Welcome back to Kings of Columbus special interview on this one this is in place of the betting show which is uh uh taking a week off this week and maybe needs to take the whole rest of the season off because we keep losing you money so uh Austin’s doing okay Landis
And I are doing terrible but we have a great guest it’s Malcolm Jenkins who has written a new book that is going to be released next week it’s called What winners won’t tell you and we have about a 20-minute interview with Malcolm there’s a lot of stuff in his book about
The NFL and about all of his activities off the field in the community with social justice but there’s some Ohio State stuff in there too so it’s a really interesting read and Malcolm and I we talked about his time at Ohio State how he got to Ohio State uh what he
Learned sort of at Ohio State and again it’s a it’s pretty wild how this this kid from New Jersey wound up in Columbus and wound up as you know a truly great Buckeye so we’re excited to have him on I think you’ll enjoy this interview Malcolm Jenkins on his book What winners
Won’t tell you all right Malcolm thanks again for doing this we’ll bring you in and uh we’ll talk about this thing all right here we go so happy to be joined on Kings of Columbus by Malcolm Jenkins and Malcolm I will I will say off the bat people who
Have listened to me over the years uh know this I’ve always said that this is my 19th season covering Ohio state that you are my favorite player in terms of the combination of fierceness and ferociousness on the field and then like deep thinker world view guy off the
Field so you know to get a whole book of your thoughts was was pretty cool um why are you like that it feels like you were like that as a young man at Ohio State and I think anybody who reads this book or knows your career in the NFL you’ve
Continued to be like that how do you manage that yeah I mean I think I’ve always just been a forever learner like I’ve always been interested in figuring out the why to things and and it’s probably because my entire you know childhood I heard my father say you
Don’t know what you don’t know uh and at first I was really annoyed by hearing this saying all the time it was like obviously I don’t know everything I don’t know but when I really like rested in that it it caused me to always ask
Why so if a Coach is telling me to you know Run cover three and you play seven yards off you know I wasn’t just going to go do it just cuz you said it I needed to know why so I can do it better and understand the totality of the
Picture and I took that same mentality you know off the field when I look at Society I look at some of the issues it’s easy to just understand things as they are and say this is you know how things always run so you fall in line
But I’ve always raised my hand and and asked like why is this that way and you start to realize that everything is on purpose everything is deliberate and therefore you can choose how to like that’s where creativity comes from you understand the confines of whatever systems you’re in whether at Society or
In sports or in business and then you use your own kind of spin on things to uh maneuver in that space and that’s always been kind of in My DNA and and it’s obviously you see it a lot in the book you’ll see how I apply those that
That mentality in a lot of different situations so Malcolm the book you arranged it it’s not a linear structure it’s not I was born here I went to middle school here it’s separated in chapters that are sort of like particular ways of approaching things in life it’s a very interesting
Way of doing things but what you just said about raising your hand and asking why there there’s at least one story you tell on that book where maybe that bumped up against coaches sometimes did you ever did that ever was that ever difficult for you that if you’re a raise
Your hand ask why kind of guy did you ever have coaches who were like hey I’mma do what I say kind of Coach I don’t want you raising your hand yeah we usually uh we we butted heads because I never stop asking questions and I I I
Had a lot of you know coaches like that and and I think any coach who’s ever really coached me especially defensive back coaches that are see me every day you know it was either you loved me or you hated me because but I forced everyone to come prepare and I think one
Of the one of the best lessons I I think I learned is when I began to ask those questions and I’m kind of disrupting the meetings uh I remember Wesley McGriff we call him crime dog he was a first year defensive back coach with the Saints he
Flat out paused the tape turned around and told me to shut the f up he’s like sometimes you got to know when to be quiet and after the meeting here and I sat and he said look and this was the most humble thing I’ve heard anybody say
As a coach he said you know this defense better than I do so you don’t need to come in here and disrupt the meeting asking why you need to figure out the answers and then come present the answers and that really changed how I looked at things as a player like when
Things broke down on the field I was responsible to fix it you know and it began to look like I looked at things in life like that anything that’s wrong I’m responsible for figuring out how to fix it and I think you know those relationships take a lot of humility it
Takes trust I can be coached by somebody or yelled at somebody if I know that you have my best intentions you know at play and vice versa and so you know it it it doesn’t work with everybody but those who who are really committed to winning
Who are humble and get their egos out of the way myself included um it’s a lot easier we can be more productive as a collaboration I I always say like you can’t slice up people’s lives right and say I like this part of somebody but I don’t like this part of somebody because
It all comes from the same place so the person that you’ve been as a leader um both on and off the field like you’re Malcolm right so I don’t know that someone could say hey man like what why ises this guy ask all these questions because that’s who you are but when you
Were at OSU you’re doing doing that are you doing that like freshman sophomore year as a buckeye raising your hand and saying why yeah uh but but I actually had um was it Tim Beckman was the defensive back coach my first two years and he was a teacher like so I didn’t
Even have to ask why he was explaining why I remember KT Coleman getting cursed out one day because uh he didn’t know the entire Scouting Report like verbatim he had to get up and recite some things and didn’t know it he tried to look like
Behind to see what was on the board and got and got demolished and so early on I understood like the responsibility of preparation to know your job to understand the defense um and so when I got to the league you know that was that was my mindset I needed to know every
Single thing about my job and if I didn’t I was gonna ask because you know nobody when you blow a coverage on Sundays on Saturdays nobody asks hey did did you get the install right on Wednesday did the coach give you everything you know it’s on the player
Right yep so before I go perform I need every bit of information you know that I can get I don’t care if you get upset if you got to do some extra work or you got to take some more time in the meeting I want to be as prepared as possible so in
This book again it’s there’s a lot of sort of interesting back and forth between life and football and again it’s it’s under headings fear discipline compete Sudden Change Step Up Poise all these things Malcolm and I think it makes for a very interesting read because you’re constantly back and forth
Football Life football life but also that feels like that’s how you lived Football Life football life I wanted people as they read it to feel that’s kind of how it feels to be in a football game like it goes back and forth from offense that is progressing forward you
Know moving you through the timeline but it’s also defense where you’re moving backwards and it’s this Sudden Change you know uh from past to Future to present um and I wanted it to be a visual experience that the reader could you know whether you were a football fan
Or not that you could understand and and feel like you were in the game like you understood the game when you understood that moment um and so yeah that’s that’s all kind of part of the way I wanted to tell a story like you said I’m 35 years
Old I didn’t want to tell a linear like hey I grew up here I did this this this this I wanted people to feel what it’s like to be kind of in my shoes the back and forths the sudden changes of things the things you have to persevere from
The inner thoughts and doubts because my life has been documented we’ve watched these games we’ve watched these moments we’ve read the articles so I had to tell it in a way that was unique to the reader it is um your voice comes through loud and clear I’m not I just know you
From covering you from your time with Ohio State Malcolm but I’m reading this thing and I’m like well this is this is Malcolm Jenkins man I don’t there’s no like there’s no like you know smoothing this out this is it feels feel so real was that hard at all to like get that
Through the editing process of like hey man like I’m just going to tell you what it’s really like because I like that your voice is so strong in it yeah you know that kind of comes down to the process of how the book came to be like
I started writing this maybe two years ago while I was still playing okay and and because I was still playing I didn’t think I could write a book you know and doing all that so we had a co-writer on board and the voice just didn’t come
Through the way that you know you just described and so about 30 days before the book was supposed to be due we were stuck with a manuscript that we couldn’t use and so I had to write this book in 30 days myself and that’s why my voice
Comes through so clear because I wrote every every word wow uh yeah and it’s and so I really put myself into those moments as much as I could I went into like a training camp mentality where every day I’m just you know in this book in my thoughts Making Connections uh and
Came came out with something I was really really proud of I I love the fact that it is in my authentic voice it sounds like you’re having a conversation with me because I wanted that to be the few there’s a lot of great NFL Insight in this there also clearly is Ohio State
Insight in this and I want to ask about two things in particular about your experience at Ohio State the first is how you wound up at Ohio State I think people love the how’ you get your offer stories and you’re how you got the offer
Story of kind of coming to a camp paying for it not being one of the invited guys and then they’re like oh man this jersey dude can play like were you shocked that you went in and earned an OSU offer like that did you know were you gonna do and
Like how do you think it changed your life that you went out and earned an Ohio State offer on a camp that maybe you didn’t even have to end up at oh it it absolutely changed my life uh and and that’s one of the things about me that I
I think people don’t understand I love the game of football from an intellectual and strategy standpoint but I never really like had dreams of planning in NFL I didn’t think I was going to go to college to play uh football but it was you know just
Happened to go to Oh My Aunt moved to Ohio we went to visit and my parents to keep us busy put us in Ohio State’s camp but there’s one thing I love to do and it’s compete and so when I was there I kept getting pissed off with all the
Ohio kids that were talking Jersey guys can’t play ball y’all don’t play no football Jersey and so I tried to demolish every single receiver at that camp I think Brian Harline was there like a bunch of other guys that recruits guys they had already offered and I just
Found myself just going rep after rep after rep after rep and I’m I’m watching as Trestle and the defensive coordinators and all these guys are are paying attention and then next thing you know I’m in the office and they’re telling me hey you might be the best you
Know Corner in the country and I was like the 66th ranked recruit in New Jersey so it was like that kind of blew my mind but that conversation just made me think you know more expansive about what I could do I started thinking about
Well maybe I could be the best in the in the country or maybe I can go to the NFL but I didn’t really even know that about myself until I got out of Jersey and started competing against other people and when I came home that scholarship
Was sitting right on the porch that is wild man so really so your aunt in the book you say your aunt lived in Westerville right I live in Westerville right now if your aunt lived in a suburb of an arbor would you have gone to the a
Michigan camp like you know what I mean like it’s it’s I don’t I don’t I wouldn’t go that far like I don’t know if my parents would have made that drive to an arbor but they were definitely driving from Jersey that eight hour drive from Jersey
All the way to Columbus C but like like you said it’s it’s crazy how you know things like that happened because she just moved out there she was feeling a little lonely so all right her sister wants to come visit um but if that doesn’t happen I don’t go
To Ohio State that’s wild that is wild okay so then the second thing that I I just found fascinating is the way that you sort of established from reading your book like a full experience and a full life at Ohio State and that seems from the book to be particularly involved with your
Faith and your fraternity and that idea how difficult is it when you are playing football at a very high level like you are at Ohio State to have a full life outside of the football team how did you manage that and why was it important to
You well it it was always important to me because I just I felt empty in the first like the first year I got there I was and it’s if you play at a major program there’s a lot of expectations we were trying to go to National Championship um but but eventually you
Want more out of life at least I did um and and I found that through my faith you know know taking me in different places finding my fraternity that introduced me to a whole another side of campus life that like athletes usually don’t partake in we are in the dorms to
The facility maybe our apartments and that’s kind of it but this brought me into um campus life with other black students and other organizations doing things in Columbus getting into schools and doing things outside of the team really brought me you know made me feel like home to the point where my senior
Year or after my junior season I had the opportunity to go to the NFL I was graded to be a top 15 pick my junior year um and I for go forre that uh gave that up because I wanted to stay at Ohio State honestly I was just
Having too much fun I loved it like I I wasn’t ready to make football or my life a job I was like that’s gonna come the league will be there I’ll take the risk I want to play one more year I want to graduate I want to enjoy my full
Experience um and and a lot of that was due to the friends that I made faith I had you know while I was on campus I can remember writing a story about you and your fraternity when you were there because you were a step leader in your
Frity remember that yeah yeah and and I again in my time covering this team I don’t know that I’ve run across a lot of players who had that other kind of connection to a group like that on campus and in your book it feels like maybe you were a little bit nervous
About how it would be received you joining that fraternity and then you went in and talked to Tres and you were a little surprised by his reaction right yeah he he he’s like you know because I missed the team function and you know Trestle was a guy if you’re you know if
You’re early you’re on time if you’re on time you’re late and if you’re late don’t show up and I missed an entire you know team function because I was you know joining this fraternity and so of course I had to go talk to him and his
Response was not only did he know kind of what I was going on what was going on but he talked about his experience joining the fraternity and how he learned so many things you know beyond just the academics he’s like I learned more from that Brotherhood than I did in
School and it made me have so much more uh respect for for Trestle and who he was how he understood things and not only did you know I pledge but after that there were other teammates who were watching me and we probably had Deontay Johnson who was a fullback he was above
Me he was a team captain he joined the fraternity Rob Rose was another defensive end uh who joined the fraternity and there’s so many guys now since then from the football team that have joined the fraternity uh mainly because you know I was kind of the one
That showed that it was safe to do such that’s you raised your hand and said man I’m I’m doing this thing right exactly so this experience Malcolm again I I don’t want to say what you’ve done in your career on and off the field like
Feels to me like it fits with the person you were at Ohio State again the way you carried yourself at Ohio State on and off the field when you think about what you did in the NFL and then what you’ve done with your life as a leader in the
Community as a leader in social justice movements um what do you think of what you done like do you feel like when you left Ohio State you knew something like this was in front of you how have you again managed sort of the success on and
Off the field at the next level after college well I think it’s it’s two things it’s one understanding that it’s a look at we what we’ve done right I’ve I’ve never the things I’ve accomplished all bigger than me which is what I’m most proud of right so that means that I
I’ve had to find people to help bring these dreams and Visions to fruition now what you know places like Ohio State playing under Jim Trestle getting that up that upbringing it really prepared me to step into that role of leadership to how to guide the vision of my Foundation
That has grown for over a decade of work now you know doing work in four different states Ohio Louisiana Pennsylvania New Jersey all the places I call home to have that you need Vision you also need support my mom is the president and we’ve got you know volunteers and donors all over the
Country that support that work so that’s a look at what we’ve done the Coalition and the social justice things that I’ve done none of that was on my own you know power that is a collective um and we were able to scale that to something that is now over 12 different
Professional sports where athletes all over the uh country can activate and get involved in whatever way they want in social issues that is a we thing and I’m only able to lead the the the collective because of the upbringing I had in my household the upbringing I had in the
Experiences I had at Ohio State and Jim Trestle being other other leader seeing what works what did with didn’t Troy Smith was one of my favorite you know leaders because of I saw how he demanded things out of teammates out of coaches he push buttons if he needed to he talk
To you on the side if he needed to those things are all tactics that I still use to this day when it comes to leadership and planning a vision for something larger than myself you mentioned in the book that James ltis was the best man when you got married he’s coaching back
You want to come back and coach at Ohio State I’m giving you the invite I I like the seat that I’m in I get the you know I’m not as stressed out like I’m I don’t I think I’d be a tough coach you know because I I want things to be done a
Certain way and if you can’t do it I don’t you know I’m struggling on the the communication part there yet but I’m enjoying watching it James and Brian you know are doing phenomenal things even Marcus Freeman I’m glad we we beat them but to see what he’s doing now as a head
Coach you know he was my locker mate all of these guys uh it’s phenomenal to watch what they’re doing especially especially Brian like he’s putting out you know first round receivers every single every single year uh so the development is is huge and I’m glad that they’re tapping back into the guys that
Help build that program so now that you’ve retired and you’ve written a book what do you want to do next you got a light lot of life ahead of you Malcolm what are you going to use your time for yeah I mean the majority of my time you
Know playing this game you sacrifice a lot with family so I’ve been very very intentional of spending more time with my kids raising them that’s really the most important thing um and I’ve also set myself up from a business standpoint where I can take some time away and not
Feel like I need to rush into the next thing so writing has been and uh and storytelling has been something I’ve always been passionate about and it’s something I’m putting a lot effort to now so this won’t be my last book this won’t be the last thing creatively that
I’m doing so I’m spending a lot of time writing researching I’m um been around a lot of artists um just understanding creative process um and that’s really where you know my life goes I real even in social justice work I realize this it’s I it’s more impactful for me to
Tell you a story about someone than it is for me to hit you with Statistics and policy and all of those things you know so we want to change the world we want to uh remember history want to honor folks that’s going to come through storytelling and now I don’t my platform
Is larger than just the microphones in front of me in my locker room you know I get to dictate how to use that voice and so you know it’s you you see me back at like kind of this rookie level where I’m learning I’m I’m I’m understanding
Things but you’ll see that voice begin to grow uh in the in the form of content Malcolm Jenkins What winners won’t tell you going to be released October 3 third Malcolm thanks for for taking time to join us here on Kings of Columbus and we hope we we’ll see you back in Columbus
Soon yeah I will be there um next Friday actually and Saturday for the game they got the Hall of Fame induction uh I did get in uh I got uh voted to join the OSU Hall of Fame this year so that’ll be that’ll be awesome so I’m looking
Forward to being back in Columbus it’ll be great to see you congratulations on all of your success and uh thanks for joining us here on Kings of Columbus thanks D so thanks to Malcolm Jenkins for that um we’ll try to do more of that here right not everybody’s always going
To be on a book tour but we I think you guys like hearing from former Buckeyes from people who are doing interesting things uh in football and in their lives so you know we we’ll keep bringing you that kind of stuff here on the podcast feed again uh you know no game this
Weekend but Landis and I will have a show for you that should go up on Saturday where we are going to draft the 20 best Ohio State football players right now we did it in the preseason and we want to do it again now after four weeks to see like what’s changed who’s
Moved up who’s surprised us who’s impressed us so we will bring you that football this weekend and of course just like constant stuff on the podcast feed from Jeremy Birmingham from Austin Ward from Bill Landis and we really appreciate you guys uh joining us here to do all of that and we certainly
Appreciate Malcolm Jenkins giving us some time for now I’m dougl Maurice and that was Kings of Columbus
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