Chad Carson

Several years ago, Chad Carson and his family moved to Ecuador without making any plans beyond a three-day Airbnb rental. They ended up living there for 17 months.

Now they are preparing for a move to Spain for a year.

Carson played football at Clemson from 1998 to 2001 but has carved out life and leadership that is totally separate from the sport that defined him in college and high school.

Carson's success in the real-estate business has allowed him, his wife and two children the flexibility to explore the world. It's also granted him the time to pursue his passion of making Clemson's transportation infrastructure inclusive of more than just automobiles.

Carson joins the podcast to talk about his life in football and after football, and he offers his reflections on the rapid changes in college athletics.

"I'm not saying that getting a scholarship and an education is not valuable -- it really is. But I think college football has always been a pro sport. We were treated like pro athletes all along. It's a business, and you get pushed hard by coaches who are saying 'sink or swim' because their jobs are on the line, and they're facing the pressure of getting paid millions of dollars. It's a pro sport that happens to be on a college campus. In my mind there has always, always been a disjunction there -- coaches making millions of bucks, players making nothing. It didn't sit right with me, particularly knowing that a few of those really big-time players were generating a lot of that revenue. It never seemed equitable to me."