Ex-Lion Chris Spielman lightens things up with family drill videos, sells memorabilia for folks in need

Angelique S. Chengelis
The Detroit News

Former Lions linebacker Chris Spielman has taken to social media to share the lighter side while teaching football fundamentals using his wife and daughters as props in the short videos posted to Twitter during this stay-at-home period.

He also is auctioning personal memorabilia — his 1984 Ohio State Rose Bowl ring is currently up for bidding and Spielman promises there will be Lions items, as well — to raise money for those currently in need because of job loss during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Chris Spielman's Rose Bowl ring.

Wearing his old Lions helmet with no face mask, Spielman has taught different linebacker techniques like stripping a football. Instead in this scenario, it’s a roll of toilet paper.

“I love to teach or coach, and I thought back to the stuff my dad made me do when I was little and I’m grateful for it, so I said, ‘Well, why not bring that to video and add my own little sense of humor?’” Spielman told The Detroit News in a phone interview Wednesday. “A lot of people have this misconception of me that I’m this serious dude all the time, I’m all cancer and football.

“Maybe my personality and my love my children in a funny way comes out, my love for my wife in a funny way comes out. I try to show a little bit of my sarcastic humorous side while keeping a straight face when I’m doing this with a helmet with no facemask.”

The helmet is near and dear to him.

“I’m proud to say that was my Lions helmet and I broke that facemask when I was playing, and I refused to fix it,” Spielman said, laughing.

How did it actually break?

“I don’t know,” Spielman, now a Fox NFL analyst, said. “I was hitting somebody or something.”

Spielman is doing more than posting videos at @chris_spielman that have brought some light during a challenging time. He was talking to his old friend, longtime reporter Bruce Hooley — they host the “Spielman & Hooley” podcast — about what they can do to help during this time with so many individuals and families struggling with finances.

“I said, ‘Why don’t I give some money every week and we’ll draw some winners and we’ll do this until the end of this stay-in-place order, until we get back to a somewhat normal situation,” Spielman said. “But I don’t know if I have enough money to do that.”

They have people email the podcast at spielmanhooleypodcast@gmail.com and individuals, nominated by listeners, initially were randomly selected to receive $100.

Spielman is deeply faith-based and understands the power of charity. He and his wife, Stefanie, tirelessly raised more than $23 million for the Stefanie Spielman Fund for Breast Cancer Research that was established in 1999. Spielman gave up football for a year to be with Stefanie during her battle with breast cancer. She survived four bouts but passed away at age 42 in 2009.

He learned from that time raising money for cancer research while caring for his late wife that it’s important to accept help. Spielman decided to raise money for this mission by auctioning his items, allowing others to help by making the purchases.

“People are helping me do what I want to do by buying this stuff,” he said. “One of the lessons I learned through that cancer journey, people would say, ‘If there’s anything I can do to help,’ and I would say, ‘No, I got it,’ because my ego and pride got in the way, right? But then I was denying people the opportunity to serve me and serve God, and how selfish that was of me. Now I’m giving people that have means to obtain something cool and also they’re also able to help somebody in need because of COVID cutbacks.”

As of Thursday morning, his 1984 Rose Bowl championship ring had 49 bids and was up to nearly $9,000. He selected the ring for a number of reasons.

“Because it’s valuable. And it hurts,” Spielman said. “Does this hurt to give away? Yes. Is it valuable? Yes. Is it going to do a great good? Yes.

“To be quite honest with you, my faith dictates to me that if we’re going to give, sometimes we have to sacrificially give. I thought, ‘Well, there’s going to be people who really are going to enjoy this stuff and if a ring can buy, say, eight families a week of groceries, than that ring is much more valuable than it is sitting in a room.’”

Someone asked if he considered the fact his grandchildren might someday want these possessions from his college and NFL careers.

“To me, they’ll have YouTube to watch any game I played in,” he said. “I would rather pass down my actions as opposed to my materials.”

He has already auctioned a jersey and his All-Madden jacket. Spielman hopes to raise $20,000, and he’s well on the way.

“I have some Lions gear coming in the mix here,” he said. “I’m either going to run out of money or run out of stuff.”

This is all part of the lighter side Spielman is sharing during the COVID-19 crisis. He hopes to alleviate financial issues for families and he also hopes he’s entertaining people with his videos on Twitter.

“Did you see the football fashion show?” he said, cracking up. “That was fun.”

His 17- and 19-year-old daughters and 19- and 20-year-old stepdaughters start off the “fashion show” wearing different Spielman football paraphernalia and the Spielman struts into the video, of course wearing the facemask-less Lions helmet — performing some linebacker moves before mugging in a runway-model way at the end.

“You hear (my daughters) laughing in the background,” said Spielman, whose wife, Carrie, also has been part of the videos. “If you can make them all them laugh at once, you’re doing a pretty good job.”

Once a football player, always a football player, and while the videos are humorous, he really is trying to teach proper football.

“This is somewhat serious but somewhat humorous — the artist in me has been able to capture actually teaching real techniques with a funny side to it,” he said. “That’s what my goal is.

“I’m running out of material, though. I’ve got a couple more in the holster here, but after that, I don’t know. I’ll have to get the dogs, because I don’t know if the girls want to keep putting helmets and gear on.”

Spielman isn’t running out of sports memorabilia, though, and plans to keep posting items. Hooley and Spielman are randomly selecting four winners of $250 every Friday to help those impacted by COVID-19 job loss. Email nominees to spielmanhooleypodcast@gmail.com. And visit this link to bid on the 1984 Rose Bowl Ohio State championship ring.

“Next week we’ll fill it up again with another item,” Spielman said. “I can’t personally finance this, because I have other bills unfortunately, so this is my way. I said I was going it, so I’ve got to find a way to do it.”

achengelis@detroitnews.com

Twitter: @chengelis