Episode 08: Jean Fugett

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Football Player! Attorney! Journalist! Broadcaster! CEO! RENAISSANCE MAN! Today on the Games People Play, our New York Giants season ticketholder host invites former Dallas Cowboy and Washington Footballer, Jean Fugett, to the program to discuss his extraordinary life, both on and off the gridiron. The pair talk about Jean’s accelerated academic progression as an early graduate of Cardinal Gibbons High School in Baltimore and Amherst College, and later, as a graduate student at George Washington Law School. You’ll hear about Jean’s NFL Draft Day experience, on-field run-ins with Claude Humphrey and Brad Van Pelt and playing for a trio of Hall Of Fame coaches in Sid Gilman, Tom Landry and George Allen. Plus: NFL labor politics in the 1970s; writing for the Baltimore Sun and Washington Post; broadcasting the NFL with Dan Dierdorf; an unlikely role as the “Father of Sabermetrics” for Earl Weaver’s Baltimore Orioles, and the tragic circumstances that led to him taking over as CEO of Beatrice Foods in 1993. Finally, Jean gives Bernie a little history lesson on the role football played in winning World War II and his familial ties to Civil War Era freed slaves and the Tuskegee Institute.