I'm glad I didn't grow up to be a pro football star

By Jeff Orvis

I'm glad I didn't grow up to be a star professional football player.

When many youngsters, especially boys, reach a certain age, they begin dreaming about what they want to be when they grow up. Quite often, their first wish is to be a fireman. That wish often fades when they learn they have to be strong enough to carry a heavy hose up a ladder, breathe in smoke and withstand tremendous heat from fires and from the clothes they have to wear, even when it's 100 degrees outside.

When youngsters begin school and start studying American history, sometimes their next dream is to one day become president. After all, you get to live in that big house in Washington and whenever you decide to go somewhere, traffic stops for you. That dream may last until you find out that at any given day, half of the country loves you and half of the country hates you. You learn that you have to decide when to send your armed forces into battle and when to console the survivors when some of those soldiers and sailors don't come home alive. You have to have all the answers, from financial to ethical. You learn that the big house you live in becomes a prison. Since you are the most recognizable person in the world, your ability to simply walk down to the corner for a sandwich is gone forever. Remember that half of the population that hates you?

From your first steps, even before dreams of firemen or presidents, somebody might toss a Nerf football to you. Then on any given Sunday in the fall, when you pass by the TV at home, you notice that some really big guys are playing with a ball that looks a little like that little foam ball you are carrying. And that's when the dream of becoming a pro football star is born.

A few years later, you develop friendships in your neighborhood. As the weather cools and the leaves begin to fall, you put away that baseball glove and bat and look for at least three other friends for a game of touch football. If you're lucky, a couple of years later, you have a chance to don pads and helmet to play in a junior tackle football league. Then it's on to junior high and high school, where fall Friday nights are truly special.

By the time you get to high school, you realize that life begins the first part of August when you report for preseason drills. Once classes start, you slog through your studies with one eye on the clock, wishing it was time for practice or time to get on the bus to head for the Friday night game.

For a select few, the dream doesn't end with your last game as a high school senior. In fact, if you have piled up impressive statistics, you are already being showered with letters and visits from college coaches. You think you are the football king of the world, unless you have paid enough attention in math class to figure out that junior colleges, small schools and major universities are all attempting to fill their big rosters. Coaches use the same speech in your living room about how great you are and how much they want you as they will tomorrow night in another senior's living room.

So if you decide on a college and pass the stringent academic screening process of your chosen school and the NCAA, you have four or five years to mature much more, emotionally, physically and mentally.

Four or five years later, you may find yourself backstage during the NFL Draft, hoping and praying that those years of preparation will pay off and your name will be called by the commissioner sooner rather than later. The sooner it's called, the better chance you have at making the team and the accompanying riches.

So you hear your name called, you pose for pictures, attend a press conference and head for training camp. 

The team likes you and soon you are one of the major factors in your team's success. The money starts rolling in. Women who are more beautiful than any you left back in your hometown begin to notice you. It's easy to feel like you have the world by the tail and you are invincible.

Then one night, you and the lady you've chosen walk into an elevator on a night out in a casino. You soon walk out of the elevator and drag your unconscious lady behind you.

Or maybe you have weekend custody of your toddler from a relationship with a woman that went sour. The woman is bitter about the breakup and when her son is returned to her and she notices that his legs are covered with cuts, she calls police.

Or maybe you decide that on an off night you want a little fun. So you call up some of your friends, stick the pistol in your belt for protection and head to a nightclub. A few hours later, there's a shooting and even though you claim you had nothing to do with it, that you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, the police notice your unlicensed pistol and as you are being led out of the club in handcuffs, suddenly dozens of press photographers appear and your image takes a real hit.

It only takes one momentary lapse in good judgment and all those years of dreams and preparation melt away. What has taken you 10-15 years to achieve is gone. You are the topic of sports talk shows for a few weeks and then you are all but forgotten. If you haven't had a good money manager, your wealth might soon be gone and you are suddenly on the outside looking in on the work world.

The NFL is tremendous entertainment. As you watch your favorite team play on Thursday, Sunday or Monday, don't think about those few individuals we've heard about recently that apparently made the wrong choices. Be grateful for the hundreds of players who put on their uniforms each week and can still play the sport they love, that they've prepared for ever since somebody tossed them their first football just after they learned to walk.

I'm glad I didn't become a pro football star. I love the game. But the only ingredient I had that would have qualified me for such a career was a stable home life, with a loving mother and father, growing up. They never told me I couldn't be a football star or fireman or the president. But they furnished me with the education and good sense to realize that there were other career paths that were more attainable.

I never was able to sign a big sports contract and buy Mom a new house or Dad a new car, but somehow we all survived. I also don't have a history of concussions...or a police record.