Love of the game or quality of life? That the is the dilemma that has been well publicized among football players regardless of their level of competition. That was also the same predicament ASU defensive back Armand Perry was facing at the end of the 2016 season. Perry candidly talked about his football career and the reasons that led him to medically retire earlier this year.

Here is Armand Perry in his own words:

“I honestly was playing football coming out of the womb. I can remember playing football ever since I was a little kid. My older brother, Tre, played football and I looked up to him a lot. At the time, we lived in Minnesota and there was an age requirement for tackle football. My parents always thought I was too aggressive for the children my age, so I had to just watch my older brother. I started doing drills in the basement so when it was time for me to play tackle football I was a natural.

“I started playing tackle football when I was eight years old when we moved to Las Vegas. As soon as we pulled up to Las Vegas, I went straight to football practice. I didn’t even go home first or move in. I started out as a running back and a linebacker. I was always aggressive on the defensive end. Tre is actually the reason why I played defense. He told me: ‘you’re good on offense, but there’s just something different about you on defense.’ In eighth grade, I started going full-time on defense.

“I went to Bishop Gorman High School all four years. My sophomore year I was on the varsity team as a nickel back and then I started the next two years. It’s neat that Tre has a state championship ring from there, I have one and my younger brother, Alex, has one. We all are separated by four years. When I was going to Bishop Gorman it was different. Las Vegas was just being ‘flown over’ and not a lot of recruits were coming out of Las Vegas simply because people didn’t know about it. I feel like my class were truly pioneers for kids out of Las Vegas getting Division I offers. In my class, I was the only defensive back to go to the Pac-12. Now, we got classes with eight guys going D-I. My younger brother and all of his friends we grew up with are all going D-I.were truly pioneers for kids out of Las Vegas getting Division I offers. In my class, I was the only defensive back to go to the Pac-12. Now, we got classes with eight guys going D-I. My younger brother and all of his friends we grew up with are all going D-I.

“Going to Gorman was tough because it’s a private school. A lot of the stricter rules and lessons we learned at a young age. That’s why I truly believe athletes from Bishop Gorman will go out there and be successful. I don’t think I only set up a (recruiting) foundation for my brother and his friends, but I also set up a foundation of doing things the right way. There were past athletes at Gorman who got into trouble and never made it. I want to be a positive role model for the kids to look up to.

“The CBA organization started in high school with myself, my best friend Dajai and my little brother Alex. It stands for Code Black Athletics. It’s nothing more than an organization of men and women, which started in Las Vegas but it has expanded all over. It pushes everyone to be at their best and supporting success. We motivate people to better their situations. It’s been nothing but positive. We threw a football camp back in Las Vegas and we want to help kids get recruited. We have CBA players on different rosters like Demario Richard, Shay Fields, Jaleel Wadood, Nate Starks, Bubba Bolden, Bookie Radley-Hiles…and a bunch of other players. The organization speaks for itself. I went back to the Gorman signing day and there were 10 players there and mine only had three. It’s a family thing and we keep the family really tight. As you can see we support everybody to live out their dreams and to be the best at whatever it is. It’s not just athletics, it’s everyday life. If you do Yoga – approach it like it’s athletics. If you’re in business - approach it like it’s athletics. I really feel you get the most life lessons out of sports.

“I was good friends with Jaleel Wadood, and at the time he was committed to ASU. There was just something about ASU that made me want to come there, but I didn’t have the offer yet. Later I got a message from (secondary) Coach Ball and he said word for word: ‘I’m building the best secondary in the country and I personally want you to be a part of it.’ So, they offered me. Then something happened with Jaleel and he decommitted, and both of us were thinking about going to Cal together. Jaleel actually committed there before he committed to UCLA. So, I was going to commit to Cal and one of the only reasons I didn’t commit right away was because they wanted me to take another SAT to get a higher score. I was talking to my parents and the next day I was going to commit to Cal. But the night before I was going to commit to them, I had a breakdown in my room, I was crying, and I was thinking about everything. I called Coach Ball and told him ‘Coach, I don’t know what to do.’ And he told me ‘sleep on it.’ So, I did, and I prayed on it and the next day I committed to Arizona State.

“I honestly expected to play as a true freshman and I did. My whole career I have been an underdog, so the minute I knew I was coming here I dedicated myself because I had something to prove. I was coming in expecting to make big plays because that’s what I told everyone back home that I would do. I saw what Tyrann Mathieu did his freshman year (at LSU) and I saw the style of football ASU was playing, so I really prepared myself to come in and play I think the results showed. I was blessed to be a Freshman All-American.

“What people may not know about my freshman year, I partially tore my groin before my pick-six against Washington. If you are true ASU fan, watch that game and you can see two plays before I was picked up on a blitz and my leg got clipped and that’s when I got injured. Three plays later I got the pick-six. I had surgery in February the next year, and I was clear to train only during summer workouts.

“The second game of my sophomore season (versus Cal Poly), I had the ankle injury. I tore all four ligaments in my ankle, and the fourth was just hanging on. They couldn’t find exactly what was wrong with the ankle. They were treating it like it was a high ankle sprain, but they found out later that there was bone and ligament damage. That was a crazy time in my life. I wanted to follow up my freshman year with a great sophomore season. I was looking down at my ankle and it was so swollen that it was the biggest thing on my body. Dealing with that was the toughest mental battle I ever had to go through.

“I didn’t have any apprehension going into the 2016 season. To be honest, that is part of the reason I hurt today. I never second-guessed myself, even being out there injured. I knew what it was like to watch a full season, have a season taken away from you. Seeing how that season (2015) went and I couldn’t be out there to help my team…that was my motivation to play in 2016 and that ended up really hurting me. Being out there playing, I didn’t care about pain. I went out there and gave it my all for my team.

“I’m 21 right now and one thing I’m struggling with is that I wake up in pain every day. It hurts me because I’m reminded of it every day. If it was up to me, I’d be out there on the field right now. That has been the hardest pill to swallow. I would recommend any player to take their health more seriously. After seeing the CTE study it opened my eyes up a lot. You do see a lot more players retiring and that came into my decision. It came down to: is it worth it? Is it worth it getting another surgery? One thing I try to tell people is that no one else is going through it but yourself. If I were to get two more surgeries, which I would have to if I wanted to play again, that’s me getting rolled back to the operating room. It’s me who’s getting cut open. It’s me who has to get up every morning with the motivation to rehab and get back. That’s the hardest thing for a student-athlete, the injuries. I’ve come back from two, three injuries at ASU but what I have right now is just a different beast.

“I had hip surgery last January. So, the decision came down to that even if I wanted to attempt to come back and play, I would need shoulder surgery and a procedure done on my big toe. So, is it worth? What’s my goal in football? The NFL? What I did is looked up players who had (serious) injuries and see where were they going in the draft? I still had two years to play at ASU, and I wanted to see where those players were getting drafted? I was just looking in the mirror and being honest with myself, would my body pass with an NFL scout and the draft? I’d probably have to take a free agent route. So, was it worth putting myself through this two more years (at ASU), and after I came back maybe get injured again and have my career end that way? Or, leave more on your own terms with a multitude of business opportunities that could surpass what I would make earning wise in the NFL. So that’s what it came down to.

“Week two (in 2016) I tore my labrum in my shoulder. In the UCLA game, I injured my toe and in the Utah game, I tore the labrum in my hip. Going into the Washington game, I wasn’t going to play but something, unfortunately, happened with Marcus (Ball) so I had to play. It was hard waking up every day at 5 a.m. getting treatment for three different injuries. It was just crazy. Starting in week six I wasn’t practicing. I was just rehabbing, watching practice, and then going out and playing on Saturday. Right after the game. I’m already getting treatments to get ready for the next game. Going through that cycle, you ask yourself: “is this really football? Is this really a way of life?” Football was coming into conflict with my personal life and me being happy. Is this really the way I want to live?

“From the first play of the Arizona game (in 2016) I knew this was my last game. The hip was bothering me, my shoulder was on fire and in my head, it was push through, push through. That game was going to determine our bowl game. The first play of the game I made a tackle, I hopped up and thought to myself ‘wow… feels like my left leg is about to fall off.’ I played a couple more plays, and if you watch that game I came out for a couple of plays. I came in later, but honestly, I don’t know how I was doing it playing with all those injuries. But by the grace of God blessing me with an extremely high football I.Q. that’s the only way I was surviving from week six for the rest of the season.

“I believe God told me to stop playing when I got kicked out of that (Arizona) game. It was the most unusual ejection I had ever seen or been a part of. If you ask ASU fans ‘why did Armand Perry get kicked out of that game?’ I don’t know if anyone can tell you. They didn’t announce my ejection on TV, the referee didn’t announce it and I wasn’t asked to leave the field. None of that went on. I honestly think it was God handpicking me and saying ‘hey, you need to take a seat.’

“Immediately after the season ended I got my MRI’s which gave me the news. After that, I told the trainer that I just need to go home to Las Vegas to be with my family and reevaluate things. I went a few months without telling Alex about my status and didn’t tell him completely what was going on and that I had second thoughts about playing. I didn’t want that to affect him playing at ASU. So, I had my surgery and Alex was helping me with the surgery, keeping me motivated. Later I had a sit down with Alex telling him that I think I was going to be done with football. That was one of the hardest conversations I ever had because my brother means the world to me. If you know our relationship, I have always been there for him. I’ve always been his rock and we spent our whole lives together and this was one of our dreams – to play together at ASU.

“The chance to suit up with your own blood in college, that doesn’t come along a lot and that would be special. When I first told Alex it hit him pretty hard and he was second guessing himself if ASU was the place for him? Coming in as a freshman but I’m not there anymore…it was tough for him. My family and I helped him get through that stage. My family was helping me out too, because my decision to retire hit them hard.

“I’m on track to graduate from ASU in December and that will make it 3.5 years. I launched with my dad my company called Perry Property Management. We’re investing and developing houses. So, I’m running this company, finishing up school and supporting my little brother. I’ll be pushing Code Black Athletics to the limit and plan to do more camps. I also make music and produce it.

“What I want to show the world is that when one door closes another can open. I want to show people that there is always a light at the end of the tunnel. I want to show the newer generation that it’s not all about football. I want to be a walking testimony for collegiate athletes saying ‘yes, he’s retired but look at what he's doing now.’ You hear all the time about football players being broke or not having anything to do when they’re done with football. I say chase your dreams. Football was one of my dreams, unfortunately, that wasn’t the plan God had for me. I had my time to dwell on it, but I’m not going to sit here and be mad every day.

“I just have to set another goal and treat it like football. It’s a sport that can set you up for success. I still wake up early every day and when the team’s in practice I’m up early doing something productive. I can look myself in the mirror knowing that I left it all on the field. So now I treat life like I treated football. With my mindset and the people I have around me I feel that I have a chance to do some pretty good things.”