Hello, everyone, and welcome in to another edition of the Czecho Daily, a special edition

as I'm joined by former Eagles, Packers, and Bengals, tight end, Jeff Thomason, who enjoyed a 10-year career.

Jeff, thanks for making some time. How are you?

I'm doing great, Andrew. It's good to be here, man.

Absolutely. So before we get into your remarkable story that many will remember back in late 2004,

I want to get into some questions,

some parts of your career that piqued my interest.

Now, you were at Corona Del Mar High School,

which is in Newport Beach, California.

You lettered in football, where you played, I believe,

linebacker and tight end,

but you were also a four-year letter winner in swimming.

Yeah.

So was there ever a point, Jeff, in your career where you were trying to make a decision whether to continue on and play football or go with the swimming?

Yeah, great question.

Honestly, swimming was a gift that I was given from the good Lord to be able to do pretty

efficiently.

So it was something I swam as a young man, way back. I was able to train under a guy named Sherman-Savar who coached Mark Spitz going way back to, you know, in Sacramento, California under Arden Hills. So I was blessed to be under some of the best as a young man. So I swam a lot of young and had to have a tall frame. It was just something that seemed to fit really well. It's skinny in high school. And yeah, it came easy for me. So it was a great sport. And I did think about it very, very seriously about going in swimming college. I had some offers to swimming college as well, but out of the blue Oregon came out and gave me an opportunity.

So I decided to take that route and blessed that I did.

So you go on to Oregon, you're a two-year starter, you end your career with over 60 catches,

over 800 yards receiving. When did the NFL become a possibility for you? And were there

a lot of teams that were interested coming off your final year there? There was a little bit talking about my junior year because we had a guy named Bill Musgrave. He was been a coach in the NFL for a long time, a well-known coach and played the quarterback for a little while. But we had a great junior year. So after my junior, there was some talk about me getting a chance to go play and I talked to a a couple agents and had a chance to get serious about it a little bit and look at the opportunity. And then, you know, in 91, the fall, we had a rough season, but I was able to get a chance to get a walk on with the Bengals. So, you know, it wasn't something I ever kind of thought I'd get a chance to play in the NFL because I just wasn't a big name, but I did get an opportunity and a guy named Mike Pope and Dave Shula was the head coach and able to train with him, which was I learned from some of the best as far as Mike Pope was a was a tight-ins coach for the Giants back of Mark Barbaro, so we're going way back. My man, I got some history here, some names. So I able to learn from some really, really good coaches when I first started

...