. So, they beat us 12 to 7.

GR: Right.

HK: So, we're on the airplane coming back. And he said, Monte, did you give that to the Coach Shula, he said, yeah. He said, what’d he do with it? He said, he threw it in the waste can. He said, if we can't beat them fair, we can't beat them.

GR: That's right.

HK: That's pretty much, that's one story that's exactly, and it wouldn't make no difference whether it was the Super Bowl or whether it was an exhibition game. He'd do the same thing. That's why, I mean, you can't cheat. If you're gonna win, you can forget about cheating. You might think you can cheat, but it's gonna come out sooner or later.

GR: That's right. That's right. It always does.

HK: That's the biggest, that's one of the biggest things I learned. There's no easy way out.

Yeah, you gotta, you gotta do it the right way. You gotta put in the work. That's right. You gotta put in the work. You gotta put in the effort. And, that's pretty much the way I've been all my life. Yes, sir. Learned that from a cut from my high school coach, as a matter of fact.

GR: That served you well.