It is a fall Saturday morning in late September, and you turn on ESPN College Gameday just like most sports fans nationwide do every week for the next five months. You see a graphic put on the T.V screen about the hottest college athletes across the country and how analysts are predicting where they will be selected in future National Football League (NFL) drafts years down the line. But, this is not the story I will be telling today.
As sports fans, many of us know the stereotypical journey that the top tier athletes go through during their recruitment process. Scholarships piling up to the ceiling, colleges offering more money that most 18–19-year-olds have any idea what to do with through Name, Image, and Likeness (N.I.L) funds, and complete strangers judging your every move on and off the field. Players of this caliber must grow up quickly. As soon as they step off the stage of their high school graduation, they step into the biggest and brightest stages the NCAA has to offer.
But what about the thousands of athletes that do not get these same opportunities? What about the student athletes that hustle, beg, scratch, and claw for even a chance to put on a uniform again once they step off the field in their senior year of high school? The athletes that were not highly recruited coming out of high school or shown the path to the same resources as others…what about them?
Meet William Smith. He was a former free safety at Holland Springfield High School and is currently enrolled at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio. Smith started playing football in fifth grade and quickly fell in love with the sport.
“I first fell in love with football when I watched Superbowl. As a kid I was a huge fan of Dez Bryant. When you saw him on Sundays, you had no choice but to pay attention. I always watched and liked football. I played soccer, baseball, basketball, and volleyball, but none quite clicked like football did.”
Unfortunately, Springfield’s football program was going through major transitions, which resulted in less than stellar records over his four years there. Adding COVID to the mix and playing football beyond high school at any level did not seem like a possibility for Smith. No recruiters came to see him play, and the high school coaching staff provided minimal efforts to get Smith’s name out.
He resigned to the fact that he would be attending Bowling Green State University in the fall of 2024, and football would be a memory instead of his future. Two weeks before classes were to start, Smith’s dream was revived. Here is Will’s story.
“My coach claimed that he would create a highlight tape from my high school career, but he never did. He was supposed to get my name out for camps, but I did not hear much. So yes, I guess you could say they were not exactly helpful.”
The Otterbein University Cardinals are a division III school located in Westerville, Ohio. In Smith’s first season at Otterbein, they had a record of 1-9 with their only win coming against Capital in the Battle for the Oar by a score of 39-10.
“I honestly chose Otterbein the day of camp. It all kind of hit me when I was calling all my friends and family telling them the news while I was packing all my stuff in my truck. That was when it all sank in. It all sort of came together super-fast, you know.”
What we do not think about is after athletes’ playing days are over, they have a substantial portion of their lives that they need to fill. The media gives attention to the athletes when they are on the field, but as soon as they step off for the final game, they turn into people instead of athletes. Where do they go? What do they do? A huge part of their identity is gone.
Here is what Smith had to say about how he sees his life after football: “That is a hard question. I am trying to get a degree in education, so hopefully, I will get to be a teacher and with that comes me coaching. Realistically, I just want to go back and coach at Springfield.”
One of the best things about life is that your direction could change at any minute. Becoming an adult means having to decide which path to take. Smith thought his football career was over, and he was prepared to go after his dreams while prioritizing his education. His last memory would be walking off the field in his final high school game wondering what he would change given another opportunity to do it over again.
“Yeah, I do have a few regrets. I wish I had gone to more camps and put my name out there myself instead of relying on my coaches to sort of do it for me, I guess. Honestly, I feared rejection, failure, and being told I was not good enough and that held me back.”
College athletics is a very lucrative business, but it does not work for everyone. Players that come from smaller schools do not get the same opportunities that the larger, more well-known schools get. This becomes a hill that most athletes do not have the will to climb.
Will Smith has a great head on his shoulders. He knows that football is just a part of his life, not his entire life. He has big dreams of life after football, and I, for one, do not underestimate him for a second. And neither should you, nor yourself.
