David Pollack was standing on a high school sideline on a Friday night when he saw a voicemail from his wife’s oncologist. He had been waiting weeks for it. What he heard, and what happened on the field a little while later, left the Georgia legend and his family in tears.
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“When I saw my baby doll walk on the field after I had sent her the voice memo and stuff, it was like we just won a state championship times 30, right? And we’re just bawling,” Pollack shared on The Sage Steele Show on October 20.
“And then to show my son on the sidelines, and he’s just crocodile tears,” Pollack added. “I mean, an 18-year-old boy on a field with all of his buddies and all of his peers, just, I mean, bawling, and then my daughter bawling.”
Pollack’s wife, Lindsey, was diagnosed with stage 2 glioma and had a six-hour craniotomy at Duke in March 2025. Pollack shared the diagnosis on X and asked people to pray for her. A year later, he said she was cancer-free.
Then routine scans in June and September 2026 showed a spot on her brain that doctors worried was growing back. They did not know if the tumor had returned or if it was a different form of cancer, and another craniotomy was possible depending on the results.
Lindsey had a biopsy at Duke on September 23, and she was told results could take four to six weeks. She said fear was starting to creep in while she waited. Pollack said Friday was one of the hardest days his family has had, but it ended differently than it began.
During the game, he saw a voicemail from the oncologist saying the results were back and showed no tumor. The doctor told him the sample had been sent back for testing three or four times and still showed no tumor. The medical team could not explain why.
“I took my headset off, literally walked over to the side, and had to call him and talk to him,” said Pollack. “But his voicemail said, ‘Hey, the results came back. Stunning. No tumor. I mean, we don’t completely understand it, but give me a call, and I’ll try to explain it to you and how we move forward.’”
“Then I called him, and he was like, ‘Hey, man, we sent it back three or four times. We tested, and we got nothing.’ He was like, ‘There’s no other way to explain it,’” Pollack added.
Pollack said he told the doctor he had an explanation, and he credits God and prayer. The doctor told Pollack they would talk about how to move forward.
Pollack shared the news with Lindsey in a voice memo, and she walked onto the field during a game themed Tackle Cancer. Pollack coaches at North Oconee High School in Bogart, Georgia, where his son Nicholas, a senior tight end committed to Clemson, plays.
North Oconee won by about 30, according to Pollack, but he said the score hardly mattered. He called it the best Friday night in a long time, and said it had nothing to do with football. His daughter Leah was crying too, and he said friends who had been through hard times with the family were as well.
Pollack, a Georgia legend, played defensive line for the Bulldogs, earned All-American honors in three straight seasons, and was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2020. The Cincinnati Bengals picked him in the first round of the 2005 NFL Draft, but a neck injury in his second season ended his playing career.
He later worked at ESPN, including on College GameDay, until he was laid off in 2023, and he started his own podcast “See Ball Get Ball with David Pollack” in 2024. When Pollack first shared Lindsey’s diagnosis in March 2025, the football world rallied around him. Rece Davis, Kirk Herbstreit, Ryan Clark and Pat McAfee were among those who sent prayers and support.
A few weeks ago, the Pollacks were waiting on biopsy results as fear crept in. Now Pollack tells the story with tears close by as his “baby doll” heals, something even the doctors cannot explain. For Pollack, it is a miracle, and he credits God.