Pittsburgh Steelers four-time Super Bowl-winning quarterback, Terry Bradshaw is known for his terrific humor. If his antics on game day aren't enough, he does a live comedy show, sings, acts in movies, and a reality show he films with his family. However, sometimes his jokes have been known to go a little bit too far, and other people become unwitting victims. That's exactly what happened to late-night host Jimmy Kimmel.
Bradshaw has used his football success to fuel his passion for horses, breeding world-class quarter horses on his farm in Texas. In his book, It's Only A Game, Bradshaw shares how difficult and expensive it was to get started in horse breeding. It wasn't just the cost of the horses or the salaries of the staff; it was also all of the other things people don't think about, including horse shampoo.
He'd been known as the "Blonde Bomber" when he played for the Steelers, but his hair began to fall out. He tried nearly every commercial product on the market, but nothing worked. It did hatch a brilliant idea on how he could save some money, though. He was going through a ton of Mane 'n Tail horse shampoo and conditioner on the farm, and it was expensive, considering how much you needed to wash a horse. He thought he would try to use it to his favor.
"I went on The David Letterman Show and admitted that my sister-in-law had given me a tub of this stuff. She told me that a friend of my brother's had been using it on his head, and hair had started growing. 'I've been using the shampoo and conditioner for six months,' I said, 'and some of the people around Fox said they can see my hair growing. And the best part is, you can buy it at seed and feed stores,'" explained Bradshaw.
He joked with Letterman that he had a few side effects, such as a craving for oats and alfalfa and the desire to sleep standing up. Bradshaw had no agreement with the manufacturer to promote their product, but he hoped they would appreciate how he talked it up and send him some free bottles for the horses.
Bradshaw said that the next thing he knew, he was hearing all these stories about people washing their hair with it, and stores like K-Mart and Walmart had begun to stock it. It worked like a charm, and boxes of free shampoo and conditioner poured into the Fox Studios as a show of appreciation. But the story didn't end there; Bradshaw had Kimmel on his Los Angeles radio show, and Kimmel told him that he'd heard from a makeup artist that Bradshaw was endorsing the use of Mane 'n Tail to increase hair growth.
"He said, 'I was checking my head every few days to see if maybe there was one hair that was growing. Terry uses this stuff, I kept telling myself--and then it dawned on me: Terry Bradshaw's bald! What kind of endorsement is that?' You can't slip anything by that Jimmy Kimmel. I admitted to Jimmy--and all the listeners to my show--that I'd told the story on [Letterman] because I was spending too much money on this stuff for my horses. Kimmel was astonished. 'So you tricked America,' he said. 'Well,' I admitted kindly, 'I certainly tricked you.'"
That was when Bradshaw said he decided to embrace his baldness and quit trying to look for a quick fix. Bradshaw was always known to be quite the lady's man, especially when he was younger, marrying four different women. He has been married to his current wife, Tammy, since 2014.
Fans can keep up with Bradshaw as he still does the pregame show. In recent years, Bradshaw has given viewers a few scares regarding his health. He has tempered his once feisty personality, engaging in fewer rants than he used to.
Steelers' Terry Bradshaw And Jimmy Kimmel Had A Rocky Start
Kimmel and Bradshaw ultimately became friends, but Bradshaw reportedly hated Kimmel when they worked together. Kimmel was part of the NFL on Fox pregame show cast and routinely performed skits that angered Bradshaw and fellow co-host Howie Long.
In the acts, he pretended to be Long or Bradshaw, complete with hair (or lack of) and makeup. He'd play up their personalities for laughs. It was a lot like a Saturday Night Live skit. Things got so bad that they actually had a vote to decide whether to boot Kimmel from the show. Eventually, Kimmel won Bradshaw over when the bit was explained to him he saw the humor in it. Kimmel said Long never really got the jokes and stayed frustrated; he got only more annoyed because his sons found it hysterical.
More must-reads: