EP87: GET UP EIGHT with Brad Brennan, Former Professional and D1 Football Player, Raken Sales Director

About the Guest:

Brad Brennan is a former collegiate and professional football player with a deeply rooted background in athletics. Hailing from California, Brad had a noteworthy career as a wide receiver at the University of Arizona and became one of the first Americans to play in Japan's X League of American football. Following his football career, he transitioned into corporate America, currently serving as the Director of Major Accounts for Raken, a major company in the construction software industry.

Episode Summary:

In this engaging episode of "Becoming UnDone," Toby Brooks sits down with his former athlete and dear friend, Brad Brennan, to delve into Brad’s extraordinary journey from a high school athlete in California to playing professional football in Japan and finally transitioning to corporate America. This episode, filled with heartfelt moments and nuggets of wisdom, explores the adversities Brad faced, including severe injuries and the emotional toll they took, and how he managed to overcome them with sheer determination and grit.

Brad shares insight into his high school days, the unexpected twists in his athletic career, including an inspiring stint in Japan’s X League, and his brief period in the CFL with the BC Lions. Despite recurrent injuries, Brad’s story is a testament to resilience and adaptability. The episode covers Brad’s life lessons from his time under coach Dick Tomey at the University of Arizona, the trials during his professional career, and the eventual transition to his current role at Rakit, emphasizing his undying will to get up after each fall.

Key Takeaways:

• Resilience in the Face of Adversity: Brad's career was marked by frequent injuries, but he continually fought back and remained determined to keep playing, signifying the power of resilience.
• Dynamic Career Transition: Transitioning from professional sports to a corporate role at Raken, Brad’s journey illustrates adaptability and finding new paths to success.
• Inspirational Coaching and Mentorship: Lessons learned from Coach Dick Tomey at the University of Arizona emphasized trust, camaraderie, and the power of caring for teammates, profoundly impacting Brad’s career and life.
• Cultural and Personal Growth: Brad’s time in Japan not only prolonged his athletic career but also provided a rich cultural experience that broadened his perspective and personal development.
• Unyielding Optimism and Self-Belief: From betting on himself to handling career setbacks, Brad's story underscores the importance of maintaining self-belief and being open to unconventional opportunities.

Notable Quotes:

1. "You're a lot stronger than you think you are. You go down this path and you get slapped in the face and kicked down, and you just have to keep getting up."
2. "When I told my dad, I don't want to do what you did. I'm going to do something different. I don't know what it is. But for now, this football thing's been taking me on this crazy journey."
3. "Coach Dick Tomey taught us really, I think, is just that he came from a real sense of love and not being ashamed to love your teammates or your friends and tell them right."
4. "It was a very good moment for me to just

Transcript

0:00:00 - (Brad Brennan): Yeah, it was messy, man. I just came off this really cool experience in Japan. I'm excited because now it's like, oh, you have a chance to go to the CFL, which, like you said, is a little more prestigious. And when you're up there, man, you feel like a rock star. We had a great camp experience from the beginning. Again, I re injured my hamstring again. And it just took me back to that kind of dark place at U of a ng. I could feel my time, like, running out in this camp experience, and I just wasn't healthy yet. And then I think I was cut like two days later, and that was a kind of a hard time. I moved back home.

0:00:33 - (Brad Brennan): My buddy ran a restaurant bar that I was working at just for some money. My dad did not love that. My dad one day said, are you gonna. Are you gonna shuck tacos and beers the rest of your life? And I was like, I don't know, but right now I'm just trying to make it work until I can. Hopefully. I was still training to get back healthy. And during that time frame, another coach from Japan said that I had become close with. He was an american guy, said, hey, come back and play for us. Let's go. Let's do this.

0:00:59 - (Brad Brennan): My name is Brad Brennan, and I am undone.

0:01:15 - (Toby Brooks): Hey, friend, I'm glad you're here. Welcome to another episode of Becoming Undone, the podcast for those who dare bravely, risk mightily, and grow relentlessly. I'm Toby Brooks, a speaker, an author, and a professor.

0:01:26 - (C): I've spent much of the last two.

0:01:28 - (Toby Brooks): Decades working as an athletic trainer and a strength coach in the professional, collegiate, and high school sports settings. And over the years, I've grown more and more fascinated with what sets high achievers apart and how failures that hurt in a moment can end up being exactly the push we needed to propel us along our paths to success. Each week on becoming undone, I invite a new guest to examine how high achievers can transform from falling apart to falling into place.

0:01:51 - (Toby Brooks): I'd like to emphasize that this show is entirely separate from my role as a professor, but it's my attempt to apply what I've learned and what I'm learning, and to share with others about the mindsets of high achievers.

0:02:01 - (C): If this is your first episode, I.

0:02:02 - (Toby Brooks): Hope you love it. And after enjoying it, I hope you'll dig back through some previous episodes where I've interviewed high achievers who didn't let failure or setback stand in the way of their eventual victories. And if you're a regular I hope you know just how much you've meant to me on this journey. Becoming a podcaster has literally changed my life and youre a big part of that. My deepest hope is that this show can encourage and inspire you on your own journey toward success.

0:02:39 - (Toby Brooks): For California native Brad Brennan, earliest dreams of stardom on the basketball court were jolted when a doctor told him hed probably Max out at about 6ft tall. A natural athlete among a family full of natural athletes, Brad also showed promise as a football player, where he made up for his smaller size as a wide receiver with an enormous heart, a gritty toughness and reliable hands. When the scholarship offers didn't come through as he had hoped after his senior season, he didn't pout.

0:03:06 - (Toby Brooks): He worked and eventually moved across the country and spent a year in a prep school. Betting on himself paid off, and he eventually got a chance as a walk on at the University of Arizona. Within a couple of seasons, that same drive and work ethic helped him earn a scholarship and a growing role as a key member of the Wildcats offense. But setback would strike again when nagging injuries derailed significant parts of his junior and senior seasons.

0:03:31 - (Toby Brooks): Undeterred yet again, he kept grinding, and by college graduation, he'd worked himself into his prime. When opportunities for NFL free agency didn't materialize, he again bet on himself, becoming one of the first Americans to play in the Japanese X League of american football, where it's been more than a decade as a key part of one of the league's most successful franchises, the Fujitsu frontiers. Hear Brad tell his story of big dreams, humbling knockdowns and triumphant returns in episode 87, get up eight.

0:04:03 - (C): This week's guest is a dear personal friend, one of the first athletes that I really connected with personally. We spent a lot of time out in the Tucson Heat. Brad Brennan, welcome to the show.

0:04:16 - (Brad Brennan): Yeah, thanks for having me. Toby. Offline you said you're getting emotional about your family getting older. I'm graduating, but this feels like already I'm gonna get a little bit emotional just because of our history. So this will be fun.

0:04:29 - (C): Yeah. We've been packing up the house. We're moving in a couple of months and just yesterday I packed away newspaper clipping that you had signed for me. So I was thinking of you as we were putting stuff away and it's been a fantastic journey and it's been exciting for me to watch the man that you've become, the highs, the lows, your journey through college and then eventually professional sports. And now in the professional setting, I always start off with a little bit of a softball, though. What did you want to be growing up and why?

0:05:03 - (Brad Brennan): That's a good question. I think mostly my older brother Brian, he was playing all sorts of sports. So that was direction, probably like a lot of your guests. But I thought I was going to be a badass basketball player. I was doing good things as a young player, going to some pretty big camps, and my dad was really forward thinking, and I was fortunate enough he sent me out to a five star basketball camp out in Pennsylvania, and it was this premier, insane talent. I was a fish out of water when I got there, but it gave me some real kind of eye opening experience with, wow, there's, like, a lot of dudes out here that can play.

0:05:40 - (Brad Brennan): And I thought that's what was going to be my path. I had a doctor's visit, and the doctor said, hey, man, you're not going to grow much more. So I was like, oh, okay, basketball is probably not going to be the thing. But, yeah, that was at a young age. That was my love.

0:05:52 - (C): Yeah, I know you come from a deeply athletic family, your cousins, your brother. There's collegiate professional athletes up and down the board. So you grew up in California. So start at the beginning of your story, wherever you would say that begins.

0:06:10 - (Brad Brennan): Yeah, the beginning. We grew up when I was younger, down in kind of San Mateo area, California, which is just south of San Francisco. And then we moved around a little bit with my dad's work, and been a year in southern California, and then back up to northern California again and moved to Redwood City. We ended up going to St. Francis High School, which is in Mountain View, pretty, like dominant and great sports history there.

0:06:35 - (Brad Brennan): And so I think that kind of just parlayed into, my dad was a college athlete, played football at San Jose State. And so I think that kind of was just the path for us, whether that be just because we always had a ball in our hands and we were playing or beating each other up with the siblings, or just my dad loved it. And so whether it was consciously or subconsciously ingrained in all of us, and I think more for him, he just thought, there's just such great kind of things that you learn in sports that are hard to replicate on a lot of the outside, outside of sports. So I think that was really important.

0:07:10 - (C): One of the things I love about this show is it gives me a chance to reconnect with old friends, and it also has enlightened me to some things I didn't know. I didn't realize that you went to prep school in Massachusetts. And so talk me through that, that transition from high school, what the dreams and goals were athletically and how going to prep school factored in.

0:07:31 - (Brad Brennan): Yeah. Being just under about six foot, uh, play receiver in high school, we were. We had a great team and we won pretty much everything, but just wasn't as highly recruited. Probably just didn't pass much of the eyeball test. Right. And then for basketball as well, we won a state championship in basketball. It was a pretty fun ride. We had a great group of guys at my high school there, St. Francis. There was just some things that maybe weren't going to align with the recruiting process for me at that time. It was a little different, too. I didn't have huddle.

0:08:02 - (Brad Brennan): I remember we're making vhs tapes and sending them everywhere. And then some coaches probably never even got them. Some said, hey, we got a lot of guys that are a little bit, you know, above you in this board that we're looking at. Dad had done a bunch of work out in Boston. He was in the money management business, and a bunch of his colleagues and friends out there, their sons were all going to these prep schools.

0:08:24 - (Brad Brennan): And the interesting thing about a prep school is that you could do what they call a postgraduate year, where you do it, almost an extra year of high school. It's basically a one year commitment, but you're not giving up any eligibility. If you were to go to like a junior college or something like that. I don't think I ever really wanted to go the junior college route, but I wanted to play, whether that was basketball or football.

0:08:44 - (Brad Brennan): And so this was going to give me an opportunity to get bigger, stronger, faster, get recruited. Another year of recruiting. And then also for guys that needed some grades, some grade help, it gave them opportunity to get in and study. I came from. From California. There was no one else pretty much from, like, New England that was at this prep school. Worcester is just west of Boston. And all my buddies that I met out there, incredible year. But it was just thing that I was fortunate enough my parents had some money to put me at the school.

0:09:12 - (Brad Brennan): But man, I'd wear coat and tie every day. I showed up in sandals and snowing. We had the worst snowstorm that or snow year. They had a long time, so I was freezing my ass off out there. But it was a great experience. It taught me a ton.

0:09:24 - (C): Yeah. Yeah. So you end up at Arizona and a pac ten school at the time, so not back home, but a chance to play and travel. So how did you end up as a wildcat.

0:09:39 - (Brad Brennan): Yeah. At prep school, I'd gotten recruited by a bunch of one AA schools. Interesting story. Chip Kelly was coaching at University of New Hampshire and he had recruited me to go up to New Hampshire. At the time, we had played a basketball game at Harvard. We played a bunch of the JV college teams there. When I was back east and my parents were out at the Harvard basketball game and I get an elbow to the face and blow out a tooth and chip was there, pick me up, and he was going to drive me up to New Hampshire for the recruiting trip.

0:10:10 - (Brad Brennan): And so he was telling my parents, my mom, oh, I'm going to take care of your son's tooth. No problem. Don't worry about it. So, pretty fun. But it got to the point where I looked at guys like Chip and all them and said, look, I'm so appreciative of this opportunity, but I have this dream to go and play at the highest level.

0:10:29 - (Toby Brooks): And there it is. You've probably heard the old saying, it isn't the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog. Brad comes from a highly athletic family, and when his basketball dreams turned to football dreams later in his high school career, he was disappointed that the opportunities he'd hoped for to play division one didn't exactly materialize. Brad's measurables never leapt off the page or jumped off a highlight reel.

0:10:53 - (Toby Brooks): Knowing that he had the heart and the will to be successful at the highest level. But lacking the opportunity, he decides to go to prep school in New England. It was a long way from home. Brad's laid back, he's a board shorts and sandals, California vibe kind of guy. He was in for a chilly awakening in the harsh Massachusetts winters, but he stayed the course. He trained, he played, he grew. While the offers did come, they were still at the then one AA, now NCAA FCS level.

0:11:23 - (Toby Brooks): He was recruited by an early career, Chip Kelly, who would go on to become the head coach of the Oregon Oregon Ducks, leading them to the 2011 BC's national championship game before moving on to stints with the UCLA Bruins. Philadelphia Eagles, San Francisco 49 ers back then, he was at New Hampshire. Flattered as Brad was at the offer, he had his sights set higher, and it was a dream that would soon pay off.

0:11:48 - (Brad Brennan): And they all pretty much thought I was crazy for one. But I think deep down respected it. And so my brother had played at UCLA. He was a walk on there. Played for homer Smith and Rick Neuhausel, and homer coach Homer Smith had gone and was going to be the new offense quarter at U of A. And Rick Neuhausel was the head coach at Colorado. And so I said, look, these two guys that I know because I was around my brother when he was playing UCLA, like, maybe I can get a foot in the door.

0:12:19 - (Brad Brennan): Which is all you need in a lot of respects, right? All you want is a chance. And sometimes that walk on, show up on campus thing, do a couple bullshit drills to see if you really can play or not. You run a 40, you do a jump test. It's not really tailored to probably making the team where this kind of thought. I thought I could get a little bit of a leg up and have a chance. And so Homer, I asked him, I went and saw the campus in the summer. I said, hey, is there any chance I can come to preseason camp?

0:12:47 - (Brad Brennan): And Coach Smith said, we don't have any spots. Sorry. He's like, but keep in touch with me because some things happen sometimes, so you never know. I hit him up a few more times in the summer. He said, nothing is available. We're full. And then we were at Donner Lake, up by Lake Tahoe. We were going up there in the summertime every year, and coach Homer called me and said, hey, brad, we have a spot, but you got to be here tomorrow.

0:13:14 - (Brad Brennan): And so I was like, oh, shit. So I had some friends up there with me that were from my prep school. They were out visiting. I'm like, sorry. Sorry, guys. I got to go pack my stuff. Jumped on a plane, and ended up in Tucson that next day, and it was one of the best decisions I've ever met.

0:13:31 - (C): Yeah, that's a great story. So you end up at U of A, and still it's a spot, but there's a big gap between having a spot and seeing the field. And so during that initial transition and maybe that first season in Tucson, what was your thought process? Like?

0:13:49 - (Brad Brennan): What.

0:13:49 - (C): What was the end game for you at this stage of your career? What were you shooting for?

0:13:54 - (Brad Brennan): Yeah, I think there's always that dream that you can. You. In your own mind, you think you can do it, right? You have no idea what that looks like. Until you show up on one of these campuses or football teams. Every guy in that room was the best guy in their area. Right? And I was a guy in our area, but maybe probably not the best. Especially, like, physically. Like, these dudes were monsters, and I think everyone brought their own little flair to it. Dennis Northcutt wasn't. He'd make you miss in a phone booth. Type guy that quick, but he wasn't very big.

0:14:29 - (Brad Brennan): But then you had other dudes like Richard Dice who were just smashing people because of their size and kind of body strength. And so I always could catch the ball, right. That was something that my dad, from a young age always made sure, catching the ball with your hands, which is something so simple, but you see a lot of it, it's not really taught from a young age. And so I think the one thing that really helped me stand out right away is I was catching everything right now.

0:14:56 - (Brad Brennan): Physically, I had a lot of to grow. Especially. I remember the first day Chris McAllister showed up. He was our defensive back, as you know, played in, I think he was top ten pick in the NFL draft for the Ravens and just a stun. Probably the best athlete I've ever been around. But the first day or second day or a couple days in of camp, he had showed up late because he had to finish a math class or something in the summertime. And we had a press drill and had been getting open for the first couple days. I was feeling good about myself, and Chris showed up and lined up across from me and literally the ball snaps. He picked me up from under my shoulder pads and planted me right on my back.

0:15:37 - (Brad Brennan): And my receiver coach at the time, Dino Babers, looked at me and he said, welcome to the Pac ten, Brandon. And I think it was a very good moment for me to just be like, okay, reset. This is a little more serious than I thought this was going to be.

0:15:48 - (Toby Brooks): Yeah.

0:15:49 - (Brad Brennan): Yeah.

0:15:50 - (C): That receiver corps, NFL guys up and down. You talked about Dennis and Andre Thurman and Bobby Wade. So I remember when I came to U of A, you had a really good season the year before. And Cindy, Michelle, shout out to Cindy as you walked through the athletic training room. She said, there's our best receiver. And I looked again. I'm like that guy. Like, I mean, and I'm sure you get that a lot in your career where physically, like you said, maybe don't pass the eyeball test, but you were a clutch receiver.

0:16:23 - (C): That, that term possession receiver gets thrown around a lot, but when, when we needed yards on third down, you were the guy they were going toward. And so you find a way on the field and then you find success on the field, and that's when the injuries started to derail where you were headed. So talk me through what those injuries meant to your thought processes as you're thinking through. Okay. Freshman, sophomore, now, junior season.

0:16:53 - (C): Yeah.

0:16:53 - (Brad Brennan): I think as a freshman I went pretty much unscathed injury wise, anything significant. I was playing a lot less, which probably had a lot to do with it as well. I think as I got older, that second year, I had a really good year, as you mentioned, and I was playing a lot as a young kid, and I wasn't on a scholarship my first year. In fact, we used to walk past where we eat training table with the team, and I'd have to keep walking because the non scholarly guys didn't get fed back then. And so my teammates would be like, aren't you going to eat? And I'm like, no, man, I don't get. I don't get dinner. And they're like, oh, that's messed up.

0:17:30 - (Brad Brennan): And so the. I think from that first year to my second year, I think there was a lot of things that were just totally different for me. Right. The weight room stuff was crazy. Just so different from. I think nowadays there's a lot more education, a lot more bleed training. Back then, I think it was starting a little bit more on the younger side. And then I think that these early injuries, especially that hamstring injury that I had, I blew out my hamstring in camp, tried to come back part of the year.

0:17:59 - (Brad Brennan): Heard it again. Me, you, we spent I don't know how much time, man. Like, those were some dark days. You go through this process of playing every day that's like your outlet or the things that make you feel great to just being down and not being able to perform. Don't get me wrong, there's something very self serving and egotistical, I think, even about playing in front of these big crowds and big games, I think that stuff drives a lot of people, especially Joe, me as well.

0:18:31 - (Brad Brennan): And when you have a lot of that stuff taken away and now all it is training room, ice, rehab, rinse, repeat, that stuff can take down into a different place. And so I think that, like, from that, I think you were really instrumental in just helping me see a path to where is that finish line? Rather than not really being able to see it and just every day being this daily grind that wasn't so funneled.

0:18:58 - (Toby Brooks): Yeah.

0:18:59 - (C): And from the outsider looking in, I saw how hard you were working. And to see those setbacks, like you, you have an injury, and it's one thing to have an injury and to recover and to get back on the field, but for some athletes, they'll have an injury and then they'll get back, and then there's a set, and then they'll get back, and then there's. And it just felt like there was constantly. It was the hamstring or the back or one thing leads to another, and we know physiologically, okay, and injured hamstring leads you to move in different ways, and that can set you up for injuries to other parts of your body.

0:19:36 - (C): But psychologically, especially back then, man, we didn't have a sports psychologist. We had one, but nothing compared to what athletes have today, counseling. There's big stigma against depression or anxiety or anything like that. And so you're really having to navigate the space pretty much all alone and chasing down these dreams. At this stage in your career, was playing professional football the end goal? Would you allow yourself to say that out loud, or were you still just thinking, I'm just gonna do the best and see what happens?

0:20:09 - (Brad Brennan): Yeah, I think that's always in your mind. But shit, man, I was. I'm pretty realistic on where I was just physically. I definitely like when you line up against those guys and you're winning and you have great games and some big arenas, like, you definitely think that you could do that. Now was that there's some guys that are wired differently. They're like, that's all I'm looking at. That's my focus.

0:20:32 - (Brad Brennan): I've got to get to the NFL. I like other stuff than just football. So I think that there was like, definitely like, hey, you could probably get there if you really want to go after this thing. The injuries didn't help. Going back and forth and in and out of training rooms, and I had a medical redshirt year. Those things were a little bit tough, but, like, socially, too, I liked going out and I liked having fun. And so I think those were some of the things that probably, like, at times where they weren't super conducive to, like, hey, I'm going to be this NFL dude. They were fun, and I have crazy, incredible friends and an incredible network because we do have this very social. Brendan's do have a very social side to us, but at the same time, was that my only thing?

0:21:14 - (Brad Brennan): No, but I had long talks with my brother about, like, how serious I wanted to get and be about it, and we definitely made a run, but it wasn't probably like that. Yeah, I need to be this NFL guy.

0:21:24 - (C): Yeah. Will you end up being part of the most successful team so far? We'll. We'll say that if Brent's listening in school history, and if I recall, it's not for a hurricane, would have had a chance to play. I mean, there. There were some weird things that led to that team not getting to play in the Rose bowl, but end up twelve and one win the holiday bowl, you make a spectacular catch to go ahead. I believe that's may have also been the same year you were on the goalposts at ASU. You were a guy who was enjoying the moment and a fan favorite because like you said, there's more to you than just football.

0:22:01 - (C): You had gone from being a walk on and you realized the significance of this. You had earned that place. And coach Tomy certainly was a critical part of that growth. I think coach, I. You would also say, what do you think was the, the most important lesson you learned from Coach Dick Tomey?

0:22:29 - (Brad Brennan): Sorry. He's a very special person in my life, in my brother's life. He's just. He's one of those guys that I think he didn't really give a shit who you were in terms of what you looked like or you didn't really fit the mold, but he really just cared about, like, people and he cared about how you as a player cared about your teammates. And, and I think it was like evident in all the team building stuff that we did.

0:23:01 - (Brad Brennan): I think it was super evident in the fact that we had these incredibly successful teams. I think when, when Arizona decided that it was time for him to go, they never really were the same because that place is very different. It's family oriented, it's team oriented. It's school city. That whole thing is like, revolves around the university. And the people that come in there think they can just do it with X's and O's. They don't get it.

0:23:33 - (Brad Brennan): And we saw that happen year in and year out with a lot of these coaches that kind of just recycle through there. But I think the main thing that coach Tomia taught us really, I think, is just that he came from, like a real sense of love and not being ashamed to love your teammates or your friends and tell them right. People have a hard time telling somebody that they love them, especially like a dude to dude in a locker room. It's a hard thing in these guys. A lot of my teammates, I was pretty fortunate to grow up with two parents in a pretty stable household, but a lot of these guys didn't. And a lot of guys that they didn't trust growing up. And so I think that finding that trust those guys and coach told me how to. A magnificent way of doing so.

0:24:17 - (C): Yeah, just a grit, a workman mentality. Like you said, didn't get the five stars that the USCs of the world might have, but got the most out of every individual player, and I just really grew to respect it. And it's one of those things where you don't realize what you're in the midst of, in the midst of it. And when you're removed from it, you're like, wow, that was different. Like, the way that guy loved his people, just as a leader of people, was something that I would take with me.

0:24:50 - (C): So your career wraps up. I've told this story more times than I care to admit, but that catch at Stanford where you took it to the house, I don't know if that. That. If you remember that or not, but I do.

0:25:05 - (Brad Brennan): And, yeah, one of my greatest moments with you, Matt.

0:25:09 - (C): Yeah.

0:25:09 - (Toby Brooks): Swear it was.

0:25:11 - (C): That season was frustrating for you, and I know it was. And didn't make the season opener. And then we kind of recalibrated. All right, maybe the conference opener, and then at home, essentially, you're in your backyard at Stanford with family in the stands. Talk me through what getting back onto that field at that moment meant for you as a person. After all you'd been.

0:25:36 - (Brad Brennan): Yeah, we were up and down with kind of some of this injury stuff as we were in. We were grinding, man, just to try and get back onto the field. We were in that fucking gymnastics pit, man. Used to kill me in that pit and all those different drills you had me doing. But we finally saw some light and said, I think we're ready to go. And it was that Stanford game. I was coming back home to play Stanford and had my number called.

0:26:05 - (Brad Brennan): They called it post corner, which was one of my favorite routes that I was known for. And I caught a ball over in the corner and leaped over a guy to score. And I remember running back after that to the sideline, man, and, like, you were one of the first guys right there. And we gave, like, this big old hug, like, we fucking did it, man. We did it, you know? We're back. Let's go. And that was a very special moment for me.

0:26:33 - (Toby Brooks): Now, let me just say that this episode is 100% about Brad Brennan, about the young man who repeatedly bet on himself, faced down adversities, worked his tail off and won. Sometimes it was lack of exposure and recruiting. Many times it was injury. All the time it was about seeking out opportunities. But if you'll indulge me, I'll show you for just a moment how the story's about me, too. I grew up in middle of nowhere southern Illinois.

0:27:02 - (C): I loved sports.

0:27:03 - (Toby Brooks): I mean, I loved them, especially football. When I was about six or seven, I had a Dallas Cowboys helmet with a two bar face mask that I picked out of the Sears catalog to that I would wear every waking hour for weeks at a time. I can remember vividly running full speed over and over into the back of our couch with a football in hand, imagining I was Tony Dorsett trying to plow through the D line of the Washington Redskins.

0:27:29 - (Toby Brooks): But in my tiny school of less than 100 students, we didn't have a team. I never once got to play organized tackle football.

0:27:37 - (C): Sure, later I grew to love basketball.

0:27:39 - (Toby Brooks): But if I'm honest, it was a consolation prize. Football was a solid ten that I dreamed of taking to the prom.

0:27:46 - (C): Basketball was the reliable five or six.

0:27:49 - (Toby Brooks): I ended up getting to go study with. Needless to say, I never got that opportunity. I went to undergrad and eventually grad school, pursuing a career in athletic training that scratched my itch a little. It allowed me to be around sports and athletes, even though I never earned the right to play beyond 12th grade. And I've worked with a lot of sports and a lot of athletes by the time I was assigned to Arizona football in 2000.

0:28:11 - (Toby Brooks): But in my heart of hearts, I'd never wanted to be a gymnast or a baseball player or any other sport that I worked with. As much as I loved the chance to help my patients get better, I was never jealous of their roles. I didn't envy them. But not so with football.

0:28:26 - (C): As Brad said, he'd battled through a.

0:28:28 - (Toby Brooks): Recurrent hamstring strain for almost a year that had kept him from being able to sprint all out. Later, he injured his back, making it even worse. When I started working with the team, he was going on a full season of rehab. We worked together pretty much every day, sometimes twice a day for months at a time. In the summer of 2000, I saw him more than my own wife. We didn't have an indoor facility, so in a pre indoor era, we regularly went up to the practice field in 110 degree Tucson Heat.

0:28:58 - (Toby Brooks): Brad also did pool workouts. He lifted with our strength staff. He did sprint work, even drills in the foam gymnastics pit in an effort to get him better. And he did. But it was slow. He missed the opening game of that 2000 season, a September 2 matchup at Utah. It was a date we'd both circled on our calendar way back in the spring. Unfortunately, he just wasn't ready yet. So we recalibrated. We talked about it.

0:29:27 - (Toby Brooks): We said, how about that conference opener at Stanford? September 30, Stanford Stadium. Brad didn't start. Melosi Leonard and Brandon Marshall got that on her, but I thought he was ready. And Brad told me he thought he was ready, too.

0:29:43 - (C): I looked it up.

0:29:44 - (Toby Brooks): 31,165 fans, I'd say half of them were probably Bay Area members of the Brennan family. They looked on as the Wildcats clung to a 30 lead midway through the first quarter, Brad got the call. He entered the game, his first action in over a year. Arizona quarterback Ortiz Jenkins hit him in stride as he leapt over a defender and took it to the house. Now, in my recollection, I distinctly remember that it was at least 80 plus yards.

0:30:17 - (C): I was shocked when I looked it up.

0:30:18 - (Toby Brooks): Maybe it's a Mandela effect or something, but according to the box score, officially it was a 36 yard pass, but it was a one play, eight second scoring drive to put u of a up ten to three. But to Brad, it was way more than that. It was an exclamation point. It was a notice. It was like a roadside historical marker that told him the world. That despite all the setbacks, the adversities, the disappointments, the mental, the physical pain, the suffering he'd endured, he was back.

0:30:49 - (Toby Brooks): Except you heard him just then. And I heard him then. He didn't say he was back. He didn't come to the sideline and say I did it. He came to the sideline and said, we're back. Brad came to that sideline lighter and freer. After all, he was finally out from under the burden that that season of his life had grown into. He came straight at me and he gave me a hug of thanks and told me he couldn't have done it without me.

0:31:20 - (C): As I look back over a career.

0:31:22 - (Toby Brooks): That has spent decades, I've enjoyed more awesome memories with more incredible athletes than I can count. That moment, that two or 3 seconds on Astroturf sidelines in Palo Alto, California, stands alone at the very top. And that, my friends, is as close as I ever came to playing college football. We did it. The Arizona Daily Star printed a full color photo of the play on the COVID of the Sunday sports section.

0:31:56 - (Toby Brooks): Brad's mid air, with Cardinal defender Reuben Carter underneath him as he's getting ready to sprint to the end zone. I have a framed and autographed copy of it that Brad gave me that, until last week, hung in my bathroom. We're moving. It'll hang in the bathroom at our new place. Arizona went on to cook the Cardinal 27 three to move to three and one on the year. Hopes were high. Unfortunately, the team faded down the stretch, finished a disappointing five and six after an exhilarating triple overtime victory at home against Washington State on October 14.

0:32:32 - (Toby Brooks): We dropped five straight, including three in a row by a combined nine points. We failed to make a bowl game and sadly it marked the end for legendary coach Dick Thome in Tucson. But all that lay ahead in that moment, it was just Brad freaking Brennan doing what he does, catching uncatchable balls with a smile on his face and a fire in his belly. We did it.

0:33:01 - (Brad Brennan): I remember you made me a really cool thing, I think when I graduated with my name plate and kind of the stats and that photo from the newspaper that was in that next day.

0:33:12 - (C): So as that career winds down, that season didn't really go according to plan, peaked maybe the year before and really expected. I think that team underperformed a little bit. So your career and you're hampered by injury, but you see this opportunity to potentially continue playing professionally, whether that's CFL or now this japanese league. So as your undergrad career is wrapping up, what were the opportunities for you to continue to play professionally?

0:33:45 - (Brad Brennan): Yeah, I think I had a good college career and I think maybe if I came out of that final year like really healthy as well, maybe I would have had a better chance. I don't know. And I think that a lot of that stuff, yeah, can be injuries, but it can also be you and what you're really focused on. Right? If that was my all in focus, then maybe something happens. But I did know that I wanted to try, right?

0:34:09 - (Brad Brennan): Whether that was the NFL, the CFL, or this random thing that landed in my lap called the Japan X Li. And one of my best friends from growing up, his name Ryan Tolner. He's a big time sports agent now. At the time he was helping dudes like me. Now he's just. He's a Jared Goff's agent. They just signed a huge contract yesterday, but. And he works with a bunch of the top NFL guys now. But at the time he was helping people like me and some lower 4th, 5th, 6th round draft pick guys.

0:34:41 - (Brad Brennan): He had a friend that was coaching in Japan and he said, hey, they're going to open this league up to foreign players. It was all japanese up until that time. So 2001, I left U of A. I went out with this guy, his name is Dave Peroznik, incredible guy. But he said, hey, come out here, do like a quick interview, see if it's even something you're interested in and you can go from there. It's no big deal.

0:35:08 - (Brad Brennan): So I went out there, I was injured and stuff. And I'm going through some of the testing process in the spring when NFL camps are coming through and CFL, et cetera. Mike, what if I did this for six months in one season and then tried something else after if it wasn't exactly what I thought it was going to be? So I ended up going out there, did an interview, I don't speak a lick of Japanese, like zero.

0:35:32 - (Brad Brennan): And thank God they had some people that were translating everything. But sit down. Had a pretty cool interview and they said, look, it's six months and they were going to pay me. What was it? I don't know, 50 grand or something for six months. I'm like, shit, I've never had any like that. And to keep playing ball and have a worldly travel experience, like hell. Yeah. And there was me and a big samoan kid from San Diego state named George Tuiloma Heather, and he was like Godzilla out there. He was six, 5320.

0:36:01 - (Brad Brennan): We'd get on the train and people were just like, ah, like freaking out. And so, yeah, great experience. I ended up signing this one year deal with them, flew out, had this incredible experience and there's definitely a book somewhere in just that experience. But yeah, not knowing any language and trying to adapt and really bond with these japanese guys over the course of six months. But yeah, pretty special.

0:36:26 - (C): Yeah, I remember stories of the team doing Taebo workouts or something like that instead of having an actual weight room and just the stories. Yeah, there's definitely a book that needs to happen. So you end up coming back not necessarily stateside, but you get a shot in the CFL, with BC, with the Lions, and unfortunately that's pretty short lived. So emotionally, what's this like for you now? Like you're thinking, okay, my college career is over, but I got this chance that's a win. And that now you've got a chance to go make it in a league that may be a little bit more prestigious, maybe more money, maybe family can come visit, those types of things and that gets cut short again.

0:37:09 - (C): Where are you at psychologically in this season?

0:37:13 - (Brad Brennan): Yes, it was messy, man. I just came off this really cool experience in Japan. I'm excited because now it's like, oh, you have a chance to go to the CFL, which like you said, is a little more prestigious. And when you're up there, man, you feel like a rock star. I was up there, pretty cool. I was up there with OJ T. Jenkins, our quarterback from U of A at the time, and also Brandon Nash, one of our dbs, and we had a great kind of camp experience from the beginning.

0:37:40 - (Brad Brennan): Again, I re injured my hamstring again. And just took me back to that kind of dark place at U of a and kind of grind through that. And I was just, I was trying everything I could do to stay, though. I even went in. I don't think I've ever told anybody this, but I went into the receiver coach and said, look, I want to be here. And I could feel like them. My time running out to try and get healthing back on the field in the CFL.

0:38:06 - (Brad Brennan): I don't know if it's the same now, but man, it was gnarly back then. They were flying guys in and out of town. Even game weeks, they'd fly a guy in, they'd play, they'd cut him. It was not the most glamorous thing, I think, for a lot of people, but if you were there, it was great. And so I could feel my time, like, running out in this camp experience and I just wasn't healthy yet. So I went into the receiver coach, I said, look, I want to be here.

0:38:32 - (Brad Brennan): I'll do anything I can to stay. I'll even help run the meeting or whatever you guys need just so I could give myself maybe a little extra window to get healthy and then back. And he heard me out and then I think I was cut like two days later, so, which, I don't blame them, I just couldn't really get back. And so that was a kind of a hard time. I moved back home. My buddy ran a restaurant bar that I was working at for just for some money.

0:38:58 - (Brad Brennan): My dad did not love that. My dad one day said, are you going to shuck tacos and beers the rest of your life? And I was like, I don't know, but right now I'm just trying to make it work until I can, hopefully. I was still training to get back healthy, maybe get back to Canada. And during that time frame, another coach from Japan that I had become close with, he was an american guy, said, hey, come back and play for us. Let's go. Let's do this.

0:39:25 - (C): And that right there. That moment is what this show is all about. It's like in that moment where do I push a bad position and maybe this works out the way I want it or do I give up on my dream and go do something else?

0:39:39 - (Brad Brennan): Yeah.

0:39:40 - (C): What did you tell yourself during that time that allowed you to keep chasing this dream day?

0:39:48 - (Brad Brennan): Yeah, I think that you're just, you're in a constant kind of battle with yourself. Are you doing the right thing? Do you think this is the right path? When do you cut the cord on this thing, I knew I could still play, and physically I looked good and I felt good. And so I was like, I can definitely do this. Like, I was pretty fresh out of college still, too. My dad's the greatest guy ever, and he was.

0:40:11 - (Brad Brennan): And my dad, you knew my dad, and he was this incredible guy, but he also. I didn't want to do what he did. I didn't want to go that kind of path. When I told him and my dad, I don't want to do what you did. I'm going to do something different. I don't know what it is. But for now, this football thing's been taking me on this crazy journey. And I think sometimes people are scared to take that opportunity to do something unknown or do something a little bit different path. But you have to just do it. Like, it opened me up to, like, by far the greatest experience of my life, this Japan thing. Right.

0:40:49 - (Brad Brennan): And I had I not just said, yeah, I'm gonna go check it out and do it, I definitely wouldn't have gotten that opportunity.

0:40:54 - (Toby Brooks): Yeah.

0:40:55 - (C): So you end up with the Fujitsu Frontiers and win a championship against your old team.

0:41:02 - (Brad Brennan): This is a good. Yeah. Um, this is funny. Their main league is in the fall. The main season's in the fall. They've evolved that league a little bit. But the time that was called the X Bowl, the X League championship, in the springtime, they have a tournament and it's all the teams that are based in Tokyo, and it's all corporate sponsored teams. So I played for Fujitsu Computer company and they do a ton of stuff, obviously.

0:41:25 - (Brad Brennan): And so we won the spring tournament, which was called the Pearl bowl at the time. I played in Japan for ten years and I lost three championships. I never won, like, the big one, which just still crushes me in these muted little ways. I can't not think about that. I feel like monthly, I'll think about something like that, and I'm like, dude, I haven't played football since 20. What was it, eleven or something when I left there?

0:41:54 - (Brad Brennan): What's 20 years? See? It's crazy. What? Why wouldn't you just let that go?

0:42:00 - (C): You're like the Jackie Robinson and the Jim Kelly of japanese football.

0:42:05 - (Brad Brennan): Yeah, exactly. Which is. I love the Jackie part, but Jim Kelly part.

0:42:09 - (C): I know.

0:42:10 - (Brad Brennan): Loves him. Yeah.

0:42:12 - (C): Yeah. So career winds down. You decide that, okay, this is it. When you took those pads off for the last time, did you know in that moment that this was over? It's time to move on to the next season of my life, whatever that means.

0:42:29 - (Brad Brennan): Yeah. When I was in Japan, like my 8th season. I tore my tour, my ACL, and, and the team actually said, hey, we're not going to redo your contract. And I said, okay, fine, but I, but in Japan, when you get surgery, I stayed in the hospital for three weeks because everyone walks there so much. Not everyone has a car. It's just a very different kind of setup for people getting around. And so I had surgery, and then they wake you up at 830 in the morning. You'd be at rehab at nine till lunch, have lunch. I'd be rehab till four or 05:00 p.m.

0:43:06 - (Brad Brennan): and then every day pretty much for three weeks. And so, as you can imagine, I started getting healthy pretty quick. You're in a full regiment. And so the team, once I started getting back out and running around and stuff, they're like, oh, man, I think you can play again. So they re signed me. And so I was like, cool. So I ended up playing for a couple more years. The last year, we went to the championship again and we lost.

0:43:30 - (Brad Brennan): And it was a heartbreak and it crushed me. And I just remember sitting in the locker room at the Tokyo dome and I, and literally everyone was gone. And I just couldn't, I couldn't take off. I couldn't take off my stuff. It feels weird to be emotional about it, but for an athlete, that's knowing that's the last time you put in so many hours, so much hard that goes into it. I just, I couldn't really take it off. And I didn't want to leave, like, that space because I just knew that that would be the last time that I got to do that.

0:44:01 - (Brad Brennan): I'm so fortunate to do it for so long, but that last time is brutal. Now.

0:44:09 - (Toby Brooks): Ordinarily, this would be a place where I'd jump in and try to shed some light on the impact of this moment in a guest's life. But I'll keep it brief this time because I'm not sure I can keep it together. Try as I might to keep my composure in the moment. You can hear my voice quake during this part of the interview. And when Brad recalls sitting alone in full gear in that locker room that ended up being the site of his third championship loss after a decade in the league, you can hear the emotion in Brad's words, too.

0:44:39 - (Toby Brooks): It's over 5100 miles from where dreams of being a basketball and later a football star began for Brad in San Mateo, California, to some locker room in the bowels of the world famous Tokyo dome in Tokyo, Japan. Where those same dreams finally ended. But even those playing days were over. Brad Brennan was still undone.

0:45:02 - (C): So today you are director of major accounts for Rakit. So talk me through how you go from being a veteran of japanese professional football to now corporate America guy.

0:45:16 - (Brad Brennan): Yeah, I think this kind of goes back to, I think, part of the social thing and network thing and having people around you that are doing big things are important people. You have to be likable, right? And I think if you are very likable, then opportunities just find their way into your lap. Kyle Slager was a teammate of mine at U of A. Kyle was a walk on quarterback, played for a couple years there and then he transferred to Brown and was a great quarterback at Brown.

0:45:47 - (Brad Brennan): But Kyle and I were really close after college and we were fraternity brothers in college as well, along with the football thing. Um, had a really good relationship with Kyle, but he, he was living down San Diego. He was going to start a company. His dad was in development and he's very entrepreneurial. So he wanted to start a company and said, hey, friends and family, I'm raising a little money to try and start this company and kind of gave us the idea around it.

0:46:11 - (Brad Brennan): And I liked Kyle. Smart dude, trusted him. So I gave him a little small investment as part of that friends and family seed money for this company. Subsequently, after Japan, I went and coached football for two years with my older brother at Oregon State. Love playing more than maybe the coaching side. There's just other things I like to do. Coaching is that's all you get to do, right? Which, if you love it, that's awesome. And I respect the hell out of those guys because they put in so much time.

0:46:37 - (Brad Brennan): But if you like to do other things, you can't just bounce on a weekend. You can't just go do something with your family when it's football season. And so I didn't want to move around the country every two or three years, etcetera. So Kyle started this company. I got out of coaching. Hes like, hey, we just launched the product of this thing you invested in. And I was with him when he was writing this stuff on napkins at the coffee shop down in San Diego. My off season id be down there and were hanging out and hes going through the whole thing.

0:47:03 - (Brad Brennan): And so pretty cool. He hired me to do sales for them. Our platform is construction software. So its literally taking all the reporting that they do from like a paper standpoint in a lot of cases and taking everything to your mobile device, right? So for daily reports and who's on site photos of the work that's being done, and these guys are suing each other left and right. Very litigious environment construction.

0:47:26 - (Brad Brennan): So it's like if you can have photo documentation, that just saves you to say, hey, we have evidence on what happened and who was there. So Kyle launched a product and I ended up going and run sales for him. And then now we're in year ten. And, yeah, company's grown ton. Kyle's actually with another company now, and we have a new CEO for the last three years, but pretty cool. And again, very lucky and fortunate.

0:47:53 - (C): Yeah, that's awesome. So it's certainly been an uncommon path. We'll call it that. And you maybe wouldn't have chosen what happened along the way been some setbacks and some failures and some adversity. What do you think you learned from the adversity that success wouldn't have taught you?

0:48:12 - (Brad Brennan): I think it just teaches you that you're a lot stronger than you. You probably think you are. You go down this path and you think it's going to be one way, and you get slapped in the face and kicked down, and you just have to keep getting up. You know, Japan has like a really good saying. It's fall down seven times, get up eight. And I think that when I learned that, when I heard that in Japan, when I was living there, I'm like, dude, that's beautiful, man. Like, that's one of the coolest things. And I remember I wrote down, I made like this stickers and stuff on it because I thought it was just super important.

0:48:46 - (Brad Brennan): But I think that's one of the main things. It's just, you have no idea what that path is going to be, no matter how well you want to plan it out. But along the way, you have to, like, for one, take the opportunity to do these things and then you have to figure out how do you build some grit along the way. And these adversity periods, I think, that really help you build that grit, really find a different level to come out of, and you're always better on the other end of it.

0:49:10 - (Brad Brennan): Rarely do I think that you, unless you just get so caught up in your own mind that you're worse at the end of these things. So if you can keep that perspective, I think then you have a real chance, when these things come up, to handle them better than you would otherwise.

0:49:24 - (C): That's great wisdom. This one's kind of an oddball, but I ask it of everybody, if we were watching a montage of your life, what song would be playing in the background and why?

0:49:35 - (Brad Brennan): Wow.

0:49:36 - (C): I don't know why.

0:49:37 - (Brad Brennan): That's great questions. I'd probably. I don't know, some sort of fighter song or something. I feel like there's always been, like, this fight in me. I think if it was just musically, I would some, like, fun hawaiian reggae, because socially that's where I'm at. But I think as the athlete side and kind of some of the things I went through along the way, just always finding a way to fight. And I think a lot of that comes from my parents.

0:50:08 - (C): Yeah. Last one. What for Brad Brennan remains undone.

0:50:15 - (Brad Brennan): I'm always undone, man. Like, I'll sit and just all of a sudden, periodically, I'll be like, dude, I'm f ed up, man. Like, I gotta. I gotta figure something out. This football thing up and down. You figure it out, then you get to the next thing, this work thing, up and down, and you figure it out. But I'm constantly trying to get into self development stuff. I think that stuff, like, at least helps me pull pieces of the things that I think can help me the most and figure out ways to be better.

0:50:44 - (Brad Brennan): I've heard some of the old, like, sales people, sales gurus talk about, don't try and be better at sales, be better at yourself. And all this stuff, whether it's sales or personal relationships, family, like, all those things will be better. And I think that's my big. Trying to unlock, like, how do I get better? How do I not be as short with my kids when they're driving me crazy? Like these little things that I didn't have to worry about before, pre kids. And they throw a wrench into a lot of the stuff, even though they're the best things you could ever ask for.

0:51:15 - (Brad Brennan): So, yeah, those are cool.

0:51:17 - (C): Brad, it's been a pleasure. I sincerely appreciate your time. It's been a great conversation. If folks want to follow what you're doing, where can I point them?

0:51:25 - (Brad Brennan): Yeah, I'm not. I don't. I haven't written a book. I don't have, like, crazy Twitter followings and stuff like that, but I'm definitely on LinkedIn. I think LinkedIn's incredible platform to stay in touch and also business relationships, etcetera. I'm on Facebook and Instagram as well. Brad Brennan, 13. At most of those, 13 was my football number. And, yeah, keep rolling.

0:51:47 - (C): Well, Brad, thanks again for your time. I really appreciate it.

0:51:50 - (Brad Brennan): All right. Love you, buddy. You're the best. So great to see you, and I appreciate you putting this together. My name is Brad Brennan and I am undone.

0:51:58 - (Toby Brooks): I'm so thankful to Brad for dropping in and I hope you enjoyed our conversation. For more info on today's episode, be sure to check it out on the web. Simply go to undonepodcast.com ep 87 to see the notes, links and images related to today's guest, Brad Brennan. I know there are great stories out there to be told and I'm always on the lookout. So if you or someone you know has a story we can all be inspired by, tell me about it.

0:52:22 - (Toby Brooks): Surf on over to undonepodcast.com comma. Click the contact tab in the top menu and drop me a note. Coming up, I've got entrepreneur Kara Wells dropping in talking about her business in Genesis, and I'm also working on a new multi part documentary about legendary NBA player Larry Johnson. So stick around. That and more coming up on becoming undone becoming undone is a nitro hype creative production written and produced by me, Toby Brooks.

0:52:54 - (Toby Brooks): For now, I'm a one person show relying on AI tools from descript, decipher and opus clip to create, produce and deliver the best show I know how to. You, my cherished friends and listeners. Follow the show on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn at becoming a nun pod and follow me at tobyjbrooks on Instagram and TikTok. Check out my link tree at Linktr ee tobyjbrooks. Listen, subscribe and leave me a review at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.

0:53:21 - (Toby Brooks): Till next time. Keep getting better.