SB Nation: Interviews & Op-Eds With Athletes & Coaches

SB Nation isn't just fan opinion or deep analysis, sometimes we like to talk directly to the athletes and coaches we're covering. Sometimes the athletes come to us and want to talk directly to the community.

That last point happened recently when outgoing Penn State QB Matt McGloin took to the pages of Black Shoes Diaries. He's hoping to get picked in the upcoming NFL draft, but he also wanted to say a little bit about Penn State football, and the tragedy surrounding it.

When the world crashed down on Penn State in an ugly, horrifying cloud, the world around our team seemed to panic. "Penn State football will never be the same" is what everyone outside our locker room said. No way. Not as long as I was wearing the blue and white uniform. Coach O'Brien told us that we were nobody's charity case, and he was right. We proved the world wrong and we did it by being honorable, hard-working, stubborn as hell, and above all we chose to live up to everything that was great about Coach Paterno's legacy. As a team, we ran away from nothing. We played the game right, and we played better and harder than most people thought we could.

Penn State rose above it all. Not just our football program, our entire community. From the janitors and cafeteria workers who worked hard to support us each and every day, to my classmates, our professors and an alumni that supported us through thick and thin. We came together and we rose up, when so many people out there thought we would break apart and fall down.

It's a good read from an athlete who is doing it right.

Over at Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician, they wanted to get acquainted with incoming football head coach Scott Shafer.

How would they describe their chat?

During our 23 minute conversation (he's a busy guy), the first-year head man used "hell" and "ass" more times than I can remember, referred to spring ball as "a civil war" and a way to "beat the hell out of one another" and welcomed Syracuse fans to show up at the Dome this fall to watch his football team cause bodily harm to other football teams.

The Phinsider was lucky enough to get an SB Nation writer together with Miami defensive end Jared Odrick. You can check out that transcript, here.

This was just a quick reminder that SB Nation is getting into the action with athletes, trying to bring you all aspects of sports news.