Eric: I have always been curious what a parent goes through when dealing with college football recruiters. I was wondering if you could tell me what your family dealt with when James was deciding on which college to attend and what made him decide to pick Ohio State?
Road Warrior Animal: Luckily, being an athlete, football was my first love. I was actually going to try out with the New Jersey Generals of the USFL before I got into wrestling.

The next few seconds were not audible. He got letters from all levels of football from D-3, D-2, to D-1. He got very many D-1 scholarships. We narrowed it down to Notre Dame and Ohio State.

Eric: What made you pick Ohio State over Notre Dame?

Road Warrior Animal: We went down to Notre Dame and with Touchdown Jesus in the background and everything else, we saw that stood on the field and thought that was kind of fun. And then they had a coaching change. They fired Tyrone Willingham and they hadn’t hired a new coach (eventually they hired Charlie Weis).

I said that we can’t wait around for this so let’s go look at Ohio State. We looked at Ohio State and they offered Jim a scholarship immediately. When we walked in there, it was unbelievable. I knew right away when we stood at the 50-yard line of Ohio State. As soon as we came down and walked into the Horse Shoe, it is the most overpowering, overwhelming field I’ve ever seen in college football. Out of all the stadiums we’ve been to in college football, whether it is Penn State, the Big House in Michigan or the Rose Bowl where USC plays, none of them compare to the Horse Shoe at Ohio State.

Ohio State is incredible. The atmosphere is incredible.

And the coaching staff was great. Coach Tressel took the coaches to Minnesota. At the time, my son was playing ice hockey and they wanted to see how he played another sport. Jim had to make sure it was OK with mom and mom said it was OK and then he chose Ohio State. I knew it was a done deal.

Eric: Is there anything else you would like my readers to know?

Road Warrior Animal: Let your readers know that I do personal appearances and speaking engagements. I speak to schools; the high school teams, the small college teams, anybody that wants me to come in and speak. Motivational speaking for corporations, I do that too. I come in as the Animal or I come in there as Joe Laurinaitis too. I love to do that and they can contact me through my Road Warriors Inc.com site.

And everybody in Manhattan, come out here this Saturday. We’ve got Ric Flair, Eric Bischoff, Terry Funk, and myself that are going to be there at the Ringside Collectibles. We’re going to have a great event and we’re hoping for a huge, huge turnout.

Eric: That should be a fun day. I’m going to be down there. Jon invited me down there and I’m going to be taking some photos for the site.

Road Warrior Animal: I’ll be there and I’ll be bringing my spiked shoulder pads for the fans to put on if they want to take pictures. I may even bring one of my tag team title belts with me too so people can see. Not the fake belts, the original belts. I’ve got a couple of original belts. I’ve got the original AWA tag team belt which is about 90 years old and then I have one of the WWF Tag Team Belts too.