Athletes will spend thousands of hours mastering their craft on the field. But almost none of them prepare for the day it ends. And it will end. For most football players it ends sooner than they think. So what happens when the helmet comes off for the last time? When the injury happens that changes everything? When you get cut and nobody calls? If football is your whole identity, that moment will break you. The athletes who handle it are the ones who built something bigger than the game while they were still in it. Their faith. Their relationships. Their sense of who they are as a teammate, a leader, a person in their community. Those things do not get cut. Those things do not get injured. Those things follow you into every job, every relationship, every room you walk into for the rest of your life. @BrantMcAdams is the head football coach at @PLUFootball and this week on the podcast he breaks down recruiting, yes. But he also hits on why your identity as a football player has to be the smallest part of who you are, not the biggest. Want the full episode? Comment PODCAST and I will send it over.

When you pull up the tuition for a D3 school, the number hits you like a wall. You show your parents. They shake their heads. Someone closes the laptop. And just like that, a school that could have been the perfect fit gets crossed off a list it never even made it onto. That happens every single recruiting cycle. What most families never get to is the part where the sticker price is not the real price. Where financial aid, merit scholarships, and one of the highest discount rates in the country bring that number down to something that actually makes sense. There are athletes on D3 rosters right now from public schools, from towns that are not affluent, from families who almost did not apply because of that first number they saw online. They kept digging. And it changed everything. Every school in the country is also required by law to have a net price calculator on their website. Plug in your GPA and your family's information and you will get a real ballpark number, not the scary one on the homepage. @BrantMcAdams is the head football coach at @PLUFootball and this week on the podcast he breaks down recruiting from a head coach's perspective and what families get wrong about D3. Want the full episode? Comment PODCAST and I will send it over.