Terry Bradshaw has supported charitable causes for years, whether through signed bourbon bottles that raised $8,000 for the Wounded Warrior Project or charity golf tournaments. So when the FOX NFL Sunday co-host was asked what he would do with Elon Musk-level wealth, his answer was simple.
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Bradshaw said he would take $500 billion and use it to feed the hungry, a goal far larger than anything he has funded so far.
“Let me tell you, if I had Elon Musk’s money, for instance, if I was almost a trillionaire, I wouldn’t be a trillionaire,” Bradshaw said on an episode of The School of Greatness last week. “You know why? ‘Cause I’d take 500 billion and I’d feed the hungry, or I’d shelter the homeless, or I’d take care of the homeless kids.”
“There’s so much good you can do other than building monuments to yourself. Makes no sense to me. Where’s the joy in that? More people will say wonderful things about you the more you do for man.”
Terry Bradshaw made plenty of money during his playing days, but he never treated it like a toy. Two years before he retired in 1983, he signed a $470,000 contract that made him the second highest paid quarterback of his time. He said he skipped the luxuries and spent it on his mother, Novis Bradshaw, instead. That habit of using what he had to look after other people stayed with him long after football.
His Super Bowl stats were remarkable on their own. Across his four wins with the Steelers, he threw for a record-setting 932 yards and nine touchdowns. Off the field, though, some of his best work happened more quietly.
One of the more fun examples involved a barrel of bourbon. Bradshaw wanted one but wasn’t a retailer, so Stuart, the owner of Captain Curt’s Crab and Oyster Bar on Siesta Key, helped him buy it. Bradshaw kept just four bottles and decided the rest should go toward something good. He signed each one, and they sold them at the restaurant, with every dollar going to veterans’ groups of his choice.
The first year brought in $8,000 for the Wounded Warrior Project, which supported veterans wounded in combat.
Next, Bradshaw turned his attention to Wounded Warriors Family Support, a group that helped the families of those veterans. In 2017, he gave $10,000 to the organization and handed a check to Lloyd Tirey, chairman of its charity golf tournament at Heritage Oaks Golf and Country Club, in January at Captain Curt’s.
“This is outstanding,” Tirey said about the donation.
Bradshaw made it clear he wasn’t done. He hoped to keep raising money through bourbon sales and find new ways to support Sarasota’s veterans community.
“We’re going to do more next year for sure,” Bradshaw said.
His family got involved too. In 2021, an exclusive preview of The Bradshaw Bunch, which aired in December, showed Bradshaw leading his family through a volunteer shift at a Feed the City event in Dallas. The Bradshaws spent their holidays helping provide over 700 meals.
In 2023, he was the celebrity guest of honor at the Goombay Bash. The event supported The H Foundation, which for more than two decades had funded basic science research at Northwestern University’s Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center, the kind of lab work that led to discoveries and better treatments for patients.
That same year, he also stopped by Anchorage Golf Course to play in the Afognak Youth Charity Golf Tourney in July 2023. Money left over after expenses went toward youth education programs run by the Native Village of Port Lions and the Native Village of Afognak in the Kodiak Archipelago.
And honestly, that was only part of the list. Bradshaw kept showing up for causes big and small, and he never seemed to treat giving back as a one-time thing.