14 years ago today I awoke on the floor of a jail cell. No hope of a peaceful or unchaotic life, rather, no life at all. Today, I get to remind myself that you can’t change the past, you can ALWAYS start over and change your future. I’m the luckiest man in the world! #soberlife

This will 100% not be the case. It will be on @usasports with 4 pm local kick. See you all there. Gonna be a goodie!! @NateGatter

You know you hit the broadcast right down the middle when you get these messages simultaneously!! #CFB #Fanatics

Even with all the changes and $ in CFB theses days there is still an innocence to it when I walk into these stadiums every week to call a game. The campuses, the history, and pageantry of CFB is still there!!

I’m in total agreement with Mike Honcho here, and thank you btw. Unfortunately, MNF is on @espn which, if I’m correct, yes, the ruling has been upheld…is not a real network!

It’s official @KirkHerbstreit is David Simms, Don Johnson’s character from Tin Cup.

And the place to see those “must-see-TV” Beavers? For the next three games and four of their next five (including the November showdown with Boise State), it’s @usasports.

I’m lucky. My tv’s are never on, and when they are they are littered with Paw Patrol and Bluey because of my young kids. I can’t imagine tuning into something that just pushes hate watching like @espn

LIVE! 91 Ryan Leaf is ONE OF THE BEST CHAMPION QB's in CUT 27! LINK BELOW

You gotta love CFB viewers…

I didn’t know how that one would land, but glad it did, lol!!

We've got football in San Marcos today 🙌 Texas State hosts Incarnate Word at 6 p.m. ET 🏈 Tune in on USA Network 📺 or the USA Network app 📱

Always good to get back home!! #GoCougs

Our @usasports family!! @pac12 #CFBszn

Fall Golf at Sleepy Hollow…#Soberlife

First to 70 in San Marcos?! Scoring early and often in the first game of our @pac12 tripleheader today on @USANetwork - @TxStateBobcats leads North Texas 28-21 in the 2nd quarter. @NateGatter, @RyanDLeaf and @_thelaurengreen on the call.

Ryan Leaf says his NFL career was effectively over after his first 3 games, and he had won 2 of them “My final stat line was 1-for-15 for four yards, two interceptions, three fumbles and like seven sacks. Worst football game in my life. Humiliated. Embarrassed. I would play for five years in the NFL, and I can tell you guys right now, my career was over after three games, and I had won two of them.” “Because of how I dealt with it. I yelled at that reporter the next day. I was more embarrassed. It was a projection on my part. I was embarrassed and I was humiliated. I’d never played that way.” “If I would have stepped out in front of that podium and went, that will never happen again. I will work my ass off. Right? Accountability. I was never accountable. I was so humiliated that I backed myself into a corner and tried pointing at other people.” “It was their fault. Their problem. Shouldn’t have played me. I was in the hospital. Coaches. My teammates didn’t have my back. Media is out to get me. That’s the lack of accountability that I think people who are incredibly entitled have.”

In 1998, the entire sport spent months arguing about two quarterbacks. Peyton Manning or Ryan Leaf. The Colts had the first pick, the Chargers had the second, and nobody could agree on the order. The Colts took Manning. San Diego took Leaf. You know how that went. Leaf became shorthand for failure in American sports, the standard every draft bust since has been measured against. What came after was worse than the football. Painkiller addiction. Multiple stints in rehab. And eventually a prison sentence in Montana on theft, burglary and drug charges. He has never softened any of it. "I was as mentally ill as you could get, and I was doing nothing about it," Leaf said. "You can't get better in prison. You just can't. The substance was removed, and I got worse. I got angrier." Then the prison put a man named Joshua Pol in his cell. Pol was a war veteran who had been drinking, gotten behind the wheel, and accidentally killed someone. He was serving his time in the worst place a person can be, and he had decided to spend every single day of it trying to become better. He started dragging Leaf to the prison library with him, where the two of them taught other inmates how to read. And something shifted in Ryan Leaf. He started sleeping. He started calling his family. He noticed he liked being around people again. Helping men learn to read was the first thing in years that had made him feel like a human being. "He helped me save my life and is a very important person in my life, for sure." Leaf served his time and came out with one idea. "I knew when I got out of prison, I needed to build a foundation that was built on service." Getting anybody to let him do that was another matter. He was Ryan Leaf. Draft bust, felon, addict. Nobody hands that man a microphone in front of their team. In May 2017, ESPN ran a profile on where his life had gone. A few months later, his phone rang. Nick Saban, at the height of the Alabama dynasty, wanted him to come talk to the Crimson Tide. "Nick Saban was the first coach to do that," Leaf said. "Best referral you could ever have is Nick Saban bringing you in to speak. I owe that man a ton." Leaf stood in front of Alabama's football team and told them everything. The Heisman finalist, the second pick, the addiction, the prison cell. All of it. "It's not always the most friendly environment to rip off your scabs and tell people about some of your worst moments in your life. But there's also a teaching moment." That one talk opened everything. Leaf has now spoken to 79 football programs, plus teams in a dozen other sports. He and Saban later partnered on opioid awareness work, including in West Virginia, where Saban grew up. Leaf became a mental health and substance-use advocate for the Menninger Clinic in Houston. He got that job through a conversation at Peyton Manning's Hall of Fame induction in 2021. The man he was compared to for twenty years, at the ceremony marking the best career a quarterback can have. And Ryan Leaf was there, and it's where he met the person who would help him build his own life's work. He calls Pac-12 games now. He has a wife and a son. He is years sober. Ask him to call it a comeback and he won't. "It's not a redemption story. It's life. I'm living life on life's terms. Period. Sometimes that's hard." A cellmate who had done something unforgivable took him to a library. A coach who owed him nothing picked up a phone. That's the whole thing.

There is a no better referral than one from the greatest CFB Coach of all time. He really gave me a chance and it built the foundation of our purposeful business. I’ve now spoken at 79 schools since I got the opportunity to be of service that day at Alabama. #Soberlife

Amidst all the melodrama of @Lane_Kiffin’s return to @OleMissFB Saturday night, perhaps read instead this fabulous piece from @jordan_mendoza5 on @RyanDLeaf’s remarkable journey to help others @usatodaysports: usatoday.com/story/sports/nc…

There are some amazing people in this article, me not being one of them, that I’m incredibly grateful for. Just for today I’m the luckiest guy on this planet for having been able to go through all these moments in my life that has ultimately given me everything!! #soberlife