Jamal Merrell

It set us up academically.

athletically because one the football program was known but not as known on the chart where we put it um academically to go to school and learn a trade that's you're getting more than what you expect and just going to a school learning just academics um to be able to leave high school with a trade in dental lab i felt like man like i could go get a job right now so that made me more of a a man pretty much to know that i can go out and get a job like right now

Yes, now.

Because now my daughter, being in her private school, seeing how much she's benefiting from it, it's a college atmosphere.

She looks at her homework, and when I look at homework, I'm like, holy shit.

All the time.

I mean, that that's what shaped us into becoming the men we are today and the athletes we were, um, we always were always were competitive.

If it was academics, if it was doing the homework, if it was.

just going outside definitely in high school because we had two different positions but we both were still on offense and defense so we always felt like our vibes and energy and competitiveness shaped the team okay and that's what every level we went through we kept that so when you were in high school you played receiver what did your brother play he played tight end and then defense end so I was receiver and safety in college and well in high school what was it like leaving basketball behind and then continuing with football

Hurtful because the more older I got, I realized like, man, like I was way better at basketball.

Yes, he was good at basketball.

But me, I was more fundamentally sound, can shoot, can dribble, can dunk.

And I was only getting better and better.

Yes.

Like still to this day, she's like, Oh, I'm either going to do volleyball or basketball or soccer and basketball.

I will never seclude her to just one sport.

Cause my dad, he, and our, once we start, we had over like 60 college scholarships and he was like,

Well, we're just going to focus on football.

And at the time, we didn't know what we didn't know.

So he kind of protected us.