Pitt has the second-most fifth-year seniors in FBS football this season with eleven total, behind only Louisiana Tech's thirteen. That's just what happened with the NCAA eligibility waiver that allowed seniors who played in 2020 to keep their final year of eligibility for playing in the middle of a season marred by COVID-19.
But Tre Tipton is in a unique position as he enters his seventh season being part of Pitt's football program. His first season came back in 2015 when he got a medical redshirt for a major knee injury that set him back in his football career. He then suffered an offseason injury in 2017 that kept him from playing. 2020 was his redshirt senior season, but he couldn't hang up his cleats and call it quits on his football career.
"The one sport that has a death certificate is football," Tipton said. "What I mean by that is that on the day when you pick up that football, you have a death certificate when you play that game. You can go back and play basketball, softball or whatever it may be, but football is the one sport that once you put it down, it's over. I love the game. The game's been my best friend and I'm going to play as long as I can."
In the meantime, Tipton is working on his Master of Social Work degree at Pitt. It's a perfect blend of Tipton's top two passions of playing football and helping people.
"I have big aspirations in helping people with mental health," Tipton said. "Athletes don't really get opportunities to speak up about our situations without being looked at differently for doing that. I want to help athletes speak up and say when they're not OK. If I could be, I'd be the Michael Jordan of mental health."
Tipton had several battles to fight through his own mental health, especially in his early days playing for Pitt. Between his injury and other struggles, he's admitted on the Level Up Podcast that he dealt with serious battles of depression and attempted suicide.
Now, after he's come out for the better from those battles, he wants to make sure none of his teammates feel as alone as he did if they experience similar trauma.
"A lot of guys know that they can come and talk to me at any given moment," Tipton said. When asked about how many players took him up on those efforts, he said, "more than you would think."
When asked about his path to pursuing his Master's in Social Work, Tipton said his experiences showed him a path where he felt he could best help others around him.
"My freshman year, when I went through such a tragic and serious situation," Tipton said when asked when he started thinking about a mental health career. "I realized holding everything in wasn't helping. It's like the glass cup theory where if you keep filling the cup with water, it will overflow. In the same way if you take on all this negativity without letting it out and putting it somewhere safely, you overflow with that negativity."
"The scary part is when you overflow, then you do things you don't want to do," Tipton continued in explaining his cup analogy. "And like a glass cup, when it overflows it might tip over and break into shards, and then it's too hard to put back together. It's the same way with people."
Tipton wants to use his career after college football in a way that will help young athletes find their voice when facing adversity and speak up more about it. He noted how just this summer the world could already see changes in the dynamics of how mental health discussions around athletes happen, with both Naomi Osaka and Simone Biles pulling out of the French Open and Olympic gymnastic events, citing mental health reasons.
Both have been inspirations for athletes across the world to look at their own mental health in a different way, and Tipton also wants to contribute to changing that part of the culture around athletes.
"We've all been taught since a young age that speaking up about how you feel is not the way to go," Tipton said when asked about the criticisms that have faced Osaka and Biles for their decisions. "Especially young women, who are looked at differently than young men, there are still people out there who say negative things about you for speaking up about when you're not OK. The goal isn't to reach out to the adults who are stuck in their ways of thinking, but it's to teach the kids that it's always OK to speak up when they need to say something."
Tipton also acknowledged that he still has to make sure he's speaking to others about his own traumas after the passing of his mother, Kimberly A. Tipton on June 21 of this year. She used to attend all of his games and was his biggest supporter. Even though she's passed, Tipton knows she's watching over him on and off the field.
"Every day I go out here I'm playing for my mom," Tipton said. "She loved more than anything to come to my games. But when I transitioned to realize I was a grown man, I knew I could not let her down. I know she's watching over me now. Before I knew that with every move I made I didn't want to make mom mad, but she couldn't see everything. Now, she sees everything, so I got to make sure I'm always doing the right things."
It's not lost on Tipton the challenge he faces in trying to change the culture for not just athletes, but doing so in such a physical sport like football where players have historically been trained to ignore and power through pain for the good of the team.
"We're in a gladiator sport," Tipton said when asked about speaking on mental health as a football player. "We're expected to go out there and kill the man across from us. The opportunity to talk about mental health in a gladiator sport throws people off. For someone to go out and talk about something that would get looked at as soft at one point, I'm OK with that. Because I know it makes more of a man to step up and say what's wrong than it is to sit in the back and pretend I'm OK. I won't do that. I would rather stand up front, tell you I'm not OK and stand on my own ten toes as I say it."
Tipton wants to use his final year of eligibility to set an example for the players around him at Pitt on how to deal with mental health issues and challenges. But after he's done, he's not entirely sure where he'll find his best avenue to pursue his dream to help people and athletes in mental health. When asked if he would rather work behind the scenes with players or be a public speaker on the issue, Tipton made it clear he's more focused on making an impact in ways that help people, regardless of the his personal destination for his career.
"I want to be a superhero," Tipton said. "If that means me being on the front lines, I'll be on the front lines. If that means behind the scenes, I'll be behind the scenes. But however it's going to come, I'm going to be a superhero. I'm going to change lives and I'm going to make a difference."
