I went to the Samsung's Four Seasons of Hope Gala in Manhattan last night and ran into Michael Strahan. Of course my first question was whether or not he had changed his mind. He said the past week has been one of the best ever.
"It’s been great," he said of retirement. "I wake up and I don’t have any pressure, I’m relieved. I work out now because I want to work out. I’m not working out thinking that I’m working out because it’s leading to something. I’m not worried about my knees, my back, my shoulders, my hips, I’m not worrying about blowing something out. So it’s been a very relieving week, a very relaxing week."
I asked him about coming to the decision to retire.
"Even when I said I had made up my mind before, I was still back and forth about it because it’s still a hard call to make. It’s still difficult to say 'I’m finished.' It was a tough decision but I feel like it was the right decision, and to be honest with you after I said it I didn’t regret saying it. Once I decided to call John Mara and everybody else, I was like 'Good, I'm glad I got it out of the way' because it would have been a big distraction to those guys who went to minicamp. That would have been every question asked: Where’s Strahan? Why isn’t he here? Because there was no way in heck I was going to minicamp. So I might as well get it over with and let those guys move on and do what they need to do.
I noted that we managed to find a few other things to talk about at minicamp last week.
"Exactly," he said. "There were plenty of other things to talk about. Now imagine if I wouldn’t have been there. Oh my goodness. An even bigger distration."
I also asked him about his quote from last week's announcement that he had shocked himself by retiring.
"It takes a lot to say I’m done, especially in a sport you know you could still play and everybody else thinks you can still play and still wants you to play. It’s different when you are at the end of your career and you’re kind of bouncing around and you don’t know if you’ll get picked up and some team says 'Well maybe we’ll pay you the minimum to come into camp.' Here I am getting offered more money to play and having everybody telling me I can play at the same level, and knowing I can do it. But it’s not enough."