The Breakfast Club - INTERVIEW: Malcolm Jenkins Talks Colin Kaepernick, Confrontation With Eric Reid , Pro Athlete To Author + More

Episode Date: October 3, 2023

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Hey, what's up? This is Ramses Jha. And I go by the name Q Ward. And we'd like you to join us each week for our show, Civic Cipher. That's right. We discuss social issues, especially those that affect black and brown people, but in a way that informs and empowers all people. We discuss everything from prejudice to politics to police violence, and we try to give you the tools to create positive change in your home, workplace, and social circle.

We're going to learn how to become better allies to each other. So join us each Saturday for Civic Cipher on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, y'all. Niminy here. I'm the host of a brand-new history podcast for kids and families called Historical Records. Executive produced by Questlove, The Story Pirates, and John Glickman,

Historical Records brings history to life through hip-hop. Flash, slam, another one gone. Bash, bam, another one gone. The crack of the bat and another one gone. The tip of the cap, there's another one gone. Each episode is about a different, inspiring figure from history, like this one about Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old girl in Alabama

who refused to give up her seat on the city bus nine whole months before Rosa Parks did the same thing. Check it. And it began with me. Did you know, did you know? I wouldn't give up my seat. Nine months before Rosa, it was Claudette Colvin. Get the kids in your life excited about history by tuning in to Historical Records. Because in order to make history, you have to make some noise.

Listen to Historical Records on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Wake that ass up in the morning. The Breakfast Club. Morning, everybody. It's DJj nv charlamagne the guy we are the breakfast club we got a special guest in the building yes indeed the brother malcolm jenkins welcome brother appreciate y'all having me how y'all doing i'm blessed black and holly favorite how you doing my brother doing well doing well malcolm got a new book out called what winners won't tell you i love that title break that title down yeah i mean you know a lot of

the times we see people who have a lot of success who are champions and we hold them up high, but oftentimes we don't see, you know, what makes them that way. And oftentimes we kind of glorify that process and we look at the end result. But for me, I've always been a bridge builder and wanted to make sure that I contextualized the 13-year career that I just finished, you know, all of the things that I've kind of accomplished by showcasing that journey, that process, that evolution of a man into what you see now.

And really, to me, that's what you want to do. That's what you want to live. You want to have impact on things. You want to leave people with breadcrumbs to that success. And so I kind of opened up. The reason I don't have a shirt on on the cover is because it's a very vulnerable memoir. It's one of the things where I show kind of the failures, the process, how I developed into the person I am today.

Nobody likes to show that no more. You played in NFL, you're a former NFL player. You got drafted with New Orleans and then you played for the Eagles. Boo! You got that cowboy shirt on. Is this shirt like kryptonite to you? No,

not at all. Not at all. We know what's going to happen at the end of the year. You going to the Super Bowl? I don't know. He says that every year. Every year he says that, but this is the year.

What year is that ring from? You said that last year. 1996. You said that last year. You said that last year. Now, what made you want to write this book now? You talk about the winning and the losing and being so open and vulnerable. What made you want to write this book now? You talk about the winning and the losing and being

so open and vulnerable. What made you want to write the book at this time? Yeah, so, you know, one of the things as an athlete, your life is usually documented by other people. Everybody else writes about you, talks about you, and we rarely get to hear the athlete talk about their own experience and contextualize it for themselves. I got

two young daughters, like, you know, that I think a lot about what I want to leave to them, how I want them to view me. And so I figured it was better for my story to be told from my own words. So I ended up writing a book myself. Cover to cover is all me. And it's one of those things that I'm always involved in everything I do.

So for me, it's one of those things that, again, everybody doesn't get to see what goes into the process that goes into the mindset, the cerebral parts of not only football, but life, the failures. And I think that has always been important for the people I know who are watching me to see that part of it, because that's the difference. You know, most of the time, though, you'll see somebody at the top and you think you can't get there. You seem so different, you know, some far from your example. And hopefully this, this kind of closes that gap for the reader to see like, no, these people who have success are just like you.

They go through trials, they go through tribulations. It's those who continue to fight. Those continue to play. You know, the idea, you know, that life is this journey. You don't, especially with sports. I think life is like a game. We tend to only enjoy life or the game after we've won. The victory is when you get to enjoy life. But really the winners will tell you that you enjoyed playing the game. In life, you have to enjoy where your feet are, enjoy the process,

regardless of the results. And really that's how I've lived my life. That's how I've grown to have success, and I try to live that every day. I love in the book you talk about a lot of the things you did as far as in the social justice space because you were the head of the Players Coalition. When it comes to social justice and being an athlete, what's the balance?

Man, it's, you know, one of the things we had to do was find what our role was, you know, because we're not the experts. We're not devoting our lives to be activists, but we do have a role, you know, as, as role models and a platform to do something. And I think one of the things that we found to be very useful was to place ourselves as conveners. We, we can bring, you know, communities to politicians, to police. We can use all of the intention that we get to drop, to put pressure on,

you know, those who are in power, especially in our local markets. And that's really how we formulated, Anquan Bolder and myself, formulated the Players Coalition as a vehicle for athletes all over the country. If you say, I want to get involved with the things going on in my community, you want to get involved with politics and whatever, you want to lobby, here's the education on the issues locally, Here's who you need to push on. Here's people are power.

And here's some resources to put those things together. So, you know, we kind of worked through that on our own. And then once we figured out the plan or figured out what worked, we just held the door open for anybody who wanted to come. It started with a group of about 12 athletes and now has expanded to 12 professional leagues of sports, which is far greater than anything I could have imagined when we started it, have an impact with grassroots organizations all the way up to politics. What are some of the accomplishments that the Players Coalition did

that we didn't hear about? So the majority of the work was like, hey, all right, talking about the negotiation with the league and things like that. But what we were able to turn that into you know so specifically my focus was in pennsylvania uh one of the things i was most proud of was uh we pushed for a bill to get passed called the clean slate act and most people don't know one in three people in america have a some kind of criminal record um and so what this did was roll back um or expunge those records after 10 years if you hadn't violated for nonviolent offenses. And we were like, you know, that's a low hanging fruit. Let's get that out the way.

But that ended up affecting like over three million people across the state of Pennsylvania. So that's that affects how you, you know, what jobs you can get, where you can live. And it's just that's a very low hanging, you know, low hanging fruit when it comes to policy. In New England, guys were doing things. They lobbied to get a bunch of millions of dollars put into the school system to close the digital divide, getting, you know, computers and things like that. So these are happening all over the country, Louisiana, Florida, Ohio, all the way to Cali. And it's being done not only by me, but obviously by athletes all over. Now, when players were kneeling at one time,

how did you guys support the players, if at all? Yeah, well, I was raising my fist. And that's how the Player Coalition kind of came to about. And I talk about it in the book, just about that moment, everybody wanting to figure out what to do, but not quite agreeing, which seems to be, over the time of history, a common thread.

Like people having, you know, the same ideals, a bunch of people being very passionate about, you know, pushing black people forward or getting involved, but having differences of agreement, you know, differences of opinion and strategy. But my biggest thing was always about the work. I'm like, whoever is about, you know, making a change and putting in the time and effort to do it, let's collaborate,

let's work together. And we've been doing that over, you know, over the course of now, coming up on a decade. I feel like you took a lot of, you took a lot of heat back then. Yeah. You know, Eric Reid called you a sellout. You know, y'all had y'all, if you watch football,

your famous confrontation, you know, during the game, before the game as well. Like, have y'all been able to have a conversation since then? No, you know, during the game, before the game as well. Like, have you all been able to have a conversation since then? No, you know, and a lot of people, you know, even in those times were like, hey, man, you need to reconcile that. You need to squash that. But I've always maintained that, you know, I never wanted to be besides that. And I was very disappointed after that game with myself because I gave the media that image. The last thing I wanted was two black men fighting over, you you know trying to save their people or trying to help their people

it's counterintuitive it doesn't work and so for me I've always maintained that like I'm proud of the work that they did I'm proud of you know all of us were we're trying to figure it out at that time but it's not me it's not on me to reconcile the situation like I never had a problem I don't hold any gripes um I was always focused on the work. Like I never had a problem. I don't hold any gripes. I was always focused on the work. I knew that regardless of how I was feeling, the things that were coming down to me, the things that people were saying,

my focus was always on the people. I got into this not to lift myself up. So my feelings didn't matter. It was like, okay, what's the goal here? And it's to help. So all of that to me was distractions and I had to stay focused on the goal, why was there why you know i put myself in that position uh and just maintain what was your thoughts on uh everything that's going on with colin kaepernick and everything that's

happening right now what's your thoughts on that i mean it's you know it's confusing at this time it's almost seven years away you know it's you almost want him to just kind of like stand on his legacy i think any the the way that it's being approached now and the way that it's being kind of laid out, it almost, you know, it's like worrisome. It makes me a little worried. What you mean? I mean, you know, you're talking about, you know, somebody who's once playing in a Super Bowl that's down like begging to be in the practice squad seven years after later.

You know, forget the politics or who he is. Any athlete that's out of the game for seven years and is still begging to be in a practice squad is concerning to me. It's that now being on the other side of retirement and having to deal with that identity change myself, you know that that's a, it's a strong thing that he's dealing with.

And you worry about like, okay, how does one handle transitioning into the next phase of life, the next chapter? Because that was done like you can't play football forever. So we need to see, you know, what that next example is. And with so many people following them, I think we all want to know, like, all right, what's that? What's that next move? You know, some people would say that, you know, he's been playing similar to you, I'm sure, since you were three years old. So that's all that you know and love and maybe on the bucket list was playing in the Super Bowl or winning a Super Bowl I should say so for some people who say maybe he hasn't got that off yet and then some people would say you know like even Charlemagne

has mentioned that he feels like that letter was kind of like an embarrassment and a disgrace that you know you go from pro athlete to Super Bowl contender to practice squad. No I don't think anybody want to win a Super Bowl that bad I don't think it's about the Super Bowl because that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about just getting on the roster. But, you know, who knows? I think that's the one thing that leaves the concern

is we don't know what the motivation is. But I don't know that, you know, one is chasing a Super Bowl. I think it is, I think it comes down to, and I'm watching it in many teammates of mine. I don't know if you saw Kelsey. Jason Kelsey did a documentary about his life last year. He was trying to decide if he wanted to play or not. At the end of it, he goes through all of these things that he loves most,

his family, his wife, his health, but he is so afraid of moving on to something else. He says, I can't imagine myself being the best in the world or anything else. And so he decides to come back. He's obviously playing again this year. And I watched it. Most people applaud it. I watched it in fear because here you are saying all the things that you value most,

you're willing to sacrifice because you're afraid of stepping into the unknown. And I think that's one of the things that I know for me, the opening chapter in my book is fear. I've learned to always, like, step into the things I'm afraid of. And that's how I knew I was ready to step away from the game is because the only thing that was holding me there, I had made enough money, my body was healthy, I was focused on other things, but the only thing really keeping me there was the fact that I was afraid

to step into the unknown of, you know, I've been playing football since I was seven. Same type of thing. But for me, my response afraid to step into the unknown. I've been playing football since I was seven. Same type of thing. But for me, my response is to lean into that. So I think there is a lot of that going on with athletes right now. And I think with Kaepernick being who he is and what he means to, especially our people, I think we always want him to be the example. But I think it's a great kind of reminder that everybody's human.

Everybody's dealing with their own stuff. And oftentimes, too, when you don't let go of something, you block a lot of your blessings. You never know what the future is going to hold if you keep holding on to the past. Yeah. I never thought I would write a book. Never in my life thought I would write a book.

Wow. And it wasn't until, like, yeah, you start to let go of these ideas of who you're supposed to be and these limitations we've kind of put on ourselves, and you lean into the unknown and say, well, OK, I can't tell myself I can't do this until I've proven myself. You know, until life proves that I can't do something, I have to always assume that I can. And for me, it's just always about like trying to expand, you know, the human experience as much as possible. I'm a forever learner. I'm curious about everything. And the more and more you learn, the more you do, you start to realize, you know, that human experience as much as possible. I'm a forever learner. I'm curious about everything. And the more and more you learn, the more you do,

you start to realize, you know, that there are no limitations, that any of the problems that you have in your life, you are going to be the base of that solution. And, you know, and that's a journey. It's not easy to get there. That takes a lot of trial and error. I love how you started chapter two. You started with a quote,

we must all suffer one or two pains, the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. Which one did you suffer the most? pain and regret um both hurt though and i think you know especially when you talk about like even love is one of those things is i've come to find love is like an action word i take love out as a noun in my vocabulary because we we often love and feelings but uh to really love somebody or even love yourself it looks like discipline it doesn't it doesn't we'll look in the mirror and say i feel good about myself so i love myself or I feel confident. So I must love myself. And so we love everybody else with feelings. But when you start to just look at actions, like how, what are the things you do to love yourself? Okay. Do you have discipline with what you eat, how you work out, how you take care of yourself? You know, do you go places you don't need to? Are you reading? Are you cultivating these parts of yourself? Those

things are uncomfortable. They take discipline, but but they they always expand who you are they help you grow they help you go to where you're trying to get to and i think a lot of the times we try to avoid the being uncomfortable um you know we try to avoid that discipline and end up just still being uncomfortable with the results because we regretted not having that you know not taking advantage of those times so for me i'm always trying to focus on you know the end goal doing those small things daily uh that starve yourself maybe sometimes there's some enjoyment but at the same time you know you're moving in in the direction you want to go now you mentioned earlier you had two daughters and i always ask athletes when they come up here if you did have a son uh would you want your son to play in the nfl uh i don't think i would have a desire for him to play if he wanted to you know for sure i

got all the keys to to show you how to get there and stay there um and it's and you know it's a dangerous sport but everything is is dangerous and i think one of the things about me i my first that first half of my career i was I would get these nagging injuries. My neck, I talk about in the book, I had to get a bunch of epidural shots in my neck. I'm like, I thought those were just for women. Yeah, I was getting them in my neck to play football. You're on heavy kind of anti-inflammatories, things like that. So there are negative things.

But when I stopped trying to hurt people in a game, I stopped trying to punish my defenders, I stopped getting hurt. And I played eight seasons straight with no injuries, which is absurd in the game. I stopped trying to punish my defenders. I stopped getting hurt. And I played eight seasons straight with no injuries, which is absurd in the NFL. So there is a way to play the game. There's a way to kind of move about it, take care of yourself that is safe. But obviously it's a violent sport. But the things that I've learned from playing football

are things that have made me who I am. I think they give me an advantage in any situation. You know, you talk about, you know, stepping away from the game and being since seven years old, you've been trained to be a leader. You've been trained to problem solve. You've been trained to go through processes, to evaluate yourself, to evaluate your opponent, fail, do it all over again, like live on routine. Like all of those things are things that when you get out into the world, you see regular people,os all the way down struggle with um yet we've been equipped to do this and been kind of trained to do that so i you know it's a trade-off you know i think some

of those things are good some of them bad it's just up to if i had a son it would really be up to him gotcha and you know tom brady wrote the foreword of your book explain that relationship because i would never have wrote a foreword yeah i mean you know we Tom Brady wrote the foreword of your book. Explain that relationship, because I would never have wrote a foreword for Tom Brady. Yeah, I mean, you know, we were looking, obviously we titled it, you know, What Winners Won't Tell You Lessons from a Legendary Defender. And we're kind of like, all right, well, who do we get to write the foreword? And Tom's name came up, and I'm like, guys, like, I've been trolling Tom about this Super Bowl for a few years now.

Like, I don't know if Tom is going to write it. But, you know, when I think about as a defender, who was my favorite opponent, it was Tom Brady. Loved playing Tom. He always brought the best out of me as a player. And, you know, he's the greatest of all time. So I just kind of shot my shot, shot him a text, and he obliged. You know, and it was kind of the cherry on top of the book.

Definitely, you know, a stamp. I appreciated him for that. Did y'all have a relationship before that? Really just a mutual, you know, relationship, respect as like an opponent, being peers in the league, but no, we're not like friends, we don't hang out. So this is really just based off of like, I see you, you see me type of thing. Now you said he's the greatest of all time.

I do, yeah. So you stand by he's the greatest quarterback of all time? Yeah. Okay, why? Because he does the ordinary better than everybody. Ooh. Like I look at Aaron Rodgers and I'm looking at his skillset, like, okay, Aaron Rodgers is probably the tougher one to play

because he has a skillset that really nobody else has. Like on the field, it's hard. But Tom, like he's not faster than everybody. People have better arm talent. He, you know, there have been other cerebral quarterbacks, but it's like, well, why is he having the success he has? And it's because of his process. He does all the ordinary things better than everybody else.

And I think that, to me, is like the cheat code of life. There's always going to be people with God-given talent, but you master the things that don't take talent and watch how far it goes. I feel like man what you just said makes so much sense when you look at the people who have god-given talent they usually do the basics better than everybody like they usually do something as simple as practice yeah harder than everybody yeah i mean think about you look at steph curry

jordan all these people like cobrie they talk about practicing like they don't talk about like oh yeah i gotta you, I can jump high. So that's, I just jumped over. No, they doing the very simple things over and over and over again. And we only see it in the game. Like, oh, this is crazy. And you don't realize he just been doing this same drill since the age of seven. Right.

And so now it's like clockwork body, you know, it's a muscle memory. And I think that's, that's something I've always been fascinated in and tried to do myself is like what can i you know instead of trying to be the best at some god-given talent or do these amazing things like how do you just do the do the ordinary right better than everybody else absolutely now you were just inducted into the uh ohio state hall of fame so congratulations now just if you could go back and change it because you know we talk about all the things you stand for now. Would you prefer or would you rather went to HBCU? Both of my parents went to to North Carolina A&T.

I think going back. No, it was a different time. Right. I think right now, the way that there's attention on it, there's people willing to put resources behind the programs and all this happened. Of course, I would now. You know, I think then it would you would have just kind of been selling yourself short it's like you you need the entire environment you need the eyes you need the coaches to come see one player coming you need the coach like what dion was doing you know for hbcus was a movement and that's something what is what we wanted to see. That's what would have made it, you know, appetizing for me as an athlete. You know,

but I do look at these athletes now who were doing it, like, I wish the environment was like that when I was coming out. We have those conversations, man. But I keep thinking,

I keep, I want people to remember, Deion's an anomaly, man. He is. Like, Deion was one of the biggest stars in the world. Because it's not like Eddie George is coaching. Right, right. You know what I mean? Like, we can be supporting anomaly man he is like dion was one of the biggest stars in the world because it's not like uh eddie

george is coaching right right you know i mean like we can be supporting it's a few yeah it's because it's dion yeah like that's what it's not how is it hugh jackson's in hugh jackson's coaching too right i believe so yeah yeah yeah i mean like i said he's not the only one but it is the dion effect for sure it's the it's not just the on-field stuff and coaching. It's the attention you're bringing, the message that you're bringing, the pride and kind of the showmanship that you bring to it too. You got to make it cool. How did your trip to Ghana influence your advocacy? Or just change your life period?

It changed everything. You know, you start to, I think all of us have a bit of an identity crisis at some point. You know, if you're African-American, you want to know where you came from. And at the lowest point in my life, it was like one of the most critical moments in the book, I needed to get away. And I was like, I always wanted to go to Africa. So I went to Ghana. And it was just to be around something you know a place

that's all black for a week and a half I didn't realize how much I needed that until I came back I was like I hadn't I hadn't even thought about being black for a week and a half and I was like that must be what white privilege feels like man and like oh you know it's like you didn't realize you needed those spaces to get away and so just going to the slave castles, the door no return, you just feel this connection with your ancestry that I hadn't had before. And so and even just nature and all of those things. So for me, it was it was life changing, changed my perspective of like what's important, what's my role here. Like you don't I don't strive to have success in this kind of like what's important what's my role here like you don't i don't strive to to have success in this kind of like american society it's like i'm i'm here for a purpose i'm gonna live here this

is what i call home but i don't have to buy into the ideology you have a you have something before slavery now to tap into a history to to to explore and i think that that that was mentally liberating for me you take your daughters uh, they haven't been yet. We've been to the continent. We were in like Northern Africa, Morocco, Marrakesh, but they haven't been to Ghana yet. Yeah, I took all four of mine and my seven-year-old, she's eight now, but she literally was like,

where are the white people at? Like, is that noticeable? Yeah, it's that noticeable. I was like, I tell people, I talk about it in the book, the only white face I saw was Jesus. And they have him. White Jesus is everywhere. It's crazy.

But I did bring, I brought my two brothers. Brought some of my frat brothers. I've been there like four times. The last time, and we closed out the book with it, is the time I bring my parents. They always wanted to get to the continent. And so I bring them with me. And they had a blast.

And the brother got to go because he got TV this morning too. So you got to pick up the new book. What Windows Won't Tell You. We appreciate you joining us. We appreciate you. Thank you for joining us this morning. Appreciate y'all having me for sure. Pick up the book right now. Malcolm Jenkins. It's The Breakfast Club. Good morning.

Hey, what's up? This is Ramses Jha. And I go by the name Q Ward. And we'd like you to join us each week for our show Civic Cipher. That's right. We discuss social issues, especially those that affect black and brown people, but in a way that informs and empowers all people. We discuss everything from prejudice to politics to police violence, and we try to give you the tools to create positive change in your home, workplace, and social circle. We're going to learn how to become better allies to each other,

so join us each Saturday for Civic Cipher on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey y'all, Nimany here. I'm the host of a brand new history podcast for kids and families called Historical Records.

Executive produced by Questlove, The Story Pirates, and John Glickman, Historical Records. Executive produced by Questlove, The Story Pirates, and John Glickman, Historical Records brings history to life through hip-hop. Flash, slam, another one gone. Bash, bam, another one gone. The crack of the bat and another one gone. The tip of the cap, there's another one gone. Each episode is about a different,

inspiring figure from history, like this one about Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old girl in Alabama who refused to give up her seat on the city bus nine whole months before Rosa Parks did the same thing. Check it. And it began with me. Did you know, did you know? I wouldn't give up my seat.

Nine months before Rosa It was called a moment Get the kids in your life excited about history by tuning in to Historical Records. Because in order to make history, you have to make some noise. Listen to Historical Records on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.