The collision of sports, and social and political issues hasn’t escaped the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The team came together recently in a private meeting to share feelings on real world issues. And this week, defensive tackle Gerald McCoy offered a glimpse. McCoy, one of the top-paid defensive tackles in the NFL, was candid about his view of these topics, offering a glimpse of hope, fear and conflict in a candid one-on-one interview with Yahoo Sports.

There has been a lot of discussion about social issues lately. Is that something you’ve been talking about?

Absolutely. Talked about it in team meeting, locker room, practice, everywhere. It’s real life. Football is a game. We choose to play this as our career choice; it’s not real life. It’s real life in a sense of this is how we make our money, but life is bigger than this game we play. We got families, I got four kids and a wife. I gotta raise my kids to understand how the world works. It’s a scary world, man. We gotta prepare our families. And one thing we’ve discussed and decided on this team is whatever is going on in the world is not going to separate or break us. We are a family here.

That’s the problem. Everybody wants to fight and be divided. There isn’t any love in the world anymore. There needs to be more discussion. What happened to having debates and having discussion? You hate a person and you don’t even know why they feel the way they feel. Why don’t you talk to them first? Find out. It’s not how it should be. There shouldn’t be so much hate. Everybody is equal to me. We are all equal. Is that how the world works? No, it’s not. You don’t want to have to prepare for the world to be that way, but it is. It’s a fact. Everybody is not treated equal, and it shouldn’t be that way. It causes a rift. It causes a lot of fighting. It’s tough to deal with.

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The inequality – how do you talk to your family about that?

Faith runs our family. God runs my house. If you ain’t read this in the Bible that you should hate this person, that person, you shouldn’t be out there doing it. You don’t be afraid to stand apart and be that person, where if everybody’s giving someone a hard time, you go and you stop it. And not only do you stop it, you go over and tell that person, “Hey, there is someone who loves you. You are enough.” That’s how I raise my family. Be that light, be that difference, instead of joining in. You see people bullying and people treating a person a certain way because of some reason you don’t understand? Don’t join in. Just stay away. If you can stop it, go stop it.

Important message.

It’s learned. Nobody’s born to hate other people. It’s a learned behavior. And it’s taught. It’s taught. Whomever is teaching this, it has to stop. There’s no one answer to how we fix it. It’s scary, you don’t know where this world is going. We don’t want to see another civil war. It’s too much, the world is too great, life is too short for everyone to be fighting all the time.

Are you worried that’s where we’re going?

Yeah, I am. There’s just a rift, it’s a break, it’s a split in society. It doesn’t have to be that way, but it is. That is a fact. Society is starting to split. Until we figure out how to come together and stop this hate and fighting, it’s going to be tough.

Do you wrestle with speaking up more as a league leader? As a community leader?

I used to. I don’t now. I’m eight years in now. I feel I’ve done enough in this league where if I speak, my voice will be heard. I’ve done enough where if I do say something, people will listen. I used to, I don’t anymore, and that’s why I said what I said in this interview.

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