Aggie Flashback with former A&M LB Antonio Armstrong

Key quotes from Antonio Armstrong interview

"Right now I own a company called First Class Training. We are a total fitness solutions facility with three locations here in Houston. We personal train, we have pilates, jujitsu, we have nutritional counseling, things of that nature and anything concerning fitness."

"Speaking to the 2015 Texas A&M football team was great. I definitely thank Coach Sumlin for that and all the guys that had a hand in getting me there, but it was an experience like none other. It actually was very emotional to see the growth that has taken place with the facilities, but the second thing was to be able to take the experiences that I had from when I was at Texas A&M and deposit it into those kids. Great athletes, phenomenal athletes there, but I wanted to try and help revive the spirit that we had in Aggieland. By no stretch of the imagination do I believe that we were across the board, man-for-man, just as good as an athlete as these guys are, but I can say that our heart was a big factor in our success while we were at Texas A&M."

"Looks can be deceiving, that's all I can tell you right now. That's all beach muscles, I can make one or two good plays, I'm good for one play actually. I talked to Coach Chavis when I was there and he told me, 'Looks like you can still play.' I said, 'Coach, I can give you one good play and I'm done after that.' On a serious note, right now I think LJ (Larry Jackson) could play it because LJ has the biggest mouth."

"You know something, the team was a great listening audience. During my speech presentation I took the guys down my walk at Texas A&M. I took them through every one of my years, all four of my years. I think every year represented somebody in that room and I think the message and the way the kids took it from me, they asked so many questions after it was over with and I was very excited about that. But the message was about the fire. Basically you take LeBron James, Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh, those were links in a chain.  The old saying is, 'the chain is as strong as it's weakest link.' Well you know something, we can't be a chain any longer, we need to go through the fire together and we need to become one. We need to become one piece of metal that's indestructible and unmovable that's working together on the same page just like a sword.

"You know when the Miami Heat went against that sword that was the San Antonio Spurs, they sliced those guys up. So it's the same concept with these guys and they want to understand how did I deal with knowing I was good enough to play, but riding the bench or playing special teams. How did I deal with the fire? How did I deal with being fussed at all the time? How did I deal with juggling school life as well as life as an athlete? You know those are very real questions that we deal with emotionally as student athletes that needs to be addressed."

"When I was a senior in high school I wasn't just a huge guy. In high school I was 6-0,186 pounds. I was 17 when I came to Texas A&M, but I also had a brain aneurysm and the doctor told me I should have died from it, but thank God I survived it and I actually was cleared to play football again so I came to A&M. I had lost a lot of weight from being in the hospital for a long period of time. When I first got to A&M I was on special teams. I could use my quickness, my agility to move around and I was also competing against guys that were my size. Usually the defensive backs and linebackers played special teams so I didn't have that much of a problem.

"I got on to special teams my freshman year. When we came to camp time, I had to line up on that line of scrimmage and take on the tight ends and tackles, let me tell you something those guys were tossing me like I was just a rag doll. Coach (Bob) Davie actually made a video and I told the guys about it, he called it the 'child abuse tape' and in it they had 20 clips. Of those 20 clips, I was on 15 of them. I'm thought I had no chance here, it was a really tough time for me. I didn't think I would ever be able to get it, but I committed myself to hard work, I committed myself to the weight room and it just made a dramatic turn around in fall and summer."

"I had the breakthrough that told me I could play at Texas A&M during my sophomore year when we played Stanford. I had spent the whole summer in the weight room, Marcus Buckley came out for a play and they threw me in there for one play and actually I had two whole snaps that game. I got in for two snaps and on my first play in I was able to do a slap and a rip and got straight to the quarterback, pressured the quarterback and my eyes just flew open like, 'Wow, I can actually do this.' I kept doing well and I progressed throughout the season. I didn't play much, but I was doing great in practice and I was able to take on blockers and hold my own and not get pushed around and I felt like I was ready to compete for a starting job the next year."

"I explained to the guys in the speech, the day that I was at Texas A&M, I walked on campus on my recruiting visit and they took me to the weight room and I'll never forget it. I saw this humongous guy, 6'5, 250 pounds by the name of Larry Jackson. He was doing incline bench press, 225 pounds and he had repped it out 10 times and I was standing there thinking to myself, 'You know something, I want to be just like that guy. I'm pretty sure in four years I'm going to look just like him.' So they introduced me to him, 'Hey how are you doing? This is Larry Jackson, he's a redshirt freshman.'  I said to myself, 'Oh my God, I'm never going to play here, this guy's huge.'  Then we went into the meeting room and watched a highlight video of the 1990 Texas A&M football team and when I saw William Thomas play that's when it hit me. That's when I said that this is the place that I belong and I want to be a part of that. That guy there played at a level that just inspired me and fired me up to want to be an Aggie."

"Changing my name from Shorter to Armstrong was one of those moments in life when you realize you are who you are because of your parents. For me, my mom was always there for me, she took care of me, but the right thing to do was to carry my father's name. No, he wasn't there for me in my life, but the truth to it is he brought me into this world and 90% of the athleticism that I have today came from him because he was a great athlete. People say he was a great guy that got caught up in some bad situations and that's just the bottom line to it. When I was going into my senior year I said, 'You know something, I need to go ahead and do the right thing and carry his name because I want my children to carry the name of Armstrong.' So that's why I made the decision to go ahead and make that change. It's not the most popular decision, but I deal with what the truth is and the truth is I'm supposed to be an Armstrong and I need to carry that name."

"I'm very excited about having at Texas A&M. I wish he would have made the move a year earlier and I also wish he would have walked on to the football team, but I'm going to leave all that alone. On a separate note, I have had bad examples in my life of what not to do by so many people and so much so that it has driven me to do the right thing because I've seen the result of those bad examples. I know one thing that I've learned in life is a fool makes the same mistake over and over again, a smart man learns from the mistakes he or she made, but a wise man learns from mistakes other people make. So I want to walk as a wise man and learn from other people's mistakes."

"Dawn (his wife) and I have been through so much together, part of it was maybe we were so young and naive it was a good thing because we were a little crazy doing the stuff we did. Packing up with just 900 dollars period and driving to Canada, that right there is kind of ludicrous these days. To both our names 900 dollars was all we had and we're talking bout gas money, hotel stays, food, etc. and we had to make it work. We got to Canada and I was actually third string on the depth chart starting off camp in the CFL and I had to make the team or we weren't going to have enough money to come back home. So we've been through a lot together to say the least, but one thing I can say is that I've kept my faith in Christ and I believe that he is always with me and he always will be.

"The second thing is I tell people you can have a relationship with Christ, you can have faith, but he tells you what you need to do. I kept following what I need to do and it eventually led us to starting these businesses and even that is tough, it's work, relationships are work, marriage is work, raising children is work. I think when people understand that you have to work at it then that's the only way that you're going to make it because it's not just fantasy, fairy tale stuff that you see on television. This isn't the notebook, this is real life so it's just not what people make it out to be on television, but if you stay the course and stay committed, you make it work."

"The big word I want to give you is trust, trusting people that people have your best interest in mind. My problem was spending money because I didn't have knowledge of how to handle finances, but the biggest problem was that I didn't trust people. The father issues, the racial issues, that was an issue because I grew up in a community where it was pretty much all black and then I come to Texas A&M and it's blacks and whites so that was a transition for me. But then the second part of that whole transition was outside of a coach, no one told me that this is how your supposed to spend your money. In my mind nobody was there for me, nobody helped me make decisions in my life so why is some guy trying to come tell me how to live my life now? So I didn't want to hear it, little did I know I needed that. I needed someone to instruct and help me down the right way. I made a lot of mistakes, so I hope young people pay attention to that and make changes."