Life after the NFL: Football players try to find another love

BY RAINER SABIN Northwest Arkansas Times

Posted on Sunday, July 2, 2006

URL: http://www.nwanews.com/nwat/Sports/42410/

TONTITOWN — Joe Dean Davenport lets out a hearty laugh, one that you would expect from a man that is 6-6 and weighs 268 pounds. Inside Mama Z’s, a quaint Italian restaurant with some Southern flavor, Davenport is having a grand old time talking about the two lives he has already led before turning 30. There is Joe Dean the cattle rancher, who tends to 570 acres of land and 215 cows in the small town of Cincinnati while hauling around hay in his own Peterbilt truck. And there was Joe Dean the NFL tight end, who caught passes from Peyton Manning and blocked for Edgerrin James. Davenport is one of a select group of former Arkansas Razorbacks who have played professional football.

But like many of the fortunate few who make it to the highest level, his career proved fleeting. Just five years out of college, he was forced to deal with the prospect of life after football.

“Every athlete wants to go out on your own terms,” Davenport said. “Your own terms is playing 10 years and retiring. But when you get tied back, you don’t have too many options. I couldn’t just sit at home and wait on somebody else to call. I had a farm and I take care of cows and I’m not looking back. ”

Well before he was cut by the New York Giants during training camp in 2004, Davenport considered never putting on pads again. Not long after he signed a two-year free agent contract with the San Francisco 49ers in 2000 following a senior season at Arkansas during which he caught 21 passes and was named to the All-Southeastern Conference second team, Davenport quit.

He decided he wanted to remain in Arkansas. But within a year of choosing an agrarian lifestyle over the glamour and glitz of the NFL, he rediscovered his passion for football and joined the Indianapolis Colts in 2001. Davenport played three seasons, starting nine games and catching 11 passes for 93 yards. By the end of the 2003 season, the Colts wanted a more fleet-footed tight end who would could be utilized as an offensive weapon in a system that used all options available to move the ball. When they didn’t offer Davenport a contract, he sat on the sidelines for months. Eventually, the New York Giants invited him to training camp. But within weeks they cut him and Davenport was resigned to the fact his playing career was over. “I had my shot and I don’t regret anything,” Davenport said. “If I got on with New York I would have stayed up there.” Davenport’s short stint in the NFL was not unusual. The average length of an NFL career is 3. 5 seasons, according to the league’s Players Association. The window for making money playing football is small.

A Cutthroat League

Don’t feel sorry for Clint Stoerner. He sure doesn’t. The fans in Dallas may have already forgot about him, but he still remains a local celebrity in Arkansas as the gritty quarterback who helped bring Razorbacks fans so much joy after years of misery during the 1990s. Wherever he goes in the state, he is still recognized as the guy who helped Arkansas achieve its two best records — a 9-3 campaign in 1998 and an 8-4 season the next year — since the Ken Hatfield era ended in 1989. But despite his great success in college from 1996-2000, his pro career has meandered. After playing in the NFL and NFL Europe, he has spent the last two seasons in the Arena League with the Dallas Desperadoes. Just five years ago, he was starting games for the more recognizable pro football team in the same city — the Cowboys. “It is a game, but it is also a business,” Stoerner said. “You look at it as a job and you grow and mature a lot.” Stoerner, Davenport and Cincinnati Bengals practice squad player Tony Bua paint the NFL as a cuttthroat league, where players are just looking to survive each day. The fierce competition among teammates to land a spot on a 53-man roster and the often merciless decisions made by NFL general managers are by-products of the hard salary cap and revenue sharing system adopted by the league in 1994.

In the 2006 season, each team was allowed to spend approximately $102 million on its players. The financial guidelines set by the NFL usually leads teams to cut more highly paid veterans in favor of rookies. Meanwhile, players who do not have defined positions with the teams are generally expendable. NFL contracts, after all, are not guaranteed. Only signing bonuses, which don’t count against the salary cap, are.

“It’s just extremely disheartening,” said Bua, who played linebacker and safety at Arkansas from 2000-2003. “If you come to a team that is not invested in you, it’s hard. You control what you can control.”

After entering the league two years ago, Bua has played for three teams and has not seen the field during a game since 2004, when he was a special teams player with the Miami Dolphins. The coach who drafted him, Dave Wannstedt, resigned under pressure during Bua’s rookie season and Nick Saban soon grabbed the reins of the franchise. At the time, Bua didn’t realized his career was in jeopardy.

“I was drafted there and they wanted to see me do well,” he said. “But a new coaching staff comes in and they wanted to clean house.”

Bua was released and after surfacing with the Cowboys in Sept. 2005 he was cut by them five weeks later. He is now one of five practice squad players with Cincinnati, where he makes a minimum of $4,700 per week. Prorated over the length of a typical season, he is earning $79,900 each year. The average income for a person between 25 and 34 years is $45,485, according to statistics supplied by the US Census Bureau.

Even though he only gives himself a “50/50” chance to make the 53-man roster, Bua is not looking to give up on his football career just yet.

“I try to look at as I was out in society,” Bua said. “I wouldn’t be doing as well as I am doing now. I am doing what I love to do, except for being on the practice field. I will ride as far as the road takes me.”

Making the transition

But there will come a point when Bua will have to hang up his helmet and put away his cleats. He can’t run around the field forever. That is the message Kurt Patberg finds himself delivering to former NFL and college football players when they begin thinking about a new career.

“They have to come to grips that they are done playing or that playing is not option,” said Patberg, the general manager of Competitive Resources Group, a Lawrenceville, Ga.-based company that helps former athletes find jobs with businesses around the country. “Let’s be realistic. How many people who have grown up playing ball and still have a shot are going to walk away? We would go as long as we could. But what is not OK is that when they say they are ready to be done when they really aren’t.”

Generally, NFL players can’t live off the money they made during their careers. And only those who have been on the 53-man rosters for a minimum of three seasons qualify for a pension at 55. The monthly payout is tied to the number of years in the league, and even a 20-year veteran like Darrell Green, who retired four years ago, would only receive $5,805 each month.

As a result, many who have played in the NFL have to develop alternative careers and some of them turn to companies like CRG for assistance. Founded by former Georgia Tech quarterback Jack Williams eight years ago, CRG has partnerships with more than 40 companies nationally and Patberg said athletes have certain characteristics that make them successful in jobs outside of sports, particularly in occupations where communication and appearance are important.

“There is no question that name recognition helps athletes,” he said. “They are in good shape. There is a presence issue. There are about 25 transferable traits and skills that an athlete has — hard work, multitasking, perseverance and time management among them. There is a unique skill set tied to athletes that makes them attractive hires to our companies.”

Bua said he has been approached by a pharmaceutical sales company in Arkansas and a Baton Rouge consulting service in recent years. But he turned them down, because the lure of playing football was too strong.

“I have had a couple opportunities to get in another career,” he said. “But you’re only young once. You might as well live out your dream. I hope and pray [those types of opportunities] will be there. But what happens in life is not up to me. It’s up to God. As much as I love football, God will find something else.

“But football is my life. I will play for as long as I can. If I have to bounce around, I will bounce around.”

John F. Murray, a sports psychologist who lives in Palm Beach, Fla., said he understands Bua’s mentality and has encountered athletes who don’t want to give up what has become their livelihood. But he also cautions that a complete devotion to football or any other sport can be detrimental to a player’s psyche when the opportunity to make interceptions, throw touchdown passes and break tackles is no longer there.

“If you don’t become more diversified, you can be lost in that identity,” he said. “When [the career ] ends you will find feelings of loss. The timing is a huge issue and in sports you become addicted to the excitement. Then all of a sudden it disappears.” That isn’t the case for Davenport, and that may have something to do with the fact that the former tight end fits Murray’s profile of a player who has other interests. Davenport seems to have made the adjustment to life without football because he was never all that tied to the game in the first place. “How much money these guys make might not be as important as being successful at something other than athletics,” Patberg said. “It is not about money for all of the guys. They want to emotionally be able to handle it. To move on to a second career is important for these guys.”

The Simple Life

“There’s no skyscrapers around here,” Davenport proudly proclaims at his 570-acre ranch in Cincinnati, a community on the western edge of Washington County that is so small some residents in Northwest Arkansas have never even heard of it. Approximately two miles down a gravel country road that is lined by wide open fields and a few Hackberry trees, Davenport spends some of his days riding around in an airconditioned baler that cuts, chops, compresses and ties together massive amounts of hay. “He has always loved the farm,” Davenport’s mother, Lola, said. “Joe Dean has always been mellow and not real outgoing. He might miss football some days, but he has fit back into his farm life like he has never been away. His father says Joe Dean knows a good cow when he sees it.” Working with his brother, Jarvis, Davenport usually begins his day at 10 a. m. and continues to labor until sundown on the large expanse of land he bought last October after he sold his 220-acre ranch in Tontitown. “I never really considered myself a total football player,” said Davenport, who was wearing a soiled white T-shirt, ripped jeans, tattered boots and a trucker’s hat. “I gave my time and effort to it when I was playing. Football can change a lot of people, because of the glamour and things like that. But I like doing other things like farming.”

Even when Davenport was a kid, he wasn’t dreaming about the NFL. He grew up on a ranch and didn’t start playing football until the sixth grade. Only at the behest of a neighbor who thought the wide-bodied kid could fill out a roster spot on the youth league team did Davenport even strap on a helmet.

Five years later, when former Springdale coach Jarrel Williams mentioned to Davenport that he could be an All-American if he worked hard, the tight end wore a look of befuddlement.

“I was like, ‘What is an All-American?’” he recalled. “I just was playing ball like everybody else. He was saying I could be real good. I was like, ‘Yeah right.’”

Davenport never really saw himself as a big-time athlete. In Indianapolis, he drove around in a pick-up truck with a big cowbell on it. These days, he also owns Peterbilt semi and spends hours on the road alone hauling hay, cows and rice for fun.

Davenport has traveled as far as Colorado in his truck and said he enjoys the freedom he has been afforded since he gave up the game. There are no coaches standing over him and he can go at his own pace. And as was the case with football, the results go hand-in-hand with the hard work.

“I don’t really have a boss,” he said. “I kind of like to see the cows grow. You take it to the market and sell it and people get to see what you have done — good or bad.”

At that point, Davenport quickly stops the baler and hops out. He is off to solve a problem that just came up. On a field with no lines or hashmarks, Joe Dean the cattle rancher is at home.

Copyright © 2001-2006 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc. All rights reserved. Contact: webmaster@nwanews.com

moreless