From the Bleachers #78!
It was a dream interview two-plus decades in the making.
On the latest episode of From the Bleachers on BGN Radio, I chatted with Pro Football Hall of Famer and Eagles legend Brian Dawkins.
Imagine telling a little eight-year-old kid running around in South Philly in a midnight green Dawk jersey that he’d be interviewing him one day.
Dawkins now adds author to his many titles, releasing Blessed by the Best, a new book that details his upbringing in Jacksonville, his time in Clemson and his whole NFL journey. You can find it on briandawkins.com.
There’s a saying that you shouldn’t meet your heroes. I never knew how to feel about it. Would I really want to meet and shoot the breeze with Bruce Springsteen? Dawk? Does it ruin the perfect image you have of them in their head?
Well, it didn’t for Dawk. He was, predictably, electric. As Eagles fans saw for more than a decade in Philadelphia, he oozes personality and when speaking with him, it becomes infectious. I felt myself getting amped up. I couldn’t run through a wall while conducting a video podcast interview, but, hey, maybe I could after.
We chatted about some of the usual stuff, his Weapon X persona, how the safety position has changed over the decades and things like that. What really hit me was the way he spoke about the connection he had with Philadelphia fans. It wasn’t merely just running out on the field and hearing cheers. It was on a deeper, almost spiritual level for him. It was as if he channeled every moment in his life, every triumph, every failure, and used that fire to fuel Eagles fans young and old.
Speaking with him hit home something I already knew: there’s no one like Brian Dawkins.
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