As super-senior offensive lineman Chris Hughes walked out of the indoor practice facility Wednesday morning, he had a giant smile on his face and was eager to share what he learned in the hour prior.

“We had a great talk,” Hughes said. “We talked about mental health, self-care and we shared how important it is to connect with people and let our loved ones know we love them and they’re here for us and we’re here for them.

Rachel Baribeau’s I’m Changing the Narrative movement - destigmatizing mental and emotional health issues - will be available to the Big 12 Conference and its member institutions for the 2020-2021 academic year. Digital Correspondent Morgan Uber goes one-on-one with Baribeau to talk about the impact the partnership will provide to support student-athlete well-being.

Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby announced a Conference partnership with Rachel Baribeau for the 2020-21 academic year. Baribeau’s I’m Changing the Narrative movement destigmatizing mental and emotional health issues will be available to the Conference and its member institutions. The partnership provides regular programming to supplement and support student-athlete well-being.

Last year, Rachel Baribeau stood in the TCF Bank Stadium in Minneapolis for a college football game between the University of Minnesota and Maryland, and together with the coaches and players of both teams, shared a message about mental health with the audience of 30,000 people. She knew that somewhere in that audience, at least one person was helped. At least one person saw that if these people could get up there and speak about their mental health, they could talk about it too. At least one person was exposed to resources he or she didn’t know to look for, and the information might have saved a life.

Rachel Baribeau stood in front of more than 100 Gophers football players in the program’s auditorium in early August and asked a big question: “Who wants to take the mask off and get real with this team?”

Baribeau — a speaker, sportscaster and non-profit founder — had broken the ice, opening up about her struggles with mental health after her mother, Georgia “GiGi” Kelley, died in May after metastatic breast cancer spread to her bones, brain and liver.

Rachel Baribeau has spent the better part of her adult life talking about college football, typically focusing on teams at the top of the national rankings and players in the hunt for the Heisman Trophy.

For Baribeau, the narrative changed in the summer of 2016 when she found the shows she did as a host on Sirius radio were geared more to those making headlines for the wrong reasons, most prominently the rape scandal with the Baylor football team.