Michael Irvin & Linda Fletcher Talk "Fetching Fletchers" I Full Interview I The Rich Eisen Show

Linda Fletcher does not like to fly. That is the entire origin of this story, and it has now produced 27,000 miles, a customized RV and a YouTube show.

Fletcher is the mother of Mark Fletcher Jr., the Miami running back, and the center of Fetching Fletchers, which airs Mondays on YouTube through Michael Irvin's production company. She joined Rich alongside Irvin, who spent his morning discovering they have something in common.

Irvin flies. He just does not enjoy it. He flies commercial almost exclusively, has gone private once in a blue moon, and described what happens when someone realizes who they are sitting next to. There is excitement. There are photographs. Then the air gets rough.

"And then we hit turbulence, I grab my," at which point Irvin demonstrated grabbing the stranger next to him. "You ain't so happy no more."

Rich summarized the situation as economically as possible. Mike likes big jets and he cannot lie.

Fletcher's problem was more practical. Her son plays road games in places you generally reach by air, and she was not going to do that. So she had started taking lessons to learn how to drive an RV.

That is where Irvin came in, and his version of how it happened gives most of the credit elsewhere. He wanted to meet her because of something she was already building, a mothers' community at the University of Miami. "I think now is more so God than anything." He has a friend, Jared McGee, who founded Fun Town RV. He put the two things together.

When he called Fletcher to pitch it, she told him she had been taking RV lessons. "So I thought, oh, this is perfect. I mean, this is what I want to talk to you about."

The clip the show played is the moment she saw it. It is mostly screaming, and Fletcher is walking through a barbecue full of Miami people who all knew what was coming while she did not.

The vehicle itself is a collaboration. Irvin's people handled the outside, Fletcher handled the inside, filling it with photographs from years of games with help from friends who coordinate things for the show.

Two details on the exterior are the ones worth knowing about.

The first is the schedule. The road games run down the side, starting at Wake Forest and Clemson, with North Carolina and Notre Dame waiting at the end. Every time Miami wins one, a W goes on top of that game. Irvin was very clear about the manufacturing decision behind that. "I just want you guys to know, we didn't even make any L's. We only got W's."

The second is the door, and it changes the tone of the whole thing. Big Mark, Fletcher's late husband, is on the door.

Irvin talked about what happened when he passed. Mario Cristobal and the entire Miami team showed up at the funeral. And Mark Fletcher Jr. played the next day.

"It was such a family moment. All of this for us at Miami has been a family moment. Just rebuilding and bonding back the family."

Fletcher has been using the RV the way anyone would hope. She has already driven 27,000 miles, stayed at four or five RV parks, and is heading to Stanford next. She has also been doing something other than driving.

"Oh, I saw the Grand Canyon. Don't get me started."

Rich, finding common ground with a Miami family as a Michigan alum, offered that nothing beats seeing the country and loving your child, except possibly scoring against Ohio State. Fletcher's son has done that. The two of them agreed the rivalry travels.

Irvin's larger point about why the show exists came back to timing, and to a phrase of Fletcher's he clearly thinks about. She talks about being ready to take the long mile for your children.

"Look at where we are when we're talking about the conversation between moms and kids," he said. "We need to see this side of motherhood also."

He also made sure the football got its due, because Irvin cannot help himself. When Mark Fletcher Jr. arrived in the playoff, "that's what took us off to another level. He became in the playoff the best running back in college football. And he's just been killing it ever since."

Asked what it is actually like to watch her son play, Fletcher did not reach for anything complicated. "The best thing ever. He's always done his best. He'll continue to do his best. And so I'm just with him all the way."

Then, more honestly: "I go crazy."

Her closing thought was about gratitude, and she was not sure how to direct it at the people in the room. "I'm overwhelmed with gratitude. This guy here, I don't know how I would ever thank them. I'm just going to thank God. How about that?"

And on the institution underneath all of it: "The University of Miami is the best thing that ever happened to us."

Fetching Fletchers premiered this past Monday and runs Mondays on YouTube. There is a tracker at fetchingfletchers.com showing where she has been and where she is headed next.