The risks and rewards around multi-sport athletes

Being a high-level athlete in any sport isn’t an easy task, and football is no exception.

Generally, football players who succeed at the NCAA and NFL levels have superior physical skills that they’ve honed through a lifetime of experience playing the game and years of hard work in the weight room to build their bodies. Even experience and physical skills alone won’t necessarily lead to success, though. A lot of NFL draft evaluation depends on the tale of what a player does on the field, which can be significantly impacted by the role a coach asks him to play. That can make finding the right team crucially important for players entering college and undrafted free agents entering the NFL.

With all those barriers in mind, it becomes even more remarkable to see the players who are not only able to survive and play one sport at a high level, but thrive and play two separate sports at that level. However, multi-sport success doesn’t come easily, and it poses a variety of issues for both players and teams.

The most legendary modern multi-sport athletes may be Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders, who starred in both Major League Baseball and the NFL in the 1980s and 1990s. According to SB Nation weekend blogger Andy Hutchins, much of the success of Jackson and Sanders can be attributed to their superior athleticism, which allowed them to shine in separate sports without the single-minded focus and experience required of many. Hutchins said both might have been even better if they’d picked one sport and stuck to it, though.

“Phenomenal all-sport athleticism factors into a lot of it,” Hutchins said. “Jackson and Sanders were among the greatest all-around athletes of their generations, and I honestly think Jackson could have been Hall of Fame-level great at either sport if he had stuck with one full-time. Deion might have been an All-Star if he’d played baseball full-time.”

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Hutchins doesn’t think we’re going to see the next Jackson or Sanders any time soon, as they were two remarkable athletes who played in a different time when salaries were smaller and teams were less concerned about regimenting players in the offseason. The injuries Jackson in particular suffered playing football are also a worry for teams.

“I think the days of crossing over like Deion and Bo did are gone,” Hutchins said. “They were able to do it because they’re tremendous athletes who needed less training and specialization, and because their teams were amenable to the idea. (For Deion, playing for two Atlanta teams was something both squads probably enjoyed being able to tout.) Since salaries have exploded since the early ’90s, I doubt that any team would permit one player at Hypothetical Bo’s pay grade to dabble in another sport.”

That doesn’t mean we’ve seen the end of the multi-sport athlete, though. A particularly interesting development in recent years has been the rise of unconventional football players, guys who entered the professional ranks despite little or no time on the gridiron in college.

The most notable case may be the San Diego Chargers’ seven-time Pro Bowl tight end Antonio Gates, who played basketball in college at Kent State. (He initially tried to play football and basketball at Michigan State, but then-Spartans’ coach Nick Saban nixed that idea.)

When Gates came out of college, NBA scouts weren’t high on his prospects for a professional basketball career, so he opted to work out for NFL teams. The Chargers were the first team he worked out for, and they immediately signed him to a free-agent contract. John Gennaro, the managing editor of Chargers’ blog Bolts From The Blue, said the expectations for Gates were very modest at first, though.

“I’m not even sure his signing was much more than an ‘interesting tidbit’ to throw at the end of articles in the local paper when talking about the Chargers’ rookies and/or training camp,” Gennaro said. “He was seen as a project. He had the size and strength, but needed to learn things that other players had been taught for years: how to run routes, how to position his body when catching the ball, how to block, etc.”

“Luckily for the Chargers, and their fans, Antonio is a very smart guy with an unbelievable work ethic. However, at the time of his signing he was seen as someone who probably wouldn’t even make the team. Even if he showed signs of ‘getting it’ in training camp, the thought process was that he’d end up on the practice squad or low on the depth chart so that he’d spend a year refining his game before being asked to go on the field.”

Gennaro said Gates may not even have seen the field in his rookie season of 2003 if not for some extraordinary circumstances.

“Two things happened that earned Gates time on the field in his rookie year,” Gennaro said. “First, the team was really bad. They finished the season 4-12, and could’ve been even worse. Their defense was frightening bad and their offense was even worse, so there was really no risk of throwing Antonio out there to get him experience.”

“Second, David Boston (who was signed to a big contract to be the playmaker in the offense) turned out to be a huge bust and led to a very boring and unexplosive passing game. The Chargers could see the potential stardom of Gates, and had nothing to risk by putting him out there even though he was still very ‘raw’, and so they pushed him out onto the field where he performed better than anyone expected.”

Gates caught 24 passes for 389 yards and two touchdowns in limited time that season, as he didn’t wind up starting until Week 6, but he showed flashes of even greater potential. That potential was fulfilled in 2004, when he hauled in 81 passes for 964 yards and 13 touchdowns and earned his first of seven-straight Pro Bowl selections. Gennaro said it was partly Gates’ increased experience and partly the work he did in the offseason that allowed him to reach the next level.

“He spent his first offseason learning to how become a football player,” Gennaro said. “After a full season, he could spend his second offseason learning to how become a tight end (and could spend time getting himself into ‘football shape’ instead of ‘basketball shape’).”

Gennaro said Gates’ success demonstrates the benefits of unconventional thinking by NFL front offices, but picking unusual players doesn’t always work out.

“NFL teams should always look for ‘projects’,” he said. “The Chargers still do (drafting Vaughn Martin out of Ontario is a bit of a project, Kris Dielman was drafted as a defensive lineman and converted to offensive lineman, etc., and many teams will take a chance on an athlete that has played in other sports. The Cowboys signed Drew Henson out of the New York Yankees’ minor league system as a quarterback. I think every year now there’s a handful of basketball players that try and make it into the NFL as tight ends, just like Gates and Tony Gonzalez before him, but you rarely hear about them because their success rate is so low. Teams should always be trying projects and thinking outside of the box, but they have to weigh the potential risk against potential reward when doing so.”

One recent case of risks and rewards in a potential draft pick is Chris Hodgson, who the B.C. Lions chose in this year’s CFL draft.

Hodgson had only played one year of college football at that point, but had previously been a renowned skateboarder and snowboarder and played hockey in the major junior, minor professional and college ranks. His football experience is next to nil, but Lions’ defensive coordinator Mike Benevides told The Vancouver Sun Hodgson’s experience from other sports may help him crack the CFL ranks.

“He’s played professional sports,” Benevides said. “He knows how to compete. He brings the intangibles you look for in a sixth round pick. But in terms of football background, it’s minimal. We’ll bring him to rookie camp and see how it goes from there.”

Playing multiple sports doesn’t always go smoothly, though. One recent case is former North Carolina State quarterback Russell Wilson. The Wolfpack decided to move on without Wilsonthis offseason thanks to his burgeoning minor league baseball career, but he’s play quarterback for another NCAA team this fall. Hutchins said the Wolfpack may have been hasty to release Wilson, but questions of commitment can hurt players who try and star in multiple sports.

“In Wilson’s case, specifically, I think North Carolina State was probably a bit too hasty to get rid of a player who has significant talents,” he said. “But Wilson’s also become a middling ACC quarterback since a stellar freshman season. If the Wolfpack thought it was in their best interests to get a more focused player under center, so be it.”

He said those concerns are generally more from coaches than fans, though.

“I think fans of any team are fine with the multi-sport athlete until injury or something else affects performance. [Current Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver] Riley Cooper played baseball for Florida throughout his Gators career, and few seemed to mind.”

The football-baseball crossover is a particularly common one, and it’s especially prominent among quarterbacks. Players like Wilson, current Oklahoma State quarterback Brandon Weeden and current Tennessee Titans quarterback Jake Locker have been selected in the fourth, 10th and second rounds of the MLB Draft respectively. Hutchins said the different seasonal schedules allow football and baseball to be perhaps the easiest crossover, and quarterbacks’ arm strength can help them excel on the diamond.

“You see it most from quarterbacks, who typically have strong arms that translate to baseball,” he said.

Those cross-sport careers don’t just involve risk in the draft from the football side, either. Wilson, Weeden and Locker were all high baseball draft picks, but Wilson’s the only one who still may wind up playing baseball. Locker dabbled in baseball for a few years, but opted to focus on football and was drafted eighth overall by Tennesee this year, while Weeden left baseball after an arm injury to try football at the college level.

Hutchins said while the MLB Draft inherently involves plenty of risk, as many of the top high school players picked turn the pros down to go play in college, picking a player with significant football aspirations may be even more of a gamble. If it works out, though, it tends to work out very well, as it in the case of Jackson and Sanders.

“Different baseball teams have different philosophies, but the idea that spending a draft pick on a talented player with the hopes that he’ll renounce a college career has been a worry for MLB clubs in the first round for quite some time now,” Hutchins said. “By comparison, taking a flyer on Locker or Wilson is more like drawing a lottery ticket.”

From a baseball perspective, Locker’s lottery ticket was a failure, but from the football side, his multi-sport career might have helped mould him into the exciting athletic prospect Tennessee targeted this year. Wilson’s final destination is unknown, but it doesn’t seem likely he’ll be the next two-sport professional star.

Still, plenty of athletes are currently playing multiple sports in the college ranks, and we may see more guys like Gates and Hodgson picked for professional football despite limited experience in the sport. There may never be another Jackson or Sanders, but the impacts of multiple-sport athletes are still felt in football today.

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