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The questions, three of them, are short but open-ended:

1) What are you up to nowadays?

2) What are your thoughts on the state of Clemson Football?

3) What do you make of the current landscape of college athletics amid the transfer portal and Name, Image and Likeness?

ALSO SEE: THE CLEMSON 30: Charlie Whitehurst | THE CLEMSON 30: Tymere Zimmerman | THE CLEMSON 30: Jeff Francoeur | THE CLEMSON 30: Michael Dean Perry | THE CLEMSON 30: Da'Quan Bowers | THE CLEMSON 30: Woody Dantzler | THE CLEMSON 30: Airese Currie | THE CLEMSON 30: Kyle Young | THE CLEMSON 30: Dustin Fry | THE CLEMSON 30: Tye Hill | THE CLEMSON 30: Robert Carswell | THE CLEMSON 30: Willie Simmons

Tigerillustrated.com has spent the past two months tracking down 30 former Clemson football figures whose names still resonate with fans.

We will spend the better part of the next two months sharing their responses.

Today our 13th installment in THE CLEMSON 30 series features former Clemson offensive lineman Landon Walker.

I've been in NASCAR with Hendrick Motorsports for 10 years now, basically since I left Clemson. That's gone really well, and the flexibility of that has allowed me to transition into having a trucking business and focusing on that during the week.

I really have to credit Clemson for giving me that pedestal to end up getting an opportunity to start my career at Hendrick.

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I've been gassing these cars for this long, and still the first thing I always get from people is "You're the guy that played football at Clemson." It's funny how that name and that brand has been recognized everywhere we go across the United States. It's just a well-known brand because of what they've done.

Fueling the race cars for Hendrick has been awesome. It gives me that feeling of still being a part of a sport with camaraderie. The team aspect that Hendricks Motorsports offers is so much like what I had in college. A much smaller team, obviously, but I'm very fortunate to be as old as I am and still competing in a team sport.

The trucking business has been good. We're contracted with FedEx. I've really had to grow this business for the five or six years I've been doing it, and it's been very helpful to be in a sport where I can do that. I was able to start small and learn from my mistakes. It's been a blessing.

I live in the Mooresville, N.C. area. We have two kids, a 3-year-old and a 16-month-old. So we've got a wide-open house. Just taking it day by day and trying to do the best we can.

It's been just tremendous since I played there. I think Coach Swinney is not just a great head coach; he's a great manager of the program. He's a great businessman. And he's a great leader. The things he has done there show who he is as a man. He has faith in the people he's brought into that program to do their job.

There are some guys coaching there now that I played with. I know Thomas Austin and Tyler Grisham will have a major impact on that program. They're good dudes and hard workers. They're the type of people Swinney has built that program with. The most impressive thing to me is the great people Swinney has put in that program, and I think you see the results from that.

It's been fun to sit back as a former player and see so much success and growth. They've built the Clemson name into what it is today. They've done such a great job with everything.

It's so exciting that they've created such a good networking system for the former players. We all talk to each other, and guys have reached out to me for trucking stuff and things like that. It's such a cool network that we have there, and I think that's very uncommon in college sports. I don't think many places have that type of setup for alumni. There's a lot of resources for the guys who are there playing, and there are a lot of resources for the guys who are done playing, whether it be the NFL or after college or whatever the situation may be.

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In my opinion, what the program has done off the field is almost more impressive than the things they've done on the field. I think he's reached way more goals off the field than I could ever have imagined he would do.

The portal and NIL have obviously forever changed football as we know it. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing is to be determined, I guess. I don't think we've quite seen the results or the outcome from it all.

I personally think it could be a great thing for players, something that if it's used in the right way could make Clemson better as a whole. But I definitely think it could be used in wrong ways too. I think there are programs that are not doing the right things with it.

It's in a very volatile state. You really have to be careful with how it's handled by players. I go back to when I was 18, and the ability to make money off your name at that age, make some money off jersey sales or whatever, I think that's great incentive to play somewhere but I also think those things have to be used in the right way. These guys need to be helped in managing their money. If you would have given me a bunch of money when I was 18, it would have been very tough for me to know what to do with that type of money at that age.

So while I think it's important for these guys to receive the money, I think it's just as important for them to learn how to invest it and use it to their advantage so that when they do get out of college they have a cushion so they can have some time to figure out what they want to do. I think NIL can be a great thing.

I'll be honest: I don't love the transfer portal, but I don't want to come off as saying I don't support it for the players who really need it. There are guys who work really hard and they deserve an opportunity to play, and that may not happen at a Clemson University. It may not happen at an Alabama. For those guys to have a chance to play, I think the transfer portal is a great thing. I think Chase Brice is probably a good example of that, a guy who used it in a good way.

But I think it can also be abused by guys who leave when they really shouldn't. There are situations where guys should probably stay and fight for their positions longer than they do. There are guys who pull out at the first sign of adversity. So the portal is a Catch-22 for me. I think it's for guys who work their tails off for three years and then have a chance to go start somewhere else. I fully support that. I think the best thing for players is to not just jump ship at the first sign of adversity. They need to fight their way through something. Maybe it's worth fighting for, right? They should use the support system they have around them, and the support system at Clemson is amazing.

Tomorrow Tigerillustrated.com will release the 14th installment of THE CLEMSON 30.

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