On the Road With Richard Sherman, Who Likes an Acai Bowl but Can’t Quit Taco Bell

Few people on earth travel as often as professional athletes. With On the Road, the GQ Sports Travel Questionnaire, they’re weighing in on everything from room service to flying comfortably to their favorite chain restaurants.

These days, as a member of the Thursday Night Football broadcast, Richard Sherman is a man of few needs. If you get the Super Bowl champion in a city with an indoor football stadium, and a hotel room that comes with a balcony, ample outlets, and a normal shower, he’s good to go. If the city in question also has a particularly strong jerk chicken restaurant, he’s in hog heaven.

The man has done his fair share of traveling, both during his 11-year playing career and now as a talking head. Though he grew up in Southern California, the 36-year-old has turned his back on La La Land in favor of his adopted hometown of Seattle. When GQ connected with Sherman, he was in New Orleans, taking advantage of all of his favorite things—even if he still has some issues with the Superdome. He shared other stadiums that grinded his gears, why he stuck around in the Pacific Northwest, and a fast food chain that he just can’t quit.

When you’re traveling for Thursday Night Football, how much time do you actually get in each city? Are you able to explore at all?

We don’t have a ton of time. I’ll get a run in on the morning of the game, and we go to dinner the night before. It’s usually: get in Wednesday during the day, dinner, wake up, production meeting, workout, maybe lunch if you’ve got a buddy in town to hang out with, then go to the stadium. With East Coast games, we don’t get done until 1:00 in the morning, so it’s straight to the hotel to sleep for a couple hours and then a 7:00 flight.

Have you gotten used to this lifestyle yet?

It’s a similar routine to what we’ve been in. With sports, you get familiar with your schedule and figure out what you gotta do: how to pack, how to unpack, your game day routine. When we first started, I did a lot more of my normal game day routine that I did when I was playing. You get to the game and it’s like, I’m not playing. Why am I getting myself hyped up?

Are there cities where you feel like the fans particularly hate you? Does anyone ever say crazy shit to you on the street?

No! I’ve never actually gotten that, honestly. Our rival team would have been San Francisco, but those fans love me now! When you’re on the road and you’re not an opponent, people are like, “Man, I’m a big fan! You were one of the best to ever play!” Nobody is ever being really rude in person like that, at least not yet.

People say a lot of nonsense behind a screen. They won’t say the same in person, but they’ll say, “I used to hate you but man, you’re the nicest guy in the world!” Or, “You’re bigger than I thought!”

On a semi-realer note, you developed a villain reputation when you were in the league. Psychologically, how did that affect you?

I don’t think it affected me much at all, because I never thought people knew me in the first place. People that don’t know me were judging me off football games, and their opinions didn’t really count in my book. For the people that know me, hang out with me, talk to me, if they don’t like me, they gotta justify the reason. But there’s not that many of those people that I know about.