Brandon Copeland is on a mission to educate and protect the futures of the next generation of sports stars. You may have recently seen him on the CNBC Halftime Report as I did.
This Ex. NFL linebacker and Ivy League Professor, is also the Executive Director and Co-Founder of an organization called Athletes.org., a Players Assoc. For College Athletes.
Brandon who played pro football or the Baltimore Ravens, and New York Jets, among others also got a terrific education at Wharton and is in his sixth year an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
He’s passionate about creating a legacy beyond his football career is is dedicating his time and knowledge to help others unlock their potential. Brandon is fully dedicated to helping the next generation of athletes and children in need.
His non-profit Athletes.org, focuses on providing financial literacy to college athletes, helping them handle their finances as they potentially deal with lucrative deals. College athletics have changed, and college athletes are essentially going pro earlier due to TV deals and other revenue streams. The NCAA has recently been discussing proposals about compensating those athletes. But Brandon knows too well how unprepared most young athletes when interest and money comes their way. Athletes.org, essentially acts as a players association for college athletes, providing services such as legal and mental health support, sometimes pro bono.
Financial literacy for athletes is what Brandon Copeland thinks is critical. He’s well aware just how many athletes have gone broke and spent all their money without consideration for their futures, Which is why, he and athletes.org aim to provide solutions so that doesn’t happen.
But that’s not all Brandon Copeland is working on. Did you know he and a slew of other NFL Players bought Christmas presents for hundreds of unsuspecting children in need this year? (The kids thought they were showing up for community service. )
Beyond the Basics, Inc., is Brandon Copeland’s family foundation he started with his wife. The foundation began by holding football camps and then organized “A December to Remember,” where NFL players provide Christmas shopping sprees for children.
Future Goals? Copeland hopes to expand the holiday initiative nationwide and encourage community involvement in every state, regardless of the presence of an NFL team.
What a wonderful conversation we had on The Debbie Nigro Show. It was my honor to showcase Brandon Copeland’s commitment to using his platform and experiences to positively impact the lives of young athletes and children, with a strong focus on financial education and community service.
BTW: He credits his grandfather, Roy Hilton, who played in the NFL for 11 years, for his inspiration and for giving him perspective on life after football.
AUDIO TRANSCRIPT:
0:00:00
And now, back to the Debbie Nigro Show.
2
0:00:03
Hey everybody, I’m Debbie Nigro, and I’ve got a special guest coming up for you right now here on the show today, because I’m all about people who are out there doing amazing things that you don’t maybe know about. My gosh, I mean I had to be educated. So are you ready to meet Brandon Copeland? I hope so because he’s worth your time. Brandon is a former NFL linebacker, 6’3″, you know the type, right? Looks good in tight pants. Went to Wharton, has a big brain and after 10 seasons in the NFL playing for the Baltimore Ravens along the way and the New York Jets and among other teams, he is doing something for the next generation of athletes coming up the pike. And he does amazing things for kids who obviously need a little extra love in this world. So when I heard about what he did at Christmas, which was he and a bunch of other NFL players bought all these unsuspecting kids presents for Christmas just because the kids thought they were coming to community service. Then I started researching him. He’s got this organization called athletes.org that is doing the most important work I’ve seen in a while, which is providing financial literacy to all these up-and-coming college athletes who are probably excited getting deals getting ready and then what they don’t have to do with it all so Brandon Copeland it is my pleasure to
7
0:01:45
have you on my show today welcome the pleasure is all mine happy new year to
2
0:01:49
you happy new year Brandon were you actually a professor too was it my
1
0:01:54
imagination yeah I’m an adjunct at the University of Pennsylvania going into my sixth year there. This spring, wow, this semester, I gotta get ready for class.
2
0:02:06
You’re a hard act to follow for a lot of the athletes coming up the pike, I can tell you that much, with the education and the teaching and the track record. So this is a very important story because I do think a lot of athletes who make it, like yourself, try and figure out their next act and are never quite sure what it is. When did you get the idea? This was going to be your next act helping everybody else
1
0:02:29
Yeah, I think you know helping people has always been in my just in my DNA. I think that you know, I when I was recruited to play high school football, I remember walking through the hallways as the coach told me about all these great players that came before me and I consider myself a pretty humble individual. And in my mind, as a young kid, I said, I want to be so good that you forget about those folks. And I had to have a little out of body experience of thinking like, wow, like, if that’s how I think, imagine what, you know, somebody else thinks about me and how they’ll honor me and my legacy as a football player post career, right. So, you know, that moment as a kid was like, alright, well, this, this legacy of football doesn’t really last that long. I need to be making sure that I’m doing other things that bring me joy, bring me passion, but but also, for me personally, helping unlock people’s potential is is a ripple effect that lives long beyond how many tackles I made, how many sacks I had, or and also long beyond my time here on Earth. So I kind of always had that, but I’ve also been fortunate to have the perspective of a grandfather who played 11 years in the NFL, 1965 through 76, Baltimore Colts, won a Super Bowl against the Dallas Cowboys, lost one against the Jets and Joe Namath. And so, you know, when you have the fortune of growing up and watching your hero every single day and seeing that, hey, football does end one day, it just gives you a different perspective as you chase, obviously, your dream of running out the tunnel on Sundays to screaming fans.
2
0:04:11
Oh my God, I’d love to run out that tunnel to screaming fans just once, just for fun. What was grandpa’s name?
1
0:04:15
His name was Roy Hilton. Roy Hilton. Roy Hilton.
2
0:04:18
Your grandpa was an NFL player. Wow, that must have been fun, watching him and bragging about him. And by the way, Joe Namath has been on this show, so you’re in good company I want you to know that Yeah, I love football and I love professional sports, and I do know that there’s a cutoff age-wise For a lot of players in various sports. You’re only if I’m correct 32 years old right now is that correct? Yes, you have done an awful lot before 32 years old, I can tell you that much, and you also are very young to be realizing what you’ve realized and using all your smarts to help everybody else. What is going on right now with college athletics? The rules have changed and as I understand it, can’t high school players be bought at
1
0:05:11
this point? Pretty much. Basically what happened is college athletes are now pro-athletes and you know schools and universities and the NCAA actually are now coming to the understanding publicly and saying hey we probably should pay college athletes. The NCAA’s president Charlie recently issued a proposal that said some of the top universities should actually pay their student-athletes. We don’t really refer to them as student athletes, we refer to athletes as college athletes and athletes.org. But pretty much, as you mentioned, young athletes are going pro sooner with the TV deals, the fan engagement, the jersey sales, the ticket sales, the concessions, right? Like I was watching the Michigan-Bama game the other day, and, you know, the beautiful… One, it makes me, as the old guy now, old football player, it makes me a little, like, envious of, like, man, to be that age again and to be playing in front of that type of crowd. Wow, what an amazing feeling. But the tragedy in it is, for some of those athletes, as they walk off that field, they walk away with some of the same bumps, bruises that pro athletes walk away with, but they have no money to show for it. They have just memories, which, again, you know, at this point in time, this day and age, there’s a lot of money going around. And so with athletes.org, what we built is a players association for college athletes that helps them maximize their income, amplify their voice, and give them on-demand support, which you alluded to earlier. We have literally gone out and already negotiated with lawyers and legal firms and accountants and mental health professionals so that they provide services, sometimes pro bono, for our athletes. So now, whether you’re a potential first-round draft pick going to the Baltimore Ravens, for example, you come to our platform and you can get a contract review for free. You can get a free background check done. Or whether you’re the backup, backup, backup at the University of Pennsylvania, you know, which is my alma mater, so that’s why I use that one, right? Like, you still can come to athletes.org and get those same services for free, right? And so we built something that is hopefully, I don’t want to say hopefully that we don’t need too much hope we have we have faith, right? Like, right, we built something that is a game changer for athletes, because I, frankly, have just been, you know, all I hear, you know, why do athletes always go broke? Why do athletes always do this? Why do athletes always, you know, not understand what to do with their money? Well, it’s time for somebody to build the solution. We’ve built it and thank goodness the athletes have taken a liking to us. We have over 80%… we started doing conferences for men’s and women’s basketball ahead of March Madness. We have… we’ve rolled out the ACC conference in November. We got over 95% of the ACC men’s and women’s basketball players signed up.
6
0:08:28
Wow, that’s big.
1
0:08:29
We have a bunch of, yeah, I mean, it’s been going extremely well. And so I think it’s cool to see because for as much as, you know, I understand when I was their age, I wouldn’t, I personally, I wasn’t ready to talk about these types of things. I was just happy to go out on the field and play football.
2
0:08:47
Right, right. Yeah.
5
0:08:49
Would you have done it for free?
4
0:08:50
The NFL?
2
0:08:51
Would you have done it for free just because you loved it so much? The NFL? When I was younger, yeah.
1
0:08:55
You know, when I was younger I would have done it for pennies. And, you know, frankly that’s why the NFL is such a popular… I mean all of these sports. Playing pro sports, I mean, again, it’s a dream come true to play a kid’s game and get paid like a king, right? Yeah. Who helped you? My mentor was always so good.
3
0:09:12
Yeah, who helped you?
2
0:09:13
Like when you were first starting out? Was there somebody guiding you?
1
0:09:17
A number of people, Village, right? So my agent was definitely huge in guiding me and keeping me focused. My grandfather, he was huge and he would never say it, but his story and his backdrop would just always make sure you stay humble, make sure, you know, he gave me advice of, you know, three things that can ruin your career and it early He’s seen three ways that his friends have ruined their careers. What was it?
2
0:09:45
You know what you can control yeah name the three name the three I got in there What injuries injuries you can’t control right?
1
0:09:52
Drugs and alcohol you can’t control and for him women right yep Being too distracted with all that comes with being a pro athlete as opposed to actually focusing on what what actually got you there. And so so yeah I’ve been fortunate my mother as well too she doesn’t take any mess. You know it’s been a journey and a tumultuous journey from you know 10 years in the NFL but I always had the mindset of it’s a matter of when not if and fortunately it worked out for me.
2
0:10:28
You’re so articulate. You’re a perfect spokesperson for this topic and I love that you’re doing this. Tell me about the thing you do around Christmas because my buddy Brian Rathjen, our mutual buddy, the president of Robert Ryan America’s First Service Disabled Veterans Broker Dealer, that’s why I love him, he does such good things with his life. He introduced me to you because he said, you’ve got to see what this guy and all these NFL guys are doing for all these kids around Christmas. So explain what that is every year so we get a jump on next year.
1
0:10:56
Yeah, no, I appreciate it. So my wife and I, we started our family foundation years ago and it’s called Beyond the Basics, Inc. And what we started doing originally were football camps and then we started this event called A December to Remember. Typical shop with a jock is what a lot of teams call it where you go and you meet some of your favorite players and stuff like that but we wanted to try to enhance it. So our first year in New Jersey I was with the Jets at the time. We took 60 kids shopping. 60 kids from some folks from Bronx and Dirty City etc. All underserved underprivileged kids and there was a moment during the first event where there was a young man who put on a jacket and the jet sent a videographer out there and he actually caught it and brought it to me and young man put on a jacket and this is Jersey City, New Jersey, right at the time. He’s like, man, I don’t have to be cold anymore. And I’m like, Oh, gosh, you got me. So so you, you see a bunch of kids coming in there and they buy stuff for everybody but themselves a lot of times and we give every kid $200 shopping spree each. They think they’re doing community service and so the next year we decided, hey, you know, how about we get our friends from around the league to replicate what we’re doing on the same day or two depending on their game schedule and stuff like that in their city. And so the next year we went to seven cities and you know, we kept it going even through the pandemic. And we’ve grown it. And this year, this past year, we gave away $100,000, over $100,000 to 500 kids, 11 cities, 10 states, over 20 NFL players and current and former NFL teams involved, which was phenomenal. And in a five-year span, we’ve given away almost a million dollars, almost a million dollars during the holidays to literally thousands of kids. And it’s just been an amazing, amazing thing to do because, you know, the athletes, the NFL players, you know, we have our group thread and the ones that participate and a lot of them send videos from it. They thank us and all those things. I have to thank them for wanting to be a part of it and wanting the support. But it’s really cool because, you know, we’ve grown up and we’ve been taught to compete with each other. And it is really cool to see that we can compete on Sunday, Monday, sometimes Thursday, but the rest of the week we’re working together to put smiles on faces. And so it’s one event and these guys do so many other special things in their communities. And I just appreciate the fact that they want to be a part of this and and anybody else out there we just we’ve set up a system that can scale it and you know my vision for is one day this is going in all every single state and whether there’s an NFL team there or not but there’s community members who want to put a smile on people’s faces during during the holidays and sounds
2
0:13:59
good to me man yep smiles are good I can assure you your story and what you’re doing is one of the better ways I wanted to start my year off here on the air by showcasing you. You guys are just tuning in. I introduced you today to Brandon Copeland and he’s a former NFL player and he’s got this cool organization called athletes.org which I think he described it once as the Airbnb of professional services for athletes and helps the young generation coming up be educated financially savvy and protected and going forward and you know it’s unbelievable so I just want to thank you so happy to meet you Brandon you have a great happy new year and let’s stay in touch okay keep you posted sounds like a plan happy new year happy new year you too gosh that’s a refreshing story with a refreshing guy.
Transcribed with Cockatoo
