What a story.
San Francisco 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey sat down on the Bussin’ With The Boys podcast during Super Bowl week to talk all things football and his career thus far, which was a really fascinating conversation.
Being that his father, Ed, was a wide receiver in the NFL and won three rings during his career (one with the 49ers and two with the Broncos), they of course talked about what it was like to grow up with a dad who had been such a successful football player and how that ultimately affected him as a player and man.
And eventually, they got into talking about the 2004 film Friday Night Lights, which Tim McGraw played in as Charles Billingsley, the father of Don, who plays football at Permian High School just like he did.
They have a pretty tumultuous relationship, and they joke with Christian, asking if his dad was anything like Charlie.
Christian noted that his dad was quite the opposite of Charlie, luckily, which led them to discuss some of their favorite scenes and lines from the movie and Tim’s character.
And because Christian played college football at Stanford at the same time as Tim’s real life daughter, Maggie, was in school there, they became friends, and Christian says he even got to know Tim and Faith a little bit, too.
One evening, a mutual family friend had invited Christian and his friends to dinner, which Tim and Faith were also attending (he also noted that Tim is super jacked in real life, too, for whatever that’s worth):
“So Tim McGraw’s daughter went to Stanford, so we got to know the McGraws a little bit, me and my friend group. She’s an awesome girl.
And we had dinner, a family friend of ours knows them pretty well, so he invited us over for dinner when we were at Stanford. Not Tim, our family friend.
But the McGraws, him and Faith Hill, were going.”
And since this was a whole group of football players who obviously wanted to play it cool in front of Tim, they discussed on the car ride over that no one would bring up or make any reference to Friday Night Lights.
I’m sure you can already see where this is going, and all bets were off about five minutes into dinner when one of them dropped their fork:
“And so we were like, cool, we’ll head over. And the whole way on the car ride, they’re like ‘Dude, just don’t fuckin’ say any ‘Friday Night Lights’ lines, be professional,’ whatever.
Within five minutes, someone drops a fork, and my idiot buddy, it’s like don’t punch the President, goes ‘Can’t hold onto the fork? Can’t hold onto the football?’ I was like, ‘No! No!’
And we all just started… and he started laughing, too, which was good. But oh my god, it was so funny. He laughed, he just laughed, he didn’t say anything.”
Truly one of the best stories about Tim I’ve heard.
What I would give to have been a fly on the wall during that dinner… it sounds like a riot.
Do yourself a favor and watch Christian tell it yourself though, it’s well-worth a few minutes of your day if you need a good laugh (around the 50-minute mark):
And here’s the movie scene they were referencing if you haven’t seen it before: