00:00You know, sometimes the stuff that makes the most sense makes no sense.
00:07So in Florida, we now have a brand-new act.
00:11You know what it's called?
00:13The Teddy Bridgewater Act.
00:15Let me give you some context here with Teddy Bridgewater.
00:18Teddy Bridgewater, former NFL quarterback,
00:21he's still floating around being a backup quarterback in the NFL last year.
00:25He was with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
00:27Well, he was a head football coach at Miami Northwestern,
00:31one of the absolute greatest high school football programs in the state of Florida, okay?
00:36And he was a head football coach.
00:39He started taking his American Express card out
00:42and paying for some of the players on the team that couldn't get to the games,
00:47that didn't have food, that didn't have travel food,
00:51that didn't have travel money, that couldn't stay in hotels.
00:56Because they just didn't come from the economic means for them to be able to do it.
01:01So you know what Bridgewater did?
01:03He pulled his card out and he paid for it.
01:07He got suspended for that for a year for helping kids feed them,
01:14clothe them, house them, do all the things that you would hope that a coach would do for you.
01:22So now they've made it an act, and now they've passed a law in the state of Florida
01:27that they give them the ability to be able to spend up to $15,000.
01:33Governor Ron DeSantis has signed the Senate Bill 178, the Teddy Bridgewater Act,
01:38and has now made it into law, allowing middle and high school coaches to use up to $15,000 of
01:45their own money
01:45for student athletes with food, transportation, and recovery services,
01:52sending them back home and giving them a ride back home like an Uber.
01:58Sometimes when we look at coaches, these are the kind of things that you remember.
02:02My wife's a rugby coach.
02:05Tons of money come out of her pocket for being able to feed her players,
02:10house their players, to travel with their players,
02:13and most coaches around the country that are high school coaches,
02:17they don't get the pats on the back.
02:20They don't get the ability to be able to say,
02:23hey, let me give a kid $15, $20 so he can have a hamburger while we're on the road.
02:28You know what this law does now?
02:30That means you can put this on your income taxes and write it off on your taxes.
02:35This is one of the coolest things that I've seen Ron DeSantis do in the state of Florida when it
02:40comes to sports.
02:41The Teddy Bridgewater Act.
02:43This is fantastic.
02:45Bridgewater, again, he was a famous high school coach at Miami Northwestern.
02:49By the way, ended up winning a state championship there.
02:52And he still, to this day, supports those kids.
02:56My God Almighty, how do you not want a guy like that as your football coach?
03:01You would suspend him for doing the right thing?
03:06Housing and feeding kids?
03:08How did that ever not be the right thing to do?
03:11These are the kind of guys that you remember for the rest of your life.
03:15My high school coach, Joe Anzalone, from Stanford Catholic High School.
03:19I remember him because he would do the same thing.
03:22Things would come out of his pocket.
03:24He would feed us.
03:25Those are some of the people that had lasting memories for me, what really gave me the love of the
03:31game.
03:32Teddy Bridgewater is a guy that's creating the love of the game, helping kids try to reach their goals.
03:40How in God's name do we look at those kind of guys?
03:43And a year ago, he was suspended for doing the right thing, helping kids try to reach a goal, helping
03:51kids try to get to college,
03:53helping kids understand that, hey, everyone needs a helping hand.
03:58You know, some of the great players and some of the fortunate players that get to go to the Pro
04:02Football Hall of Fame
04:03or go to any Hall of Fame, listening to their speeches, and they're standing up there talking about high school
04:10coaches
04:11traveling from city to city on their own dime, or putting kids in positions to give them great success.
04:20These are the real heroes.
04:22These are the real people that set the foundation for athletes that want to go on and reach their dream.
04:30These are the people that when you're younger, that really start that whole urge to want to be great.
04:37Teddy Bridgewater doesn't have to do this.
04:40He's a well-off guy, made millions and millions of dollars as an NFL quarterback, and he's wanting to give
04:47back.
04:48And it's what I say is one of the great stories here, because now you get an opportunity for other
04:55coaches to be able to do the same thing
04:57and get a little bit of a tax break here when it comes to filling out their income taxes at
05:02the end of the year.
05:04I love it.
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