Sean Clifford dances around, creates distance from murky CFBPA leadership role

INDIANAPOLIS — Sean Clifford tried to play it off.

Sitting at his podium inside Lucas Oil Stadium, the Penn State quarterback talked and sidetracked his way around last week’s fiasco. With a matchup at Purdue closing in, his focus is on training camp.

But it’s obvious that is the furthest thing from the truth. A Big Ten communications staffer stood next to his podium for the entire session — the first and only time that’s been done over this two-day stretch.

When a Nittany Lions strength staff member crashed a players-only meeting with College Football Players Association executive director Jason Stahl earlier this month, Clifford’s under-the-radar charge to reform players’ rights was suddenly in jeopardy. Moving quickly, he tried to pull it back together. He talked with Pat Kraft and James Franklin. A phone call with Kevin Warren was set up as an introduction.

But when word leaked last week about the work Stahl and Clifford had done in Happy Valley, Clifford attempted to distance himself. The CFBPA’s three requests to the Big Ten are a radical shift. Only hours after the news broke, the quarterback issued a statement, claiming he did not play a leadership role in the organization.

Given the opportunity to clarify the situation Wednesday, Clifford referred back to Friday’s statement. He directed questions back to football. And he tried his best to shuffle away from ever truly backing the CFBPA.

“Do I want to make change for college athletics and college athletes across the country? Absolutely,” he said. “I mean, that’s one of the things that I set out to do this offseason. And I still believe that.”

That was the closest the Penn State star got to acknowledging the change he wanted to bring to college football.

When asked if the current situation would be different if the CFBPA meeting on Penn State’s campus had not been interrupted, he deferred.

“I’m going to stick to football questions, but I appreciate the question,” he said.

When asked what was on his agenda for what he was hoping to accomplish for current student-athletes, he tried to move on.

“I think that those are things that I stated in my statement on Twitter,” he said.

When asked if he still stands by the three demands of the CFBPA, he brushed past them.

“I think,” he said, “I said enough in my statement on Twitter.”

Sean Clifford, the entrepreneur and leader

Sean Clifford was not always a leader of players’ rights. But he was never one to shy away from rising to the occasion. St. Xavier High School football coach Steve Specht said Clifford was the first two-time captain during his tenure, which has included four Ohio big school championships.

“When you have that kind of respect from your peers, I think that speaks volumes about the person you are,” Specht said.

Clifford led the Bombers to a state title as a senior in 2016. That was six years ago before he founded the agency Limitless NIL, which he said now has 25 clients. That was before Clifford completed an undergraduate degree in advertising and a minor in psychology, with another degree in broadcasting on the way.

“If I had would have known that I would be here this long, I would’ve had three Master’s and five degrees,” he joked.

He picked up the microphone at the dais to speak into it more loudly, suggesting that he could be behind the mic more often in the future.

It was a rare moment of levity for Clifford’s media session, as the quarterback navigated questions about his past communication regarding the CFBPA’s demands.

“When I hear things like Sean’s looking at expanding healthcare for college athletes, I just laugh because nothing seems to surprise me with Sean Clifford anymore,” Specht said, when asked about Clifford’s leadership in the context of last Friday’s news cycle. “He’s a natural-born leader. He’s just a quality, quality human being and he’s going to be successful in whatever walk. Everybody talks about how great of a football player he is. Well, you know, Sean doesn’t define himself through football. He defines himself just through being a tremendous human being in many facets.”

However, Clifford or others describe his role or level of involvement in the CFBPA’s efforts in State College, it’s clear why Clifford, at least briefly, became the athlete face of the association.

The sixth-year senior who’s now an entrepreneur discussed how he’s replaced the time he spent playing video games with business calls. He now reads Bloomberg and checks the market. He spends less time on Instagram, Twitter and TikTok.

Questions remain surrounding Friday night

The timeline and details are murky about what, exactly, happened last Friday. What happened between news breaking that afternoon about the process of a CFBPA chapter forming at Penn State and the evening, when Clifford and Warren each released public statements?

In Indianapolis Tuesday and Wednesday, Big Ten players and coaches repeated how open to conversation administrators at the school and conference levels are.

When asked if there was a meeting scheduled between he, Kraft, Franklin and Stahl that was later canceled, Clifford said, “I can’t talk about it.” It was the final question of his hour-long media session.

Early in the session, he was asked if he ever considered not coming to Big Ten Media Days.

“No,” Clifford. “Absolutely not.”

Do we know what conversations happened within Penn State’s locker room, athletic department and the Big Ten Conference to lead to this point, where the strength of potentially the first CFBPA chapter has fizzled?

No. Absolutely not.

Where Sean Clifford, CFBPA go from here

The Penn State quarterback seemed content to step away from this chapter of his summer. Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren announced Tuesday in his state of the conference address that a Student-Athlete Advisory Committee has been formed. Clifford will be involved — justifying that he can address conference-wide problems.

“I see myself as a leader in the locker room, first and foremost,” Clifford said. “There for every single student-athlete that comes in contact with me because I want to make sure that I’m there for them.”

Yet, there are still members of the Nittany Lions’ roster who are members of the CFBPA. When Clifford made his statement Friday night, more than three dozen Penn State players had signed up. Since then, that number has dipped into the 20s. When asked directly about how the locker room has reacted, the quarterback shifted his answer into an assessment of how excited his teammates are about the coming season. Clifford was never an official member of the CFBPA.

The CFBPA was set to attend media days in Indianapolis until its request to attend was denied in a Saturday email. Stahl remains adamant that the organization is not going anywhere — even if the stars continue to walk away.

Two more chapters in the Big Ten are in the works, Stahl told On3. Any active college football player is eligible to join the association for $1 in annual dues.

“This is the problem that is going to be such a problem,” Stahl told On3 this week. “It’s a hurdle we have to overcome in building this institution that the star players who are attached at the hip, and make excuses for coaches and benefit from the systems as it is. They don’t want to see reform because these sort of problems in college football actually benefit that.”

Andy Wittry contributed to this story