Jay Glazer on Helping Vets and Overcoming Depression

BUCK: We want to get into a discussion our friend Jay Glazer right now. He is National Football League insider for Fox Sports’s NFL pregame studio show. He’s also the founder of Merging Vets and Players, a nonprofit organization that connects combat vets and former professional athletes. Jay, thanks so much for being with us.

GLAZER: Absolutely, man, thanks for having me.

BUCK: First, I’m fascinated by — and obviously just sounds like such an important mission, this founding that you’ve done of Merging Vets and Players — founding Merging Vets and Players, this organization. What are you doing? I mean, how does this work, and how can people get involved.

GLAZER: It’s, you know, MVP for short and I’m basically taking former combat vets who are, you know, in transition, which transition sucks for anybody for a lot of us who are, you know, pro athletes or veterans were taking former combat vets and merging them together with pro athletes, started with NFL and fighters ’cause those are like two worlds but now it’s branched out to everything.

Look, it’s basically a community. You know, it’s a mental health thing. And I’m trying to show both sides, like, you playing in the NFL, and then when uniform comes off your greatness doesn’t suddenly just leave you. Right? It’s what’s behind your rib cage that got you to beat out millions and millions to get that level if you were an Olympian or a fighter or baseball player, whatever it is.

But the same thing with our combat vets. They go overseas and they do such great things. They have grace under fire and courage under pressure, and they… Man, they save a lot of people. And, you know, they make us feel safe over here without really even knowing us. Then they come back over here and it’s like, “Ohhh, I’m different.” I’m trying to shift that narrative, like:

“No, you’re different. Different is good. Different leads to success.” But who reminds them of that? So, if you put ’em in a group and you can remind each other of what your greatness is, that’s — like, our results have been magical. And we train together for about a half hour just to give you that burn again and, you know, be beholden to your brother/your sister on your right or left. But after that we sit around on mats and, man, we just talk and we talk so real. We put every elephant in the room there and like, you know, the vulnerability part of it is what makes us so strong.

CLAY: Jay, appreciate you coming on. You’ve got a new book, Unbreakable: How I Turned My Depression and Anxiety into Motivation and You Can Too. I’m just fascinated by — and I know you have had tremendous experience — how much soldiers love football and love football players. I know as part of the Fox pregame show you guys have gone all over the world to meet different soldiers who are serving overseas.

GLAZER: Mmm-hmm.

CLAY: What has your experience been like in terms of being able to interact with those guys, and why do you think so many people serving overseas connect so substantially with football players in general?

GLAZER: Well, when we have our meetings, it is pretty cool. Like, I’ve got to go around the world with Fox; this is my 19th year at Fox, and every year they have sent me or a whole crew to a military installation on Veterans Day, on Thanksgiving. It’s been just incredible. And then me being involved in mixed martial arts I’ve got to train troops throughout the world also.

We have our MVP sessions; it’s pretty cool. Our vets will tell our athletes… Our athletes a lot of times go, “Well, I don’t belong in this group.” We’re like, “No. Yes, you do.” The vets will say, “Hey, you guys gave us a break from war. While we’re out there, you know, in battle, a lot of them are thinking, ‘Man, I just gotta get back and I gotta watch this game,’ or, ‘I gotta watch this fight.'” It’s pretty cool.

Recently in a meeting, one of our vets said, “You guys helped save us in war; it’s now our turn to save you guys, ’cause we know you guys are struggling when the uniform comes off.” It’s pretty cool, the commonality. Look, I know it’s not the same job. I get it. But the struggle when you lose your uniform? Man, that sucks. It’s hard, right? And a lot of us…

For me, I wrote this book Unbreakable because of my mental health issues because I have depression, anxiety, clinical from my earliest childhood memory. I don’t know what it’s like to not wake up in the gray, and the things that help me out — I put this in the book — are having a team. When I don’t have a team usually like my fight time?

Man, my roommates in my head they do not talk nicely to each other (chuckles) on a daily basis. And the venom it kind of spews, like, look I know my life is great on the outside. I get it. My life, I got fame and fortune, no doubt. But between my ears sucks. And when I have a team, it sucks a little bit less. When I can be of service to people, which is also, you know, why I wrote this book, I kind of get the gray to fade a little and see some streaks of blue.

CLAY: Jay, over 20 service members, veterans, kill themselves every single day.

GLAZER: That number is not okay, man. Twenty-two a day is not okay.

CLAY: And we’ve got a huge number, huge number of veterans that we are excited and respect to the utmost degree who listen to us every day, and they know — they see it — when they come back from overseas, the difficulty of integrating back into civilian life, the challenges that that brings. What would you tell those people out there, many of whom are listening to us right now, that might be struggling as they come to grips with their service terms ending or maybe just their overseas tenure, being back civilian side? What have you seen, and what would you like for those people to know from your perspective?

GLAZER: Here’s, I think, a huge problem is our vets come home and they’re told not to talk about it. Right? They’re really ingrained not to have individuality. “It’s not about you, it’s about the team.” Well, when the rest of America is lying on their resume to like pump it up (chuckles) our veterans kind of downplay what they’ve done.

It’s really hard for them to transition back when you do that. So I’m trying to give these guys and gals their individuality. Let ’em know it’s okay to, you know, boast and brag about what you’ve done, ’cause what you’ve done…? Like listen, the stuff I’ve done, those are my stories, but really pales in comparison to what they’ve done over there. They’ve saved lives.

Like I’ve always said, like, it’s unbelievable, like, they don’t know me, they don’t know my kids, they don’t know my family. Yet they leave their own families to go fight for our freedom? And it’s so incredibly selfless. And, you know, I just saw too many of them struggling when I looked up to ’em so much. So I know I can coach.

I can coach people to do crazy things in a cage — and, you know, I have this MMA program I use for pro athletes and me and Randy Couture and Chuck Liddell trained 1,200 of these guys. I know I could train people between their ears and behind their rib cage, and I wanted to use, you know, that ability to coach or train to help them, you know, to put it to use to our vets ’cause they deserve it!

That’s who should be running a lot of businesses in our country and, you know, we have a lot of who are… I think six or seven of my employees, of our employees at MVP, I think they were homeless when I first met ’em, and we helped, you know, build ’em up, give them a team, give them a community — and all of a sudden, their greatness came out. And they are running our chapter. Just amazing.

We just gotta, you know, show ’em it’s okay to talk about what you’ve done. Definitely stay connected to your team. And, yeah, like I want ’em to be proud. I got this one dude, very first guy I ever had, Elliot Ruiz, he came in one day, and, Elliott, man, he was the first guy that came in that couldn’t look me in the eye. I’m like, “What’s going on with you? Why do you always come in like this to our gym?”

He said, “Well, man, I’ve had 17 surgeries. My wife has to get me out of bed, and, you know…” I said, “How’s that? How?” He said, “Well, we rescued seven American POWs, and, man, the truck came, tried to get back. They shot the truck up, flipped it over, hit razor wire, took me for a ride. But, man, now I’m, you know, left with all these injuries.” I said, “Wait. Hold on. Back up. Back up. Did you just say you saved seven Americans POWs?”

He goes, “Yeah, but…” “Eh! Don’t, yeah-but me. Did you just say you saved seven American POWs?” He said, “Yeah.” I said, “Okay. From now on I want you walking around the streets here looking at everybody saying, ‘I ain’t like the rest of you guys. I’m different.'” And he said, “Am I just supposed to change the way I view myself just like that?” and I said, “Yep, just like that. Tomorrow, start it.”

And a lot of these vets when I said it kind of get angry about it until they realize, “Yeah I am different. It’s okay,” and Elliott, it changed the way he viewed himself that day. And man, kind of a whole movement was born. It’s been beautiful, and that’s what I want them to understand. There is so much to be proud of and different, and stay connected with your teammates.

BUCK: We’re speaking to Jay Glazer of Fox NFL Sunday. He’s also the author of Unbreakable: How I turned My Depression and Anxiety into Motivation and You Can Too. Jay, on the sports side… I know we got the Super Bowl coming up and Clay might talk to you about that in a second. But obviously the Winter Olympics underway.

It has been something of a learning curve for me to see that there’s even more, it seems, political bias and conformity within the sports media than in the political media and obviously all leaning very left. Do you think that there will be a moment at which they will start to realize that speaking out against China in the sports media has to happen or else there’s no moral authority to speak out against whatever issue gets their attention here stateside?

GLAZER: I’ll be honest with you: I’m the last dude to talk politics. I know you guys love to. I hate talking politics, and I also don’t… I haven’t really paid attention to the Olympics. So you’re… Man, I like talking about stuff that I’m somewhat of an expert in, and I am so not when it comes to this. Like, I know that my 2.3 GAAP doesn’t have me smart enough to talk about this stuff. That’s for you guys. (chuckling)

BUCK: Okay, then.

CLAY: Jay, what happens in the Super Bowl? A lot of people, a hundred million people are gonna be watching on Sunday. It’s in L.A. I’m on the Fox lot right now for the week. Rams-Bengals. If people out there have to pick a side, if they have to make some bets for part of their Super Bowl parties, what do you expect to see? Matthew Stafford, Joe Burrow, Zack Terrell, or Sean McVay? Who’s holding up the trophy at the end of the day?

GLAZER: You know, look. If you look at the teams, the Rams are the more well-rounded team, and I think the Rams learned something about themselves last week. Like, Sean McVay is a bully, and they really need to take on his personality, and they finally did last week. Right? We have all these great players, and, you know, it’s still a fight. Football is a fight.

And, you know, I think last week’s version of the Rams, that’s probably of the more talented team. But, man, Joe Burrow is a culture changer, a complete culture changer. We’ve already seen them be completely out of it and him bring everybody all the way back. So that’s… I gotta be honest with you” I keep flip-flopping back and forth. Probably…

Well, if you ask me now, I’m probably looking at Rams. If you ask me, like, in 25 minutes from now, I may get a call and talk to somebody else on the Bengals who kind of convinces me the other way, and I’ll go back to the Rams. It’s just there’s such a… You just can never count the Bengals out. They just keep clawing back because of that guy.

CLAY: Jay, we appreciate it. We encourage everybody to go check out your book.

GLAZER: Mmm-hmmm.

CLAY: We also really appreciate all the work that you’re doing with the veterans and everybody else out there. Look forward to seeing you again sometime soon, my man.

GLAZER: If I can real quick, again, this book is… You know, I got clinical depression and anxiety. But this is for everybody who’s living in the gray. Like, we all just went through a pandemic. It’s a horrible world to live in, especially social media these days. So whether it’s you or you have somebody you can connect with, you’ll laugh your butt off the pages. I made it worse — funny — so I can kind of tackle the hard stuff. But, man, I’m doing this, too, to kind of… I need a bigger team for my own mental health; so I’m hoping to get a whole bunch of teammates with this.

CLAY: No doubt, Jay. We appreciate it. We know there’s tons of people out there who listen to us who are veterans who are coming back from tours, and I think you can get ’em big help by checking out what Jay is doing.

GLAZER: There’s a lot it. Thank you, man. I appreciate it.