It was a regular Tuesday afternoon and I was driving my Uber as I had done every Tuesday for the last two or three months. I was listening to 98.5 The SportsHub’s Zolak and Bertrand. It was right around the time of the Super Bowl and they had national media member Mike Florio on for an interview. Of course, they asked about Tom Brady’s cut hand and if a backup quarterback from the Eagles would be able to dethrone the defending powerhouse Patriots. But, at the end they asked Mike Florio a personal question, about his journey, which coincided with Tom Brady’s. Brady became starter in 2001 and Florio had begun his journey into sports media right around the same time. Florio recalled when he decided to start that he had no idea his quest would take him to the national fame he currently has achieved. What struck me most was when he stated that he just found something he loved doing and did it the best he could, despite how much money any specific job offered or despite any outside noise he may have heard.
I’m 27 years old and was just coming off the experience of a lifetime. For the previous two years I had co-owned my own restaurant. It was an endeavour that I readily jumped into despite not being fully ready. Over the course of two years I faced many challenges, some mental, some financial and even some physical. More often than not I was working ninety hours, seven days a week with no vacations and hardly any pay. After two years, my mind and body had had enough and I did one of the hardest things I ever had to do: give up on a dream.
In spite of all the challenges and hardships I faced as a struggling restaurant owner, the one outlet I could rely on was sports. At some point during the previous summer my high school football coach came in to the restaurant for lunch. We got to talking and it ended up in me accepting a job as the freshman football coach, a job which I held prior to opening the restaurant. I was desperate at that point. Desperate for a break from the regular schedule, desperate to interact with a different group of people on a daily basis and of course, desperate to do something involving sports.
So a few weeks later, I showed up for the first day of practice and for the first time in a long time, life felt like it was back to normal. I used that 2-3 hours a day as a break from the restaurant, as a break from real life. For 2-3 hours every day, it didn’t matter how much food the restaurant needed, it didn’t matter how much traffic we had coming in, it didn’t matter how much money was in the bank account, all that mattered was football. But what I loved most was the innocence of freshman football. While none of these athletes had NFL potential, every one of us on that field were brought together by a love of the game. That kind of break saved me. Instead of stressing for a few extra hours a day, my mind was able to delve into a world which made me feel comfortable. When you can have a period like that ingrained into your daily routine, it helps you in every single aspect of your life.
So as I sat in my car that Tuesday, I started thinking about the past two years. While to many of my friends and family my life had been defined by the blood, sweat and tears I had poured into my restaurant, many of my personal highlights were tied to sports. The first year we were open I managed to record about fifty podcasts and wrote over twenty blog posts with one of my former college roommates during my minimal downtime. Then, I thought back to every Sunday afternoon when, like clockwork, I always found a way to sneak out for 3 hours to watch the Eagles game with my old man, sometime much to my employees dismay. I thought about how every big NFL, NBA or MLB playoff game my head chef and I would stop our cleaning and huddle around our TV in the back to take a break and watch. I thought about how every day when I would drive to buy the days food, I got lost in sports talk radio. I thought about how I would specifically record shows like First Take, the morning after a big win from one of my teams. So before my next Uber ride got in my car, I realized that maybe while closing the restaurant was giving up on a dream, sometimes it’s not failing if the consolation is doing what you were meant to do, what you’ve always done. Maybe that failure was just a part of the process.
The way I see it, life should not always be about what you are willing to do for money, it should be about what you are willing to do for free. It should be about what you turn to for comfort when other aspects of your life are failing. When you do what you love, the money will follow. For me, that answer is easy, it is and always has been sports. So for now, it’s time for me to stop dreaming and start doing, stop preaching and start practicing. I can’t wait to delve deep into 1204, hope you enjoy reading the content as much as I enjoy producing it.
By Peter Gumas
1204 Sports 