Yeah

... um, there were some people I knew that were involved in doing financial literacy education at schools at like Alabama and Clemson, places like that.

They were, uh, they were based in Philly.

And I connect with them and we started talking about the NIL stuff, so started consulting with them and then talking to other people.

And, you know, having the perspective of a former coach as well as now a trustee and seeing this from both angles, I had a different vantage point that, uh, it sometimes allowed me to see around the corner before some other people could, so got involved in that space.

And then the last, uh, seven or eight months as this legislation that is now in the Senate has come about, uh, connected with trustees from a lot of other schools, some in the Big Ten, some are at schools around the country, to see if we could have some impact on how this would all end up.

Right.

You got plenty of money.

Bring us through what happens next.

It gets very complex, but...

At Penn State, there was a situation where a former coach was accused of sexual assault of children.

And he had not been, at the time he was arrested, he hadn't been a coach at Penn State for over a decade, for over 11 years.

But it became a media firestorm because my dad, who did nothing wrong, he was told of one report and reported it exactly as he was supposed to under the law.

And to the fullest extent, he was allowed to under the law.

The media narrative did not understand that or chose not to understand it.

But when you're being falsely accused of things, it is hard to not want to strike back or to fire back or to fight it till you die, right? So how did you learn to let these haters and liars go?

I'm curious, you know, if you could kinda walk through what you think everybody is getting wrong about the story, about your father, about anything that you wanna say and set the record straight.

Well, I think the idea that Joe was central to this is, is something that still kinda lingers, that, you know, he was somehow involved in a cover-up.

There's absolutely no truth to it.

The prosecutors in the case were on 60 Minutes and said flat out that they, there was no cover-up on Joe's part.

Um, so I mean, the idea that there was some sinister thing going on here, that we were enabling Jerry Sandusky, that he was around, uh...

You know, I went on to, um, Mike and Mike at ESPN, and they were like, "Well, you know, these kids were around the program all the time." I said, "No, no, no, no, no.

No, Jerry was not around the program with kids.

That is correct.

Yeah

... pretty apparent that NIL was gonna happen, the NCAA just kind of hoped that lawsuits would make it go away.

College presidents kind of ignored it like it's not gonna happen, and on the board of trustees I was telling people on a regular basis it's gonna happen.

My dad's the kinda guy that the minute he saw something was gonna happen, he'd say, "Look, let's get control and let's land the plane." And so they would have found a way to work with all the stakeholders, players, coaches, university presidents, athletic directors, and find a way that was acceptable to everybody to try and find a model that had stability.

So I think we would've been further along if that generation of coaches were part of it.

So I think that's probably the biggest thing that would be different than where we are now.

He's also a realist, and he also understood that, you know, if the players walked off the field before a broadcast, no one's gonna stick around to watch the coaches play cornhole or pickleball, whatever the sport may be, because they're there to watch the players, and we were all, you know, realistic about that.

Can you talk about how that theme has showed up in real life and how you advise people to deal with those types of situations?

So, so what made you say this book and now?

Well, couple things.

I-- When my dad died about two, two or three years later, I, I wrote a book about him.

And then, um, it did really well, really well, and people said, "What are you gonna write about next?" And I was like, "Okay, well, that's a good sign that people want me to keep writing stuff." At that point, you know, I would sit around and people would ask what college football's really like, and I would tell them stories about recruiting or in the course of a game and the what, what it's like in headsets.

And some would say, "You ought to, you ought to write a book about that." So I started to write it, and then I realized, you know, some of these recruiting stories, we gotta change names to protect the innocent and the not so innocent because there's a lot of things that go on.

So I said, "You know what?" There was a book called Primary Colors, which was ostensibly about the Clinton presidential campaign, and it was written as fiction.

I said, "You know what? That's what I'll do.

It's in the book, but why mental health matters and what people should be looking for.