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Athletic greatness comes in all shapes and all sizes.

It doesn't come naturally, but is achieved from hard work, diligence and adversity along the journey.

There's opportunity and there's always struggle.

There is triumph and there is defeat.

And there is always a story behind the glory.

Andrew Whitworth has been an unstoppable force on the gridiron at the high school, collegiate and professional level.

He always poured into other guys.

He like to have an influence on people.

Nicknamed Big Whit for a reason.

The six foot seven, 330 pound West Monroe High School tight end would transition to offensive lineman under the coaching of Hall of Famer Don Charles.

And go be a great college player and you know he'll have a chance to move in play at the other way.

He was a part of three high school state championship teams with the rebels.

When it was always one.

It was in tune with his body.

He always wanted to perform at his highest level.

There are many reasons why Andrew Whitworth is in the 2025 Sports Hall of Fame class here in Louisiana.

A couple of them state titles at West Monroe, a national championship at LSU.

Super Bowl champion with the Los Angeles Rams.

But I get the impression, having heard you speak, that being the first player at age 40, in the history of the NFL to start at left tackle, especially coming off a serious knee injury, means more to you than anything else.

You know, it probably does a little bit only because, I am somebody that I think about.

My impact on other people means a lot to me.

And so to have the opportunity to go through some of that and be able to show who you are in situations of adversity or challenge, I think tells a lot of people about you as a person and really you as a friend and somebody they can count on.

And so, you know, listen, all the accomplishments are amazing.

And there's a lot of special people that were a part of me doing that and being a part of those teams was just more about all of us together than me.

But those moments when you got to dig deep into who you are and what you're capable of achieving, you get to tell people a little bit about yourself.

And so I thought that and we're going to talk about some of those special moments and some of those special peoples.

But I want you to recollect a time when you were knocked on your backside by a girl at, Washita Christian Middle School.

You have made Molly Harper famous.

Yeah, might.

Well, she should be, coach, coach Harper's daughter, Molly Harper, you know, was my first time.

Really?

I played Elam in elementary.

I played, one year in fourth grade.

I played football, and I didn't really like it, so I didn't go back out.

And finally I got talked into.

Hey, you need to play real football.

You know, forget popular stuff, come up and play.

Junior year going into junior high should come play out on the team.

And I was a basketball baseball guy.

I wasn't that excited about going out there.

Put the pads on.

I went out there and like, you're the biggest kid.

You're going to be great at football.

When it came my time to go online, I realized that the person I was going against had really long hair, and I had not noticed that a lot of boys at that time.

Sure enough, it was the coach's daughter, Molly Harper.

She's our middle linebacker and probably our best player.

And she tracked me.

She didn't.

You know, the next thing I knew, I was staring up at the sky and wondering why I was in humidity, covered in grass and in full pads.

And, you know, I always tell young kids that story when I get to go to schools.

Because I know that's not an urban myth.

No, it's not an urban myth.

I want them to understand that, you know, listen, even somebody like me that you look up to, that's playing professional football, and you think that's the world.

The first time I tried this, I was pretty low on the totem pole of football quality.

So I got ran over by the coach's daughter.

You have spoken about your love of participating and heartily recommend to parents that children participate in more than one sport, whether it be baseball or football or basketball.

But.

But the more sports you can participate in, the more it helps all of the sports and the person's character.

Yeah, I think it's really important to continue to challenge yourself.

If you look at some of the most successful people in the world, it's really that ability to continue to grow and adapt and to never say that I'm a finished product.

And I think in young people, how do we prepare them for that?

We prepare that, we prepare them for that by continuing to challenge their ability to learn new task.

I mean, mentally, if they can understand, the complexity of a golf swing or a tennis, you know, racket and how to hit a tennis ball the right way with a forehand, the backhand, and how to hit a baseball or a curveball and the mechanics it takes to do those things, or throw a football that's going to actually make them a better athlete at whatever sport it is they fall in love with, because eventually they're going to pick that sport that they know they're going to devote their time and energy and effort and attention in to being great at.

But let that happen on their own.

Let them try and kind of push them to try other things in other mechanics, because they're going to eventually learn how to master lots of different things if they do that, and when they get into that sport, they want to be great at all the new challenges and the new things they're going to have to learn how to do will come easier, because they're someone who's been trained to learn how to adapt.

You went through, a radical change in your position and as you were being recruited by LSU and you've spoken about you love Florida, you took some other trips.

You you had opportunities, obviously.

And then Nick Saban convinced you to go from tight end to offensive tackle.

What was that like at that time of your life as you're being recruited nationally?

You know, it was one of those things where as a young kid, when you're you're at high school and college offers start coming in, your ego gets pretty big, and you think a lot of yourself and you mostly you see people in and recruiting, no different than in dating when you're trying to find the pretty girl, or she's trying to find that man that she likes.

There's a lot of compliments.

And so you don't hear a lot of truth all the time.

Like someone who's really going to challenge you on something you need to improve.

And I'll never forget, Nick Saban was the one coach who sat in my living room with my parents and said, listen, he could play tight end and I'm sure that might work out for him.

But if he play tackle, I think he's going to have a lot of success for a really long time.

And he could play this game far past college football.

And you know, I don't know if Nick Saban's done a lot of things right in his life, but I guess he was right about that.

At LSU, Big Witt set a school record 52 starts with 920 snaps, 62 knockdowns and 23 pancakes.

Mia.

We battled a lot of days in practice, and I knew he was going to be an exceptional football player in college and in the pros.

That was Nick Saban was first class and, they set a standard here for the future players at LSU.

He started all 14 games at tackle and LSU was magical.

2003 championship season.

He missed only one practice during his entire career, and that was to attend his graduation ceremony.

He was a second round NFL draft pick of the Cincinnati Bengals, where he redefined left tackle, played Walker, as did the pass out here to the tackle eligible Andrew Whitworth for the touchdown.

Whitworth was not just good, but a perennial all pro, capping off a 16 year career in the league as a champion with the Los Angeles Rams.

I think the steadiness at which he handled things, whether it was good or whether we were working through some challenging moments he always used to talk about, hey, this is a blessing.

It's never a burden.

And that was the approach that he took every single day.

But a defining moment of his career came after that Super Bowl celebration.

Sitting on a confetti field at SoFi Stadium floor with his family.

That was daddy's last football game.

That's it.

No more.

I'll be home with you guys.

For me, it wasn't about celebration and running around crazy.

It was about reflection.

That was the best way I could relate to them in that moment is that they'll have that memory forever.

They would see me running around, celebrate my teammates.

But how about they'll remember my dad won the Super Bowl, and the first thing he did is he got on the ground and he got eye level with all of us.

And we reflected and shared a moment together, and I wanted to do that for them.

Tell me about the parts of Louisiana that you took with you all across the country, Cincinnati and LA of course, as your homes at that time, but visiting other beautiful, magnificent cities across the land.

What was the curiosity factor about you as a Louisiana and and what did you bring to them?

Well, I think the first thing somebody's going to say to you is probably how you talk or the way you say words and different things, of course, but it's also the food, the fellowship, the culture we have and of having a great time.

And did you ever convince people to eat crawfish and alligator?

Yeah, we took them everywhere.

There's actually, I lucked out that that, there was a restaurant in Cincinnati.

You got Naughty Pan on the bayou.

And, that chef was from West Monroe High School.

Believe it or not, I moved up there.

That was a part of what we wanted to do.

I mean, our food and our culture is is a lot of what who we are and that acceptance of everybody.

And we want everybody to feel a part of something bigger than themselves.

And so that was important to us.

Everywhere we played.

Big win wasn't just a mountain of a man, but also had an equally exceptional character, always showing humility and leadership to his teammates and community.

We will rebuild L.A.

hand-in-hand together, because he's the only person to ever wear the Walter Payton Man of the year patch, be able to win a Super Bowl and go out that way.

But he's the epitome of a special one and a Hall of Famer.

It's not just the competitiveness, it's the selflessness.

It's the servants heart that he has.

He is the ultimate blend of dominance and decency.

And he joins.

Is West Monroe head coach, the late Don Charles, as a member of the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame.

None of us know when the moment is going to present itself.

The key is to always be available when it does.

Andrew, one of the things, and I'm speaking personally now that bring me joy when I look into your eyes, is realizing that you won the Walter Payton Man of the year award, which may be the most significant award in all of sports in terms of doing for others.

I know it's not something you set out to do, but I also know it meant the world to you when you were named the Walter Payton Man of the year, it did, because it was a really a reflection on my wife and on his passion, to make a difference in any situation we walk into, whether that was a community in Cincinnati or hometowns in Louisiana or those last five years in Los Angeles.

I thought of it as really, honestly, a culmination of just all those things put together.

You know, you think of Melissa was a miss Louisiana, here in 2003.

And, you know, Make-A-Wish was her really her platform and something she'd been a part of granting wishes and doing that her whole life.

And really, our passion in life is not just to chase our own success, but to say, hey, as we succeed, what are some ways that we can make impact for other people to one have the dreams to go succeed themselves, but to also feel like they're possible?

It's capable, it can happen, and that can involve investment in our money.

That could be my time.

It could be my energy.

That could be my love.

It could be whatever it is that you need from me.

And I want to meet you where you are and not just give you something that I think you need.

And so to us that was really important.

So to be honored for that is something that I think to me is one of the greatest things I'll ever have been a part of.