I think every year you're in the NFL you probably lose three or five years off your lifespan.

I've never thought that I would see any man of color, not just a black president, but any man of color, I never thought that I would live to see that. I thought maybe my grandchildren would, but I never thought I would. So when Barack Obama first started to run I was like, "I've never heard of this guy - he probably doesn't have a shot." But then he started picking up steam and that piqued my interest.

I get a lot of people that are thanking me for speaking out about certain issues. I get people telling me, "If you don't like it here, then there's plenty of other countries to go to," which is hilarious to me. I don't take anything personal. A lot of people are blinded by their love for this country.

For me, 9/11, it was my last year in college and I didn't know anything about Al Qaeda, I didn't know anything about bin Laden, I had no idea. I think probably after a few years when I started seeing how the country and the policy was shifting due to terrorism, I wanted to know: Why are these people terrorizing us, and who are they?

It's like, 'Wow. Yes, I had fun... but damn, was it really all worth it when I'm in a wheelchair at the age of 45 and can't play with my grandkids?'

I'm not going to be the guy to be 36, 37 years old still trying to hang on and play in the NFL. I'll be 33 in a couple weeks, and there's a million things I want to do with my life before my time is up, which is hopefully 40, 50 years down the line from now at least. So I'd definitely be content.

Anyone that knows me will tell you that any time we're going somewhere, if there's a US flag, they'll always point it out because they know I love it. Just how our whole country started and just the migration of Europeans to this country, all of that, just the history of everything has fascinated me, but my biggest thing is I want people to understand that when there are hostilities between nations there's always two sides.