Show Notes

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🎧 Coaching Beyond the Game: Football as a Platform for Healing, Accountability & Social Progress 

🏈 About This Episode

What if football could do more than build athletes—what if it could build bridges?

This week, I sit down with Coaches Jim Place and Al Powell, two men who have transformed the Miami Valley Football Coaches Association’s Social Justice Seven-on-Seven Tournament into a powerful platform for dialogue, accountability, and community healing.

Born in the aftermath of social unrest, the tournament has grown into one of the most unique events in Ohio high school sports—uniting young athletes from diverse backgrounds, sparking conversations on race and empathy, and reminding us that coaching is about far more than wins and losses.

🔑 What You’ll Learn

✔️ How a football tournament became a hub for social justice and youth empowerment
✔️ Why personal accountability is the key to long-term success for young athletes
✔️ How sports can bridge racial divides and foster meaningful dialogue
✔️ The challenges—and victories—of building trust across communities
✔️ Why true coaching means teaching life lessons, not just plays

🌍 Why It Matters

This episode reminds us that real social change doesn’t always start in big forums—it can begin in local spaces like sports, where youth meet across lines, dialogue happens, and empathy grows. It’s an uplifting story of how coaching—when rooted in purpose—can help knit communities together.

📰 Read More About Their Work

Washington Post – In football-mad Ohio, a camp focused on social justice is still going strong

Dayton Daily News – High school football: Social Justice 7-on-7 returning for 5th year

Dayton Daily News (Archdeacon) – A football venture like none other in the Miami Valley—and maybe the country

Dayton247Now – MVFCA holds fifth Social Justice 7-on-7 Summit

💬 Memorable Quotes

“We don’t think we’re changing the city… but there’s a small world called Miami Valley high school football. That’s our world. We’re trying to change our world.” — Jim Place

“Two grown men and we were weeping… ‘Why don’t you and I do something together to try to make things better?’” — Al Powell

🚀 Take Action

Share this episode with a coach, mentor, or parent who believes in the power of sports to unite

Start a conversation in your own community: What everyday spaces can become platforms for healing and connection?

Subscribe and never miss an episode of Derate The Hate

🙌 Join the Movement

This episode of Derate The Hate is produced in collaboration with Braver Angels — America’s largest cross-partisan, grassroots organization working to bridge political & societal divides to foster a more united country.

The world is a better place if we are better people. That begins with each of us as individuals. Be kind to one another. Be grateful for all you’ve got. Make every day the day that you want it to be!

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Show Transcript

Transcript is AI Generated and may contain errors

Wilk Wilkinson [00:00:00:00] 

This week, we kicked off the 2025 NFL football season, making this episode that much timelier. Before we roll that intro, let me ask you: What if football could do more than build athletes? What if it could build bridges? In this episode, I sit down with coaches Jim Place and Al Powell—two men using the game to teach accountability, spark dialog, and bring communities together. It’s not just about plays and points. It’s about purpose and people.

Welcome back, my friends, to the Derate the Hate podcast. I’m your host, Wilk Wilkinson—your blue-collar sage—calming outrage and helping to navigate a world divided by fog and those who would spread that fear, outrage, and grievance. The Derate the Hate podcast is proudly produced in collaboration with Braver Angels, America’s largest grassroots cross-partizan organization working towards civic renewal. This podcast amplifies the mission that we share: to foster a more respectful and united America where civic friendship thrives even when we disagree. Each week, through the power of story, conversation, and connection with incredible guests, we work to build bridges instead of barriers—not to change minds on the issues, but to change how we see one another when we differ.

Because, friends, it really is about bettering the world one attitude at a time. We did not create the hate, but together we can Derate the Hate. So be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, share it with a friend, and visit BraverAngels.org to learn how you can get involved in the movement to bridge the partizan divide. Friends, I am so incredibly grateful that you have joined me for another powerful Derate the Hate episode. So let’s get to it.

I’ve always said the work of healing our communities doesn’t just happen in town halls and won’t happen on social media or through politics. It happens in everyday places where people show up, listen, and lead—and sometimes that place is a football field. In this Derate the Hate episode, I am sitting down with coaches Jim Place and Al Powell, two men who spent their lives mentoring young people and building bridges through the game of football. We’re talking about the Miami Valley Football Coaches Association’s seven-on-seven tournament, a powerful event that’s doing more than just sharpening skills. It’s bringing together youth from all walks of life to foster dialog, build relationships, and spark real change. This conversation gets into the heart of what coaching can be when it’s rooted in purpose and people. We talk personal accountability, race relations, and the kind of teamwork that doesn’t end when the whistle blows. These coaches aren’t just teaching plays; they’re teaching life lessons—helping young people see beyond the scoreboard and into what it means to be part of something bigger. If you care about your community, if you believe in the power of sports to unite rather than divide, and if you’re looking for stories that remind us what leadership really looks like, this one’s for you. Friends, let’s get into it with Al Powell and Jim Place. Here we go.

All right, the coaches are here with me today. Al Powell and Jim Place, thank you for joining me here on the Derate the Hate podcast. I’ve been looking forward to this conversation. I really have.

Al Powell [00:04:08:16]
Thank you for having us.

Jim Place [00:04:08:18]
Yeah, looking forward to it. And thanks for all you do, Wilk.

Wilk Wilkinson [00:04:11:05] 
Well, I appreciate that. Thank you so much, Jim. And for people who are not familiar with Coach Jim Place and Coach Al Powell, I’ve brought these guys into the DTH studio today to talk about the Miami Valley Football Coaches Association seven-on-seven tournament that they just did in July up there in Ohio. This was brought to my attention by my dear friend Monica Guzman from Braver Angels. And when she told me about Jim and then I started looking into what you guys have been doing up there, Al, I was like, man, I’ve got to get these guys on the podcast. So, Al, tell me what started you guys off on this journey? What was the inspiration for starting this seven-on-seven tournament and bringing all of these different teams together?

Al Powell [00:05:08:07] 
Well, first of all, knowing who my friend is—Jim Place—knowing the type of heart that he has and the messages that he has been spreading around Ohio for 40 years now. And he’s the older guy, and we, as coaches, we’ve battled on the gridiron together. He always brought the teams together in the end, because there were times where his team was majority white and mine was always majority black. So he always gave a heartfelt message, and I never forgot that about him—always appreciated it. He was talking about people making right choices and being good… being good subtle shifts. And that’s what—when the issue of George Floyd happened—I was devastated in the reaction in the community.

So I’m coming down I-75 heading south. I was coming from Michigan. Jim just happened to be heading north, coming back to Ohio. And I pulled over to the rest area and I said, brother, what’s happening to our country? And, you know, I’m a Christian, he’s a Christian. What can we do? What can we do? Because I was hearing crazy talk from young people who were angry, of course, and colleagues—working colleagues—like, no, we need to come together and talk and heal, don’t we? You’re not going to— I don’t want to force an opinion on anyone or whatever, but one thing I know that is neutral is goodness. Good heart is neutral; it’s not debatable. And that’s when Jim said, let’s see what we can do together. Let me reach out to the coaches association, because we’re members of that. He came with the idea. He said, let’s do it. I’m like, well, let’s do it. No money—we did it on prayer. Yeah, and asked for favors and places to hold these camps. It’s growing—already this year was our biggest and we’re receiving more requests. So that was the start of it.

Wilk Wilkinson [00:07:24:20]
The start—and that’s such an awesome story. And quite honestly, some of the greatest things—and you guys both and I are Christian—so going back to the idea of starting on prayer, right? Some of the greatest things start on prayer and just turn into spectacular things. So, just for context: Jim, talk to me about where you’ve been coaching for 40 years. Al said that you’ve been this milestone of coaching in Ohio for 40 years. Where have you been coaching football? And then, Al, where have you been coaching football? And you guys have coached against each other—majority white teams, majority black teams. Jim, take that question for me and talk to me a little bit about what your background is in coaching and how this idea kind of came to you.

Jim Place [00:08:24:20]
Well, Wilk, first of all, thank you for asking me that. I coached for 48 years in every imaginable situation: all white, integrated, all minority. My last two positions, I didn’t get paid. I was in inner-city schools, and did that because they couldn’t find anybody else, to be honest. One thing I want to stress, too: at every school I was at, I had a questionnaire that the players filled out before the season started—name, height, weight, position… and I had two questions at the bottom that said this: Number one, where do you want to be 20 years from now? And number two, what’s going to keep you from getting there? Regardless of where I coached—white or black, integrated—I was a head coach for 42 or 43 of those 48 years at all of those schools. The answers were exactly the same. Every young person wants a nice life. They want a nice house. They want a nice family. They want a good job. They want good friends. They want just a good life. Everybody is the same. And that’s one of my philosophies in coaching, Wilk: kids are kids. Now, some kids have huge obstacles to overcome, and that’s a problem—that’s something that coaches have to do. I call them hurdles on the track. Some students line up for a hundred-yard dash and there’s nothing there—they go. Some of them have six hurdles. As a coach, if we can take hurdles off the track for young people, that’s one of the biggest things we can do.

So basically, that was the philosophy in my coaching: I’ve coached in every possible environment. Kids are kids—simple as that. And, Wilk, when I got that call from Al, I hung up the phone; I was crying. I said to my wife, I should have made that call. Why did Al have to call me? I should be the one making that call. And then we just took off, and we actually have three different programs involved. The seven-on-sevens got the most publicity. Over the last five years, we have initiated three different programs. Number one, strength working together. We’ve got a great relationship. We stand up here and we say, look: I’m a white guy, he’s a black guy, and we want to talk to you about how things should be. So that’s my background, Wilk.

Wilk Wilkinson [00:10:32:12]
That’s awesome. No—that’s fantastic. And the reality is whoever initiated the call is really a moot point, in my opinion. It’s the fact that you made the call. And, Jim, I want to talk a little bit about those two questions that you had at the bottom of your form each year—and not so much the questions but the answers. Because the answers that you were getting bring to mind something that I speak about quite often, and that’s that pro-humanity footing. Right? We’re all unique individuals, but we all want very similar things at the end of the day. We want a warm bed to sleep in at night. We want a safe house to sleep in at night. We want a family and we want a good job to provide for that family. And when we come together on that pro-humanity footing—fully understanding that we’re unique individuals but we want very similar things—that’s a place to start. So, Al, talk to me about how, when you start to bring all of these youngsters together and you start to have this conversation—because, like you said, you had people, whether it be students in your school or in your program or faculty you were working with—they were very troubled. And the problem is, when we enter that realm of “very troubled,” a lot of people—especially when they have hurdles on the track—start making bad decisions. Give me an idea of the kind of reaction you were receiving from people right away when you started presenting them with this idea of, “Hey, we know there’s a lot of ugliness in this world right now. We can get an idea of a positive way to deal with it.”

Al Powell [00:12:39:12]
Yeah. If I can be very blunt and nice with you—it was tough. Because some of the people who I thought would embrace it and say yes were saying, “I’m done with it; this country’s never going to change,” etc., etc. Other people were like, “What can I do to help you guys? What can I do?” You’ve got to keep in mind during that incident, it was a string of things—there were six deaths within 11 months—and it just seemed like, “Oh, it’s free terror—this is Jim Crow or something like that.” So people were… “domestic” is the word I choose—more so. But we stayed—we kept the course. We kept the course. Then you started to see people’s eyes open and say, “Yeah, what can I do to make a change?” Because I just basically asked people to contribute or get out of the way. Like, on a football field: if you’re not going to make this tackle, enjoy the uniform and stand on the sideline; I’ve got a back who’s going to make the tackle. And we went through our ups and downs—hearing some no’s from some people we expected to hear yeses from. Since that time, they’ve come around and they’ve joined us.

I had to explain to people—what I was a little hurt about—what would not occur at our workshops. We’re not going to call any proper names—who’s wrong, who’s right. We’re not going to call politicians’ names—who’s wrong, who’s right. I want to talk about our good heart. I believe, as a Christian, we’re born with a good heart, a clean heart, and we can’t allow for it to be anything other than that. We have to have tough discussions, right? And we can get uncomfortable. But guess what—when you sleep in your bed, if I had a hidden camera in your room, I bet you toss and turn until you get comfortable, right? That’s the way it is around subjects—around social justice, around any type of use of music. And so, yeah, but it comes down to: we all want to be safe. We all want to feel safe. I don’t want a young inner-city kid telling me, “The reason I’m king is because I don’t feel safe.” About what? Somehow right there, that defeats the purpose. So, yeah—that’s where we were. That’s where I was with that. And I just felt like: God brought you into this world; now that you’re here, do something.

Wilk Wilkinson [00:15:22:23] 
Do something with it. I love that—be part of the solution or get out of the way. Jim, I want you to key in on that—and then also take in and feed into why it’s so important and how sports, especially football in this case, is such an integral part of this—working as a team and all that. I mean, I know a lot of people listening are going to key in on the movie Remember the Titans and how important that story of Herman Boone is—how using the sport of football for the purposes of integration can be such a powerful deal. So, Jim, key on that for me, would you please?

Jim Place [00:16:16:13] 
Okay, well, I’m going to ramble a little bit here. Number one, just to expound upon what Al said: there were times where I was angry. There were districts that wouldn’t come out and tell me why they weren’t coming, but I knew—and I was angry. Now, what am I going to do about it? Our philosophy was: let’s not fight with anybody. Let’s make our product so good that everybody will want to be part of it. We’ve gone from 24 teams to 72 teams with that philosophy, and we’re going to go more—we’re going to get them all. We’re going to make our product so good and explain it so well. I mean, how can anybody be against getting kids together and trying to talk about better race relations? But I think there are some people out there. We’re not going to fight with anybody.

And, Wilk, I want to go back to the second question on my questionnaire—you responded to it exactly the way I would, and it’s what our whole program is about: let’s talk about what we have in common. All those kids I coached—at seven different districts, head coach at seven different schools for different reasons—same answers. What I did, Wilk, at every school: I have a three-ring binder. I had that sheet in the binder and I’d call a young man in. I never fought discipline with them; I didn’t have discipline problems. All I said was, “Here’s what you wrote in your book. You want to have a successful life. You want to be a good person. Are your actions—like you just cussed out a teacher or were disrespectful—going to get you there or not get you there?” And the young man would say, “Coach, I hear you.” I never had to say, “You did something wrong.” The young man would always say, “Coach, I did something wrong and I’m not going to reach my goals.” That was universal, Wilk—I don’t care where I was—that’s how kids responded. Kids have a good heart—simple as that.

Now, to the last comment about football: kids playing football are very passionate. When you say “list the top five things you care about” at that point in their lives, that’s one hook, and we want to use that hook to bring them in. One last thing on my philosophy: I challenge coaches—are you a coach, or are you a teacher of football? If you’re a coach, you care about kids, and your ultimate goal is to make a young man be prepared for a better life. If you’re a teacher of football, you care about drawing plays and who wins or loses. My problem, Wilk, is I think the game is tending towards the latter—people getting in because they want to teach football; they don’t want to be coaches. That’s a term Al and I respect: we’re coaches. That’s what lifts this profession. And that’s what our event is all about—bringing coaches together with their teams and letting them be coaches. Let’s not care about the football—football’s the hook that got you here, but now let’s use it to do what we want.

Wilk Wilkinson [00:19:06:04]
Yeah—football is the hook, and I absolutely love that, Jim. I love what you said about coaches and the importance of coaching as opposed to just the fundamentals of football. That’s really where I wanted you to go, because football is obviously something that both of you are passionate about—but it’s the people more than the fundamentals that you’re passionate about. And the next thing—I want to hear your take on this too, Al—is personal accountability. When Jim is talking about that three-ring binder and bringing those kids in and saying, “Hey, this is what you put down on paper. This is a commitment not to me, but to yourself. This is what you want for your future—long after my and your relationship has probably passed. Are your actions today commensurate with getting where you want to be?” That personal accountability thing—that’s what I talk about so much. There’s this relationship that you have with yourself. You can break your bond with a lot of different people, but breaking that bond with yourself… Talk to me about that, Al. I think that’s a huge piece people miss, and it’s just not talked about enough.

Al Powell [00:20:43:15]
Yeah, absolutely. And I don’t want to make excuses. A lot of times when I give this answer, people say, “Well, you’re just writing an excuse for the population you work with.” But I often tell my audiences—whether I’m at the university or a guest speaker at a high school—I have them repeat after me: “Trauma happens to you, through you, and it leaves residue.” The issue I have working in a lot of the urban communities I’ve worked in is the residue isn’t being dealt with. So it comes out—the easy way out psychologically is to blame somebody else: “I blame what era 300 years ago,” whatever. The residue of not having self-satisfaction in reaching a goal—dealing with those hurdles—you clear some hurdles and you look at the hurdles still on the track for another person—that leads to frustration. And people give up. They say, “Well, I’m going to help myself with it by any means necessary.” And that lack of accountability—that’s why the crime sometimes manifests itself. The self-harm manifests itself. If I put my psych hat on—it’s trauma. Particularly as Christians—this is my personal experience and perspective—being a PK (a preacher’s kid): we’re supposed to help when and where we can, when and where we go. And when we don’t, kids buy into an “eye for an eye” mentality. Then the influences… Can you believe there’s a job to be an “influencer”? That’s amazing. But when you look at the choice of entertainment and they see people making money saying the most ignorant and self-destructive things—yeah, it’s horrible.

So accountability—I don’t get accountability until I visit the juvenile detention center or the judge or the prison. And kids are saying, “I wish I had listened,” or “Can you help me?” I’ve been preaching it for… [trails]

Wilk Wilkinson [00:23:09:17]
Yeah, and I think as a coach—whether you be a football coach or a life coach or business coach—to be a true coach, you have to care about the people. You have to care about the outcome. And what you guys are doing—I really want people to hear what this program is, from you guys. From the day it starts—I mean, that Washington Post article that I read—which we’ll link in the show notes—I liked the visual the author started with, talking about the rickety yellow buses coming down the road, and these kids—many of them who have never interacted with the people they’re going to play with that day, or scrimmage with that day—people they’ve never seen before and may or may not ever see again. But bringing those people together—the importance of it. So let’s dive into the fundamentals of this event and how you structure it to achieve real results for all these youngsters, who are, in my opinion, very lucky to have you and this opportunity. Whichever one of you wants to take that.

Al Powell [00:24:51:10]
That’s the journalist—Jim’s the author of the curriculum. I just follow orders.

Jim Place [00:25:05:15] 
That’s not true. Well… I see you. All right—how does it work?

Wilk Wilkinson
How does this day start, and what are we doing?

Jim Place [00:25:05:15] 
So the way it works—we have three different events, but I’ll talk about the seven-on-seven. We put teams in a group of four and we balance it. We want it to be 50% white kids, 50% minority kids, and we do it by matching a farm school and then bringing an urban school into that integrated school. We end up with 3,000 participants; it comes out to about 1,500 white and about 1,500 minority. We put them in a group of four and they play seven-on-seven (touch football) for 40 minutes against each of the three opponents, for a total of two hours—so they’ve played against each other. After that, they go inside and they get a speech and they go to the social-justice session for one hour. We start out with a 15-minute speaker—the best is Al Powell—but we have a lot of different speakers. We have 18 different groups and had 72 teams this year. So Al will talk. What we tell all our speakers is: here are a couple of messages we’d like you to deliver.

The message is that football is important to you. If you want to move on to the next level and then the next level, you have to learn how to get along with people who are different than you. If you’re a white kid going Division I, you’re going to walk into a locker room that’s about 70% black. If you’re a black kid, you’re going to walk onto a campus that’s about 85 or 90% white. Regardless—football—you have to learn how to work with people different than you. Have you thought about that? And then we say: that’s true in life, too. Everywhere you go, if you want to really achieve, you’re going to work with people who are different than you.

All the speakers talk for 15 minutes—that’s the primary message. Then we put them in groups and give them a sheet with seven questions, and every person in the group has to answer all the questions. They don’t get through all seven. We tell them: here’s how we form groups—you have to have at least three white guys and three minority kids. Sit down, go. They move, sit down. The first questions are: “How can football be used to promote better race relations?” and “What will you do when you go back to your school to try and keep the spirit alive?” Then the seven questions go on. Then they come together; they have to find a person of a different race, stand next to them, take a selfie, and post it or send a message. What happens is they get in groups—next thing you know, there are six guys taking selfies, moving around, laughing. Then we challenge them to go back to their schools and make a difference. You find the coach and talk to the coach. Al outruns all that—he’s the premier. We’ve grown to the point where we have 18 of those four-group pods over six sites. It goes all day—3,000 students. The best part: during those group discussions, you sit back and see those kids interacting and talking to each other and laughing—and then the selfies.

We’ve said this: we don’t think we’re going to change America; we don’t think we’re going to change probably the city of Dayton. But we’re going to try to make a little effect on our world, which is the Miami Valley Football Coaches Association. If everybody will try to make an effect on their little world—we call it “win small battles.” As Mother Teresa said, there are no great acts—only small acts done with great love. We try to follow that philosophy. At the end of the day, we’re exhausted. It’s about 7:30 when the last thing is finished, but we look at each other and go, “We did it, brother.”

Al Powell [00:28:39:01]
We’re calling each other the 72 hours because—yeah—go to sleep!

Wilk Wilkinson [00:28:43:22]
When you talk about the sphere of influence—I always go back to that phrase I believe Gandhi said: “Be the change that you want to see in the world.” Our spheres of influence—depending on who we are—some are big, some are small. But if we’re doing everything we can to better the world—just focusing on our sphere of influence—our spheres overlap. You guys—your spheres overlapped and look what that turned into. And those 3,000 participants—each one has their own sphere of influence. Depending on… and this is what I want you to dive into here real quick, Al—the idea that you encourage them to take what they’ve learned there—because this is step one, planting the seed. I love the selfies, the speeches—that’s part one. But then taking that back to wherever home happens to be and working within their sphere of influence. How do you encourage them to find a coach? And what kind of change do you hope to promote with this? That’s where the rubber meets the road—the residual effect is where the big things happen. Talk to me a little about how they find that coach and what they do after that.

Al Powell [00:30:24:18] 
It goes back to my childhood experiences. My families were always—from a small place called Utah, Alabama, outside of Birmingham. What brought my family north was the bombings of the church and things like that. One thing I have learned from that, answering your question, is that we tend to take a giant step from each other instead of taking a tiny step towards each other to reach the destiny of peace and harmony and humanity. So what I do at the workshops: I write the word “destiny” on the board and tell them to circle the suffix—“tiny.” Take that tiny step. When you go back to your community—urban, suburban, rural—take a tiny step. At least—say this—at least go to your principal and say thank you. If you enjoyed yourself here, go say thank you, because some schools have said no and your coaches have said yes. That’s bravery. That’s an angel. It takes a tiny step; they took a tiny step against the odds. And quickly—72 teams—we’re looking at 84 next year. This thing is taking off. If you take that tiny step—circle the last four letters in the word “destiny”—if you take a tiny step toward your destiny, you’ll make a change.

Hey, if you could be in the room—the honesty some of the kids share with you—they open up so quick with the questions. Like, “Wow, I can’t take this back to my grandpa because he’d say something”—grandpa experienced something in 1954 or an old stereotype about one group or another. That’s what I’ve seen—the influence some of these children are getting, black and white—some healthy and some not. But that’s okay—no judgment. I’m going to leave you with this charge: young person, you have a good heart. Are you working the good of it?

Wilk Wilkinson [00:32:40:02]
There’s so much beauty in this—what you’re saying, Al, is hugely important. I keep going back to a phrase we’ve all heard: if parents aren’t teaching the children the right lessons, often the world’s going to teach them the wrong ones. What you guys are doing is changing the trajectory of that for some folks. Many may not be getting the right message at home, but being involved in something like this—and being encouraged to find a coach, somebody who said yes when others said no—that’s hugely important. It’s changing minds, hearts, and lives. Give me some parting words for the listeners. This is fantastic—a message we’ve got to continue to spread. So give us some parting words, each of you.

Al Powell [00:34:01:15]
I often tell people when they ask, “What is this social justice thing—what is it really about?” I say it’s about health. “What do you mean, health?” Inside the word “health” is the word “heal.” In order to have good health—if it’s bad—you’ve got to heal. We’re at a place in our country sometimes—not all the time—but sometimes where it’s unhealthy. We have to give an equal, fair message—give people an opportunity to discuss what they need to heal, to overcome stereotypes about other groups, to reach out and want to help where help is needed. And if you’re claiming any religion, from what I understand in my brief studies, there are some good tenets in there that say “love thy neighbor.” So I just try to stress that. That’s my parting words: let’s get to that good-health place where we can heal.

Jim Place [00:35:03:06]
Three basic concepts that Al and I both believe in. One: contact brings acceptance—the more you’re around people different from you, the more you accept them. Stay in your little bubble and it’ll never happen. Two: sometimes you’ve got to get uncomfortable to get comfortable. We’ve had people ask, “Should I use the words black and white?” Yeah—that’s what it’s all about. If we don’t, we’re running from it, not to it. Three: win little battles. Do what you can do in your sphere. We love this thing. We hope it grows. If anybody out there can buy into it, feel free to contact us and we’ll help you out. Thanks for the opportunity, Wilk.

Al Powell [00:35:53:03]
And share the secret—how you grow that beard. I’m a little envious right now.

Wilk Wilkinson [00:36:01:13]
Oh, man—yeah, this thing sometimes gets a life of its own. I appreciate this, guys. I love this message. I love the things that you’re doing here. It is so important that people step outside their comfort zone. Sometimes the best healing we can do comes outside of our comfort zone. Step out of your own bubble—let’s find the healing, let’s find the way. You guys have found a beautiful way through football to make this happen. But it’s not necessarily about the fundamentals of sports—it’s the fundamentals of the human heart. You guys are awesome. Thank you so much. Jim Place, Al Powell—thank you very much.

Al Powell [00:36:41:23] 
Thank you, brother.

Wilk Wilkinson [00:36:43:17] 
Friends, I want to thank you so much for tuning in. If there’s anything in this episode that provided exceptional value to you, please make sure to hit that share button. If you haven’t done so already, please be sure to subscribe to get the Derate the Hate podcast sent to your email inbox every week. We really are better together, so please take a moment to visit BraverAngels.org and consider joining the movement towards civic renewal and bridging our political divides. This is Wilk wrapping up for the week, saying: Get out there. Be kind to one another. Be grateful for everything you’ve got. And remember, it’s up to you to make every day the day that you want it to be. With that, my friends, I’m going to back on out of here and we will catch you next week. Take care.