Jared Allen

And I had a lot of respect because, you know, I came from, I didn't have a lot of money growing up.

I mean, we had prosperous times and we had really, really poor times, you know?

So, you know, I understood and would read fan mail when people would talk about, you know,

you know, football was their escape, right?

Or this guy was making a couple hundred bucks a week and he's spending a couple hundred bucks a week on his season tickets, you know?

Yeah.

So you understand the importance of what football was bringing to people, whether it was a distraction, whatever that fan, whatever the fandom was for.

And so for me, I'm like, some people are going to pay their hard-earned money to come watch me play.

Man, I'm just, I'm going to, I'm going to give it all.

I'm going to be me.

And part of that me was, was my faith.

And I think people saw me growing there.

You look at me as a rookie running around to where I was, you know, at the end of my career, you'd be like, man, there's, there's a maturation process of a human being right there.

Right.

And I think that was important for me to show people that, you know, and I, and I didn't, I didn't know it at the time.

It wasn't like my goal was to show this, you know, this process of change.

But when you look back at it, you say, you know what?

I think I did a good job of being me and setting an example of,

Listen, young, fun, dumb, immature, growing into responsibility, you know, you getting married, having kids, that whole life change that you could be an example for people that are out there running and gunning that don't think they're ever going to slow down or those people that, you know, hey, I can stand on my faith and it doesn't have to be this legalistic view of what people think your faith is, right?

Of this list of do's and don'ts.