Former NFL MVP and sports media personality, Boomer Esiason has charged through his battles on and off the field.
Since retiring from the NFL after playing for the Cincinnati Bengals, New York Jets, and Arizona Cardinals, Esiason now hosts a live radio show every morning in the Big Apple. And he's not limiting himself to sports.
Speaking of the show, Esiason notes, "It's about life in general. It's about relationships. It's about coaching, decisions, who comes up big, who doesn't come up big."
In an effort to engage his online audience, Esiason also live-tweets his "Boomer & Carton Show" programs, along with his business partner Craig Carton and his producer, Al Dukes.
Esiason's penchant for Twitter lies in its real-time, conversational format. "So if we make a mistake, there are a million people out there that can't wait to tell us that we made a mistake," Esiason says. "We have an instantaneous opportunity to fix our mistake."
Boomer's immersion in social media has recently fused with his longstanding passion to spread awareness and find a cure for cystic fibrosis. Since launching in 1993, the Boomer Esiason Foundation has raised over $100 million to find a cure for the disease.
Along with pumping money into scientific research, the foundation gives over $2 million in scholarships to cystic fibrosis patients across America, along with lung transplant grants that cover collateral costs.
Esiason's motivation kicked into full gear after his son was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis at the age of two. However, in the early '80s and '90s he'd already become a celebrity face for the cause by taking action after meeting a man who lost his young daughter to the disease.
As a former football player, Esiason's dream of being the star quarterback and winning the Superbowl has been outseated by something much more valuable. "Now, my ultimate goal is to make sure that my son outlives me and has a future for himself," Esiason says. "And as a 21-year-old junior at Boston College, we're right in the middle of that."
His foundation was also one of the first charities that Samsung selected for its #Hope4Children campaign. We will both meeting again soon when I host the red carpet livestream for Samsung's #Hope4Children Gala on June 4 at 6 p.m. EST from the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
"What Samsung does for somebody like us is give us great credibility across a broad range of an audience," Esiason says.
Social media has inevitably changed the way that Esiason can engage with communities to promote his charity. He notes that the simple acts of sending out bits of information and then having people retweet creates a network of communication and feedback that can reach inestimable bounds.
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