Note: The following appears in the North Carolina football digital gameday guide, available HERE.
Brodey Conn has had multiple opportunities to see different sides of his hometown.
The long snapper grew up in Clemson. Clemson University has served as the host for his athletic and educational experience. He was also a two-sport athlete for the Tigers, as Conn was a utility player for Tiger baseball for three seasons.
Conn’s journey with football began when he was six years old, when he begged his father, a high school football coach, to let him join a team despite the minimum age being seven. He began playing at age seven and eventually played both football and baseball in high school.
When considering why he wanted to pursue football at the college level, Conn pointed to his parents.
“I always looked up to my parents. My mom and dad are definitely the two most influential people in my life. My dad was a football player at Alabama, so I wanted to be like him. I wanted to play college sports and I wanted to play football at the highest level. They always pushed me and told me that I could and were huge encouragers.”
For Conn, it was the relationships in his life that drew him to Clemson’s football program, particularly the idea of working with his father. When Conn was 13, his father, Mickey, joined Clemson on staff, which led Conn to experience “the program from a family perspective.”
“Being a part of it before I was a college athlete…it really drew me.”
For Conn, being a walk-on has taught him a great deal about himself and, in his eyes, has benefited him significantly.
“There's a lot of stuff you can gain from being a walk-on. The first thing is you learn to serve, and being a walk-on showed me what it means to serve. You have all these guys that they recruited, and you get to go out and help the team win. It was so rewarding for me those first few years being on the scout team, and then watching on Saturdays and watching us win and knowing that the work I was putting in to serve my teammates and helping us win on Saturdays was special.”
Looking back at the games he has played, Louisiana Tech in 2022 stands out as one of his favorites.
“That’s the first time I ever got to play in a game. It was a fun experience. I'll never forget the feeling of running out onto the field and getting to play on a punt return. It was a surreal feeling being able to be on the field, because I had looked up to so many players at Clemson that came before me, and it was awesome.”
Along with Clemson football, baseball has been a formative experience for Conn and has helped his football career, particularly in lessons in adversity.
“I had an amazing experience playing baseball here at Clemson, and I had so much fun and have so many great teammates and relationships that I've been able to sustain even after baseball. I was convinced I was going to be a starter in baseball, and I wanted to be a baseball player. And when the Lord took that away, I was able to put all my focus into football, and it's really helped me grow.”
Conn explained that his experience taught him the following.
“It helped me deal with hard things, and that's not just in sports, but life in general. You have to have so much self-confidence in yourself and in your relationship with Jesus that whenever tough things happen, you know you're unfazed because your joy doesn't come from that.”
When considering what he loves most about Clemson, Conn smiled.
“What's there not to love? I mean it. There really is something special in these hills. I know everybody says it, and it's a catchphrase, but there's a reason. It's because it's so awesome. The people that you meet here, the beauty…there’s not enough good things that I could say about Clemson.
“I feel lucky too because I have both sides. I got to grow up here, and then I got to go to school here, and it's two completely different experiences of Clemson that you get, and both are so wonderful.”
For Conn, the biggest lesson learned during his five years at Clemson University is clear…you need to love and serve people.
“You have to love what you do, you need to love who you do it with and you need to have a servant's heart. You need to be willing to sacrifice things and serve others. The servant leadership aspect, the things that we get from Coach (Dabo) Swinney every single day, the guest speakers, from our position coaches, the way they pour into us, P.A.W. Journey and the initiatives that they do with us every day, trying to help us grow into successful men, not just successful football players, is really great.”
In December, Conn graduated with his undergraduate degree in marketing, and he is currently working towards his MBA. The most important thing to Conn is his passion for serving others.
“I'm in a position where I need to serve people, I need to pour into people, I need to be a light to people. My mom used to tell me every single day she dropped me off at school, ‘Show kindness to somebody today.’
"Showing kindness to people is so easy, and you never know what somebody's going through. It makes me feel so good to be able to be kind to people and encourage them and push them, and that's probably the thing I'm most passionate about outside of my relationship with Jesus first and my family second.”