Zach Crabtree isn't shy about talking about the value of his scholarship. It's something he thinks about every day.

"I called my mom yesterday," said the 6-7, 305 oak tree who doubles as a guard on the OSU offensive line. "I got my books from the bookstore and they gave me my receipt. I called my mom and said, 'I just got $400 in books for free.'"

"It's kind of cool when you get a check or a receipt and you see how much you are receiving. It's very, very special to be able to go to college and you're not going to have debt when you come out. It's certainly easier on my parents."

Crabtree is one of three children that Brenda and Garry Crabtree decided early would do something they didn't – go to college. "My parents weren't that fortunate when they were young and had to go to work after high school," said Zach, who hails form Mansfield, Texas. "My daddy told us at a young age that, 'I don't care what it takes, how many loans I have to take, y'all will go to college. An education makes life easier.'"

Crabtree's oldest brother was the first to fulfill his parent's wish. "He got some scholarship money – not a full scholarship – but some money," said Crabtree. "He's a very smart kid and he came here, to OSU. Then, my other brother went to Midwestern State. They both went on loans and my parents paid for it."

When the youngest Crabtree brother started receiving scholarship offers, Garry Crabtree – who owns a retail tire shop – wanted to make sure his son fully understood the opportunity before him.

"My dad always said, 'I'll never make you work as long as you're playing sports, as long as you're staying active," Zach said. "He sent me to his tire shop. He had a wholesale side of it. Fifty-three-foot trailers. June and July in Texas. He said, 'You're going to work for two months for me so you understand what you have in college, what you're getting for free, why you need to get a degree. This will help you appreciate it.'"

"I remember he took me to his big warehouse full of tires. I can't stand tires now. There were about 1,200 tires in there. He told his workers, 'Y'all don't get up there. He's getting up there. He's unloading the whole trailer. Y'all can sort them when they come off the back.' I mean, I'd come out of there drenched in sweat. I'd go into my dad's office and say, 'Dad, I've still go to get my workout in today.' He'd say, 'Well, this can be your workout.'"

Crabtree is majoring in sports management. The balance between being a student and an athlete is difficult, but he is excelling in both thanks to help provided by Oklahoma State's academics team.

"I just went through my schedule yesterday with all my syllabuses and when I have things due," he said. "There's a week period where I have about three major assignments due in one week – on top of that, I have a game. Luckily, we have great people in the academic center to help us lay that out and see our schedule. They'll say, 'If you are leaving on Friday to go on the road, obviously you can't get work done on Friday, so you have Monday through Thursday night to get everything done, so how are you going to do that?' They help us lay out a plan."

"Time management is probably the biggest thing I've learned here," he said. "How to manage time. If you do it right, balancing academics and athletics is really not too much to handle. It's really doable. But if you don't handle your time right and if you want to, you know, sleep in and do other things, then it's going to be hard to get everything done on time. It's discipline. Discipline in everything you do. Football. Academics. Discipline translates into everything you do in life."

As Crabtree continues to progress toward his degree and an eventual career that he hopes finds him in an NFL front office, he still reflects daily on the summer working in his father's shop. And what was the key lesson he took from that experience that left him "hating tires?"

"Every day that I go to practice, I know I'm not working construction," he said. "I'm not unloading trailers. I'm going to play football every day and I'm getting my education paid for. It's unbelievable."