Post by TheShadow on Jul 8, 2008 3:47:15 GMT -5
www.realfootball365.com/
by Os Davis
As the NFL itself is on vacation, the surfer’s clicking mouse turns to thoughts of some of those permanently “vacationing” from football, those retired players for whom the game has moved on. Today, RealFootball365.com takes a briefs look at three of the Oakland Raiders’ retirees to find three decently different approaches to life after football.
In some ways, Napoleon Kaufman got a bit stiffed when with the Raiders, but he sure doesn’t see it that way. Drafted in the first round by what would remain a mediocre team throughout his tenure of 1995-2000, lifelong Raider fan Kaufman worked his way up the depth chart by putting in some monster numbers early and often.
As a part-time starter in 1996, Kaufman bagged a league-leading 5.8 yards per carry on his 150 runs. Established as the leader of the running game the next season, Kaufman went for 1,294 yards and 4.8 per carry, including the team-mark 227 yards against the Denver Broncos, pretty much immortalizing him Oakland forever thereafter; in 13 games in 1998, Kaufman racked up 1,112 total yards. As a reward, Kaufman shared time with Tyrone Wheatley in ’99 and was mostly back on the bench by 2000.
So Kaufman gave up the game and went into service – the secular service, that is. Senior Pastor Kaufman now heads up The Well: A Christian Community, a multi-faith church in Dublin, Calif. Among its members are Steve Wisniewski, Robert Jenkins and Wheatley himself.
But Kaufman, fourth on the team's all-time rushing list with 4,792 yards, would change none of it, despite getting nowhere near the Lombardi Trophy.
“All of it was great. The whole experience was great for me,” he told RaidersOnline.org while also showing true faith in imploring the Raider Nation to “keep believing. We’re gonna turn things around.”
Warren Sapp hasn’t been retired for long, but he’s working to make himself one of the most unpopular retired Raiders among fans. Constantly taking the bait from the media to trash on the unhappy situation with the silver and black in his four years there, Sapp compared the team to a “dark black hole.” (But wait, isn’t that a good thing in Oakland?) John Ryan of the Mercury News used the quote to spin off a bizarre mini-rant about how the mainstream media in California don't actually blow Raider innuendo utterly out of proportion. John, cut down on the smoke, dude.
Slightly more professionally speaking, Sapp is reporting that he has will probably accept an offer from the "Dancing with the Stars" folks.
"My daughter would love it,” he said.
Meanwhile, Sapp is partying for charity, announcing “retirement celebration events” with proceeds going to the Children’s Cancer Center and the QB Killa Foundation, which doesn’t appear to have a Web site yet. Hey, QBKilla.com is pretty much available ...
Finally, if you think this writer would turn in a column on former Raider greats without dropping in Bo Jackson, you’re nuts.
Interesting that the mainstream media now nearly always note Jackson’s advertising deals well before, say, his athletic accomplishments. While Jackson was responsible for the most memorable Nike campaign not involving Spike Lee and Michael Jordan, Bo probably deserves props for a little more than catchy subject-verb-object bumper-sticker material; out of respect to the greatest athlete of my lifetime, we’ll avoid use of that expression here at RealFootball365.com.
After popping up on TV once in a while, including his still-awesome home-run hitting display on “Pros vs. Joes,” Bo’s game these days is mostly in investment. Just erected was the Bo Jackson Elite Sports Dome, a massive baseball training facility in Lockport, Ill., run by Jim Cangelosi’s Cangelosi Baseball.
And in February, the prospective board-sitting Jackson was in a consortium of 20 investors who ponied up some $11 million to open a Chicago-area bank. A fellow investor was quoted in the Chicago Tribune as stating, "Bo will tell you he's not a pro athlete anymore. He's a business person."
Guess Bo knows bucks, eh? (Oooh, almost made it.)
by Os Davis
As the NFL itself is on vacation, the surfer’s clicking mouse turns to thoughts of some of those permanently “vacationing” from football, those retired players for whom the game has moved on. Today, RealFootball365.com takes a briefs look at three of the Oakland Raiders’ retirees to find three decently different approaches to life after football.
In some ways, Napoleon Kaufman got a bit stiffed when with the Raiders, but he sure doesn’t see it that way. Drafted in the first round by what would remain a mediocre team throughout his tenure of 1995-2000, lifelong Raider fan Kaufman worked his way up the depth chart by putting in some monster numbers early and often.
As a part-time starter in 1996, Kaufman bagged a league-leading 5.8 yards per carry on his 150 runs. Established as the leader of the running game the next season, Kaufman went for 1,294 yards and 4.8 per carry, including the team-mark 227 yards against the Denver Broncos, pretty much immortalizing him Oakland forever thereafter; in 13 games in 1998, Kaufman racked up 1,112 total yards. As a reward, Kaufman shared time with Tyrone Wheatley in ’99 and was mostly back on the bench by 2000.
So Kaufman gave up the game and went into service – the secular service, that is. Senior Pastor Kaufman now heads up The Well: A Christian Community, a multi-faith church in Dublin, Calif. Among its members are Steve Wisniewski, Robert Jenkins and Wheatley himself.
But Kaufman, fourth on the team's all-time rushing list with 4,792 yards, would change none of it, despite getting nowhere near the Lombardi Trophy.
“All of it was great. The whole experience was great for me,” he told RaidersOnline.org while also showing true faith in imploring the Raider Nation to “keep believing. We’re gonna turn things around.”
Warren Sapp hasn’t been retired for long, but he’s working to make himself one of the most unpopular retired Raiders among fans. Constantly taking the bait from the media to trash on the unhappy situation with the silver and black in his four years there, Sapp compared the team to a “dark black hole.” (But wait, isn’t that a good thing in Oakland?) John Ryan of the Mercury News used the quote to spin off a bizarre mini-rant about how the mainstream media in California don't actually blow Raider innuendo utterly out of proportion. John, cut down on the smoke, dude.
Slightly more professionally speaking, Sapp is reporting that he has will probably accept an offer from the "Dancing with the Stars" folks.
"My daughter would love it,” he said.
Meanwhile, Sapp is partying for charity, announcing “retirement celebration events” with proceeds going to the Children’s Cancer Center and the QB Killa Foundation, which doesn’t appear to have a Web site yet. Hey, QBKilla.com is pretty much available ...
Finally, if you think this writer would turn in a column on former Raider greats without dropping in Bo Jackson, you’re nuts.
Interesting that the mainstream media now nearly always note Jackson’s advertising deals well before, say, his athletic accomplishments. While Jackson was responsible for the most memorable Nike campaign not involving Spike Lee and Michael Jordan, Bo probably deserves props for a little more than catchy subject-verb-object bumper-sticker material; out of respect to the greatest athlete of my lifetime, we’ll avoid use of that expression here at RealFootball365.com.
After popping up on TV once in a while, including his still-awesome home-run hitting display on “Pros vs. Joes,” Bo’s game these days is mostly in investment. Just erected was the Bo Jackson Elite Sports Dome, a massive baseball training facility in Lockport, Ill., run by Jim Cangelosi’s Cangelosi Baseball.
And in February, the prospective board-sitting Jackson was in a consortium of 20 investors who ponied up some $11 million to open a Chicago-area bank. A fellow investor was quoted in the Chicago Tribune as stating, "Bo will tell you he's not a pro athlete anymore. He's a business person."
Guess Bo knows bucks, eh? (Oooh, almost made it.)