If you're tweeting - and this is what I tell the young athletes who come to me about these situations, because I've been through them and I've seen both sides of it - if you're tweeting just because everyone else is tweeting and you're not uncomfortable, if it doesn't feel like a sacrifice - like when I wore that T-shirt it was a sacrifice.

I honestly think there's people who just perceive me different.

Shame on me, for me to have this platform and me to have this opportunity to stand up for something that I thought was unjust, and I passed on it. I can't do that.

I was always the underdog that everyone identified with, and I still think I'm that way. But if you're on the other side of the fence on a certain issue, your opinion is going to change. And that was the part I was scared of, because I built my reputation on being this guy who's all about football - and I am, and I'm still the same guy, that doesn't change.

I understood that there would be some backlash, and that scared me, honestly. But deep down, I felt like it was the right thing to do. And if I was to run away from what I felt in my soul was the right thing to do, that would make me a coward. I can’t live with that. God wouldn’t be able to put me where I am today, and as far as I’ve come in life, if I was a coward.

There's bad people since the beginning of time. Literally one of the first four human beings was someone who killed somebody. So that's never going to change, unfortunately.

Some people who make it to where we are, life changes for them, they're treated differently, they're recognized. They're 6-foot-6, 280 pounds and people automatically know what they do for a living.