we take advantage of it.

- This is as good a time as any is, I want you to name drop.

Let's name drop who you got in the NFL.

Who's the doctors, who's the lawyers?

What have you done?

Tell us all about it.

- It's crazy, I mean, I think the start, how they start is more amazing than even how they finished.

Like where they came from originally.

Bryant McKinnie is a guy that people know.

Our dorm is named after him.

He played for 13 years in the League.

Well, he was in the band when he was a junior, didn't play football, played football when he was a senior.

Played for us for two years, played for Miami, won the Outland, then he went to the League and won the Super Bowl.

One of the better, probably one of the top five or six offensive line who ever lived.

And he was a 17-year-old kid who wanted to go home in the first week.

And so there are these tipping points in people's lives that you really have to understand so, so urgent.

And if you do the right things with them and take advantage, things go well for him.

So he's a prime example of that.

The Pro guys, we all know about the Pro guys, right.

Because they're on TV and stuff and you know, Mark (indistinct) is on TV and all those guys are alumni, the guy from the Giants are, he's their right tackle.

Pretty interesting stories from London.

Okay, no, we're not very creative at Lackawanna.

So I call him what, London.

Okay, so his name is, was calling him London.

Well, London comes here, he's from New Jersey.

He goes from London to New Jersey, plays football for one year, goes to Lackawanna, plays for two years, goes to Texas A&M, he's still in the League.

He's like been in the League for like 11 years.

11 years, okay.

So a guy who played football for basically one year in high school, right.

And two years at Lackawanna is playing in the League for like 11 years.

Completely, completely different story.

And so those people all have a place with us.

But to me, I know this sounds trite, but it's not, to me, teachers and all those kind of people that we bring up are vitally important and maybe even more profound because they come from an environment sometimes where nobody gave a chance to do that, right.

So education is just an opportunity, right, it's a chance.

And so if football can keep you here, right, then education could take you where you wanna go.

So sometimes you need that carrot, you need that, that something you really, really love to do to help your education.

So I see all these guys doing this stuff.

G Wade's out there, a guy named Shaun Galloway's out there in California.

He owns an ice cream company for the love of God.

Like I don't know how he does that, but he's out in San Diego and like he had no offers come out of high school.

He had no place to go really.

And came to Lackawanna College, got a college degree and now his life is different.

So education is what you make.

It's for certainly, but I think sometimes you need like an entree into it.

You need something to kind of get you into it.

- If so many of these young men credit you with getting to where they eventually got to, the big question is why, how, how were you able to do that?

- I think I love 'em enough to make their life difficult enough so their life turns out not difficult, right.

I love 'em enough so that you get punished at Lackawanna when you don't do what you're supposed to do.

You run stadium steps, you do all those things, right.

Care about 'em enough and they start caring about themselves.

And once that happens, everything changes.

Their lives change.

Like, you know, that look on a kid's face when he realize he can actually do it for the first time he can do it.

Your children, when your children walk for the first time and they realize they can do it.

Well, these guys are kind of the same way.

They realize they can do college work and then all of a sudden everything changes, their attitude changes, their life changes.

And I think that's really, really important.

So for that person who's teaching history, he's as important to us as the first round draft choice.

Absolutely is important to us.

And they all know it.

They all know it.

That changes everything, right?

- So you're able to see in real time what these young men look like when they first come to you and what happens one year, two year, five years later?

- It's fascinating, and myself and Denise, you know, we sit home and of course we talk about them.

Talk about 'em all the time and how they change and how they develop.

And at the end of it, like they become your best friend at the end, but sometimes you have to be hard and you have to be disciplined with them because they just need that.

- Your daughter Taylor, right?

I understand kind of grew up on the sideline there.

What is, I mean, she's not here.

I believe she lives in Florida, correct?

- She lives in Florida.

She has been at many games.

What we decided a long time ago was that if we could, we'd have Denise at every game that was ever played.

As soon as my daughter got old enough that she would be at every game we ever played and to our presidents, to their credit, they allowed us to do that, right?

They allowed us to go to Bowl games and do all those things.

She thought a 320-pound offensive tackle was a normal looking guy, right?

When she thought Brian McKinney was just like a regular guy, right?

She thought that, she thinks like a 225-pound linebacker hits somebody.

She doesn't even wince.

She's been at hundreds of games, hundreds of games.

And then she went to West Virginia, long and behold, and guess where she worked?

I'll give you a guess., the football office, right.

So she worked in the football office and we had four players there from Lackawanna at the same time as she went there.

And so Taylor has been involved in football our entire life.

But you know what's nice about it, and I'll say this to everybody here.

Everybody who's a father, how nice it is to be able to include your daughter and wife at work.

How nice is that, what an advantage that is.

And I'll be honest with you, that is the single most important reason that I stayed.

And people say, why did you stay, why did you stay?

Because I can include my wife Denise, and my daughter Taylor.

That's why I stayed because I could have a family and I could coach football at the same time.

And we know in many situations that coaches don't have families or they don't have families they could see very often.

So I've had advantage.

So I thank you all for having that happen.

That was very important for me.

- You had to have had other offers.

- Yes, yes.

- You wanna elaborate?

- No.

(audience laughing) Hey, sometimes I was, sometimes you get the offer and you'd be like, damn, where's Colonel Volk?

Where's Colonel Volk, he's there, yeah.

Sometimes you get an offer and you go to the Colonel and you say, Colonel Volk, I'm gonna go to Oklahoma, you know, and don't go to Oklahoma, like stay here, you know.

And so yeah, you do get offers along the way and it's very flattering.

But when I got out of high school, I went to Maryland like we talked about.

Then I went to Phoenix, like we talked about, I'm sorry, St.

Louis.

Then I went to Phoenix like we talked about.

I travel all over the country.

I did not wanna travel all over the country again.

And you know, coaching is a three or four year stint and you travel and you know, the thing I learned a long time ago, your family has to travel too.

And so now Denise has to have a different job and Taylor has to be in a new school.

And to me it just was not worth it.

And I could get more done here and I'll say it to the day I die, maybe we'll put it on a tombstone, I'm not really sure.

I think we have done more here for these kids than anybody could have did at any level.

And to me that's really, really rewarding, more than anything else.

- Had you gone to Oklahoma, maybe the impact wouldn't have been there.

- It wouldn't have been there, yep.

You coach eight great looking kids who could really play the game, right.

And then they go to League or wherever and you coach eight more, Lackawanna, you coach 130, sometimes 140 yo, sometimes 140.

Ask my brother back there, the big fella.

He ran the dorm, right?

And sometimes there was like a lot of kids there.

And so I think you get to influence more kids.

And I really think that for me in my life, if I look back on it, I will 100% say it did the right thing, no question.