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?

Ever since I was a kid I've always loved history. I think that kind of catapulted things, but I would say the two major factors were maybe 9/11 and the election of Barack Obama.

I think whenever you go through something of that nature, you get to see who's really on your side and who's really there for you. That happened in my case. And it really let me understand that no matter how small of a decision you make, it's going to have a subsequent action or reaction, and something that started out very innocent turned into the tragedy that it was.

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'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.

Player safety is definitely something that has to be at the top of the list. I think that the union and the NFL are doing all they can to make sure they're protecting the players the best they can.