It’s been a pretty busy ‘off-season’ for me and the family. After some much needed down time and fun in the sun with the family I took part in the NFL’s Business Management and Entrepreneurial Program at Harvard Business School. I wanted to start making a transition plan for my post-football career. You know that this doesn’t last forever and you have to a plan for when football is over just as I had a plan to get me to where I am now. Being a member of the PA [NFL Players Association] and a veteran, you know the many resources that are available to take advantage of. I felt the program at Harvard offered a lot of help that would ease the transition. The weeklong seminar was a crash course with loads of information crammed into a few days. The most glaring thing I learned was the biggest step in moving forward with a plan is taking the first step. That first step was finding a mentor in the area to shadow and learn about the restaurant business and whether it is really something I want to do. I’m really enjoying learning something new and the fact that it doesn’t involve blocking and hitting on Sundays is refreshing. I just recently returned from Maui where the NFL Players Association holds our annual board of representatives meeting. It may sound like a vacation but it was far from it. With the looming uncertainty involved with 2011 and whether there will be a lockout the meetings went long into the evening. The most important thing for me while there is to take in as much information as possible in order to relay the info back to my teammates and be a resource to them. I’m also expecting my second child this summer and it will be my first boy. I’m really excited and interested to see how my three year old daughter is going to react to somebody cutting into her space, because right now she is definitely the diva of the house.
[pagebreak]
I always thought that most of my charitable giving as a professional athlete would be centered around youth and sports because this is an area I feel has given me so much. All of this changed when I was approached by Jack & Jill Late Stage Cancer Foundation. We all know about the devastating effects cancer has on the diagnosed but there are many families and especially innocent children that are deeply affected by this terrible disease. What this foundation does that I find very interesting and worth my involvement is focus on creating ‘wow’moments and memorable events that the children whose parents are in the final stages of terminal cancer will keep with them for the rest of their lives. To help I’m having a golf marathon on the 19th of May to benefit this foundation and to help create as many memories for the families as I possibly can. To find out more please take a moment and go to jajfnyjets.dojiggy.com.
