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Penn State football great Matt Millen, who currently works on FOX and the Big Ten Network, is in need of a heart transplant. Millen, who has been battling amyloidosis which is “a disease in which a protein known as an amyloid is produced in bone marrow and builds up in a person’s organs” since this spring, but he is also scheduled to call the team’s season-opener against Appalachian State at Beaver Stadium on the Big Ten Network.
Millen will also be covering the Raiders’ preseason game against the Seattle Seahawks on Aug. 30 before catching a red-eye flight across the country to State College.
Millen underwent seven weeks of chemotherapy, but he remains in good spirits.
“And I’ll you the same thing I told the last doctor. We came in and he said, ‘You’re going to need a heart transplant’. I said, ‘Let me tell you something, my heart at 30 percent is better than yours at 90 percent’, and we both started laughing,” Millen told PennLive.com.
“He actually said, ‘There’s some truth to that based off of your years of training’, and all of that stuff. You know, I just take it as it comes.”
Despite the health issues, Millen plans on going through his full TV schedule during the 2018-19 NFL and college football schedules. Hopefully the Nittany Lions will be able to put together another strong performance in 2018 to make the Penn State great proud.
