I honestly think I would've just gone home. Today, Carolina Panthers great Luke Kuechly is a guest on
Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s Dale Jr. Download podcast, and it's fun to get a long form interview with him like this because Luke typically hasn't done a ton of podcasts, or any kind of press, really, in the past. And the interview started off with Dale Jr. recalling the first time he met Luke, when he headed down to Wofford college one summer during training camp to speak to the team. He said it was "the most awkward thing" he's ever done, mostly because former quarterback Cam Newton was sitting in the front row looking less than amused:
"Dude, I wanna tell you man, that was like the most awkward thing I've ever done in my life. I think abut that all the time. Every time I see Cam Newton, I think about that day because I remember standing up there trying to talk to you guys. And Cam, all of y'all are intimidating as f***, and all of y'all are just standing there going, 'Who is this f*****g guy?' I'm trying to tell y'all stuff that maybe I've learned, or I think has helped me, and I'm like, these guys know all this sh*t. I don't feel like I'm telling them anything they don't know, but there was some rookies in the room that probably needed to hear it." The ever-humble, sweetheart that he is, Luke reassured Dale that there were plenty of guys that needed to hear it and the whole situation had nothing to do with him:
"The hard part sometimes is, the guys that need to hear it aren't listening, and the rest of the guys, they love hearing it from somebody else that is in the same kind of situation that we are." Dale elaborated, saying he felt like a lot of the players couldn't have cared less, and his line about being intimidated by all the guys in there because they were "freakin' 6'5 and jacked and bigger than hell" made me laugh out loud. While Dale Jr. has obviously been very successful in his NASCAR career, I can totally understand how intimidating it would be to be in that kind of setting, though it sounds like in the end, Cam actually enjoyed the speech and was glad he came:
"That was the most intimidating thing... I mean, I'm not a big fan of talking to crowds or getting in front of a big group of people, but I do it quite a bit sometimes. But talking to an NFL roster, this was before cut downs, so there was like 83 or so guys in that room. And they're in the middle of training camp and the grind of all that, that was intimidating as hell. But what was fun was, I'm standing there and I'm trying to read Cam and a couple of guys are sitting near him, they're like in this little group, and I'm trying to read them, whether they're digging this or not or they're like 'What's going on?' I couldn't really tell, and then when everybody got up, they came over and said hey and you could tell he was a good dude, happy I was there, glad I came or whatever. And that made me feel a little better... it was something, man. I'll never forget that day. I couldn't believe that I got asked to come over there and do that. I was like, 'Hell yeah, I'll do that!' Then when I got there, I was like 'What the hell have I gotten myself into?' 'Cuz everybody in there is like freakin' 6'5 and jacked and bigger than hell." Luke agreed with how big Cam is, and I seriously wish I could watch this speech now knowing the whole backstory... You have to listen to Dale tell it himself though, it's so funny: https://youtu.be/c6kbe6pcU_U?t=124
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