Despite playing only 13 games in the NFL, Dusty Dvoracek made it to Canton, Ohio.
Hey, being friends with Brian Urlacher has its benefits.
“I only played with this guy for three years, but Dusty Dvoracek influenced me greatly,” Urlacher said during his memorable Hall of Fame speech on Aug. 4. “Even as a rookie, he stepped in and took control of the huddle and he held people accountable. If he saw something he didn’t like, he’d shout, ‘Shut the blank-blank up and listen.’ As a rookie that’s pretty tough to do, but he did it. He set the tone for our defense.”
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During Urlacher’s heartfelt speech at the Hall of Fame last week, No. 54 didn’t have time to single out all of the former teammates and coaches he wanted to thank — the Hall of Fame forced him to cut his speech down, which eliminated mentions of Lovie Smith and other coaches — but somehow Dvoracek made it to a whittled-down list of six players: Mike Brown, Lance Briggs, Charles “Peanut” Tillman, Alex Brown and that wild-haired Bears lineman who was always injured.
“It was incredible,” said the now close-cropped Dvoracek in a phone conversation a week later. “I would’ve been one of the ones to not expect to hear my name.”
Former Bears defensive lineman Dusty Dvoracek reacts to being mentioned during Brian Urlacher’s Hall of Fame speech on Aug. 4. (Screen shot courtesy of ESPN)For Bears fans who don’t watch a lot of college football on ESPN, it was a real blast from the past. Dvoracek, a defensive lineman out of the University of Oklahoma, was a third-round pick in 2006 who had a lot of promise, but injuries crippled his career. Twelve of his 13 games in the league came during the 2008 season. He started his first NFL game in 2007, and wound up tearing his left ACL. In 2009, he tore his right one. When Urlacher talks about an outspoken rookie in the huddle, he must’ve been talking about training camp or the two preseason games he played in 2006 before missing the Super Bowl season with a foot injury.
Five surgeries in five years, by his count, is his legacy in one way. But obviously he had an impact on the most important Bear since Walter Payton.
“My career with the Bears was short-lived and injury-riddled,” he said. “But I developed some great relationships and tried to leave my mark the best I could when I was there. I stayed good friends with a lot of teammates and Brian and I became really close. He’s one of my really good friends.”
Dvoracek’s last injury with the Bears came in 2009 when he tore his ACL in training camp. That’s when Football Outsiders writer Bill Barnwell calculated Dvoracek was the most-injured NFL player of the entire decade.
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Dvoracek wound up playing parts of two seasons in the short-lived United Football League for the Omaha Nighthawks, before hanging up his spikes after yet another injury in 2011.
Dvoracek, who credits the McCaskeys and the Bears organization for giving him chance after chance to get healthy, had already sold his suburban Chicago home and moved back to Norman, Oklahoma with his wife and budding family. He had a business degree from Oklahoma and a famous name. What was he going to do next? He had some non-football business meetings, but nothing sparked his interest. And then, opportunity struck.
“My friend Teddy Lehman, who was a second-round pick of the Lions and was wrapping up his career said, ‘Why we don’t we do a radio show?’” Dvoracek said. “We called up a mom-and-pop radio station in Norman and met with the owner who said he had no time and no money.”
Dvoracek and Lehman, both former star players at Oklahoma, talked the owner of KREF-AM into giving them a tryout during a postgame show for the Oklahoma-Texas A&M game that fall. That quickly morphed into a mid-day show in early 2012 and that turned into a steady 2-6 p.m. show that was syndicated on small stations in the state. It didn’t take long for Dvoracek to move up to a bigger station based in Oklahoma City at the end of 2014.
Dvoracek wasn’t satiated just doing radio. He pitched himself as a sideline reporter for Oklahoma games on the radio (“I thought it was a little bland,” he said of the broadcasts before he arrived) and then started appearing on Fox Sports telecasts of Oklahoma games.
He wanted more. So without an agent, he put together a highlight reel and sent it to three people: Kirk Herbstreit, Joel Klatt and Doug Gottlieb.
Herbsteit and Klatt sent it to higher-ups at ESPN and Fox Sports, respectively, and Gottlieb told Dvoracek to get an agent. Dvoracek met with ESPN executives in Charlotte and started calling games for the first time in his life for ESPNU matchups in 2016.
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Last season, he was paired with Chicago’s own rising broadcast star Adam Amin. The two did so well last season, they were promoted, but split up. Dvoracek will join a Saturday night team with Mark Jones and Molly McGrath this season.
“He’s the best,” Dvoracek said of Amin. “Hopefully our paths cross again.”
His day job is doing a daily sports talk show, appropriately named “The Monsters of the Midday,” from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at The Sports Animal in Oklahoma City. As if a weekly college game and a daily radio show aren’t enough work, Dvoracek has dabbled in radio broadcasts for NFL games and he’s going to coach his oldest son Hudson’s flag football team this season.
Dvoracek never had media dreams growing up, but he said when he was a teenager, he’d wake up early to memorize SportsCenter before school. In Chicagoland, he used to turn on ESPN 1000 in his car.
“Of course we all said we don’t [listen to sports radio], but yeah, I used to flip it on,” he said. “I loved, loved ‘Waddle and Silvy.’ I thought it was a great show. I’m sure it still is a great show. They entertained me, gave me sports nuggets. I try to do the best I can to do a similar show to them. There’s a sports aspect to it, but at the same time, it’s entertainment. It’s getting people from Point A to Point B.”
Dvoracek is hardly recognizable from his “Lattimer from The Program” look during his playing days. For one thing, he says he’s lost about 60 pounds, dropping from a playing weight of 305. For another, his long hair has been chopped off.
“Two forty-five looks a lot better on TV,” he said.
Dusty Dvoracek has cleaned up his look just a little since his truncated NFL career. Now he’s a successful football broadcaster and sports radio host. (Getty Images and USA TODAY Sports)Dvoracek’s old look dovetailed with his collegiate reputation as a wild man, one earned through a string of violent incidents, with one getting him kicked off Oklahoma’s team before his senior season. He returned to the program, apologized profusely, graduated and was an All-Big 12 player in 2005. What did he learn from those days?
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“Gosh, what did I learn?” he said. “I think you learn a lot. You have to grow up. I was out of control. Those are good words to describe me, to a certain degree.”
Now he’s married with three kids and a burgeoning media career. During football season, he said he’s lucky if he has a half-hour a day to himself, between his multiple jobs and an obsessive approach to preparation. During the offseason, he still has a daily radio show. All in all, not a bad life after a disappointing NFL career.
“I’d really be lying if I said I wasn’t ever bitter or ‘Why me?’” he said. “At the same time, man, it’s no different than the bad choices I made in college, though those were self-inflicted. I wouldn’t take those back. I don’t look back and say what could’ve been or I was dealt a bad hand. I look back and say I played four years with the Chicago Bears and developed relationships with great people. I got to do more than 99.9 percent of the people on the planet. Wouldn’t it be selfish to look at it as a negative? I can be a pessimistic person, but I have made peace with it. Covering the sport, being there on game days, still being involved with football fills a void not being able to play football left. That’s really helped me feel like I’m still part of football.”
And that brings us back to Urlacher’s speech. When Urlacher mentioned his name among all of those football legends, well, it got a little dusty for Dvoracek.
“I can tell you that night the water was a little colder and the food tasted a little better,” he said. “I was standing a little more upright. For a Hall of Famer, one of the 318 greatest people involved in the NFL, recognizing the small piece I played in his career … for me, the injuries sucked, but I still made an impact in the small opportunity I had. I’m still thinking about it.”
Dvoracek has done a little NFL radio, and obviously talks pro football on his radio show, but said he’s more comfortable as a college expert, considering his lack of success in the league. But he’s still an ex-Bear, the closest thing this city has to a royal family. What if, I posited, someone offered him a radio gig in Chicago? Would he consider moving up to a major market? He has immediate cachet and he’s actually entertaining on the radio. Could he be the next Tom Waddle?
“Absolutely,” he said. “Somebody want to offer me a job?”
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He quickly added that while he loves Chicago, he’s comfortable and happy in Oklahoma, where he’s near family and friends, doing what he loves.
Dvoracek is still new in this media business, but he’s obviously a fast riser. One way or another, Dvoracek’s football career is far from over.
(Top photo: Duane Burleson/AP Photo)
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