This week on The Marty Smith Podcast, Pete Werner stopped by the show to talk about football, the NFL, and growing up in Indiana. While the Hoosier state has its fair share of players on the gridiron, it’s not the place most folks think of when they think about football. Especially those from the state. Instead, they care more about the action on the hardwood, basketball is the state game.
While Kentuckians and Hoosiers don’t agree on a lot, both states absolutely love the game of basketball. It’s been a point of pride and contention between the two states, who both play a high school All-Star game against one another each year. For Pete Werner, growing up in the hoops-loving state wasn’t a challenge. But it meant people expected something else from the linebacker.
“It was nice. Coming from Indiana all you think is Larry Bird and a bunch of basketball dudes that can shoot threes. Which people still look at me now, look at me as a basketball player that can just shoot threes, sit in the corner. Which obviously is not the case.”
While folks have been sleeping on Indiana football for a while, that doesn’t mean folks like Werner aren’t going to try and change the narrative.
“But Indiana is ramping up,” Werner continued on The Marty Smith Podcast. “They’re getting better, more popular in high school football. So it was an honor, kinda coming out there and being one of those guys out of the state to play at Ohio State. At one of the most prestigious colleges and play in the NFL, that was pretty cool. Now being in the NFL that doesn’t really happen out of Indiana.”
But it happened for Werner, that’s for sure.
The Marty Smith Podcast Chats with Pete Werner
While he was around for The Marty Smith Podcast, Werner talked about a few other topics. He’s a young guy in the league, so he’s getting acclimated. But, he’s been around long enough to have a few opinions on this and that. Usually, these interviews are fun and light-hearted, Marty and Wes do a great job of keeping it a fun show.
However, poor Pete almost fell victim to a gotcha that Wes threw his way… do you like the uniforms? The Saints debuted new unis for this season and it’s going to be a bit of a change from the usual cuts. It just isn’t something that New Orleans messes around with often as a franchise. Thankfully, that media training at THE Ohio State University, and in NOLA has helped. He gave a good answer that respected his team and the new uniforms.
If you’d like to hear the rest of the Pete Werner interview, check out the rest of The Marty Smith Podcast. The guys talk about NASCAR, Top Gun, and more from the last week. It’s another fun and interesting episode that you won’t want to miss.
