“When the bartenders at the Playboy Mansion parties know your drink order—you’re a loser. They knew my drink order.” — Kyle Brandt

He sat in the house.

And sat in the house.

And sat in the house.

And sat in the house.

Sometimes, when the spirit moved him, Kyle Brandt would interrupt his sitting in the house to take an abbreviated stroll down Parish Place. Or drive his blue/green Jeep Cherokee to the store and pick up some bread and milk. He checked his MySpace page with absurd frequency, ate ceaseless bowls of Frosted Mini-Wheats, made pilgrimages to the nearby Bally Total Fitness in Studio City, where he devoted two hours (or so) per day toward bench pressing and bicep curling and head-to-toe mirror gazing.

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Otherwise, like clockwork, Kyle Brandt would wake at noon (or whenever the spirit moved him), shuffle down the steps, plop onto his massive beige sectional couch and sit.

And sit.

And sit.

He desperately wanted the telephone to ring.

He desperately wanted an e-mail from an agent.

A note.

A package.

Something.

Anything.

In his heart, Kyle Brandt knew that big break was within reach. Or at least thought—please, God?—maybe that big break was within reach. Hadn’t Matt Damon written the “Good Will Hunting” screenplay in an English class at Harvard? Didn’t Reese Witherspoon attend an open casting call for “The Man in the Moon,” only to be given the lead role? Surely, a producer would see the radiant smile; the coal miner’s ruggedness; the (cultivated with years of practice) sultry gaze that purred, Come to the couch, and I will simultaneously undress you and feed you chocolate. Why, for 3 1/2 years he had portrayed Philip Kiriakis on “Days of Our Lives,” and while the material wasn’t quite Brando in Streetcar, during Brandt’s tenure he displayed the necessary dexterity to have his character work as a (preposterously conceived) trained killer for a secret agency, a (preposterously conceived) deployed marine who loses his right leg in a tragic landmine accident and a (preposterously conceived) one-legged driver on the NASCAR circuit. “Kyle was dating my character’s sister on the show—or maybe he was married to her,” says Alison Sweeney, the actress who played Sami Brady. “I’m not sure. It’s hard to remember these things. But he did have a feel for acting on a soap opera. I wouldn’t say he arrived with natural instincts, but he worked hard to improve. He was a strong member of the cast.”

And yet, here in 2007, Brandt found himself waiting for something that wasn’t to be. He had purchased the 1,996-square foot house three years earlier. It had once belonged to “Entourage” actor Kevin Connolly and was a bright yellow ode to serendipitous soap opera success. Located in the heart of Burbank Hills, it featured three bedrooms, 2 ½ bathrooms, a bar, a jacuzzi, a pool table, a deck, a hammock and a fire pit. Brandt paid for it with money that would certainly always be there (He was making $1,300 per episode—enough to also buy a – preposterously conceived –  black Infiniti G35), then threw wild parties for friends and friends of friends and friends of friends of friends. “People would ask, ‘So your parents are out of town?’” Brandt says. “No, dude, this is my house. My house!”

Now, however, the once-joyful abode morphed into a prison. Brandt sat and sat and sat because, truly, he had nowhere to go. When he left “Days of Our Lives” despite the offer of a new contract, it was out of a fear of forever being Philip Kiriakis, deep-as-a-dime hunky hunk. “I didn’t wanna live off of the daytime beefcake character,” he says. What he hadn’t predicted, though, was the emptiness. In Los Angeles, land of 1,001 Grade-C out-of-work soap opera actors, nobody wanted to hire a Grade-C out-of-work soap opera actor, and nobody wanted to chill with a Grade-C out-of-work soap opera actor. Especially one with a dwindling bank account; one spiraling deeper and deeper into an inexhaustible depression.

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“It got really bad,” Brandt says. “When I wasn’t home in my robe I would go on all these auditions. Nothing resulted from it. No callbacks, no jobs. I went on every call you could imagine—the Star Trek movie to play James T. Kirk, the ‘Knight Rider’ reboot. Some show with James Woods. It was torture. Your agent is disappointed in you. You start hearing whispers about maybe doing another soap. You’re running out of money. Your self-worth vanishes. It got to the point where my agent started suggesting I work as a host.”

The low point came in early 2007 when Brandt experienced his Erik Estrada-hawking-timeshares moment. For a whopping $500, he was hired to stand alongside Jose Canseco in a rundown Los Angeles studio and—with all 14 viewers of a late-night cable access television show watching—beg people to call in and bid on cameras and cell phones. “I was wearing a suit jacket,” he says. “Canseco was screaming at the guy who brought us there, demanding more money. Talk about …”

A pause.

“Humiliating.”

It was at this juncture—tap dancing alongside a former steroid-fueled slugger two years removed from “The Surreal Life”—when Kyle Brandt realized, once and for all, the dream was dead.

It is the afternoon of October 2, 2018.

The dream is not dead.

Kyle Brandt is on the phone, calling from the rear of the black Lincoln Town Car that ferries him each day from Larchmont, N.Y. to Manhattan, then back. He does not pay for this service, just as he does not pay for the designer clothing that is laid out for him inside the Times Square-based studio, or the sustenance plied to him on set (it’s the same every day—a large black Starbucks coffee and oatmeal with blueberries).

As one of four co-hosts of the NFL Network’s widely praised “Good Morning Football,” as well as the solo host of his new weekly NFL Network program, “The Kyle Brandt Football Experience,” the 39-year old has emerged as one of the brightest new faces in sports television. He is engaging and spirited and—in the words of Peter Schrager, his friend and GMFB co-host—“very, very real. There’s no act. What you see on the screen in what Kyle is. He’s that guy.”

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Schrager’s words are coated with a layer of mock surprise, as if one would never expect the man formerly known as Philip Kiriakis to be anything other than a shell of a soul. Yet Brandt is that guy—unwilling to take himself particularly seriously; more than happy to mock everything from his acting chops (When I asked whether it might offend him to have his “Days of Our Lives” turn characterized as “relatively believable,” he texted, “Insulting? That feels like an Oscar”) to what made him the right choice for the soap (“I was one of 1,000 clones. But I auditioned in the tightest shirt.”). Plus, his backstory is so nutty, there is—he readily acknowledges—no other way to view it than some sort of parallel universe serendipity. “It’s all farce,” he says. “I get it.”

Born and raised in suburban Chicago, Brandt was a standout athlete who excelled as a 400-meter runner in track and a halfback-outside linebacker for the Stevenson High football team in Lincolnshire, Ill. He calls his adolescent self a “walking cliché”—the prototypical late-1990s strut-through-the-hallway jock who drove a Jeep Wrangler, listened to Pearl Jam, dated a bevy of pretty girls and wondered aloud (for all to hear) where he would be playing college ball. “I was Emilio Estevez in the ‘Breakfast Club,’” he says. “I hated it.”

Everything came to a head his senior year, when Brandt gazed into the mirror and thought, “God, I’m sort of a tool.” He signed a letter of intent to play football at Princeton, then stopped everything. No more image nonsense, no more jock bullshit. He opted not to run outdoor track, even though he was the defending 400 divisional champion, and instead started a rock band with three friends. They named themselves Section L, after a code in the school rulebook that outlawed drinking and smoking marijuana on campus, and Brandt fronted as the eyeliner-wearing lead singer. “It was my anti-establishment statement,” he says. “I had a shirt made with giant bold letters that spelled out J-O-C-K. We played a lot of Pearl Jam, STP, Tool. We played in front of audiences, and we were probably horrible. But, man, it felt so cool. Just to step outside a comfort zone.”

Throughout his early prep days, Brandt’s athletic dream had been to star as a halfback at Northwestern, just as his hero, Darnell Autry, did for the shock-the-world 1995 Big Ten champions. Brandt even made an unofficial recruiting visit to the campus and attended a practice. It was while watching the Wildcats work out that he realized, “I wasn’t fast enough, I wasn’t big enough,” he says. “To play at that level you have to have crazy speed and weigh 225. That wasn’t me.”

Princeton was the perfect spot—but not for obvious reasons. Yes, the Ivy League was an ideal level for Brandt, who started three of his four seasons with the Division I-AA Tigers and rushed for 1,277 yards and eight touchdowns. But what caught his fancy, perhaps even more than the gridiron, was the school’s thriving theater scene. Brandt’s first taste of acting had come as a fourth grader when he performed in a Highlands Elementary production of “The King and I.” Now, nine years later as a college freshman, he was occasionally leaving practices early for auditions and rehearsals. Roger Hughes was the Tigers coach, and he was the rare football man to encourage his legions to expand their horizons. “Kyle got it way before I did,” says Ross Tucker, the former NFL lineman who roomed with Brandt in college. “I was the meathead irrationally giving Kyle shit for not being there for everything. Meanwhile, he’s making the most of the Princeton experience. We all should have been doing that.”

During his junior year Brandt landed the lead role in “Beyond Therapy,” a risqué play that featured the polite, upbeat halfback as Dr. Framingham, a lecherous psychiatrist who sleeps with his patients. It was dark and creepy—and he loved it. Football was exciting, and the bonds he shared with teammates remain. Yet standing on a stage, vulnerable and alone, was unlike any other feeling. Nobody hit you on the stage. Nobody benched you on the stage. Nobody chewed you out on the stage. Just you,” he says, “and your lines.”

Kyle Brandt found his calling.

Eh, sort of.

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Kyle Brandt’s calling was supposed to be Broadway. Or Hollywood. Or at least some commercial work.

Not this.

Not “The tattoo.”

That’s what he calls it—“the tattoo,” Brandt says with a subtle moan. “A life tattoo you get when you’re young, but it never goes away.”

Toward the end of his senior year at Princeton, Brandt and some friends got drunk, then attended an open casting call on campus for “The Real World,” the wildly popular MTV series that selected seven strangers to live in a house and have their lives recorded. “We went to it for shits,” he says. “That’s all.” Mary-Ellis Bunim, the show’s producer, asked Brandt how he would feel were a gay man to tell him he was attractive. Without skipping a beat, he replied, “Well, it’s already happened twice today and I appreciated it both times.”

Four months later he was cast to appear in the 2001 season, which would be filmed over 16 weeks in his hometown of Chicago. It was everything one might think of early-2000 reality television. Which is to say Brandt was typecast (he starred as the bandana-adorned asshole jock) and pushed into awkward situations of all shapes and sizes. It might be an exaggeration to say that the show’s producers wanted him to cheat on his then-college girlfriend with intoxicated castmates. But, he says, they wanted him to cheat on his then-college girlfriend with intoxicated castmates. Which, to his credit, he did not do. Not really (Says Brandt: “The dope with the off-the-show girlfriend is like the goat in ‘Jurassic Park.’ They bring out as bait for the T-Rex. Easy pickings.”). But when Brandt wasn’t flirting, he was fighting. When he wasn’t sober, he was drunk. He spent 90 percent of his time in the house worrying about how he might appear on TV—which made it even worse. “You overcompensate,” says Cara Fudemberg, a fellow cast member and the rare Real Worlder Brandt continues to keep in touch with. “Kyle wasn’t a jerk. Not at all. He was the All-American kid. Smart, handsome, funny. They tried pushing this love triangle involving me, Kyle and another girl, and it was totally made up. Kyle was just a really good guy. But if you watch, the show, you might think he’s a …”

“Pretty boy,” says Kyle. “God, I hate that.”

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“Douchebag,” says Bob Brandt, Kyle’s father. “A big one.”

“Fool,” says Georgia Goldberg, Kyle’s mother.

She chuckles, because 17 years have passed. But when the program aired, Georgia—a retired actress and teacher who was divorced from Bob when their son was 5—had to watch between her fingers. The sweet boy she raised to be polite and courteous was sort of a pig. And not merely a pig, but a pig on national television. “When he first told me he was doing the show we were driving somewhere, and I pulled the car over,” she recalls. “I said, ‘What college did you just graduate from, moron?’ It was every bit as bad as I thought it could be. He was embarrassed, I was embarrassed. Because I knew our Kyle wasn’t that Kyle.”

Not long after “The Real World” concluded, Kyle moved to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career. He rented an apartment for $700 per month, and instead of bartending or cleaning carpets he made a living traveling the country to speak to college students about the show. It was a magical stretch, during which he was paid, oh, $1,500 a pop to fly to North Dakota State or San Jose State or Western Kentucky, speak Real World nonsense for an hour, then cruise the town as a mini-celebrity. When he wasn’t on the road, Brandt was hitting up auditions. His first breakthrough came in 2002 when he landed a Right Guard commercial with Jim Breuer, the comedian, and then-Arizona Diamondbacks ace Randy Johnson. The spot called for Johnson to launch dodgeballs at the other participants, a la a high school PE class, only the pitcher possessed zero acting chops. “He had one line, and he couldn’t do it,” Brandt says. “They cut it from the commercial.”

Kyle’s breakthrough came on audition No. 653 (or something like that). Until this moment, he often found himself sitting in a room alongside other former reality stars, all itching to make it in a world that saw them as circus freaks, not promising thespians. On this particular afternoon in the spring of 2003, his agent, Mara Santino, sent him off to a “Days of Our Lives” tryout with this advice: “When you go in, show off your body.” That’s why, en route to the studio, he stopped off at a Banana Republic to purchase an extra small baby blue Lycra T-shirt. “It was ridiculous,” he says. “It honestly looked like baby clothes. I looked like such a dipshit.

“Well, two days later I got the call from my agent. It was amazing. I was going to be on national TV every day, appearing on an iconic show.”

In many ways, “Days of Our Lives” were the best days of Brandt’s career. Playing the dreamboat Philip meant a steady paycheck, a close-knit cast, fame and fun and one party after another. He was no longer the frat boy from MTV. No, he was the heartthrob from daytime television. Housewives and sorority girls swooned in his presence. Autograph requests were nonstop. Rumors of his character’s future plans appeared regularly inside Soap Opera Digest, and the loyalists ate it up. Brandt knew it was silly and campy (One hasn’t lived until he’s played a game of shirtless basketball against a greased-up rival stud for the love of a woman). But so what? When Philip lost his leg, Brandt got to film a scene with Heather Mills, Paul McCartney’s wife and a real-life amputee. When Philip became a NASCAR driver, Brandt was able to meet Casey Mears, who appeared on the show.

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The sweetest part—hands down—were the weekend getaways. Befitting its place atop the soap opera food chain, “Days of Our Lives” cast members were regularly whisked off to do signings and meet-and-greets. It could be a department store in Tuscaloosa, a hardware shop in Birmingham. Whatever the case, Brandt was greeted by long lines, swooning women and weird, confusingly sexual requests. The one of which he speaks most, eh, glowingly occurred in Greenville, S.C. in 2004, when he found himself on a dance floor, wedged between two husky twin sisters in matching outfits. With Nelly’s “Hot in Herre” blaring from a DJ booth, the siblings grinded into Brandt’s midsection while raving about giving him, “The Southern Sandwich.”

“These events—I mean, crazy,” says Brandt. “You’re talking tons of horny housewives, most a good 25 years older than I was. Married moms. There’s a reception, a party, a cocktail hour. The doors open and someone announces, ‘The stars will join the party!’ It’s a feeding frenzy of alcohol, desire, sweat. I was getting paid, so that was nice. But it wasn’t normal. It was a grope fest.”

From Rick Springfield and Tommy Lee Jones to Julianne Moore and Marisa Tomei, Hollywood is overrun by superstars who began their careers on soap operas. So when, toward the end of his third season on “Days of Our Lives,” Brandt chose to depart, it made some sense. “I understood it,” says Goldberg, his mother. “He saw that show as a stepping stone. It seemed reasonable.”

Yet the days turned into weeks, and the weeks into months, and the isolation and rejection created an inescapable black cloud. It is an unnatural transition, going from star to nobody sans warning. So as the house held him captive and the turn downs battered his hope, the one constant Brandt relied upon was his website, the simply titled kylebrandt.com. During his time on Days, Brandt utilized the medium to stay in touch with fans and offer updates on his acting. The original header was a black-and-white portrait of Brandt, tank top revealing his sculptured shoulders, eyes gazing pensively into the ether. Yet as time passed, the image was scrapped and kylebrandt.com became a place of delightfully random life observations, from a trip to Medieval Times (“We did it up first class too. We rented a bus or ‘motorcoach’ and boozed from the time we left Rossmore til we crossed over the drawbridge. I wouldn’t be able to endure, let alone enjoy, 2+ hours of cheering for The Yellow Knight if I wasn’t packing Ketel 1 in my scabbard.”) to the questionable intelligence of West Virginia’s inhabitants (“Over the past couple weeks 4 people have been treated at the West Virginia Poison Control Center for drinking Tiki Torch Fuel. Come on West Virginia, work with me here. You’re better than that. I know that it SORT OF looks like beer. But it’s not. Have you ever seen beer come in clear, plastic tubes with a screw-on top?”).

One day, while working out at the gym, Brandt spotted Carl Lewis, the nine-time Olympic gold medalist, on a treadmill. “And I was beating him,” Brandt says. “So I wrote about it. No big deal. Just me trying to stay funny when I was otherwise feeling like general shit.”

That entry went up in the early months of 2007.

At the time, Brandt was seriously considering a departure from California; a return to Chicago; a new life; a new career.

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Then Jim Rome randomly called.

OK, it wasn’t entirely random.

Tucker, Brandt’s college teammate, was wrapping up a seven-year NFL career when he was contacted by Rome, who at the time hosted “Jim Rome is Burning” on ESPN and “The Jim Rome Show” (aka The Jungle) on Premiere. He was looking to hire a young producer and writer with both intellect and sports knowledge. “I appreciated it, but I wasn’t ready for that kind of move,” Tucker says. “Then I told him I knew a guy he just might like.”

Rome was neither a fan of reality television nor soap operas. Yet he visited kylebrandt.com and found himself laughing aloud as he read the chronicles of a once-upon-a-time “Days of Our Lives” star sprinting on a Bally’s treadmill just to feel pride in toasting Carl Lewis. “I liked him from the first time we talked,” says Rome. “He has this unreal résumé, and he was used to being the guy. He’s an alpha. He’d always been an alpha. But at the same time, he was hungry and he was clearly willing to do anything.”

Rome wasn’t handing the position away. He interviewed multiple applicants, debated qualifications, searched for the perfect candidate. During the process, Brandt thought back to advice once offered by his father, who ran an advertising agency: If you want a job, say so. At this point, Brandt—a longtime admirer of Rome’s work—wasn’t merely interested. He needed it. Longed for it. After sitting down with Rome one day, Brandt tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Do you mind if I tell you something before I leave?”

Sure.

“I want this job,” Brandt said. “I want it badly. As badly as you can want a job. And I just think you should know that.”

Shortly thereafter, he was hired.

Brandt was thrilled. But more than that, he was renewed. Even as the personas of “The Real World” frat boy and “Days of Our Lives” stud faded from his psyche, they hadn’t fully faded from his existence. He knew what people thought of him; knew what it was to be typecast as these … things. To pose for photos that would wind up in cracked faded frames atop a garage sale table; to sign scraps of paper that blew off into the abyss. It had all been so surface and disposable. Hell, he last played Philip Kiriakis on October 12, 2006—and three months later Jay Kenneth Johnson, an actor who starred as Kiriakis before Brandt, was back in the role. No one—literally not a soul—seemed to notice.

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Now, to rob from “The Real World” intro, it was time to start getting real. The drive from Burbank Hills to Rome’s Irvine studio was 60 miles, and Brandt rose at 4:30 a.m. every morning to be there by 6 a.m. It was anything but glamorous—Brandt booked guests, researched information, wrote material. And, well, he loved it. The anonymity was delightful. The subject matter was fresh and exciting. “Running into sports was like running into an ex-girlfriend,” he says. “That’s how it felt.”

Before long, where Jim Rome went, Kyle Brandt followed. From Super Bowls and World Series to NBA Finals and Final Fours, he was a sidekick, a confidant, a provider of information (Brandt’s pop culture knowledge is both bizarre and unrivaled). The star was now in the shadows, and it fit like a glove. After half a decade passed, Brandt started filling in on the radio show when Rome was absent. No longer a man trying to figure out how to be liked or unliked, sexy or cool, buff or uber buff, he was simply himself. He knew sports like a first language. Could explain the motions behind a crushing tackle. The disorientation of a concussion. “We were in the studio one day and a commercial comes on with an attractive woman,” Rome says. “One guy says, ‘Man, look at her!’ Kyle, matter of factly, says, ‘Yeah, I used to date her.’ He’s this extremely handsome, engaging, talented guy who just worked his butt off and never seemed overly impressed with himself.

“That takes you far.”

The final transition from Kyle Brandt, star, to Kyle Brandt, guy, can be traced to August 8, 2008.

He was 29 at the time and completely done with the bullshit. He dated his fair share of actresses and aspiring actresses, and the routine (drinks, dinner, banal conversation, more drinks) had grown stale. He spent plenty of time at the Playboy Mansion but felt increasingly stupid doing so. He appeared to be the prototypical “dude” you might see hitting on chicks at the bar but craved a wife, a family, kids. “You watch these actors leave their soap operas, get their real estate licenses, still hanging out at some cheesy sushi place in Studio City,” he says. “For me, it had all worn off.”

So, with nothing to lose, the ghost of Philip Kiriakis registered a profile on Match.com. He listed his name, his age, his occupation, his background, his likes, his dislikes. And, amazingly, the first five women he encountered were lovely and fun and normal.

On the sixth date, he met Brooke Kopanski.

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She was an attorney from Glendale who never watched reality television or soap operas. They were having dinner at The Odyssey, a restaurant in Burbank, and the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics were being broadcast on a nearby TV.

“You like sports?” Kyle asked.

“No,” she replied.

Silence.

Throughout the meal Brooke noticed an inordinate number of people staring at their table.

“Am I supposed to know who you are?” she asked. “Am I missing something obvious?”

“Well, Brandt replied, “I was on a soap opera.”

Brooke’s aunt used to work as a bookkeeper on a soap opera. The father of her best friend also worked in the business. She had no interest in entertainment as a field. If anything, the banality repulsed her.

“Oh, don’t worry,” he said. “That’s a past life.”

Kyle and Brooke were married two years later, in a ceremony at The Lodge at Torrey Pines in La Jolla. It was everything they were. A reader delivered a passage from “Everlong” by The Foo Fighters. The wedding party walked up the aisle to “All You Need is Love” by the Beatles. Rome announced the officiants, and Kyle and Brooke’s first dance was a choreographed performance to Michael Buble’s “Haven’t Met You Yet.”

There was no paparazzi. No celebrity sightings.

“It was exactly what I wanted it to be,” Kyle says. “Authentic.”

Kyle Brandt is back on the phone.

In the rear of the car.

Living the dream.

Really, explaining the dream.

The call came in 2015—a serendipitous development in a serendipitous life. Brandt was happy working for Rome but found himself itching for more. So when he was contacted by Michael Davies of Embassy Row production company and told that the NFL Network was starting a morning talk show, he was beyond intrigued. Two hosts— former NFL wide receiver Nate Burleson and Kay Adams of NBC Sports Network’s “Fantasy Football Live”—had already been hired, but Davies was seeking one more person to sit at the desk. Thought Brandt was far from a sports household name, he was a household name for those who worked in sports. Or, put differently, in his nine years with Rome, Brandt had met absolutely everyone, from athletes to agents to journalists. “He makes a really good impression,” says Schrager, who appeared as a guest on Rome’s CBS Sports Network show myriad times. “When I wasn’t talking to Rome or one of the other journalists, I’d be talking to Kyle. He actually had glazed tips when I met him. He was a pretty boy producer, but really nice, really engaging, incredibly personable. Impossible not to like.”

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As it turns out, Davies and Co. were weighing the pros and cons of Schrager and Brandt as a third studio member. One (Schrager) was a longtime football writer who fit a conventional “expert” need. The other (Brandt) had a charisma and buoyancy that oozed positivity.

“We needed Peter,” says Jordan Levin, the NFL’s former chief content officer. “But we really liked Kyle’s energy a lot. We went with four hosts and thought it could either be a great idea or a tremendous mistake.

“Well, it hasn’t been a mistake.”

On July 3, 2016, Kyle and Brooke welcomed their second child, Evelyn, to the world (their son Calvin was born in 2013). Two days later Kyle flew to New York to look for a house in the suburbs of New York City. A lifelong Californian, Brooke had never dreamed (or wanted to dream) of living on the east coast. “But if the NFL Network calls and offers a show,” she says, “you go. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

Now, two years later, Jose Canseco’s once humiliated co-worker sits atop the media world. Or, if that’s an afternoon soap-esque exaggeration, sits in rarified air. Though the “Today Show” will never have to worry about “Good Morning Football” stealing customers, it’s one of the NFL Network’s most popular shows. Talk to NFL players, and almost all either watch it live or DVR it. According to Sports Business Daily, in 2017 GMFB averaged 109,344 viewers—a 23 percent jump from NFL Network programming two years earlier. On Sept. 10 of this year, it hit 191,000 viewers, its best day ever. The program is laid-back and carefree and engrossing; chemistry, Schrager says, that isn’t invented or contrived. “We’re all in this together,” he says. “I think that shows.”

Indeed. Seventeen years after he moved into a house with six strangers, and 13 years after losing his fictional leg to a fictional land mine, Kyle Brandt has found a real home on solid ground.

He has it made.