NBC Sunday Night Football Analyst Cris Collinsworth was on media conference call yesterday to preview the upcoming NFL season. An off topic of discussion was his son Austin Collinsworth who was named a captain of the Notre Dame football team for the 2014 season.
#28 Austin Collinsworth, A Notre Dame Captain #fox28 pic.twitter.com/zSDXWG0AxZ
— Dean Huppert (@DeanH_FOX28) August 29, 2014
From BGI on Austin Collinsworth:
Collinsworth enrolled as a receiver in 2010, but just like classmate and graduated 2013 captain Bennett Jackson, he eventually shifted to the defensive backfield. Referred to as a “werewolf” by former Irish defensive coordinator Bob Diaco (2010-13) because of his high level of energy and intensity, Collinsworth was named Notre Dame’s Special Teams Player of the Year as a sophomore in 2011.
Here’s what Cris Collinsworth had to say yesterday about it: (transcript via NBC Sports Press box)
Cris, a little off topic, but your son being named the captain at Notre Dame yesterday and I know he went through quite a bit in terms of injuries over the course of his career, but just how proud are you that he’s got to this point to be a captain there after everything he went through?
CRIS COLLINSWORTH: More than a little bit, as you can imagine. To see the C on the jersey of your son at Notre Dame is just an amazing thing. I can remember when he got recruited there and we were walking down the tunnel and you could sort of see this beacon of light out there that was Notre Dame field. And he said, ‘what do you think, dad?’ And I wanted to say, ‘what do I think? What are you nuts?’ This is Notre Dame, the greatest college players in the history of the world walked through this tunnel out on to that field. And this is where you should go. And this is awesome.
But I had said, well, I don’t know, ‘Austin, what do you think?’ And in fact from that moment and, you know, we all live at the mercy of social media these days and everybody has comments about your son and positive and negative and you read all that stuff and you try and calm your wife down whenever there’s something that somebody says that’s not so nice.
But wearing the C is going to cap it off brilliantly.
Now he said yesterday that you called him with his grandparents at the table too and had it all on speaker phone. So what was that conversation like?
CRIS COLLINSWORTH: Well it was great. The funny thing is, now you have opened up the possibility of a dad brag here, so I’ll apologize in advance. But my daughter is captain of the Harvard track team and had been named that just a month or so before and so there was a little teasing going back and forth about it being no big deal, you’re just the second one in the family and all that kind of stuff. But it was his grandparents’ 53rd wedding anniversary, so believe me, it was a night of great celebration and great fun.
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