quote:
“I think the game’s never been better. I think there’s an agenda. When North Korea gets the nuclear bomb, it’s going to be football’s fault. We’re in a culture that everything is football, and it’s because football has the stage. I don’t care what people’s agenda is, yes, we’ve got to improve. We’ve got to always get better, always learn, always create ways to protect our players, but at the end of the day, I got all kind of education — a business degree, and MBA — but the greatest education I got is in between the lines.

“What I tell people is football is a great example to this country. Football unifies. Football brings people together. I go to Death Valley, and there’s 85,000 people in those stands, and they’re packed, and you know what? Monday through Friday, a lot of those people probably wouldn’t talk to each other, because they’re different religions, different colors, different neighborhoods, different bank accounts, but on Saturdays, when the Tigers score, they’re hugging each other, they’re high-fiving.

“I have brothers for life that I met between the lines. When you put the helmet on, it doesn’t matter what color you are, what religion you are. It’s a singleness of purpose. Nothing brings people together like the game of football. You want to fix Congress, let’s go create some football teams, have some inside drills, some one-on-ones. You’ll bring people together real quick. This game is special, it’s unique, it’s dynamic, it’s culturally diverse. You’ve got the kid from over here and the kid from up here, and they’ve become brothers through the game of football. It would never happen without that experience.

“The coaches of this game, all we see is the negative. If Deshaun Watson gets in trouble, it’ll be all over ESPN and everything. But to know he’s five hours away from graduating in two-and-a-half years, that doesn’t get a headline. That’s not running on the thing. That’s not a story. But that’s the world we live in, and football has gotten under attack, because it’s the negative. But there is far more good from this game. I’ve seen people’s lives change. I’m passionate about it, because you’re looking at a guy who’s life has been changed by the game of football.

“You can throw all the stats you want out there. Football ain’t going away. For some of these people out here that say they won’t let their kids play, that’s such a terrible perspective, in my opinion. I’ve lived it. I’ve seen the bad, and I’ve seen the good, and there’s not one thing out there — there’s bad and good in everything: a church, a bank, soccer, baseball, boxing, it doesn’t matter. You can’t turn an eye to the bad. You have to work through that and get better. But the game of football changes lives, mixes race and religion like nothing else, in my opinion.

“… How to be a good teammate, how to handle adversity, how to show up on time, how to have toughness and discipline, how to work hard, how to set a goal and work to achieve it, how to be unselfish. These are things that you learn through the game of football. You learn how to get up when you get knocked down. You learn how to lose. That’s what this game teaches. It empowers. What we do at Clemson is try to take away entitlement and try to empower. All I can tell you is I’ve had 135 seniors and 129 graduates, a bunch of young men who probably wouldn’t have had that opportunity without the game of football.”

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