Bret Michaels Is Trying To Make Fernando Mendoza Fall to His Steelers?!

Bret Michaels brought a Pittsburgh Steelers hat, a $10,000 check for St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital, and a working theory about the 21st pick in the NFL Draft when he stopped by The Rich Eisen Show, where the Poison frontman tried to talk Rich into believing Fernando Mendoza could be steered toward his hometown team.

Michaels, a lifelong Steelers fan, told Rich he had been working on the Mendoza family directly. "I'm working with Fernando right now myself, and I personally been reaching out down in Miami to the family," Michaels said. "I said, 'Listen, would you be interested in going 21?'"

The pitch, by Michaels' own admission, was a long shot. He said he had countered with the only currency a rock star carries on the road: merch. "I did my best, but I got him a hat," Michaels told Rich, holding up the Steelers cap as evidence of his recruitment efforts. He acknowledged the financial gravity working against Pittsburgh. "I said, 'There's a lot of money over here if you go number one with the Raiders. Should that be?' But I said, 'I have a hat. Don't you want to be a Stiller?'"

Rich, working through the bit, asked Michaels to confirm what the hat had failed to accomplish. Michaels conceded the recruitment had not landed, telling Rich that Mendoza was not going to be the Steelers' quarterback and that he wanted everyone to know it.

The segment shifted from draft fantasy to something more substantial when Michaels presented Rich with a check for Run Rich Run, the host's annual benefit for St. Jude's. "Our family, my wife and kids, we make donations non-stop to St. Jude's," Michaels said. "You guys go so far. You, everybody, above and beyond, and it means the world to us. So we wanted to start it off with Run Rich Run."

The initial check was for $10,000, raised at a recent Poison concert from fans Michaels said wanted to contribute. As Rich was thanking him, Michaels announced that another donor had matched part of the gift in real time during the show. "Someone already donated 5,000 and I'm matching it," Michaels said. "So it's 20,000 now."

Rich, who had recently completed his own run on the St. Jude campus in Memphis, described what he had seen there. "It is a very special place where a lot of kids get better and a lot of frightened parents show up," Rich said, noting that the children themselves were often the calmest people in the building.

Michaels agreed, then closed the segment by pointing back to the cap on his head and the unfinished business of the 21st pick.