10 NFL Players With the Coolest Post-Football Careers

If most NFL players enter the league at 23 and play for average of 3.3 years, they’re on to their next chapters by the time they turn 27. For every ex-player who remains in the game’s orbit or parlays their celebrity into a career in show business or sportscasting, dozens settle into a life most ordinary. Here are 10 players who did some cool stuff after their days in a uniform:

10. Gino Marchetti

Marchetti’s pre-football career was pretty cool in and of itself: surviving the Battle of the Bulge and being among the first soldiers to make contact with Russian troops near the end of World War II. Marchetti didn’t enter the NFL until the ripe old age of 26, playing defensive end and offensive tackle for the Dallas Texans and Baltimore Colts for 12 years, winning two NFL championships and ultimately being named to the NFL’s 100th Anniversary All-Time Team. His post-playing career found him in the hospitality biz, launching a fast-food restaurant called Gino’s Hamburgers, which grew to 313 locations before being sold to Marriott, who rebranded them as Roy Rogers.
• Nine-time first-team All-Pro
• Was instrumental in getting legendary coach Don Shula his first head coaching position

9. Glen Coffee

San Francisco 49ers running back Glen Coffee was born on an Air Force base. Twenty-six years later, he was a paratrooper. In the interim, he excelled at football, earning first-team All-SEC at Alabama before getting drafted in the third round by the Niners in 2009. During his rookie year, he was the backup to star Frank Gore, putting up respectable numbers. But midway through training camp the following season, he quit the game abruptly to follow his calling: serving his country by enlisting in the U.S. Army. In 2017, Coffee made an unsuccessful comeback attempt with the Niners, who still owned his rights. In 2022, he wrote a book with his father, “There’s More to Life Than the Pursuit of Money.”

8. Mike Reid

A first-round draft pick of the Cincinnati Bengals in 1970, Reid had a respectable career as a defensive tackle, being named to two Pro Bowls in his five seasons in the league. Then he turned to music, playing with symphony orchestras, writing a Grammy-winning tune for country singer Ronnie Milsap, co-writing a hit for Bonnie Raitt, and composing a number of musicals. In 2005, he was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. Not bad for a guy who was playing in a Holiday Inn bar band after being forced to retire from football prematurely with hand and knee injuries.
• First-team All-Pro (1972)

7. John Urschel

In January 2017, HBO’s “Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel” (RIP) profiled Baltimore Ravens guard John Urschel, not for any of his on-field exploits, but for how darn smart he was. Urschel is a math whiz who had previously won what is known as the “academic Heisman” while at Penn State. Months after the “Real Sports” piece, Urschel retired at age 26, citing a desire to protect his most valuable asset: his noggin. Urschel would go on to earn a doctorate in math and become an assistant professor in MIT’s math department. His onetime side hustle? Writing a column on advanced statistics for The Player’s Tribune.
• Two-time first-team All-Big Ten
• Since 2017, has had an Erdos number of 4.

6. Charles Tillman

The man who developed the “Peanut Punch,” in which a defender creates a turnover by punching the ball from the carrier’s arms, wreaked havoc as a cornerback for the Chicago Bears for 12 seasons. After his playing career ended after the 2015 season, Tillman put to use the criminal justice degree he earned from the University of Louisiana-Lafayette, eventually earning a badge with the FBI in 2019, according to reports. Later that year, Tillman paddled 65 miles across Lake Michigan in a self-built boat to raise money and awareness in the fight against childhood cancer.
• Walter Payton Man of the Year (2013)
• First-team All-Pro (2012)
• Named to 100 Greatest Bears of All-Time

5. Myron Rolle

In 2010, the Sporting News called Rolle the second-smartest athlete in sports. At the time, Rolle was a rookie safety on the Tennessee Titans, having just completed a master’s program at Oxford University after earning his bachelor’s in exercise science at football powerhouse Florida State. In two seasons with the Titans, Rolle never saw a single minute of action in the regular season. By 2012, he was out of football and on to a career in medicine. After a neurosurgery residency at Harvard, he became the Global Neurosurgery Fellow at Harvard Medical School. He also wrote an inspirational book, published in 2022: “The 2% Way: How a Philosophy of Small Improvements Took Me to Oxford, the NFL, Neurosurgery.”

4. John Madden

Madden was selected by the Philadelphia Eagles in the 21st round of the 1958 draft as an offensive tackle. He never played a game professionally, and that should’ve been the last anyone had ever heard of John Madden. But he would become well-known as a Hall of Fame coach of the 1970s Oakland Raiders and then he would become a household name as a color commentator on TV, essentially redefining the job and setting the standard for the countless ex-players who followed their playing days with careers in broadcasting. Madden died in 2021 at age 81, leaving a profound impact on the game and the way we watch it.

3. Jim Brown

Brown was one of the best players in the history of the game, setting virtually every rushing record there was during the 1950s and 1960s. Brown is a proxy on this list for two kinds of former athletes: those who parlayed their celebrity into successful careers in show business (regardless of talent) and those who used their unique positions in the culture to further civil or human rights causes. When Brown died in 2023 at age 87, it was an NBA player, LeBron James, who put it best: “We lost a hero today. … I hope every Black athlete takes the time to educate themselves about this incredible man and what he did to change all of our lives. We all stand on your shoulders, Jim Brown.”
• Three-time league MVP
• 54 roles in movies and TV shows over a four-decade span

2. Alan Page

Page, a member of the Purple People Eaters, the fearsome defensive squad that led the Minnesota Vikings to four Super Bowl appearances during the 1970s, had perhaps the coolest post-NFL career of them all: becoming Minnesota’s first Black state Supreme Court justice. During the tail end of his Hall of Fame career, Page attended law school at the University of Minnesota, earning his J.D. in 1978. After retiring in 1981, he began a career in law that culminated in his election to the Minnesota Supreme Court in 1992. Page was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest distinction given to civilians in the United States, in 2018.
• NFL MVP (1971)
• Five-time first-team All-Pro
• NFL 100th Anniversary All-Time Team

1. Byron “Whizzer” White

White, the No. 4 overall pick in the 1938 draft, was one of the preeminent running backs of his era, even though his career lasted only four seasons. He led the league in rushing twice and was a first-team All-Pro twice. Then came Pearl Harbor, and White’s gridiron career was over. After surviving World War II (and earning two Bronze Stars in the process), White went on to a storied career in law that ultimately landed him as an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, where he dissented in the historic Roe v. Wade decision, pushed for desegregated schools and supported affirmative action. White died in 2002 at age 84.
• League’s highest-paid player in 1940 ($15,800)
• Was nominated to the court by John F. Kennedy, whom he knew from serving overseas together

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