“Your word is really one of the only things you have in life.”

Some wise words spoken by a young man only just figuring out the college lifestyle and what it means to play Division I football. For Christian Hackenberg, Penn State’s 18-year old starting quarterback those words rang even truer as he elected to stay committed to Penn State following the announcement of the NCAA sanctions.

Hackenberg’s commitment to the program has been well documented, but in a brief five or so minute interview with CBS Sports, Hackenberg, O’Brien, and Hackenberg’s father Erick Hackenberg opened up about the entire process and what it still means to them today.

“Penn State wasn’t even really on the radar and three weeks later we were up there for Junior Day,” Erick Hackenberg says in the video. “And about halfway through that day Christian just kind of turned to me and elbowed me and goes, ‘I think that’s the guy I want to play for.'”

As they say, the rest is history.

Check out the entire interview below.

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