In the past few weeks, Kurt Richardson has experienced the highest of highs and the lowest of lows.

Last week, Richardson was officially named the new director of player engagement for Michigan State football, a job that allows him to be involved in a program he idolized growing up.

He has worked for MSU’s assistant athletic director Darien Harris on some individual programs in the past but now he is in East Lansing in a full-time capacity, taking over Harris’ past role.

“I had just turned down an offer, an NFL player engagement job,” Richardson said to the media on Tuesday. “My wife and I talked about it. It’s like, man, that would be cool to do, but we’re not moving to Florida again. I got 4-year-old twins about to be 5-year-old twins. We’re not doing that.

“So ironically, I had offered that job to Darien (Harris). He obviously declined it and took an even better role here with the university. But when I got the offer, I kind of shifted it off to him and let him kick the tires on it. And so I got an email one day that this job was gonna post and I actually thought they were (asking me), ‘What else should this include, Kurt?’ Like, I didn’t understand that they were asking me to be one of the candidates. And so I showed it to my wife and she said, ‘You bonehead, they’re asking you to apply.’"

Of course, Richardson ultimately landed the job. This is a dream role for Richardson, a Lansing native.

However, during that process of being hired, his mother underwent cardiac arrest while Richardson was on the phone with Deputy Athletic Director Ashton Henderson, finalizing the deal. She later passed away with Richardson at her side.

Richardson described it all as a “really muting” experience. Of course, it was a whirlwind of emotions for Richardson.

“Randomly, my Mom was like, ‘Are you working for Michigan State?” Richardson said. “‘I’m seeing all this stuff you’re posting on Facebook about Michigan State.’ And I had already started the interview process, but I didn’t tell her about it, unfortunately. And so she never got to know.”

Richardson founded Encore Athletix, and has worked with various NFL teams, college football teams and players to develop athletes off the gridiron. He’s worked with NFL Pro Bowlers like Saquon Barkley and Lamar Jackson.

His job roles at MSU include being a mentor for the football players, coordinating and leading player development, alumni engagement, career networking, university outreach and community service.

When asked if he had a specific vision for the role, Richardson noted that he simply plans to keep all of the initiatives and programs that Harris started because his ideas are aligned. This is his plan to start, at least.

“Darien (Harris) laid down such an incredible foundation, it makes it easier,” Richardson said. “So my first year, what I’m trying to do is assimilate in, do everything that he did, just keep that going."

Richardson said that he is “100 percent (in) on everything” that Harris did when he was in Richardson’s role. He may incorporate a couple of his own ideas in the future.

Name, image and likeness (NIL) is something that’s new in today’s era of college football. Student-athletes can make money while they're still in college. However, younger and more immature minds are now exposed to money sooner in life. Before NIL, football players wouldn’t get a taste of this scale of money until they reached the NFL or another pro football league.

One of Richardson's other roles with this job is teaching the players how to manage money. He discussed the importance of showing young players how to handle money and navigating through NIL.

“It’s accelerated wealth,” Richardson said about NIL money. “It’s just the same as if a regular person wins the lotto. I don’t know if you know the numbers on that, but they’re almost statistically guaranteed to go broke again because what we think about and what we don’t understand is — I come from the finance world originally — most people think like, ‘Oh, I’m broke because I don’t have money.’ But it’s like you actually don’t have money because you’re broke.

"How you think about money doesn’t match with what you could get. So even if we gave you some money, you'll probably mess it up. And so that’s especially true of young people who, mental health wise, their brain is not even developed when they leave here. Literally, it’s not a full-grown human brain. So how they see money is twisted.”

Richardson does think that they’re are benefits of NIL, including student-athletes having access to programs that they would not have in the past.

“One of the things we’re going to talk about is money management,” Richardson said. “One of the things we talk about is mental health. Some of the stuff that the universities are doing a great job, in my opinion, of prioritizing it.”

Another benefit of NIL is that student-athletes can provide for families and loved ones much sooner in life. That can allow them to stay in college an extra year or two as opposed to chasing the NFL money because they need it as soon as possible. Richardson feels this is especially true for certain positions, such as running backs.

“(For running backs), it may make a lot more sense to stay in college (longer) right now,” Richardson said. “My opinion is that they’ve devalued that position (in the NFL). So, if you keep a 12-game schedule instead of a 16-game schedule and still take care of your family to some degree in a way that’s extraordinary compared to what other young people could do, I believe that’s what we’ll see. We’ll see certain positions totally grasp that.”

The role of director of player engagement is perhaps not a job title that immediately pops in your mind when you think of a football program. However, it is an essential piece of the puzzle now that mental health has been put in the spotlight in recent years.

“In the NFL, what they’ve realized recently is you can’t have a good player if you don’t have a good man out there,” Richardson said. “If you have somebody that’s distracted either by money, infidelity, imposter syndrome, all the stuff that can happen to these high-performance athletes, they cannot play the game that’s so competitive. There’s only 1,600 people on the planet that can do it. You can’t go out there on Sunday and not be right mentally.”

Richardson likes the focus that head coach Mel Tucker and the MSU program has put on mental health, and it was one of the reasons he was comfortable taking the job.

Richardson will help players develop off the field, in a variety of ways, whether they plan to pursue professional football or not.

Discuss this article in our premium forums by clicking here.

You can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

For video content, including our Red Cedar Radar podcast, find us on YouTube and consider subscribing.