KURT WARNER: "American Underdog"

Published Dec 28, 2021, 10:00 AM

Life made them underdogs. Faith made them champions. Kurt Warner is with me today on the season's last episode of LOVE SOMEONE. This is the guy who went from stocking shelves to winning the Super Bowl, and becoming an NFL legend. A major motion picture has been made about his life; with wife, Brenda, the children that brought them together, and the legacy they have created. Kurt's here to give us some behind-the-scenes insight and share how he hopes the film will impact viewers. If you like football, like romance, or just like a great story, you won't want to miss the movie, and you won't want to miss this podcast episode! "American Underdog", was released on Christmas Day! ~ Delilah

One has been a phenomenal podcast season, a weird year, phenomenal podcast season for us. I have had some sensational guest I have learned so much and I've been inspired by stories by life experiences. Do you remember how we kicked this year off with a dynamic representative from the American Heart Association reminding imploring us, especially US women, to live fiercely, to take our heart health seriously. From there, I had the great privilege of speaking with superstar recording artists from pop, country, Christian and theatrical genres, an Oscar nominated movie director, and one from a multi season television drama about the life of Jesus Christ. Several book authors joined me to share how to have more fun and to remind us that being kind to others and compassionate with ourselves is the most important work we can ever do. Leaders of charitable foundations doing amazing things in the world came aboard and infused our podcast with their passion for giving help where it's needed. And CEOs of innovative businesses shared their drive for their industry and of course for giving back to their communities. And now now we have come to the last episode of the twenty one season. We're going to wrap up things with an astonishing story of hard work, faith, and perseverance. It's the story of an American underdog and how he came not just from behind, but from out of nowhere to knock the socks off the National Football League, and it's millions and millions of cheering fans. Kurt Warner went from stocking shelves at a supermarket to become a two time n f L m v P, a Super Bowl champion, and a Hall of Fame quarterback. His story has now been made into a major motion picture, American Underdog, which hit theaters on Christmas Day. Right now, though, I'm going to sing the praises of a sponsor that helps me be able to have these great conversations and to be able to share them with you. 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Omega x L dot com forward slash love to place your order and to discover all the wonderful goodness of Omega Excel. Hi, Kurt, Welcome to Love Someone with Delilah. This, Kurt Warner, is our final podcast for the one season, and how exciting that I get to talk to you for our final podcast. Thank you for agreeing to be with this that it's the last one of the year. I think it's gonna finish up the year strong. We're going to finish up the year strong, and I am so excited to talk to you. And I have I do a special on my radio show called Confession Session where people call in and you know, confession is good for the soul, and it's not quite you know, like with a priest or a pastor, but they you know, they share something and then I either call them dog of the Day or whatever. But my Confession session is the only football games I have ever been to in my life are once my kids played in and every time they would call you Pop Warner in the movie, you know, my head would snap because that's the league that my kids played in, and and it just took me back to all those of those times go out to the games and my kids. And then I went to one professional game two years ago Tampa Bay. And then the next year they cleaned up at the Super Bowl. So I say the same thing. The first professional game that I ever went to, I was a part of. So I was really as yes, oh, how cool is that the first time you were in the stadium at a professional football game. You were in the game. Yeah. Well I actually didn't get in the game, but I was on the sideline in my uniform with the team, so it was a preseason game. But yes, dude, that is very very cool. So with me, I love someone today is Kurt Warner, and I was not prepared to be sitting on the edge of my seat cheering for you in the movie like I did. Well, that is awesome to hear. Uh you. That's the hard part of this process is that you're excited about being able to share your story and having on the big screen and all of those different things. But as it gets closer and closer to release or people starting to see it, you get a little anxious because you're like, Okay, did we do the story justice, do we do it in such a way that people are cheering on the edge of their seats and their impact. Then they leave the theater and they're still talking about the movie. So that's great that you say that. And as we've talked to people that have seen the movie, there's been so many different responses like that on how the movie gripped them in different ways than they expected it too when they went into the theater. Uh. And for me, that's that's what makes a great movie, as you go in expecting something and hopefully you get what you expect, but hopefully you get so much more, and I think this movie has the possibilities of doing that. Well. I I didn't know what I was going to expect because, like I said, I don't really follow professional football, and part of that is because I worked nights and my weekends are you know, completely devoted to my kids. And part of that is many many, many many moons ago. I was married to a man, my first husband, who was a sports director and a news director at a TV station, and his weekends were his biggest work times. And there were a lot of problems in our very brief marriage. But but football was one of those problems. Um you know, he would he would either be at the game or have three or four TVs stacked up, these little TVs that he had that were like, you know, thirteen inches stacked up watching multiple games at the same time. So everybody knows of your story, but I didn't really know your story. And I looked you up, you know, I googled you, I what, read the Wikipedia and everything. But the movie was so well done. I feel like I know you. Well, that's that's what we want, and we want those that think they know as going in Unlike you, there's gonna be plenty of people that think, oh, I know the Kurt Warner story. Like you said, I was alive when it happened. I remember the first game or the Super whatever. Um. But I think when it's all said and done, they're gonna go, oh. But I didn't know Kurt and Brenda like I know them now, and I didn't know the rest of the story, or or really, I should say, the heart of the story. And that's what we were trying to portray in this movie. Give them the football, because I know they want the football, but them I didn't. I didn't go for the football. I I went for the relationship. And I I thought the two actors that played you and your wife, I don't know if that's truly your love story or if it was changed for the movie, but I was a believer. You know, sometimes you watch movie, You're like, I'm watching an actor pretending to be in love. And and even sweeter than the relationship that was portrayed between you and your wife was the relationship between you and your son. Yeah, that was you know. We've been working on this movie for a long time and a lot of people that you know, came into the process and wrote the early scripts. They got the football part right, but I always told them, I'm like, the heart of this story is not just the love story between Brendan myself and how we shaped each other, but as my son's act. And uh, you know, you see a lot of movies or sports movies, and the natural theme is, you know, if it's a if it's a guy trying to chase his dream, it's like, I want to make my dad proud, right, I want to do this so I can show my that whatever. And so that's the part of a lot of movies, and for me, I wanted it to be the flip of that. I wanted people to know that it was this young man that was four or five years old, that had dealt with his own struggles and his own challenges on a daily basis that inspired me, that pushed me on. I wanted to make it and part of the reason was I wanted to make him proud of me that, hey, I saw you and you inspired me to continue to push when everybody else said stop. And when you look at the love story between Brendan myself, Zach was the one, uh, meaning my son's act, not Zach, relieve, but my son's act was the one that broke down a lot of those barriers, and I believe really allowed us to come together because Brenda, as a single mom of two one with special needs, uh, she had her guard up, she had her walls up, like, you know, you better be ready to handle all this because I've been through stuff and the person that you know comes into my life has got to be able to treat me and maybe more importantly, my kids in the right way. So early relationship between Zach and I, I think broke down some of those walls. And for me, Delila, I'm sure you've heard it a million times. You know, you meet someone a single mom with two kids, and you know they throw around the term, oh, do you really want to get into relationship? Has that baggage or has all that stuff that comes with it? And for me to be able to meet Zach with no context, um, as you saw in the movie, that's exactly what happened. Is he grabbed my hand, he pulled me into the house and said you were going to the bathroom and I want to show you my radio. And so we had this unsolicited moment where I got to see who Zack was and start a relationship there without Brenda telling me anything about him, and that broke down some of those walls that automatically came up when she told me I'm a single mom with two So he was such an integral part of this entire journey and so many parts of the journey. So I love that you were impacted by that part of it, because to me, this movie was not going to be made unless Zach was a central theme in the I cried more than once during the movie. But you and Zach on the floor. I don't know if that scene really happened in your life or not, but you and Zach on the floor in the bathroom, I was crying and I looked over at my daughter and she had a tear in her eye, And I'm like, you as big of as sap as I am. And you write a lot of a lot of movies, especially sports movies, have a love story in them, but your love story and your love story with the two kids really sets it a part in this precious well, thank you, that's exactly what we were trying to do. And the hope, because again, there's lots of themes throughout this movie. Um that no matter where you come from or where you're at a particular time in life, I believe you can go to this movie and connect with different storylines that are in it. And that was again something that was important to me, is that I didn't want to just make a movie for sports fans or you know, people that were necessarily dreamers. And in the terms of the way that I was a dreamer, we wanted to make a story that you could bring your daughter, I could bring my seven kids, and everybody would walk out of the theater going, oh, I liked that movie. And here's why I liked it. Might not be the same reason you know that one of my other kids liked it, but they will all be connected to a part of the story in a unique way. And I really think this movie has a chance to do just that. I think it does. And I love the title, uh the underdog theme. Tell me it talked to me about the coaches that there were two actors that played coaches that at the end of the movie you actually saw the video from the real football game with the real coaches, and Dennis Quaid, who is such a phenomenal actor, was was the character that he played really that much in your corner in real life? Uh, he was you know so much of life. We we all have, you know, those moments of struggle, um, that we go through. And you know, one of the themes in the movie was doing it together, right we we we always need people to come alongside and go, Okay, I'm gonna give you a chance. I'm gonna come along with you and give you an opportunity. And dig Romio from a football standpoint, was one of those guys for me, and I thought it was just a really great moment and how they captured it in in the movie where Dick saw a lot of himself in me that he had been through some of those similar things and um, and sometimes that's how it has to work, right. Sometimes we're the person that needs someone to give us an opportunity. And then other times we've gotten that opportunity and we get to be the person that gives someone else that same chance that we got. And so that to me was a really key moment in the movie, is that I needed somebody. I knew, you know, in my mind, I can do this. I just need somebody else to believe in me. And from a football standpoint. That was dick for me when you know there's a there's a great story. It's not depicted in the movie, but you know when they were making the final cuts for the Rams team that first year that I made the team, is he went around the room because there was myself in another quarterback that they were trying to decide between how old were you? Because it never comes up in the movie like he would. People would ask you when you graduated or when you finished, and the character that plays Dix says, fourteen years you've been You've been out of this game fourteen years, dude. So I'm doing the math in my head, going okay, well, if you were twenty four three when you graduated, how old were you when that conversation went on in real life? No, he was out of the game. So he had coached somewhere and then he got out of the game for fourteen years before he came back as a coach again. For me, it wasn't that long. I was twenty seven when I got my opportunity in the NFL, so it was five years basically removed from when I left college. And I love that he called it your time in the desert. Yes, yeah, and so you know, how long was your time? And you know his was fourteen years, mine was five, which is equivalent to that when you're talking about an athlete who only has a finite time to play. But as the story goes, he went around the room with all of his coaches and said, okay, which of these two guys should we keep? Which these two guys should we keep? And at the end of the time, the numbers were split right down the middle. There was half for me and half for this other guy. And so ultimately he was trying to get a you know, somebody else to kind of make the decision for him, and ultimately came right back to Dick and he had to go and wrestle with whether he was gonna keep me or the other guy. And it was Dick that said, you know what, as again as you see in the movie, there's something special about you. I recognize something different about you, and I just can't, you know, not keep you around to see you know what? That is true life story. That's how it played out, and um, you know he was that guy that you know, without Dick for meal, you're probably not cocking to Kurt Warner right now. When he said, the character said, you know how long in the desert? To me that said he was a man of faith. Was he a man of faith in real life? No? Well, I mean I would say he was a man that was open to all those possibilities. I don't know where he stood, you know, and if you talk about a Christian journey or the faith overall, but I know he recognized faith and he understood it, um and specifically in my journey that you know, I was a man of faith and was very outspoken early on about my faith, and we would have conversations about it, and just like you said, there would be moments where we would have conversations and the things that he said made you think, are you seeing this the way I'm seeing this or is this just a big picture understanding of of what that is. But he was very very conscious of my faith and faith in general, um and that resignated with his character the entire I mean, I'm still very close to him, but ever since the first day I met him, Nice, I was very blessed in my life to have two men Jerome and Steve Connegie, that believed in me when I was a kid and and open doors for me when I was a kid, and that I have had opportunities to do that for other young people is one of my greatest blessings and what an honor exactly. I couldn't agree more. So, have you got to coach Pop Warner or anything like that? Have you got to be that guy? Yes? I mean I do coach. Um. I have two boys that play, one that plays in college and one that's senior in high school. Now, so I started coaching when my son started high school football. So I've been fortunate to be able to coach for about ten years now, uh, and be able to give back not only to my boys and help them kind of chase their dream but also be able to share those those gifts and that knowledge and expertise with these other kids that are that are dreamers like I was. So it has been fun when you when you have a gift and you're good at something, to be able to take that and try to impart it on on other people when they have the you know, the same type of goals and dreams that you had the movie folks, and you know a bunch of information, a packet of information and football stats and all that, and I'm like, yeah, I don't want to see the stats. I want to see the wife. And there's a picture I don't know how recent it is of your wife in real life, not the actress who did a fabulous job, by the way, but your wife in real life and you and all seven of your children, and dude, you did good. She is gorgeous, very much. So I'm married out, no doubt. I'm looking at her going. She's had seven kids, no doubt about it. I mean she is. She is a rock star in so many different ways, and so it is. It is amazing when you look at it and you're like, dang, seven kids, All these kids came out of you. I was convinced that because I have fifteen kids, but you know, God brought them to me in other ways. And when I saw your kids, I'm like, they kind of all looked very similar. And then I did the research and I'm like, dang, she did give birth to all those, including twins, that she looked that good. Okay, back to the stair stepper. So did you really fall in love with her that quickly? Probably not as quickly as the movie shows, you know, because we would always and we always talk about how I really fell in love with the kids first, with some of the walls that Brenda had put up. Now, you know, I was attracted to her right away and the relationship started very very quickly. But I think, you know, with the way I was kind of chasing my dream with some of the walls that she had put up. Um, it took some time to fall in love and to convince her to let down those walls and let me see all of her. But it was very easy and very quickly I fell in love with the kids. And when I fell in love with the kids, uh, that really broke down some of those barriers for her and allowed her to open up to to let me see the entire package. And once once that happened, it was it was easy when you see the depth and you see the character, and you see the strength of that woman, the resolve that and you know, in a big part, I thought Anna did a great job in the movie of of playing Brenda was being a to fight that balance that. My wife is very strong. She was a former marine, and she likes to portray herself as strong that you can't you know, you can't get in here, you can't mess with me. But there is a vulnerability to my wife as well, and not a lot of people on the outside have gotten to see that because she does have those walls up. I thought Anna in the movie and the script and the movie did a great job of showing both sides, showing your strength, uh, and how she was going to stand up for what she believed in, but also letting down those walls a little bit to let people peer into you know why I fell in love with her and and what the other side of my wife is all about. So if you're a football fan, you're gonna love the movie American Underdog. If you are a romance fan, you're gonna love the movie. If you're someone like myself that loves stories my whole life, you know, the whole radio thing I've done in the podcast I've done, and everything I've done has been weaving stories together and seeing how God weaves families together or teams together. And that was touched on a tiny bit in the movie, but very sweetly. We see and the scene where where you're just struggling and cry out to God and and your son wraps his arms around you. I was like, Oh, I don't know if that really happened, but what a beautiful way to portray the love of the father through the son in that scene. That well done, sir, well, but thank you. I'm very much the same way is that, you know, when you get to this point and you start to make a movie, you know, one of the first questions everybody asks you who's gonna play you? Who do you want to play you in the movie, And through this whole process, I've always just said, I don't care who plays me. What I care about is do we get the story right? Because when I go to movies, that's what I look at. I don't care you know, what the scenes look like. I don't care what the special effects are. I don't care who's acting in the movie. I want you to grip me with the story of the movie, something that I can leave the theater with and go, man, that that's hanging with me. You know, entertainment is great, love to be entertained like everybody else. But to me, great movies are the ones that have great stories and things that go with it. So I love that you say that because I feel exactly the same way. Whenever I go to do anything, I want to get touched by the story that is being told to me and those are my favorite movies, and so that was a big part of this movie. Is, Yeah, we want to get all the other stuff right. We want people to see football and enjoy that and be entertained. Well, we gotta get the story right, and we got to connect to people through the story. And I do think we uh, I think we have a chance to do that because the story is really really the story is beautiful, and as the mom of some kids who have very special needs, I think it will empower and encourage people in so many ways on so many levels. But mostly you know, what I do on my show is I try to share the the love of God with a multitude of people in a way that they'll receive. And I think I think that that movie definitely shares a whole lot of love in the layers of ways. So I really enjoyed it. Yeah, I think you're right, And that was important to us as well, being a man of faith and being outspoken with my faith. Um, you know, making a movie, it's like, okay, how do we make this movie the right way where we do justice to who we are and the heart of who we are, but we also do justice to the faith. Journey is that not everybody is in the same place as you and I, And as you saw in the movie, I was not in the same place as Brenda when we got together. I was in a completely different place from a faith perspective than where she was. And so we tried to make this movie where we were true too who we are in The underlying theme was always about faith in that part of things. But we want people to go see the movie and be able to be engaged to the faith journey based on where they're at at that particular time in their life, and you know, not be turned off by it, um, but you know, kind of seek after it or wonder what all that's about, because that's what I saw in Brenda. I saw her on this faith journey and she was very devout in in what she believed. And I'm sitting kind of on the outside, going, Okay, I understand it, but I'm not where she is. You know, what do I do with that? And she did a great job of kind of bringing me along and challenged me with it and showing it to me in different ways. So I was able to come to my own faith through it. And you know, Delilah, that's that's what it's all about. You've got you say, fifteen kids, and I've got seven kids, and it's easy to go, Okay, you're gonna go to church with me, and we're gonna read the Bible and I'm gonna tell you these and think that you're gonna come to my faith. That's not what it's all about. It's about you coming to your own faith. And so that was a pivotal part of the movie, is trying to figure out that balance of being able to do justice to both sides of it, and I do believe we were able to do that. Our podcast sponsored today is Mercy Ships. Could you imagine living in a part of the world where there was no access to medical care? What would you do if your child were ill or in need of surgery. Mercy Ships is committed to serving the needs of these far flung places with giant floating hospital ships that provide free, life changing surgeries and medical care, a majority of them to children. Imagine the immense relief of Mother Fields when her child is healed aboard a Mercy Ship. Go to Mercy ships dot org to learn more about this incredible organization and how you can help them help others that's Mercy Ships dot Org. So when you met Brenda, you said she was solid in her walk, but you weren't quite there in yours yet. How much of the fact that she is gorgeous swayed you? I'd say that because I have an older brother he's in heaven now. And we weren't my family, We weren't raised in a particular church or denomination or religion even and my brother started college. In his first week at college, he met a girl named Ann and that was it for him. That was it. He was all in from like a month or two into knowing her. And she had a very strong faith. And we made I made a lot of fun of him, you know, mocking him and teasing him, good naturedly, sometimes not so good naturedly. Yeah, But it was his love for her that opened his heart to the bigger picture. Well, and I often and field that's how people truly come to faith is that they're opened up to it in some way, some door is open to them, whatever that may be. You know, a friend taking him uh to church, somebody that they fall in love with. It opens their eyes to it. Um. You know, the way somebody carries themselves to say Oh, if that person is a Christian and that's what he's like or that's what she's like, and that's how they live and that's how they love, I'm willing to, you know, kind of walk through that door to see it. And so yeah, I mean I was attracted to Brenda. There's no doubt about it. That came true very well in the movie. Exactly if I did a very good job. Did he study you? Did he like sit with you and talk to you to get your mannerisms because seeing you now in this podcast and having just watched the movie a lot of the mannerisms he had in the movie are you. He did a very good job. He did a great job. He came and spent a few days with us early in the process, Uh, to kind of see, like you said, who I was, my mannerisms, how I did different things, throwing a football, all of that stuff. But also to understand the dynamic between Brenda and myself as well, because that was something that was important to him, is that knowing relationship was going to be a big part of this movie. I want to understand how you guys do this relationship thing, and you know how and and I can pull this off in the movie and and connect with it. And so you know, even in the movie, you'll you'll hear a little bit of an accent, which I don't ever think I have an accent, like we never do. Um, but everybody's like, oh, yeah, you got a little one. And so him trying to get those little subtleties right in the movie that really separated Um. I don't know if you remember in the movie, there was a scene when we were in the blizzard and we run. I didn't have any money to to get gas. I thought I could get where we were going. Twelve year old daughter was going the whole time, no no, no, no, no, please Mom No. Yeah, Well I knew better. I just didn't know how to do better. I didn't have any options. But yeah, I mean so in that scene, Um, as we're starting to run out of gas, you hear Anna say Curtis. So in the whole movie, I'm you know, and everybody calls me Kurt. But obviously in our relationships with Mom or whatever or um. You know, when you're in a relationship, there comes times in critical moments we use somebody's full name, right, we become Curtis because of you know, the depth of that moment and what that meant. And so it was stuff like that where she goes Curtis and you know, if you didn't pay attention or you may have easily missed that. But it's those kind of subtleties that are in the movie that add an extra layer of depth if you're able to pick up on those things. But my point being is that Zack and Anna that was important to them that they spent time with us to kind of see how that worked, so they could let that come out on the big screen and really do justice to what are relationship was. Well, your relationship is beautiful, your love story is beautiful. The movie American Underdog. I know many many many people Kurt Warner are going to be blessed. Well, thank you, appreciate appreciate having some time with you, and appreciate your faith in what you do. Lord, bless you. Sometimes this world can feel a little dark, and we can feel a little defeated, but never ever ever give up hope. When we learn to adjust our focus, we find there is light, there is love, there is hope, there is triumph surrounding us at all times. Kurt Warner's beautiful story is a representation of that truth. A wonderful way to wrap up this podcast season. American Underdog, a lions Gate film open in theaters on Christmas Day, starring Zachary Levi, Anna pa Queen, Dennis Quaid, and Chance Kelly, rated PG. It's brilliantly dure, directed by brothers John and Andrew Irwin and produced along with their Kingdom Story Company partner Kevin Downs. You will immediately be drawn into the complex, emotionally charged story of Kurt's life both on and off the football field, sharing the highs and the lows of his devastating setbacks and his triumphant victories. It is a story filled with hope and the knowledge that with really, really, really hard work, perseverance, faith and family, our dreams, no matter how far fetched, are never out of reach. If you haven't already been, get yourself to the movie soon, take the family, get a big old bucket of popcorn, and get in the game. Thank you for being with me on this season of Love Someone. We will kick off and just a few days and I cannot wait to share all the inspiration from upcoming guests that have to share goodness with you. Take care, my friends, God bless you,

LOVE SOMEONE with Delilah

In a world that can feel divisive and bleak, it's easy to get caught up in feelings of hopelessness, 
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