Ross Tucker never stops talking football — and he’d have it no other way

Like the rest of his Mites and Midgets teammates, Ross Tucker had his sights set on playing for Penn State and in the NFL. Football was his first love and he wanted to make it his life.

Then reality set in. He was 5-9, 150 pounds as freshman at Wyomissing; his dad wasn’t much bigger. He figured he’d have to settle for talking about football as a living rather than playing it.

“I kind of gave up on (the idea) of playing at a high level,” said Tucker. “I was really focused on broadcasting. I wanted to go to Syracuse (to study broadcast journalism) and work for ESPN, or write for Sports Illustrated.”

Years later, Tucker has realized both his dreams.

He sprouted quickly in high school, to 6-4, 245 pounds as a senior when he earned All-Berks honors and snagged an offer to play at Princeton.

He continued to develop as an offensive lineman with the Tigers, earned All-Ivy League honors and found his way to the NFL where he played at 310 pounds. He spent seven seasons in pro football, playing with the Redskins, Cowboys, Bills, Patriots and Browns.

Tucker always knew playing football was “a temp job” and prepared for a second career during his final years in the league. When he heard the NFL was sponsoring a “broadcasting bootcamp” he leaped at the opportunity.

He listened to broadcasters such as Ian Eagle, James Brown and Mike Mayock talk about the business and their careers, and was hooked.

“It was eye-opening,” Tucker said.

He met Peter King, the lead football writer at Sports Illustrated, and was encouraged to write a first-person story for the popular “Monday Morning Quarterback” feature. Not long after Tucker seriously injured his neck covering a kickoff, leading to the end of his playing days.

He knocked it out of the park with an emotional story in Sports Illustrated about his football dream coming to an end; before he knew it he had job offers from Sports Illustrated, Comcast and SiriusXM.

“I kind of fell into a media career,” said Tucker, sitting in his home studio, located on the top floor of a garage just across the driveway from his Paxtonia home.

It’s there each morning that he broadcasts one of his four podcasts, does a guest spot on top sports stations across the nation or fills in as host on the nationally broadcast Dan Patrick Show.

The studio had been used as a woodworking shop by the previous owner, but Tucker converted it into his work space. His desk is jammed with computer screens, broadcasting equipment and a camera so that his daily shows – the “Ross Tucker Football Podcast,” “Fantasy Feast,” “The College Draft,” and “Even Money” – can be viewed on Youtube.com, along with being broadcast via rosstucker.com.

The shelves behind him are lined with helmets from his playing days in Washington, Dallas and Buffalo, as well as at Princeton.

The walls throughout his studio are adorned with his football jerseys – including his beloved Spartans’ No. 55. There are photos, including one of him leading all-time rushing leader Emmitt Smith of the Cowboys through a hole. (Tucker blocked for him on the day he set the NFL career rushing record.)

Tucker’s days are jammed with early morning podcasts, business meetings with potential advertisers, and coordinating future shows with his producers. He’s also busy monitoring his other business start-ups, gobigrecruiting.com and myfrontpagestory.com.

Each Thursday he records the “Keystone Kickoff Show” (which airs Saturday mornings year-round, and can be heard locally on CBS Sports Radio 1240-AM) to talk about Penn State football, focusing in particular on recruiting.

During downtime, his adorable daughters – 9-year-old Tess and 8-year-old Hellen – sneak into the studio for hugs, or to do yoga workouts alongside their dad.

He does it all with a smile on his face. Tucker loves to talk football at any level: NFL, college or the Inter-County League. The fact that he’s getting paid to do it every day, year-round, delights him.

“Not many people have their dream come true,” he said. “I had both of mine come true, and I’m very grateful and appreciative for that. I loved football so much, I had to do something with it.”

During the season he broadcasts college games – mostly Army and UConn these days – and NFL games for Westwood 1. He also does Eagles preseason games on television and the Eagles’ regular season pregame shows on WIP.

His broadcasting season has no end.

He agreed to do a podcast for ESPN without ever having listened to one. He was hired by the network to write a weekly football column; someone at the network noticed his vast reservoir of knowledge about the game and his ability to express it clearly so that the average fan can relate.

That was evident during his high school days, when he was such an engaging interview he was offered a job as a phone clerk in the Reading Eagle sports department. He knocked that opportunity out of the park, too.

It wasn’t long before ESPN offered him a chance to host their daily football podcast.

“I had no idea what a podcast was in 2010,” Tucker said. “I just knew they were going to pay me money to talk about football, so, let’s do it.”

It became wildly popular – Tucker says it ranked second at the network, behind only Colin Cowherd, in terms of advertising muscle – and he soon realized he could break away and do a show on his own.

He has always had an entrepreneurial spirit, self-confidence and the ability to sell himself. He put all of that, along with his passion for football, together in getting rosstucker.com off the ground.

In 2014 he launched the “Ross Tucker Football Podcast,” offering opinions on NFL news five days each week during the season.

“When I went out on my own I was able to bring over a pretty significant audience, and advertisers (from ESPN),” Tucker said. “The first day I started the ‘Ross Tucker Football Podcast,’ it was a profitable venture. I saw right away that it had potential.

“I realized fantasy football was popular, so I started the ‘Fantasy Feast’ podcast. Then I noticed people were asking me about betting, so I started a betting podcast. I knew the college draft was popular, so I started the ‘College Draft.’ And then I had Andrew Brandt do a business podcast (“Even Money“).”

Tucker might’ve been behind the game when he was a freshman with the Spartans but in the business world he’s always been one step ahead.

“If I tried to start a podcast now it would be much more difficult to get an audience, because there are so many of them,” he said. “It’s very difficult to grow a podcast these days. I was fortunate to get ahead of the game.”

He was ahead of the game when he launched gobigrecruiting.com some 15 years ago, while still playing. That was borne out of his own frustrations as a high school recruit when he wasn’t sure if college coaches were actually seeing the tapes he had sent.

Tucker’s broad contacts throughout college football give him deep insight into the ever-changing recruiting game and he’s able to guides his clients through what is often a confusing maze.

More recently he launched another enterprise, myfrontpagestory.com, which creates newspaper-style stories about loved ones, or for special occasions, such as weddings or anniversaries. He’s as passionate about that as any of his football ventures.

All of it keeps the 42-year-old constantly on the move – and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Out of nowhere I had a media career right away (after my playing career),” Tucker said. “That wasn’t the plan. If I didn’t write that story for Peter King I might not ever have gotten in the media. I’m really glad I did it. I love what I do. I almost feel guilty sometimes because from age 5 to my senior year, my dream job was to be an NFL player or a broadcaster, and they’ve both come true.”