The Bob Elliott Show Ep. 26 - Corey Williams

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
The Live The Dream Media Network is proud to host an Arizona legend. His remarkable journey spans college and pro basketball, business excellence, and community leadership at the highest level. Get ready for insightful conversations, expert analysis, and a unique perspective that only one man can deliver.
This is The Bob Elliott Show, exclusively on the Live The Dream Media Network.

**Bob Elliott** (0:39)
Welcome to The Bob Elliott Show. And as you've been here before in the past, we try to bring people in front of our community that maybe you've seen. You've seen them on TV, you've seen them in the newspapers. But we want you to be able to know what they're like as a person. And that's exactly what I have as a guest today. Guest today is Corey Williams, a former U of A basketball player, ESPN TV broadcaster, and executive with Crest Insurance.
Corey, welcome to the show.

**Corey Williams** (1:11)
Hey, thanks for having me. Glad to be here.

**Bob Elliott** (1:13)
This is kind of weird, though. It's kind of like, you know, I'm like the old head. You're like all the other guys that have played at the U of A. You know, we're a family.

**Corey Williams** (1:24)
Exactly.

**Bob Elliott** (1:24)
So I get a chance to bring my little brother here for sure to the show for people to know who you are and what you're doing.
So welcome. And one of the things we try to do here, again, to help people know who you are as a person, not necessarily what you think you might know about Corey because you see him on TV, you see his personality on TV, but Corey is a person. So let's do oral history.

**Corey Williams** (1:50)
Sounds good.

**Bob Elliott** (1:51)
Let's go back, take the DVD, wind it back to when Corey was born. Where were you born? Talk about siblings, family, school memories, elementary school, junior high, high school, et cetera.

**Corey Williams** (2:05)
You know, I got a pretty unique story. At least I think it's unique. I was born in 1974, Moline, Illinois, far west part of Illinois, almost on the Iowa border, a small little town. That's where I was born. Now I was adopted into a family. My mother and father adopted me three weeks after I was born. So then I was living in Batavia, which is the suburb of Chicago. So I was born in Moline, Illinois, adopted by a young schoolteacher and a guy who worked in a factory, straight middle class, blue collar folks. And I really had an enchanted upbringing growing up in the suburbs in the 80s. A Midwest suburb town. I mean, it was everything you see, main town, USA. Batavia, Illinois, at the time, 13,000 people.
My grandparents lived maybe five houses from each other.
There was the church, there was middle schools. I mean, it was just straight 80s. It was so easy to live. And I said, at that time, later, I had a younger brother and a younger sister. So there were five of us in that family. And it was just really everything you'd expect, the 80s in the Midwest. So I had a really standard upbringing, a lot of great childhood memories. And a lot of that served as the foundation for everything that happened afterwards.

**Bob Elliott** (3:24)
Okay. Any elementary school memories?

**Corey Williams** (3:28)
You know, my mom was a teacher, and she taught at my school. So my mom's teaching third grade, so K through six, mom's in the building. I see her in the morning, I see her all day, and then I come home to her. So, you know, with that, you can't get in trouble in elementary school because they won't even do nothing to you. They'll just literally go get your mom.

**Bob Elliott** (3:45)
So you know what, now we're finding out something else that you and I both have in common. My dad taught at the high school that Beverly and I went to.

**Corey Williams** (3:55)
So he was on you.

**Bob Elliott** (3:56)
But see, I never had a problem with it.
Now, my two younger brothers, they had a problem with it. But if you do what you're supposed to do, it's not a problem.

**Corey Williams** (4:03)
That's what I'm saying. I'm not worried about that. If I'm doing what I got to do, then I don't have to worry. But yeah, getting in trouble, fighting on the playground, anything you said or did got reported to your parents on-site. Yeah, so you know, you grow up with a little pressure. But the other thing about it, people don't realize, we're talking about the 80s, we're talking about playgrounds, totally different environment than today. Everybody picking on each other, dozens, all that stuff.