Phillip Lindsay finds his voice

It’s not inevitable that high-performing athletes turn to golf once they retire.

But it sure seems that way.

Phillip Lindsay is just the latest to fall. Now age 31, he was a standout running back for Denver South High School, then a record-setter for the University of Colorado, then a Pro Bowler with the Denver Broncos.

His father, Phillip Troy Lindsay, had raised him to be an aggressive, tough-to-tackle running back since his days in youth football. His uncle Tony, his coach at Denver South, honed him into a torpedo. His college coach called him ‘A Tasmanian Devil.’ With a giant and wild head of hair barely contained by his helmet – he cut it all off when his playing days ended – Lindsay made his name by taking the fight straight to tacklers, and often coming away the victor.

When that kind of life is all over – as it was for Lindsay when teams stopped calling in 2023 – there is a lot to miss.

“It’s more of a chase of competing,” he said. “It’s the chase of forcing yourself to get up at 5 o’clock every single day and work your ass off to the point where you’re throwing up. Dieting. Going to the football field after. I had an organized way I did things and it was like a build-up towards July 24th (the typical opening of training camp).”

Then, in the hottest part of the year, the real work began.

“You get ready for battle, get ready to compete against your teammate that’s trying to take your spot but also get ready for the season and put yourself in the best possible shape and mentally put yourself in the best mental game you can ever be ready for going into that season,” he said. “And the beautiful part about it is nobody else can make you do it but yourself, so there’s nobody else to blame when you build up for this battle if you’re not ready. That’s on you.”

Today, Lindsay lives in Aurora with his wife, Morgan, and their children, 5-year-old Phillip and 1-year-old Sophia. His mornings are the customary chaos of a young family – getting the kids up and ready for the day. His afternoons are filled with his new career. From 2 to 6 p.m., he and Denver afternoon sports talk stalwart Zach Bye co-host the afternoon drive show on 104.3 KKFN-FM.

So, after a life of football and now all the craziness of learning a new career and being a husband and father, how and why do you add golf to the mix?

“So our show is – once we get the show kind of done and the rundown done – we have a bunch of time in the morning to where we could try to play nine holes if we really want to,” he said. “We’re always trying to find ways and find creative ways to golf as much as possible. It’s a very hard game, as you know.”

He was surprised as his pro career moved along how deep the game was with his fellow players.

It started for him in 2020 when teammates like Von Miller, Brandon McManus and Emmanuel Sanders would finish up a practice, then dress in golf gear and head out.

“I remember the first time we were in the locker room and they were getting ready to go golf,” he said. “It was after practice and, you know, they had a tee time ready. And they’re like man you guys need to start getting involved in golf and I’m like, Why golf? And they said, it’s a way not just to get out and do something different, but also it’s a way to connect with people. It’s a way to do business. It’s a way to connect with your teammates because a lot of us play golf.” So he and fellow running back Royce Freeman – another beginner – began to play.

“Now to this day, Courtland Sutton golfs his ass off,” he said. “I feel like the rookie class that I was with golfs a lot.”They have all gone their different ways and don’t see each other routinely at practice. “But it’s like, hey, let’s get together, Justin,” Lindsay said. “Let’s go have some fun. Let’s catch up.”

Lindsay said his move to radio in 2023 came partly as a result of providence, and partly his own decision that it was time to put his playing days behind him.

“When I was transitioning out of football, I didn’t know what I was going to do,” he said. “And one night I was walking and I tried to talk to God a lot. I talked to my agent before and I was like, What’s going on? We’re not getting a lot of calls. What do you think?” His agent told him if a call came, it would be late in the summer, during training camp.

“OK, in my head (I’m thinking) do I really want to do that?,” he said. “That’s a lot of patient waiting and if something doesn’t happen and I feel like I’m doing all this work and it’s for nothing.”

His agent suggested he give himself a deadline. He picked June 20.

“So one night I was walking and I was talking to God and I said ‘ God, if I don’t hear anything by June 20th that’s a sign that you’re telling me that I need to move on,” Lindsay said.

A few days later, the phone rang. It was KKFN asking if he wanted to explore doing some radio work with them

“They’re like ‘Hey, Phil, we don’t know what you’re doing in your football career right now but we would like for you to come in and see if you’d be interested in doing some radio. Just to hear you out. And maybe you’re not a good fit but we want to just see that if you want to do it.’ ”

He and Morgan talked it over. “(She said) you asked for a sign and three days later you have somebody calling about an opportunity that’s not football anymore.”

Bye has experience with training and tuning up former athletes and turning them into solid radio pros. He teamed for many years with former Bronco slot receiver Brandon Stokely until Bonneville Radio moved Stokely to the KKFN flagship morning show, where he is now paired with Mike Evans.

Lindsay went in and he and Bye recorded a mock-show to see how he sounded and how they meshed. Then they went out to get something to eat.

Bye, who has been doing Denver sports radio for nine years now, told him that if they were to do this, it would be very difficult. There would be mistakes. There would be a lot of on-the-job learning. They would also be one of the youngest duos on any sports radio show in a major market in the country.

“There’s going to be a lot of noise at the beginning and we’re not going to be very good,” Bye told him. “But we’re going to work our asses off and we’re going to build up. I think there is something special there with us.”

Leaving football brought good and bad.

Gone were the constant moves for him and his young family. Gone were the days of living one-year-contract to another.

But gone too was an identity that was important to him – and a goal and craft he had been very good at.

Two years into his new broadcast career, the relationship between Bye and Lindsay has developed to one where they know their strength and tee each other up appropriately.

Bye, is the basketball guy. When news broke in early July while they were on the air that the Denver Nuggets had traded Michael Porter Jr., that was the equivalent for local sports radio of the Pearl Harbor bombing.

Live, on-air, Lindsay shifted more into the interviewer and just guided Bye with the occasional question. Bye was the subject-matter expert and went on at length about the impact of the trade.

When the news is about the Broncos – which it often is – their roles are reversed. Lindsay will often take the lead on-air, and Bye will lead him with questions.

“(Now I’m) working on my craft and understanding this stuff is hard as Hell and that it’s not just four hours on the radio and it’s not just talking – it’s all the research you’re doing,” he said.

Like he did with his playing career, he said he’s working to get better every day.

“I’m raw and I have a lot to work on when it comes to what it is, what it takes to do radio, and how it sounds. But that’s just building over time. It’s getting your words right. You’re not in a locker room anymore. You’re talking on air.”

So as fall nears, Lindsay is excited about his new path and the teams he now covers. The Buffs, he said, will be only as good as the coaches make them. The past two years, they had elites at quarterback and wide receiver; now it’s a matter of discovering how good this coaching staff really is.

As for the Broncos, there’s nothing but excitement.

“The pieces that they bought in the draft for the past couple of years, they’re growing up,” he said. “They’ve been in the system; they understand what it takes. And here’s the years two and three; you see big jumps.”

And as he’s watching from the booth or the sidelines, Lindsay said he’s going to continue to try to take the lessons he learned on the field with him into his next chapter.

“I don’t know where this is going to take me, but I want to be the best damn radio host I can possibly be, and if that takes me somewhere further, then so be it; that would be the ultimate goal,” he said. “I want to make sure that I’m maximizing everything I can possibly do here and it starts with having great shows.”