Todd McClure got into his blue Ford F-350 on Tuesday, wound his way out of Zachary and down toward Central, and his heart sank.
“Piles and piles,” McClure tells Yahoo Sports. “The sheet rock, the furniture, the insulation, non-stop, unbelievable.”
McClure’s hometown of Baton Rouge suffered a once-in-a-lifetime flood that has left 13 dead, more than 100,000 needing federal assistance, and more than 60,000 homes damaged.
McClure, who played in the NFL for 13 years, has been a one-man force over the past few days, offering assistance through his construction company, doing media interviews to get the word out, delivering donated clothes and raising $12,000 in tandem with the Zachary Charity League. He even has 12 extra family members living in his house.
“I don’t know if at any point in my life I’ve ever been more physically and mentally drained,” he says, adding he plans to ramp up his efforts. He’s getting some help, though, from former LSU quarterback Herb Tyler. The pair was close teammates when they were at LSU. Now with Baton Rouge devastated, the two decided to band together again.
“When Herb called me that night,” McClure says, “it was a match made in heaven.”
They were quite the pair at LSU. Tyler went 26-5 after taking over at quarterback as a freshman, including a home upset over No. 1 Florida in 1997—still remembered as one of the biggest wins in the program’s history. A lot of Tyler’s biggest highlights came rushing, and following McClure’s lead.
In nearly two decades since their LSU days, both men have gone into similar careers in construction and renovation. McClure has grown JBS Companies, and Herb Tyler Renovations has specialized in disaster recovery since Hurricane Katrina.
“In relation to emotions and spirit, people are still kind of down and out,” Tyler says. “This is a tragedy of epic proportions—so much greater geographically speaking than Katrina. So many people without insurance.”
