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Chapter 1: What is the story of Mike Flynn and his journey back to college football?
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. We agreed that the goods will remain in stock. Calm down. It's Pirkka. Pirkka. K-ruokakaupoista.
Jo 40 vuotta.
Hello and welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm Katie Smith. And I'd like to recommend the podcast that I host, Not By The Playbook, where we bring you inspirational stories from around the world, featuring interviews with people who are defying the odds. You can listen and subscribe to Not By The Playbook wherever you found this podcast.
And in this episode, we explore the concept in sport and in life that it's never too late. It's never too late to be what you might have been, so wrote the Victorian author George Eliot. And I think she would herself be inspired by the guests we've gathered together this week.
Having searched the world for the best stories in sport, we're about to embark on an hour of radio that might force a rethink to what you can achieve.
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Chapter 2: How did Meg Robson Austin overcome pain to become the World's Strongest Woman?
Anyone that ever doubted me, they don't get to have that space in my head. Like, I'm not letting them in. I'm a very strong believer of you can't hate yourself into success and you can't hate yourself happy. And it's a much nicer place to be, that's for sure.
Enrolling, there are no busload of fans. There are no million dollar contracts after college. But what you will find is someone who will show up every single day. to rip apart their hands and break their backs for the person who sits in front of you and the person who sits behind you and themselves. Those are the kind of people I need in my life.
More from the world's strongest women, Meg Robson-Austin and Roa Arshay Cooper on Not By The Playbook from the BBC World Service with me, Katie Smith. And we start in Texas and the remarkable story of Mike Flint, one so extraordinary that it reads like the script of a Hollywood movie, which is why I guess they did make it into a Hollywood movie.
Mike's is a story of resilience, not to mention incredible fitness. But at its very heart, his is a story of redemption. Because Mike returned to play for his college football team at the age of 59. The very team that four decades earlier had kicked him out.
Chapter 3: What challenges did Arshay Cooper face growing up in Chicago?
Really two stories, same man, two totally different individuals though. The younger man that was kicked out and then the older man that went back to play, they were not the same guy.
So, well, I feel like we have to go back to the start then, because you mentioned you were that completely different guy. You were a young guy and you mentioned the word violence and darkness. So take us to why that was and who you were at that time.
Well, my father was a World War II veteran. I talked to so many people about violence. my dad, because it was my dad that put me on that path of violence. But looking back on my life, it was my mother and the things that she went through that I didn't find out until I was a little older that so inspired me in so many different ways. Uh, My dad started boxing with me when I was six years old.
He called it boxing. I was pretty sure what we were doing was fighting. But it wasn't so much the physical training that he gave me as it was the mental training that he gave me. I called it boxing.
Chapter 4: What motivated George Foreman to return to boxing at 45?
Years later, I called it mind games. Daddy just called it being ready. I became a trouble seeker. And so in West Texas, you have to understand the culture there with the Refnex and the oil field, the Cowboys, and then football. So my senior year in high school... We won state championship on the team that inspired the movie Friday Night Lights.
Then my freshman year, going into college, I was a star college player. I was team captain going into my senior year. But over the course of those years that I was there, I had multiple fistfights off the field.
Were they provoked? Were they started by you?
It just happened to me. And it was that mindset I had. Anyway, I finally I was kicked out.
Chapter 5: How did Mike Flynn's past influence his comeback?
I got in a fight. They call the police and the police call the president of the college. And he told me, I've heard Mike Flint's name for the last time. You're gone. What was that moment like for you? Well, it was devastating for me. You see, I was team captain. I was an all-conference linebacker. And after I was kicked out, they didn't even have a winning season. They went four, six and one.
And I shouldered that pressure. responsibility and and because I knew if I'd been there what would have happened and it became my greatest regret in life not so much getting kicked out but letting those guys down and what was life like once you were kicked out then what what happened next well God is amazing because I moved to Austin, Texas, and met this beautiful young co-ed.
And we started dating and fell in love. And we've been married now for over 53 years.
Chapter 6: What role did community play in Arshay Cooper's life?
Wow. Yeah. And Eileen changed everything. She changed my whole life. She led me to faith in Christ. And then everything about my life began to change my focus on different things. And but, you know, I was always looking back at my past and the things that the mistakes that I made. So then. Years pass, 37 years pass, and it's quite a quite a long time, Mike. Yeah, yeah.
I started getting calls about a reunion, but there's no way I'm going to go. I avoided those guys, my former teammates that had been my best friends. And we moved all the way to Tennessee. And so those calls started coming in and all the memories flooded back. And I realized there was no way
Chapter 7: How did Meg Robson Austin redefine her identity through strength training?
that I could change my past. I could not change that regret. But I thought, if I can change the meaning of my past, if I can do something today and substitute it for that mistake that I made and those guys that I let down, if I can help someone else in their name, then for me, It enables me to overcome that regret in my life. And so I went to this reunion.
I found out that I still had a semester of eligibility left.
But tell me about the conversation at the reunion, though, because... Did you sort of say, OK, maybe I'm going to do this. Maybe I'll go back to the team. What was everyone's reaction?
Yeah, here's what happened. I had gone into the fitness business, became a strength and conditioning coach at three major universities. And I always had a philosophy about my training that I would never ask one of my athletes to do something that I wasn't willing to do myself. So I stayed in great shape. Well, after I resigned from coaching, I never stopped training.
Chapter 8: What lessons can we learn from the stories shared in this episode?
I go back to the reunion and these guys are saying, oh, my gosh. man, you look like you could play. And I said, you know what? I would do anything to have another opportunity to play my senior year. And one of the guys said, well, why don't you? And I said, there's no way. He said, hey, if that's the greatest regret you've got in life, you think you can run with those guys and take the hits?
You need to check it out. And that's all I could think about the rest of the weekend. And I called the NCAA rules division and found out that I still had a semester of eligibility left. Yeah. What did your family think? Our youngest daughter has just graduated from high school. So she's leaving. Our two oldest children have already gotten married and left home.
And so we're going to be empty nesters. Eileen is ignoring me. You know, I'm I'm talking to the NCAA about rules and I'm going down to, you know, meet with the coaches and talk to them. And she's looking for houses. And finally, I come back and the coaches agreed to give me a chance to walk on to make the team.
I come back and she said, we've got to go look at these houses because we have a contract on our house. And so we've got to be out. And I said, Eileen, what? we're going back to Texas. I'm going back to college. I'm going back to college. And she looked at me and she said, I cannot believe at age 59 that you want to go back and try to play college football. I feel like I'm married to Peter Pan.
Yeah. And all of a sudden it hit me. She didn't know. I had never shared with her the depth of the regret. I hadn't told anyone. And I told her, I said, I have lived over half my life with a regret over a mistake that I made. And now... Coach is going to give me a chance to rewrite that last chapter in my athletic career. I've got to try because I may not make the team.
I can live with that, but to have the chance... After all these years and overcome that regret in my life and not take it? I said, for me, that'd be worse than getting kicked out the first time. I've got to try. And she said, I had no idea that it meant that much to you. She said, I know you'd do it for me. So let's go play football. So we sold our house.
We loaded up, moved 1,500 miles to Alpine, Texas. And I enrolled in school. It was crazy.
I can't even imagine. Were you ever embarrassed?
You know, I knew I couldn't do it by phone. If a 59 year old guy calls me as a head coach and wants to come try out for my team at the college or university, click, I can hang that up right quick. So I showed up at his office. Then the assistant head coach sticks his head in. He says, coach, we got a bunch of freshmen down on the field waiting on us.
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