Tuesdays with Wilde: Jarrett Bush

My favorite TV shows? I love Modern Family, I like Entourage. Those are my current ones. Modern Family is hilarious. The stuff that happens in families that people don’t know about, they make it into comedy. Entourage, he’s living that movie star life … but it also teaches you some lessons with money and how fast you can get it and how fast you can lose it. I don’t quite have an entourage myself. We’re all equal in our group. I do have a group of friends like that, and we’re tight just like that, but that’s a little exaggerated. I’m a lower-key guy than that. I’m just one of the guys. I’m just the same as everybody else in our group.

On my iPod, I’ve got lot of Drake, a lot of Lil’ Wayne, I like Adele. I like The Roots. Eminem, I’ve got some of him on there. Lauryn Hill. I got to meet Lil’ Wayne when he came into the locker room (after a game last season). That was cool. To see him, shake his hand, dab him up, see how short he was … that was cool. To see someone you listen to, the music he creates, it’s an honor. Being a football player, it brings you down a level and makes you realize how fans must feel about us. It makes you like a kid again where people look up to you, it make syou become a fan again. I hear he’s one of our biggest fans.

I like Twitter. I’m @Jarrettbush. I pick and choose when I use it. The lockout, I used it quite a bit. With the fans, it’s a great way to reach out to them. A lot of fans have questions. You have obnoxious people also, but you have to take the good with the bad. I love it. You get to communicate with fans and a lot of people. It’s a great way to work with social media.

When it comes to how the fans feel about me, I think things have started to change. I just try to stay humble about it. Just keep doing what I’m doing. I thank my supporters. I really do appreciate those people who do support me. I just pray for more success and more support. I work hard at it.

Fans don’t know how much I work to prove them wrong. I could fill that sentence so many ways. Fans don’t know how hard I work. How much I love football. It’s self-motivation. I’m motivated internally to be the best. I may be far from it, but that’s what motivates me. We have one Super Bowl under our belt, and no matter what some fans might say about me, I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing. I’m going to keep making.

I love stand-up comedy. I go to the place in Appleton. I just enjoy watching it. I have a couple buddies who do it. I enjoy what they do. I’m focused on my profession. When I’m done with football, it seems like a fun thing to do. You make people laugh, you’re having fun. It seems like a good time. I think I could do it. I’m a pretty funny guy at times. I feel like it’s all about being yourself. People think a lot of things, they just don’t say it. If you can tell it in a funny way, you can make people laugh. It’s all about capturing the audience.

I feel like there’s a bunch of comics in our locker room. I guess it depends on what kind of joke it is. The D-linemen, they’re big comedians. You’re always giving guys a hard time. It’s the camaraderie. There are certain guys who can joke better than others. The funniest guy in the locker room? Brad Jones is up there. Charlie Peprah is up there. But he’s on the down-low  He’s not too funny at the stadium, but away from the stadium he’s hilarious. I don’t know how he brings that out, but that’s part of his personality.

I grew up in Vacaville, California. It’s by Sacramento. It’s east of San Francisco. I went to junior college in Sacramento. Vacaville actually means ‘Cow Town.’ So it was nice to get to a bigger city.

Winning is everything to me. In high school, we won maybe four games my whole high-school career. And then I went to junior college for two years (American River Junior College) and went 0-10 my freshman year and then 2-8 my sophomore year. Then I went to Utah State and we went 3-8 and 3-8. So I won like eight games in the course of my college career. And most guys win like 30. But everything happens for a reason. It wasn’t too fun. You just had to keep pushing. You have to keep persevering, keep believing in what is possible if you get a chance. I knew I could play. I just had to get an opportunity.

I had a goal set in mind of what I wanted to do, and I’m a true believer that if you want something, you just have to figure out what you’re willing to do to make it happen. Once you know that, you can do anything – within reason. That’s how I see life. You set goals, you decide what you want to accomplish, and then you make it happen. Sometimes it’s hard, because you lose sight of that goal because bad things happen – you get criticized or you have a bad game. And it gets to you a little bit.

I run a football camp back home, called the Jarrett Bush Football Camp. Pretty creative name, yeah. I do that because I want to help kids. When I was growing up, money was an issue. Growing up, there were kids that could have been better than me who never got a shot. They didn’t have the money, or they didn’t have the right people around them growing up to send them in the right direction. That’s what I’m trying to do now that I’ve established myself a little bit.

I refereed soccer when I was in high school and junior college. It was cash-under-the-table. The IRS is probably going to come after me now. That was a great way to earn money. I used to play soccer, so it helped me stay in shape and I made a little money on the side. But I was all about playing football. There was no Plan B for me. I did graduate, so I knew I had a Plan B, but in my head, there was only Plan A – football.

Soccer is OK. It was a lot of running for me. I had plenty of energy, so that was fine. But it wasn’t my forte. I couldn’t excel the way I wanted to. I wasn’t as passionate as I was with football. Anytime soccer is on, I watch it. Charlie and I were playing FIFA (the video game) last night. Soccer was my first love. But for some reason, football overtook it. And I ran with it. It was a great opportunity. I kept my nose clean and here I am today.

My favorite moment as a Packer was the Super Bowl. Obviously. Super Bowl. Super Bowl. Super Bowl. If there was another moment, it might’ve been the Seattle playoff game in the snow. We were down early, and we came back – and I mean we came back. We were flying. The NFC Championship Game in ’07, it wasn’t a great ending, but it was a great game. Very emotional game.

Being chosen as the special-teams captain, I was so stoked about that. That was remarkable. I didn’t really know what the special teams corps thought of me. I didn’t know where they held me at as a captain. I didn’t know. When I heard it, that was beyond words couldn’t describe I had no idea the guys felt that way about me. I just try to play hard every down as best I could.

Honestly, I think the NFL commissioner is doing a pretty good job. Besides the fines being outrageous. It’s so ridiculous. They just take it right out of your check. I‘ve been fined maybe four times. It’s been penalties. Last year in Seattle, I had a shoulder to the head. Then my second year, I had a horse-collar that got me for $7,500 and I got it reduced to $3,500. And then they got me for a chinstrap this year at Chicago. It was five grand! They said it wasn’t buckled. For a chinstrap! Like, really? But otherwise, I think the commissioner is doing a great job.

My closest friend on the team is Charlie Peprah. No doubt. We came in in ’06 together. He got cut from Giants, I got cut from Carolina, we hopped on the same flight together and won the Super Bowl together last year. We just stuck together. We’ll stick together awhile too. We connected in Cleveland or Detroit and we ended up on the same plane. We got to the Austin Straubel International and met at the baggage carousel. And we’ve stuck together ever since. We told each other we had to look for each other, and we’ve been doing it ever since.