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Living On The Edge

Sporting News, The, Feb 1, 1999 by Paul Attner

That's how it always has been for MIKE SHANAHAN, who takes it to the max whether he's trying to win a Super Bowl or performing death-defying stunts

The eerie part about it is that Mike Shanahan never let anyone drive his motorcycle. He didn't feel comfortable sitting on the back, allowing someone else to steer. But on this day, his friend begged him to make an exception. Mickey Bertini was contemplating buying a cycle, and he wanted to test-drive Shanahan's. So they switched seats and the two college sophomores, home on a break, headed into downtown Chicago.

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It was dark when they came to an intersection. The light was green. But a car coming from a cross street never slowed down. It went through the red light and slammed into the bike. The impact was so enormous that Shanahan was tossed across the street, over the sidewalk and almost against a nearby building. Bertini absorbed more of a direct blow. Within 30 minutes, he was dead.

Shanahan limped back to the motorcycle and wrestled with some spectators trying to steal it. The car sped away, never stopping. Later, Shanahan realized his ankle was hurt badly enough that he needed crutches. He helped bury his friend, days before police caught the hit-and-run driver.

So why is a shiny new Harley sitting in Shanahan's garage, with barely 25 miles on the odometer, waiting for its owner to finish with this Super Bowl nonsense so he can drive it into the Colorado mountains, away from the whirlwind of pro football and into the serenity of mile-high air? And why does Shanahan dream of a time, once his coaching career ends, when he and some buddies can drop out for six months and ride their Harleys around the country, without an annoying schedule to dictate their days?

For the same reason that Shanahan annually seems to dance with high-risk foolishness, be it bungee jumping or jumping off a 60-foot cliff or driving a race car for the first time at speeds up to 160 mph or hang-gliding so high that he needed clearance from a local airport. For the same reason he is undeterred by the up-close confrontations with death that periodically visit his life.

"He's come close to killing himself more times than I want to remember," Peggy Shanahan, his wife of almost 22 years, says with a nervous laugh. Before Peggy began dating Mike at Eastern Illinois University, where they were students, she had noticed this fearless guy who would join some mutual friends and challenge a local spillway, which would swell up from heavy rains and turn into rampaging rapids. That's when Shanahan would jump in and see if he could remain afloat.

On this one day, the water was particularly dangerous and it was stupid for anyone to test the surging turbulence. But Mike and a buddy did anyway, and they quickly were pulled under and disappeared. Agonizing seconds went by and everyone got scared because it looked like they wouldn't resurface. They finally did, winded and frightened. Mike admitted he thought he might die. Years later, Peggy read in a newspaper that a student drowned in the same spillway.

Shanahan has had last rites read to him once, alter he was speared in the kidneys on a tackle while playing quarterback as a 150-pound junior for Eastern Illinois. The internal hemorrhaging was so immense that a priest thought Shanahan might not survive. His heart stopped for 30 seconds and he lost the kidney, but he lived. A couple of weeks later, he was riding river rapids on a raft, defying doctor's orders. When his coaches refused to let him at least punt, he became a student coach.

It's all about The Edge. There's something in Shanahan that entices him to be on the edge with everything he does, forcing him to max out, test his limits, challenge his abilities; whether as coach of the Broncos in attacking a defense ... or the guy who plays 72 holes in a day and wonders why everyone else is fired ... or the fun seeker who stays up all night in Vegas working the gaming floor ... or the crazy man who feels invigorated by the devilish challenges that most sane people would avoid, realizing they are not cats but mere mortals. The resulting rush he receives, whether from winning games or getting back on a motorcycle or surviving the odds on a spillway, gives him a feeling of serenity that most of us achieve from, well, more mundane accomplishments.

"I like to do things that are exciting," he says. "I have always lived that way. When I was young, we'd jump off the 10-meter board that most kids my age would avoid. That's how I got used to heights. I found I wasn't afraid. I know there are risks involved in some things I do, but it's fun. I think about what's happened. Why wasn't I driving that motorcycle? Why didn't I die when I got hit on the football field? The only way to live with it is to say the guy upstairs has a plan for you and you try to make the best of it. So I'll get back on a motorcycle, do whatever. I figure when it is your time, it's your time. So I don't hold back."

Living On The Edge

Sporting News, The, Feb 1, 1999 by Paul Attner

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