After more than three hours of sharing, Nick Eason finally takes his first deep breath and pauses.
"So … what questions do you have for me?" he asks, followed by that deep laugh that everyone who knows him recognizes.
Eason has decided, at age 42, that it's time to tell his life story. And once he starts, it's hard for him to stop because there's so much to cover.
Give a gift subscription to Tigerillustrated.com!
Most people are acquainted with the surface-level part of his journey, and that in itself is compelling enough:
The roots in Lyons, a tiny town in Southeast Georgia, the academic achievement at Clemson where he earned two degrees, the football prowess and persistence that allowed him to play 117 games over 10 seasons in the NFL with four different teams, the outgoing personality that makes him a beloved and magnetic figure almost everywhere he goes.
When Eason decided to leave Auburn after just one season to return to his alma mater 15 months ago, it seemed like the perfect fit because of his seven years of experience coaching in the NFL, and of course because he was back home again at the place that helped mold him.
It was an ideal match also because of his skill as a recruiter, and his ability to relate to players.
Yet it's beneath the surface where you find that Eason is truly aligned with the DNA of a head coach and program that is in many ways defined by the overcoming of epic struggle.
For years, Eason would share only bits and pieces of his life.
But then his life felt like it was crumbling when he lost both his grandmother and his great friend Altroy Bodrick over a span of a few months in 2021.
Not long thereafter he was back in Clemson and working for a man who believes in opening up about life's most difficult hurdles.
In the fall of 2008, Dabo Swinney shared the story of his against-all-odds upbringing with Tigerillustrated.com.
Eleven years later, defensive coordinator Brent Venables decided to sit down with this web site to share his own story.
At the highest point of Clemson's football history -- two national titles in a three-year span -- the two most recognizable figures leading this powerhouse program had overcome poverty and severe family dysfunction.
The endearing and enduring context added power and gravity to the overall underdog story of Clemson clawing its way to the top. It put a human, everyman face on a supreme winning machine.
Join Tigerillustrated.com subscribers on The West Zone message board!
And now this program has another coach with a story to share, another figure who found ways to rise above the hardship.
For the first time, Eason pulls it all together and revisits some of the moments and experiences that have shaped him:
-- He spent his childhood never really knowing his father, who lived seven miles away as Nick lived with two grandparents who struggled to make ends meet.
-- He encountered the legacy of the Jim Crow South while in high school, where his retribution for dating a white girl was a baseball bat to the mouth swung by the girl's father.
-- He watched his college teammate, Brandon Rouse, die in a Clemson movie theater after collapsing and suffering a heart attack.
-- While with the Cleveland Browns, he unknowingly became involved in a massive Ponzi scheme that left him broke and fearing for his life.
-- While with the Pittsburgh Steelers, complications from a ruptured appendix pushed him near death and left him in the hospital for two weeks as he recovered from having part of his colon removed.
-- He lost his mother to breast cancer and has dealt with the death of 20 close family members over the years.
-- His spiral into depression after losing his grandmother and the 41-year-old Bodrick, and realizing just last year as he prepared for his first season back at Clemson that he had to make a change as he pushed close to 400 pounds (he's since lost 67 pounds and has a goal of getting to 300 by the start of the 2023 season).
Yes, there's quite a lot more to Eason's story than has been known even to those who followed his life closely.
And the big guy is now ready to share in hopes of helping not just himself but others.
Starting Tuesday, Tigerillustrated.com presents the Nick Eason story in his own words.
SHOP NOW: Marked down Clemson gear in stock at The Tiger Fan Shop HERE!
