Pat Mahomes officially woke up on Tuesday as the highest paid athlete in pro sports history.
It's especially impressive to think about considering that Mahomes didn't even start a full season until 2018. In just two years since he's been able to win a Super Bowl, league MVP, and secure close to $500 million. How did this all happen so quickly? Mahomes' agent Leigh Steinberg – who presumably set his own field's commission record on Monday, too – sat down with the Under Center Podcast back during Super Bowl media week to talk about it:
I think so much of it was growing up with a baseball player as a father, and watching the nature of ephemeral fame and how it comes and goes. It's all about being grounded, and in this moment, and not thinking about anything except focusing on this. But also having some fun with it. We're here on Radio Row, and happens is that you have so much coverage of the Super Bowl, that if a player performs dramaticlly, they cross over out of the narrow genre of hardcore sports fans. They become an American icon.
Stay in the game with the latest updates on your beloved Chicago sports teams! Sign up here for our All Access Daily newsletter.
Steinberg also (briefly) discusses Mahomes' contract negotiations and how much the Chiefs' QB benefited from sitting behind Alex Smith for a year in 2017. You can listen to the entire conversation with Laurence Holmes right here, or in the embedded player below: