An inspiring member of the Penn State football family will be featured tonight on The Big Ten Network.
The station will air a one-hour special titled, “The B1G Moment: Adam Taliaferro” this evening at 7. BTN will re-air the special multiple times, including 1 p.m. on Wednesday, 6 p.m. on Thursday and 3 p.m. on Friday. Fans can find more listings at btn.com/shows.
Many fans are familiar with Taliaferro’s incredible journey. As a true freshman, he suffered a life-threatening spinal cord injury at Ohio State in 2000, absorbing a hit that left him with no movement in his extremities from his neck down.
He was given a 3 percent chance to ever walk again.
That 3 percent came through in a big way, as Taliaferro jogged onto the Beaver Stadium field less than a year later, before Penn State’s home opener against Miami (Fla.).
Chuck Kimball was the Nittany Lion mascot that game, and Kimball talked about that experience earlier this season on The Football Letter Live. He even has the jersey that Taliaferro wore that evening. You can watch the episode online, with Kimball talking about Taliaferro beginning around the 30-minute mark.
We also spoke with letterman Justin Kurpeikis last year. Kurpeikis talked about the game following the Ohio State contest in 2000, an emotionally charged home victory over a Purdue team led by future Hall-of-Famer Drew Brees.
Today, James Franklin talked about Taliaferro’s impact during his weekly news conference. The head coach had an opportunity to see the video ahead of time, leading him to call Taliaferro and share how much he enjoyed watching the special.
“As you guys know, I’m an emotional guy,” Franklin said. “Actually, Michael Hazel (senior director of football operations) and Nacho (Jim Natchman, assistant AD, media and video production) sent that to me last week before it was public. I got the hot peek at it and got emotional watching it. I called Adam and Adam hadn’t seen it yet, and I just told him, I said, ‘You’re going to love this thing. It is powerful.’”
Franklin continued:
“I think Adam represents everything that Penn State is all about. It’s interesting, the other thing that kind of hit home for me watching that is the challenges that that team had that season and the timing of it all (Taliaferro ran onto the Beaver Stadium field 10 days before 9/11). So, I had a really good conversation with Adam. He’s been phenomenal, not only with his time as an undergraduate student here, and how the Penn State community rallied around him and behind him is special. I know that at a point, Adam was on the board of trustees here, and he’s very successful back in New Jersey. I’m a big Adam fan and we couldn’t be more proud of him, and I think everybody’s going to love the show. And I strongly recommend, again, everybody take an hour and watch that and get away from your frustrations with other things right now.”
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The Football Letter Blog 
The show is excellent. Adam’s story is inspirational. Anyone who saw the injury happen during the game and followed his journey back from the injury — well — it’s just a phenomenal story. We lived in Voorhees NJ when Adam was a huge star at Eastern High School and we followed him then and were thrilled when he chose to attend PSU. To see him get so badly injured was heartbreaking but to know how he dealt with it and the successful life and career that he’s had after seeing his life and career explode at 18 has been nothing less than miraculous. He’s a remarkable young man.