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Handing off Rutgers center gives up football for business pursuits
It's not unusual for new coaches to lose a number of upperclassmen before they coach a game. Seniors used to the former coach's ways decide they literally don't want to get with the new program. Rutgers center Jeremy Womack would have been the foundation of the Scarlet Knights' offensive line this season under new coach Greg Schiano. Womack started every game last fall for a team that finished 3-8. He played solidly. He began spring practice with every intention of participating in the latest version of Rutgers football, which has been remade more often than Hamlet. Two weeks into spring drills, Womack went to Schiano and told him he was giving up the game. It wasn't that Womack disliked Schiano or had tired of football. He quit because of the competitive success he was having elsewhere. Womack, former teammate Garrett Shea and Amanda Phillips, a member of the women's track team, finished as the runners-up in a school business-plan competition last month. "We took second place against MBAs and Ph.Ds," Womack says. "We received a lot of recognition for being the only undergraduates, let alone athletes, who had even made it there." The second-place prize included $10,000 and, more important, entry into a national venture-capital competition at Wake Forest the following day. Here again, the three college jocks competed against businessmen and businesswomen in their 30s and 40s. "In the beginning, they didn't know we were undergraduates," Womack says. "We didn't say anything. We didn't want them to think, Oh, they're undergraduates. We're not going to give them a chance. When they found out, they were absolutely stunned. We sat down with a guy from Ernst & Young and his face just lit up." Womack, Shea and Phillips named their project plan AthleteOne. It is an Internet startup, which of late have a success record remarkably similar to Rutgers football. Their idea is easily understood. Think of an eBay for recruiting. AthleteOne would be a marketplace for coaches and athletes to find one another. Athletes would be able to post profiles and video clips of their performances. Coaches could do a preliminary round of scouting without leaving their offices. "A coach could say, 'I want an offensive lineman who's 6-4, 290-plus, can get into school and has the athletic ability to compete at this level," Womack says (and what coach wouldn't?). The site would search its entries and spit out a list. And the site wouldn't only track football recruits -- in fact, the plans are to cover all sports -- but colleges spend more money recruiting for football and basketball than any other. (They're not called the revenue sports for nothing.) Womack and his partners hope to tap into that market. "In the beginning, coaches are not going to pay at all," he says, "but we'll show colleges they can't live without it. It will change the way recruiting is done." The Wake Forest competition included one exercise in which the Rutgers team had to make their pitch to a venture capitalist in the time it takes an elevator to go 28 floors. It's not often football players get to recreate a two-minute drill while wearing coats and ties. Though AthleteOne didn't win a prize, Womack says he and his partners received sufficient attention and encouragement that they plan to make a go of it. They are actively chasing investors, though Womack took a timeout on Wednesday to graduate with a degree in finance. Womack left the football team with Schiano's blessing and good wishes. Yet the 21-year-old from Rockwall, Texas, is anxious about how he will feel next August when the Scarlet Knights report for two-a-days. "There's nothing like college football," he says, "to look down the field 99 yards and think, How am I going to do this? That feeling can't be duplicated." Of course, a Rutgers football player could probably get a doctorate in starting-from-your-own-1-yard-line. And Womack sees a parallel in the startup of a small business. "I don't know what yard line we're on," he says. "We're a long way away." Suffice it to say, AthleteOne is huddling in its own end zone. Still, Womack, Shea and Phillips are in the game. Sports Illustrated senior writer Ivan Maisel covers college football for the magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com.
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