Speaker 1: Wake that ass up in the morning.
Speaker 2: The Breakfast Club.
Speaker 1: Morning.
Speaker 3: Everybody's dej n V. Charlamage the guy we are the
Speaker 3: Breakfast Club. We got a special guest in the building. Yes, indeed,
Speaker 3: brother Malcolm Jenkins.
Speaker 2: Welcome, Brother, appreciate y'all having me.
Speaker 1: How you're doing I'm blessed Black and Holly favorite. How
Speaker 1: you doing doing well?
Speaker 2: Doing well?
Speaker 1: Malcolm got a new book I'll called What Winners Won't
Speaker 1: Tell You. I love that title. Break that title done.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, a lot of the times we
Speaker 4: see people who have a lot of success, who are champions,
Speaker 4: and we hold them up high, but oftentimes we don't see,
Speaker 4: you know, what makes them that way, and oftentimes we
Speaker 4: kind of glorify that that process and we look at
Speaker 4: the end of you know, the end result. But for me,
Speaker 4: I've always been a bridge a bridge builder, and wanted
Speaker 4: to make sure that I contextualized the thirteen year career
Speaker 4: that I've just finished, you know, all of the things
Speaker 4: that I've kind of accomplished by showcasing that journey, that process,
Speaker 4: that evolution of you know, a man into what you
Speaker 4: see now, and really that's you know, that's to me,
Speaker 4: that's what.
Speaker 2: You what you want to do. That's what you want
Speaker 2: to live. You want to have impact on things. You
Speaker 2: want to leave people with breadcrumbs to that success. Uh.
Speaker 4: And so I kind of open up the reason I
Speaker 4: don't have a shirt on on the covers because it's
Speaker 4: it's a very vulnerable memoir. It's one of the things
Speaker 4: I showed kind of the failures, the process, how I developed,
Speaker 4: you know, into the person I am today.
Speaker 2: Nobody he played in the NFL.
Speaker 3: Former NFL player, You got drafted with New Orleans and
Speaker 3: then you played for the Eagles.
Speaker 2: You got no not at all at all. We know
Speaker 2: what's gonna happen at the end of the year, go
Speaker 2: to He said that every year.
Speaker 3: Every year he says that, But you said that last year,
Speaker 3: said that last year. Now, what made you want to
Speaker 3: write this book? Now you talk about the winning and
Speaker 3: losing and being so open and vulnerable. What made you
Speaker 3: want to write the book at this time?
Speaker 4: So, you know, one of the things is an athlete,
Speaker 4: your your life is usually documented by other people. Everybody
Speaker 4: else writes about you, talks about you, and we rarely
Speaker 4: get to hear the athlete talk about that own.
Speaker 2: Experience and contextualizing for themselves.
Speaker 4: I got two young daughters, like you know that I
Speaker 4: think a lot about what they what I want to
Speaker 4: leave to them, how I want them to view me,
Speaker 4: And so I figured it was better for my story
Speaker 4: to be told from my own words. So I ended
Speaker 4: up writing a book myself. You know, Cover to cover
Speaker 4: is all me, and it's and it's one of those
Speaker 4: things that I'm always involved in everything I do, so
Speaker 4: you know, for me, it's one of those things that
Speaker 4: again everybody doesn't get to see what goes into the process,
Speaker 4: that goes into the mindset, the cerebral parts of not
Speaker 4: only football.
Speaker 2: But life, the failures.
Speaker 4: And I think that that's always been important for the
Speaker 4: people I know who are watching me to see that
Speaker 4: part of it, because that's the difference. You know, most
Speaker 4: of the time, they'll you'll see somebody at the top
Speaker 4: and you you think you can't get there. You seem
Speaker 4: so different, you know, so far from your example. And
Speaker 4: hopefully this kind of closes that gap for the reader
Speaker 4: to see, like, no, these people who have success are
Speaker 4: just like you. They go through trials, they go through tripulations.
Speaker 4: Is those who continue to fight, those continue to play,
Speaker 4: you know, the idea, You know that life is this journey.
Speaker 4: You don't especially with sports, I think life is like
Speaker 4: a game. We tend to only enjoy life or the
Speaker 4: game after we've won. The victory is when you get
Speaker 4: to enjoy life. But really the winners will tell you
Speaker 4: that you enjoyed playing the game. In life, you have
Speaker 4: to enjoy where your feet are, enjoy the process, regardless
Speaker 4: of the results. And really that's how I've lived my life.
Speaker 4: That's how I've grown to have success, and I try
Speaker 4: to live that every day.
Speaker 5: I love in the book you talk about a lot
Speaker 5: of the things you did as far as in the
Speaker 5: social justice space because you were the head of the players.
Speaker 5: When it comes to social justice and being an athlete,
Speaker 5: what's the balance.
Speaker 2: Man, it's you know.
Speaker 4: One of the things we had to do was find
Speaker 4: what our role was, you know, because we're not the experts.
Speaker 4: We're not we're not devoting our lives to be activists,
Speaker 4: but we do have a role, you know, as role
Speaker 4: models and a platform to do something. And I think
Speaker 4: one of the things that we found to be very
Speaker 4: useful was to place ourselves as conveners. We can bring
Speaker 4: you know, communities to politicians, to police and use all
Speaker 4: of the intention that we get to drop to put
Speaker 4: pressure on you know, those who are in power, especially
Speaker 4: in our local markets. And that's really how we formulated
Speaker 4: Incomboldaan myself formulated the Players Coalition as a vehicle for
Speaker 4: athletes all over the country. If you say I want
Speaker 4: to get involved, you know, with the things going on
Speaker 4: in my community, you want to get involved with politics
Speaker 4: in whatever you want to lobby, here's the educational, the
Speaker 4: issues locally, Here's who you need to push on, here's
Speaker 4: people are power, and then here's some resources to put
Speaker 4: those things together. So you know, we kind of worked
Speaker 4: through that on our own, and then once we figured
Speaker 4: out the plan or figured out what worked, we just
Speaker 4: held the door open for anybody who wanted to come.
Speaker 4: It started with a group of about twelve athletes and
Speaker 4: now has expanded to twelve professional leagues of sports, which
Speaker 4: is far greater than anything I could imagine when we started.
Speaker 4: It have an impact with you know, grassroots organizations all
Speaker 4: the way up to you know politics.
Speaker 5: We's some of the accomplishments that the Players Coalition did
Speaker 5: that we didn't hear about.
Speaker 4: So the majority of the work was like hey, all right,
Speaker 4: talking about the negotiation with the League and things like that.
Speaker 4: But what we were able to turn that into, you know,
Speaker 4: so specifically, and my focus was in Pennsylvania. One of
Speaker 4: the things I was most proud of was we pushed
Speaker 4: for a bill to get pass called the Clean Slate Act.
Speaker 4: And most people don't know one in three people in
Speaker 4: America have some kind of criminal record, and so what
Speaker 4: this did was roll back or expunge those records after
Speaker 4: ten years if you hadn't violated for non violent offenses.
Speaker 4: And we were like, you know, that's a low hanging fruit,
Speaker 4: let's get that out of the way. But that ended
Speaker 4: up affecting like over three million people across the state
Speaker 4: of Pennsylvania. So that's that affects how you you know,
Speaker 4: what jobs you can get, where you can live. And
Speaker 4: it's just that's a very low hanging you know, low
Speaker 4: hanging fruit when it comes to a policy. And New
Speaker 4: England guys were doing things. They lobbied to get a
Speaker 4: bunch of millions of dollars put into the school system
Speaker 4: to close the digital divide and you know, computers and
Speaker 4: things like that. So these are happening all over the
Speaker 4: country Louisiana, Florida, Ohio, all the way to Cali, and
Speaker 4: it's being done not only by me, but obviously by
Speaker 4: athletes all over.
Speaker 3: Now when players with kneeling at one time, how did
Speaker 3: you guys support the players if at all?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I was raising my fist and I was
Speaker 4: wonder That's how the player coalition kind of came to
Speaker 4: about it, and I talk about it in the book,
Speaker 4: just about like that moment everybody wanting to figure out
Speaker 4: what to do but not quite agreeing, which seems to
Speaker 4: be over the time and history, a common thread like
Speaker 4: people having you know, the same ideas a bunch of
Speaker 4: people want being very passionate about, you know, pushing black
Speaker 4: people forward or getting involved, but having differences, you know,
Speaker 4: differences of opinion and strategy. But my biggest thing was
Speaker 4: always about the work. I'm like, whoever is about, you know,
Speaker 4: making the change and putting in the time and effort
Speaker 4: to do it. Let's let's collaborate, let's work together. And
Speaker 4: we've been doing that over you know, over the course
Speaker 4: of now, coming up on a decade.
Speaker 5: I feel like you took a lot of you took
Speaker 5: a lot of heat back then. Yeah, you know, Eric
Speaker 5: Reed called you a sellout. You know, y'all had y'all
Speaker 5: if you watch football, your famous confrontation during the game
Speaker 5: before the game as well, Like, have y'all been able
Speaker 5: to have a conversation since.
Speaker 4: Then, nah, you know, and a lot of people, you know,
Speaker 4: even in those times, were like, hey man, you need
Speaker 4: to reconcile that, you need to squash that. But I've
Speaker 4: always maintained that, you know, I never wanted to be
Speaker 4: besides that. And I was very disappointed after that game
Speaker 4: and myself because I gave the media that image. Last
Speaker 4: thing I wanted was two black men fighting over you know,
Speaker 4: trying to say that people were trying to help that people.
Speaker 4: It's counterintuitive, it doesn't work. So for me, I've always
Speaker 4: maintained that, like, I'm proud of the work that they did.
Speaker 4: I'm proud of you know, all of us were trying
Speaker 4: to figure it out at that time, but it's not me.
Speaker 4: It's not on me to reconcile the situation. Like, I
Speaker 4: never had a problem. I don't hold any gripes. I
Speaker 4: was always focused on the work. I knew that regardless
Speaker 4: of how you know, I was feeling the things that
Speaker 4: were coming down to me, that things, what people were saying.
Speaker 4: My focus was always on the people I got into
Speaker 4: this not you know, to lift myself up, so my
Speaker 4: feelings didn't matter. It was like, Okay, what's the goal here,
Speaker 4: and it's to help. So all of that to me
Speaker 4: was distractions and I had to stay you know, stay
Speaker 4: focused on the goal why I was there, why you
Speaker 4: know I put myself in that position, and just maintain.
Speaker 3: What was your thoughts on everything that's going on with
Speaker 3: Colin Kaepernick and everything that's happening right now, what's your
Speaker 3: thoughts on that?
Speaker 4: I mean, it's you know, it's confusing at this time.
Speaker 4: It's seven years the way you know, it's you almost
Speaker 4: want him to just kind of like stand on his legacy.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 4: Any the way that it's being approached now and the
Speaker 4: way that it's being kind of laid out, it almost
Speaker 4: you know, it's like worrisome.
Speaker 2: It makes me makes me a little worried. What you mean.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know you're talking about, you know, somebody
Speaker 4: who wants to play in the Super Bowl that's down
Speaker 4: like begging to be on a practice squad seven years
Speaker 4: after later. You know, forget the politics or who he is.
Speaker 4: Any athlete that's out of the game for seven years
Speaker 4: and it's still begging to be in a practice squad
Speaker 4: is concerning to me. It's that now being on the
Speaker 4: other side of retirement and having to deal with that,
Speaker 4: that identity change myself, you know that that's that's a
Speaker 4: it's a strong thing that he's dealing with and you
Speaker 4: worry about, like, Okay, how does one handle transitioning into
Speaker 4: the next phase of life, the next chapter, because that
Speaker 4: one's done, like you can't play football forever, so we
Speaker 4: need to see, you know, what that next example is.
Speaker 4: And it's where so many people following them, I think
Speaker 4: we all want to know, like, all right, what's that?
Speaker 2: What's that next move?
Speaker 3: You know, some people would say that, you know, he's
Speaker 3: been playing similar to you, I'm sure since you were
Speaker 3: three years old. So that's all that you know and love,
Speaker 3: and maybe on the bucket list was playing in the
Speaker 3: super Bowl or winning a Super Bowl. I should say
Speaker 3: so for some people who say, maybe he hasn't got
Speaker 3: that off yet. And then some people would say, you know,
Speaker 3: like even Charlemagne has mentioned that he feels like that
Speaker 3: letter was kind of like an embarrassment and the disgrace
Speaker 3: that you know, you go from pro athlete to super
Speaker 3: Bowl contended to practice squad.
Speaker 4: Nah, I don't. I don't think anybody want to win
Speaker 4: a super Bowl that bad. I don't think it's about
Speaker 4: the super Bowl because that's not what we're talking about, right,
Speaker 4: We're talking about just getting on the roster.
Speaker 2: But you know who knows.
Speaker 4: I think that's the That's the one thing that that
Speaker 4: leads the concern is we don't know what the motivation is.
Speaker 2: But I don't know that you know, one is chasing
Speaker 2: a super Bowl. I think it is.
Speaker 4: I think it comes down to and I'm watching it
Speaker 4: in many teammates of mine, like even I don't know
Speaker 4: if you saw Kelsey. Jason Kelsey did a documentary about
Speaker 4: his life last year. He was trying to decide if
Speaker 4: he wanted to play or not.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 4: At the end of it, he goes through all of
Speaker 4: these things that he loves most, his family's wife, his health,
Speaker 4: but he is so afraid of moving on to something else.
Speaker 4: He says, I can't imagine myself being the best in
Speaker 4: the world of anything else, and so he decides to
Speaker 4: come back. Is obviously playing again this year, and I
Speaker 4: watched it. Most people applaud it. I watched it in
Speaker 4: fear because here you are saying, all the things that
Speaker 4: you value most, you're willing to sacrifice because you're afraid
Speaker 4: of stepping.
Speaker 2: Into the unknown.
Speaker 4: Dang, And I think that's one of the things that, like,
Speaker 4: I know, for me, the opening chapter in my book
Speaker 4: is fear. I've learned to always like step into the
Speaker 4: things I'm afraid of. And that's how I knew I
Speaker 4: was ready to step away from the game is because
Speaker 4: the only thing that was holding me there. I had
Speaker 4: made enough money, my body was healthy, I was focused
Speaker 4: on other things. But the only thing really keeping me
Speaker 4: there was the fact that I was afraid to step
Speaker 4: into the unknown of You know, I've been playing football
Speaker 4: since I was seven, same same type of thing. But
Speaker 4: for me, my response is to lean into that. So
Speaker 4: it's I think there is a lot of that going
Speaker 4: on with athletes right now, and I think with Kaepernick
Speaker 4: being who he is and what he means to especially
Speaker 4: our people, I think, you know, we always want him
Speaker 4: to be the example, but I think it's a great
Speaker 4: kind of reminder that everybody's human.
Speaker 2: Everybody's dealing with their own stuff.
Speaker 5: And oftentimes too, when you when you're when you're when
Speaker 5: you don't let go of something you block a lot
Speaker 5: of your blessings. You never know what the future is
Speaker 5: going hold if you keep holding onto the past.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I never thought I would write a book. Never,
Speaker 4: Never in my life thought I would write a book.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 4: And it wasn't until like, yeah, you start to let
Speaker 4: go of these ideas of who you're supposed to be
Speaker 4: and these limitations we've kind of put on ourselves and
Speaker 4: you lean into the unknown and say, well, okay, I
Speaker 4: can't tell myself. I can't do this until I've proven myself,
Speaker 4: you know, untilntil life proves that I can't do something,
Speaker 4: I have to always assume that I can. And for me,
Speaker 4: it's just always about like trying to span, you know,
Speaker 4: the human experience as much as possible.
Speaker 2: I'm a forever learner. I'm curious about everything.
Speaker 4: And the more and more you learn, the more you do,
Speaker 4: you start to realize, you know that there are no
Speaker 4: limitations that any of the problems that you have in
Speaker 4: your life, you are going to be a base of
Speaker 4: that solution and you know, and that's a journey. It's
Speaker 4: not easy to get there. That that takes a lot
Speaker 4: of trial and error.
Speaker 1: I love why you started chapter two.
Speaker 5: You started with a quote we must all suffer one
Speaker 5: or two pains, the pain of discipline or the pain
Speaker 5: and regret regret.
Speaker 1: Which one did you suffer them all?
Speaker 4: I think I suffer both until I learned, you know,
Speaker 4: the pain of discipline. I think I think I've gotten
Speaker 4: so much more comfortable in the pain of discipline than
Speaker 4: the pain of regret. Both hurt, though, And I think
Speaker 4: you know, especially when you talk about like even love
Speaker 4: is one of those things. Is I've come to find
Speaker 4: love is like an action word. I take love out
Speaker 4: as a noun in my vocabulary because we often love
Speaker 4: in feelings. But to really love somebody, or even love yourself,
Speaker 4: it looks like discipline.
Speaker 2: It doesn't.
Speaker 4: We're looking in the mirror and say, I feel good
Speaker 4: about myself, so I love myself. I feel confident, so
Speaker 4: I must love myself, And so we love everybody else
Speaker 4: with feelings. But when you start to just look at actions,
Speaker 4: like how what are the things you do to love yourself?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 4: Do you have discipline with what you eat, how you
Speaker 4: work out, how you take care of yourself?
Speaker 2: You know? Do you go places you don't need to?
Speaker 2: Are you reading?
Speaker 4: Are you cultivating these parts of yourself? Those things are uncomfortable.
Speaker 4: They take discipline, but they always expand who you are.
Speaker 4: They help you grow, they help you go to where
Speaker 4: you're trying to get to. And I think a lot
Speaker 4: of the times we try to avoid the being uncomfortable,
Speaker 4: you know, we try to avoid that discipline and end
Speaker 4: up just still being uncomfortable with the results because we
Speaker 4: regret it not having that, you know, not taking advantage
Speaker 4: of those times. So for me, I'm always trying to
Speaker 4: focus on, you know, the end, go doing those small
Speaker 4: things daily that starve yourself. Maybe sometimes it's some enjoyment,
Speaker 4: but at the same time, you know you're moving in
Speaker 4: the direction you want to go.
Speaker 3: Now, you mentioned earlier your two daughters, and I always
Speaker 3: ask athletes when they come up here, if you did
Speaker 3: have a son, would you want your son to play
Speaker 3: in the NFL.
Speaker 2: I don't think I would have a desire for the
Speaker 2: play if he wanted to.
Speaker 4: You know, for sure, I got all the keys to
Speaker 4: show you how to get there and stay there. And
Speaker 4: it's and you know, it's a dangerous sport, but everything
Speaker 4: is dangerous. And I think one of the things about
Speaker 4: me my first first half of my career, I was
Speaker 4: I would get these nagging injuries my neck. I talked
Speaker 4: about in the book, I had to get a bunch
Speaker 4: of epidor shots to my neck. I'm like, I thought
Speaker 4: those were just for women. Yeah, I was getting them
Speaker 4: in my neck to play football. You're on heavy kind
Speaker 4: of anti inflammatories things like that. So there are the
Speaker 4: negative things. But when I stopped trying to hurt people
Speaker 4: in the game, I stopped trying to punish my defenders,
Speaker 4: I stopped getting hurt and I played eight seasons straight
Speaker 4: with no injuries, which is absurd in the NFL. So
Speaker 4: there is a way to play the game. There's a
Speaker 4: way to kind of move about it, take care of
Speaker 4: yourself that is safe. But obviously it's it's a violent sport.
Speaker 4: But the things that I've learned learned from playing football
Speaker 4: are things that you know, have made me who I am.
Speaker 4: I think they give me an advantage in any situation.
Speaker 4: You know, you talk about, you know, stepping away from
Speaker 4: the game and being Since seven years old, you've been
Speaker 4: trained to be a leader. You've been training a problem solve,
Speaker 4: You've been trained to go through processes to evaluate yourself,
Speaker 4: to evaluate your opponent, fail, do.
Speaker 2: It all over again, like Live on routine.
Speaker 4: Like, all of those things are things that when you
Speaker 4: get out into the world you see regular people CEOs
Speaker 4: all the way down struggle with Yet we've been equipped
Speaker 4: to do this and been kind of trained to do that,
Speaker 4: So I you know, it's a trade off. You know,
Speaker 4: I think some of those things are good, some of
Speaker 4: them bad. It's just up to If I had a sign,
Speaker 4: it would really be up to him, gotcha.
Speaker 5: And you know Tom Brady wrote the forward of your
Speaker 5: book explaining that relationship, but I would never have Tom Brady.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, you know, we were looking obviously we
Speaker 4: titled it, you know, what, was going to tell you
Speaker 4: lessons from a legendary defender.
Speaker 2: We're kind of like, all right, well, who do we
Speaker 2: get to write the forward?
Speaker 4: And Tom's name came up, and I'm like, guys, like
Speaker 4: I've been trolling Tom about.
Speaker 2: This Super Bowl exa for a few years now.
Speaker 4: I don't know if Tom's gonna write it, but you know,
Speaker 4: and I think about as a defender, who who was
Speaker 4: my favorite opponent?
Speaker 2: It was Tom Brady. Loved playing Tom.
Speaker 4: He always brought the best out of me as a player,
Speaker 4: and you know, he's the greatest of all time. So
Speaker 4: I just kind of shot my shot shot of the
Speaker 4: text and he obliged. You know, that was and it
Speaker 4: was kind of the cherry on top of the book definitely,
Speaker 4: you know, a stamp.
Speaker 2: I appreciated him for that.
Speaker 1: Did you have a relationship before that?
Speaker 4: Really just a mutual you know, relationship respects like an
Speaker 4: opponent being peers in the league. But no, we're not
Speaker 4: like friends. We don't hang out. So this is really
Speaker 4: just based off of like I see you, you see
Speaker 4: me type of thing.
Speaker 5: Now you said he's the greatest of all time? Do yeah,
Speaker 5: so you stand by he's the greatest quarterback of all time?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 4: Why because he does the ordinary better than everybody? Oh, Like,
Speaker 4: I look at Aaron Rodgers and I'm looking at his
Speaker 4: skill set, Like, okay, Aaron Rodgers is probably the tougher
Speaker 4: one to play because he has a skill set that
Speaker 4: really nobody else has, Like on the field hard but
Speaker 4: tom like, he he's not fastening. Everybody's people have better
Speaker 4: arm talent. He you know, there have been other cerebral quarterbacks.
Speaker 4: But it's like, well, why is he having a success
Speaker 4: He has? And it's because of his process. He does
Speaker 4: all the ordinary things better than everybody else. And I
Speaker 4: think that's that to me, is like the cheat code
Speaker 4: of life, Like you can there's always gonna be people
Speaker 4: with God given talent, but you master the things that
Speaker 4: don't take talent and watch how far it goes.
Speaker 5: I feel like, man, what you just said makes so
Speaker 5: much sense. When you look at the people who have
Speaker 5: God given talent, they usually do the basics better than everybody.
Speaker 5: Like they usually do something as simple as practice harder
Speaker 5: than everybody.
Speaker 4: I mean, think about you look at Steph Curry, Jordan
Speaker 4: all these who like Kobrie, they talk about practicing like
Speaker 4: they don't talk about like, ah, yeah, I gotta you know,
Speaker 4: I can jump high, So that's I just jumped over. No.
Speaker 4: They doing the very simple things over and over and
Speaker 4: over again, and we only.
Speaker 2: See it in the game like, oh this is crazy.
Speaker 4: You don't realize he's just been doing the same drill
Speaker 4: since the age of seven, right, and so now it's
Speaker 4: like clockwork body.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a muscle memory.
Speaker 4: And I think that's that's something I've always been fascinated
Speaker 4: in and try to do myself, is like what can
Speaker 4: I you know, instead of trying to be the best
Speaker 4: at some guy giving talent or do these amazing things
Speaker 4: like how do you.
Speaker 2: Just do the do the ordinary better than everybody else?
Speaker 3: Absolutely, Now you were just inducted into the Ohio State
Speaker 3: Hall of Fame.
Speaker 1: So congratulations that.
Speaker 3: Now, just if you could go back and change it,
Speaker 3: because you know, we talk about all the things you
Speaker 3: stand for. Now, would you prefer or would you rather
Speaker 3: went to HBCU.
Speaker 4: Both of my parents went to North Carolina A and T.
Speaker 4: I think going back, no, it was a different time, right,
Speaker 4: I think right now the way that there's a tension
Speaker 4: on it, there's people willing to put resources behind the
Speaker 4: programs and all that happened. Of course I would now,
Speaker 4: you know, I think back then you would have just
Speaker 4: kind of been selling yourself short.
Speaker 2: It's like you you need the.
Speaker 4: Entire environment, you need the coaches to come out to
Speaker 4: one player coming, you need the coach Like what Dion
Speaker 4: was doing, you know for hbc USERS was a movement
Speaker 4: and that's the thing.
Speaker 2: What is what we wanted to see.
Speaker 4: That's what would have made it, you know, advertising for
Speaker 4: me as an athlete, and you know, but I do
Speaker 4: look at these athletes now who are doing it, like
Speaker 4: I wish I had, I wish the environment was like
Speaker 4: that when I was coming out.
Speaker 5: We have those conversations, man, But I keep thinking, I
Speaker 5: keep I want people to remember de anomaly, man, like
Speaker 5: Dion was one of the.
Speaker 1: Biggest stars in the world.
Speaker 5: Because it's not like Eddie George is coaching right right,
Speaker 5: like we could be supported.
Speaker 1: It's because it's Dion, Like that's what It's not a.
Speaker 2: Huge Jackson's in Hugh Jackson's coaching too, right, I believe.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean, like I said, he's not the only one.
Speaker 4: But it is the Dion effect for sure. It's the
Speaker 4: It's not just the on field stuff and coaching is
Speaker 4: the attention you're bringing, the message that you're bringing, the
Speaker 4: pride and kind of you know, the showmanship that you
Speaker 4: bring to it too.
Speaker 2: You gotta make it cool.
Speaker 1: How did your trip to Ghana uh influence your advocacy?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I just changed your life, period, It changed everything.
Speaker 4: You know, you start to I think all of us
Speaker 4: have a bit of an identity crisis at some point.
Speaker 4: You know, if you're African American, you want to know
Speaker 4: where you came from. And at the lowest point in
Speaker 4: my life, it was like one of the most critical
Speaker 4: moments in my in the book. I needed to get away,
Speaker 4: and I was like, I always wanted to go to Africa.
Speaker 4: So I went to Ghana and it was just to
Speaker 4: be around something, you know, a place that's all black.
Speaker 2: Or a week and a half.
Speaker 4: I didn't realize how much I needed that until I
Speaker 4: came back. I was like, I hadn't I hadn't even
Speaker 4: thought about being black for a week and a half.
Speaker 2: And I was like, that must be what white privilege
Speaker 2: feels like.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 4: And I'm like, oh, you know, it's like you didn't
Speaker 4: realize you needed those spaces to get away. And so
Speaker 4: just going to the slave castles, the door and overturn,
Speaker 4: you just feel this this connection with your ancestry that
Speaker 4: I hadn't had before, and so and even just nature
Speaker 4: and all of those things. So for me it was
Speaker 4: it was life changing change my perspective of like what's important?
Speaker 2: What's my role here?
Speaker 4: Like you don't I don't strive to have success in
Speaker 4: this kind of like American society. It's like, I'm here
Speaker 4: for a purpose. I'ma live here, that's what I call home.
Speaker 4: But I don't have to buy into the ideology you
Speaker 4: have a you have something before slavery. Now to tap
Speaker 4: into a history to to explore and I think that
Speaker 4: that that was mentally liberating for me. Do you think
Speaker 4: your daughters, Uh, No, they haven't been yet.
Speaker 2: We've been. We've been to the continent.
Speaker 4: We were in like Northern Africa, Morocco, Americas, but they
Speaker 4: haven't been a gane yet.
Speaker 1: Y'all took off for of mine and my seven year
Speaker 1: old she's eight now.
Speaker 5: She she literally was like, where are the white people that.
Speaker 2: I talked about in the book? The only white face
Speaker 2: I saw it was Jesus and they have him white.
Speaker 2: Jesus is everywhere. It's crazy.
Speaker 4: But I did bring I brought my two brothers. Uh,
Speaker 4: brought some of my frat brothers. I've been there like
Speaker 4: four times. The last time and we closed out the
Speaker 4: book with it is the time I bring my parents.
Speaker 4: They always wanted to get to the continent, and so
Speaker 4: I bring them with, bring them with me, and they
Speaker 4: had had a blast.
Speaker 3: The brother gotta go because he got TV this morning too,
Speaker 3: So you got to pick up the new book that
Speaker 3: Winders will tell you what. We appreciate you. Thank you
Speaker 3: for joining us this morning. Pick up the book right now,
Speaker 3: Malcolm Jenkins. It's the Breakfast Club, good morning, wake that.
Speaker 2: Ass up in the morning. The Breakfast Club