Rick Telander is curious by nature, and his drive to learn more through reporting and relationships has served readers well for five decades. He’s always dives deep on stories, and he takes us with him on this episode. Rick puts us in an NFL training camp, where getting cut as a player caused his writing career to bloom. We go with him to the heaven-like basketball playgrounds of New York City in the 1970s for his first book. We ride with Rick into the Wild West of college football in the ‘80s. He takes us behind the scenes with characters on the ferocious ’85 Bears. Hear about the childlike wonder and blazing inner-drive of the great Walter Payton. Rick also explains the mischievous and competitiveness of another Chicago icon – some guy named Michael Jordan, who could read any room like no one else. And Rick takes us from the heights of fame with Jordan to the tough west side of Chicago, where he chronicled how prep basketball players at Orr Academy must overcome much more than opponents.

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