Since hanging up his cleats, four-time Super Bowl champion Terry Bradshaw has had to fight with challenges far beyond the football field. After being prescribed medication for rheumatoid arthritis, Bradshaw’s weight skyrocketed from 215 pounds, his playing weight, to an unexpected 268 pounds. “It took forever to find out what steroid worked,” Bradshaw told FOX 32 Chicago. “I put on so much weight, and I got big. And I just, I couldn’t get it off.” But with his wife Tammy’s help, Bradshaw has fought back and lost 48 pounds while following a new treatment regimen.
So, due to his health and age, rumors started to swirl around his possible retirement from Fox Sports. But, he maintains that he’s still got plenty left in the tank and has set a retirement age of 80. “It’s a good feeling, a really good feeling,” he said, looking ahead to the 2025 NFL season with optimism. Bradshaw is still on TV every week at the age of 76, but viewers only witness a portion of his life. There’s much that Terry can still do.
The Hall of Famer’s latest move proves just that. In 2025, Bradshaw will make a comeback to the stage with The Terry Bradshaw Show. Bradshaw announced the move on his IG story by reposting a post from Clay Cooper Theatre. The post read, “Terry Bradshaw has 5 more shows at the Clay Cooper Theatre this year!” The Clay Cooper Theatre in Branson, Missouri, will host 11 performances throughout the year. Shows began on March 8 and will be wrapping up just before Christmas on December 19. In a press release announcing the run, the theatre praised Bradshaw as a Branson mainstay as well as a performer. In fact, in his honor, the city itself declared December 13–14, 2024, as “Terry Bradshaw Week.”
The show highlights the same magnetism that carried Bradshaw from locker rooms to late-night TV by fusing humor, country music, and personal anecdotes from his life. “There’s a reason why we’ve done more than two dozen shows at the Clay Cooper Theatre – and it’s not just because Clay asks so nicely,” Bradshaw said jokingly. “Branson is an entertainment destination that’s second to none, and the audiences that come to our shows instantly feel like old friends that we’ve known for years. We can’t wait to make a bunch of new ‘old friends’ at our upcoming shows.”
And the biggest buzz? Terry Bradshaw has established a legit Hollywood career outside of football and Branson. He voiced Robots, appeared in The Masked Singer, featured in Failure to Launch, and gave audiences a glimpse into his personal life with The Bradshaw Bunch. He is a Super Bowl legend, an Emmy winner, and one of the few NFL players with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. And still continues to be a Sunday regular on FOX NFL Sunday.
But while Bradshaw is busy rewriting his post-retirement playbook, the Steelers are generating headlines of their own. Officially, Aaron Rodgers is a Steeler, and the situation couldn’t be more awkward.
Aaron Rodgers’ delay turns Steelers’ jersey chaos into a full-blown crisis
Naturally, questions about Rodgers’ jersey arose as he dressed in black and gold. Photoshopped pictures of Rodgers wearing the Steelers uniform with Bradshaw’s No.12 went viral on social media on Thursday. But Steelers fans knew better. Since Bradshaw’s retirement, that number has not been used. Although it isn’t formally retired, it might as well be. Nobody touches it. And Rodgers won’t either.
Despite Joe Namath’s approval, he did not wear his No. 12 in New York. So, for sure, he won’t wear Bradshaw’s, especially because Bradshaw didn’t just withhold support. He torched the entire idea of Rodgers with the Steelers as “a joke.” Bradshaw had said, “That guy needs to stay in California. Go somewhere and chew on bark and whisper to the gods out there.” That wasn’t just shade, that was a solar eclipse.
So, Rodgers will not wear a 12. He will instead don No. 8, the same number he wore with the Jets and at Cal. That number was once worn by Steelers punter Corliss Waitman. But let’s face it, punters don’t win these games. “He will get number 8, if he wants number 8, because ultimately, I’ve said this time and again…The team owns the numbers, the team wants the number, the team gets the number and number 8 would go to Aaron Rodgers,” Mike Florio stated. And like he said, the Steelers made it official that Rodgers will wear No.8 at Pittsburgh.
But that tension was only half of the jersey drama. The deeper issue? Legacy friction. Both Chris Simms and Florio made references to Bradshaw’s lengthy history of criticizing Rodgers, adding an uncomfortable layer to an already awkward transition. Simms even made a joke, saying, “Terry Bradshaw has been kind of critical of Aaron Rodgers through the years…There’s that little you know issue with the Steelers and Bradshaw and the number 12 and all that…So I just was having a little fun there.”
So, Rodgers now enters a franchise that is shaped by Bradshaw’s DNA. Bradshaw’s influence lasts longer than that of most modern athletes, even at 76. And Rodgers must now manage a new team while dealing with a ghost in the rafters who is still alive, still speaking, and still very much watching—a daunting task for a quarterback with his own complex legacy.
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