Champ Bailey is one of the best football players in the history of the game.
After a stellar career at Georgia, he was a first-round pick in the 1999 NFL draft. He then went on to be a 12-time Pro Bowler and seven-time All-Pro in his Hall of Fame career.
Bailey always was a gifted player, as he played both receiver and cornerback during his time in Athens. But he recently opened up on how he was able to perform at such a high level for so long.
And in an interview with GQ Sports, Bailey shared that cannabis helped him greatly.
Bailey stated he never used cannabis while he was at Georgia, or in high school, noting he didn’t begin to use it for recovery purposes until he got to the NFL.
“What I realized is, it was so good after games, it was so good after practice,” Bailey told Matthew Roberson of GQ. “I’m like, man, this is what I need to calm my mind and my body. There were still reasons for me to quit based off rules and regulations of the league. But since then, those rules have been eased a lot as the league kind of turns the corner.”
Cannabis wasn’t a legal option when Bailey first began using it, but the drug has become decriminalized in parts of the country. The NFL announced in December that it was increasing the THC level for a positive test, going 150 ng/ml (nanograms per milliliter) to 350 ng/ml.
In comparison with prescription painkillers, which Bailey used early in his career to play through pain, Bailey feels cannabis is a better and healthier alternative to managing pain.
“Look, those old-school methods need to die,” Bailey said. “But it is what it is. We got some progress to make, and I think we’ve made some. But it takes a lot of us, people like myself, to tell these stories.”
In the interview, Bailey stressed the importance of using cannabis responsibly, while asserting that alcohol is seen as a more socially acceptable vice.
Bailey is from Folkston and spent three seasons at the University of Georgia. In his junior season at Georgia he had 52 tackles, three interceptions, 47 receptions and 744 yards. He was drafted by Washington with the No. 4 overall pick in the 1999 draft. He would played for the Denver Broncos and the New Orleans Saints during his 15-year NFL career. He was a first-ballot Hall of Famer.
