Tony Gonzalez 1,000 Catch Interview

Tony Gonzalez stopped by The-Mainboard.com to chat about his quest to reach 1,000 catch, his Twitter contest and more in this exclusive feature interview.



Transcript Below:

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TMB: Hello and welcome to the first edition of Special Feature on The Mainboard. I'm Joe with The-Mainboard.com. Our guest today is six time All-Pro selection, a ten time Pro-Bowl selection and is regarded as one of the best tight ends in NFL history. He's one catch shy of becoming the seventh player and the first tight end with 1000 career catches. I'm joined today by Tony Gonzalez, Tony thanks for joining us, its really great to have you on.

Tony: Thanks for having me bud.

TMB: As I said, you're one catch away from 1000. Is there kind of a bitter-sweetness...you're getting your thousandth catch with the Atlanta Falcons and not the Kansas City Chiefs, the team that everyone kind of thought you were going to retire with?

Tony: Yeah, yeah there is but all good things come to an end and I would have loved to have gotten it in a Chiefs uniform but I spent more...I spent 3 or 4 careers, the average career lasts 3 years, and I was out there 12 years so that's 4 careers. I have some great memories out there, played on some great football teams, obviously made a lot of catches out there. But you know, with the Atlanta Falcons now its a great atmosphere just as well and I'm glad just to be a part of their organization and if it wasn't the Chiefs I think Atlanta is filling in quite nicely and hopefully we'll get this thing done this weekend.

TMB: You have a contest going on your Twitter page right now, you want to tell us more about that?

Tony: Yeah. Its for my thousandth catch obviously and what you do is you tweet at me, which my call sign on Twitter is tonygonzalez88 and just tweet at me "thousandth catch" and you enter once a day and we're going to draw a random winner after the game's over and the winner is going to be flown out to Atlanta, put up for a couple nights, go to the next home game...I'm going to get you tickets to the game, gonna sign some autographs for you, and then also I'm going to give you a pair of gloves that I wore in the Pittsburgh game which is... obviously I'm hoping I'm hoping I'm going to get the catch this weekend against Pittsburgh and give you a pair of autographed gloves that I actually wore in the game. So its going to be an exciting contest and I just kind of wanted to share in with the fans everything that was going on and we'll play a little catch too, as well.

TMB: Aww, that is very awesome. Like you said you are doing this on Twitter, and with the whole new media thing, like Facebook and Twitter, do you think that helps professional athletes?

Tony: Yep, I think so for the most part. Ninety-eight percent of the time I’m thinking it can hurt someone too if you are putting something silly up there and do something stupid one night. I think for the most part though it gives athletes better access to the fans, direct access to the fans, a way for us to communicate. That is one thing I love about Twitter. I am able to answer questions from fans tweeting at me about stuff that has nothing/anything to do with football. The sky is the limit as far as I am concerned, if I see a question on there that I want to answer then I will usually get back to the fan. It is good all the way around. It is a way for us to stay connected after we are done playing this game, set something up when we get done playing this game. It is great all the way around.

TMB: Before the interview we were kind of talking about college football a little bit. What is your opinion on Boise State? If they go undefeated do they deserve a birth in the national title game?

Tony: I am kind of wishy-washy about that. Obviously they deserve it. They did really well against Virginia Tech the other night. I don’t know though, the schedule doesn’t seem strong enough as much as these other powerhouse teams that if they were able to go undefeated. The simple answer to that or the simple way to get to the bottom of things period is to move to a playoff system anyways. Obviously they would be deserving to go to the playoff games. They could easily set that up with bowl games. I have been saying this for years. College football has to do this if they want a true champion. That way there is no stone unturned , but if we are dealing with what we have then yea I would give them a shot if they go undefeated depending on how the other teams fare during the regular season. You have to look at their records and strength of schedule as well.

TMB: What do you miss most about playing college football?

Tony: I guess the innocence of it. It is just the way you go out there. You are not playing for money; you are playing for the school. Don’t get me wrong, the pro level is a lot of fun no doubt about it. But when you are at the high school and college levels you just play for the love of the game. At least for me, I was never even thinking about going pro or anything like that. I was just out there enjoying the game of football while I was in school and class. You don’t even have to worry about the bills being paid, major bills being paid, or anything else. I wasn’t married with kids at that point; it just seemed so innocent back then. It was really one of the best times of my playing career and something I will cherish forever.

TMB: Do you want to give us a prediction for your Cal Bears this season?

Tony: Cal Bears, we are going undefeated and are going to win the national title. [laughs] I am just playing. We started out good and played UC Davis the first game of the season and beat them. We always do well, Coach Tedford does an unbelievable job out there and I just think the sky is the limit and the best is yet to come from those Cal football teams. But right now if I had to put a record on it, I would say they would probably lose 3 games and that is yet. They will go to a bowl game again because they are such a good football team and well coached.

TMB: Yeah they will be competitive in the Pac 10 this year for sure. Do you want to tell us more about your nutrition company, All Pro Science?

Tony: Yeah All Pro Science, it is going on four years ago now I changed my diet dramatically. I tossed out all the processed foods that I was eating, no more fast foods and not eating as much as meat and steak and all that stuff. And the meat that I do eat now I get from a clean source, that means things like grass fed beef, free range chicken and wild fish which is what you want to put in your body. I just felt unbelievable for it and I saw my energy levels go up, felt like I could focus better, my recovery was through the roof. I would come in the next day after games and I would feel completely fresh. And in doing something like that, I wrote a book called the “All Pro Diet”, and off of that I figured if I was eating clean I might as well be supplementing clean. And so when I went out there looking on the market for these big name brand supplements, there nothing was fitting the bill as far as supplements with no synthetics, no hormones, no artificial flavors just really good stuff. And so I decided to form my own company with a partner of mine Paul Edalat and we came out with All Pro Science. And that is exactly what I just said, the products we come out with, we have grass fed whey protein which I challenge anyone is tough to find. We have a great veggie protein, which is a combination of hemp, brown rice and pea protein. It comes in flavors of vanilla and berry blast. And then we have a great recovery, 3:1 carbohydrate to protein ratio of recovery. We have more products coming out soon but the niche is that everything is completely all natural, no synthetics, no hormones, no artificial flavors just really good stuff for you. We aren’t in retail quite yet, but we are online exclusively at www.AllProScience.com where you can check it out and it is also a health website as well. So you can get your questions answered on there and we have some great workouts and smoothie recipes as well. So www.AllProScience.com is where you can get more information on it.

TMB: Question: We’ll let you go after this question, but I don’t know if you saw the quote from Michale Palmer in today's Atlanta Journal Constitution. The rookie third string Tight End out of Clemson said that you are old, and that he would crush you on the hardwood. Do you want to respond to that right here?

Tony: [laughs] yea well I’ve been responding to him all day. We’ve got a little bet going on next off season-I’m gonna play him one on one and we’ll see how good he really is, see if he can take the old man cause he put it out there now so we’ve got to get some questions answered. It's going to be fun though I was giving him trash talk all day.

TMB: [laughs] I bet you were. Thanks a lot Tony for joining us.

Tony: No problem thanks for having me.

TMB: You can catch Tony and his quest for 1000 catches as he and his Atlanta Falcons take on the Pittsburgh Steelers this Sunday at 1pm Eastern this Sunday on Fox. That wraps up our first special feature installment. I’m Joe with The-Mainboard.com.

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If you want to join the contest simply head on over to the APS website and follow the directions there.

And as a special treat to our members here if you would like to buy some of the great products All Pro Science has to offer you can use coupon code "tmb" to get 20% off