News

Professional football players live a lot of life in a short amount of time: An on-field career can end quickly, sometimes before a player even sees it coming. So, many players don't wait until the cheering stops before preparing themselves for their post-football careers. That can be a more pressing necessity in the Canadian Football League, where most players earn less than $100,000 per season. With a six-month off-season and an in-season schedule that affords a few hours of free time each day, many players put their downtime to productive use.

MARWAN HAGE
Growing up in Lebanon, Marwan Hage and his brothers, Rawad and Elias, were immersed in the business run by their father, Antoine, who shipped cargo around the globe.

When the family moved to Montreal in 1990, Marwan discovered his love of football but kept up his interest in the family enterprise, which he helps operate today. "Learning the shipping business is like a business degree itself, because you learn all about commodities and pricing," says Hage, 27, who has a degree in business administration from the University of Colorado. "Growing up in my family, it was all business talk. I've heard about shipping form as long as I can remember."

Hage, a centre for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, spends part of his off-season following up on contacts and visiting clients both in Canada and abroad. He's also begun diversifying his professional interests, starting with a real estate portfolio comprised of three commercial properties in Halifax and Hamilton.

Besides getting a start on his post-football career, Hage says his off-field ventures help him deal with the commercial side of the game. "I know that in football, I'm a commodity," says Hage. "That helps you understand your value. There's a lot of players who struggle with the business side of football and don't understand how they're treated. My business background has helped."

ANDRE DURIE
Andre Durie grew up watching his mother, Melva, making a difference in the lives of others through her work—first with young offenders, and later with developmentally challenged children.

So when Durie's own son, Malcolm, was diagnosed with autism, his mother's work resonated even more for the Toronto Argonaut running back. "I saw the difference my mother made in people's lives," says Durie, who majored in sociology at York University. "My son having a developmental disability is one of the things that got me interested in working with developmentally challenged people, to help them in their lives."

Durie visits clients in their homes in Mississauga on behalf of Community Living, a provincial association that promotes the well-being of people with intellectual disabilities. "They are somewhat independent, but we make sure their upkeep is okay and they are maintaining goals," says Durie, who often makes his visits in the evening so as not to conflict with football.

Durie also works with the Children's Aid Society, working with foster children. "I take them out to do the most fun things they can do," he says. "For most of the kids, [life] is really stressful and they all like to have fun."

DAN COMISKEY
Having sustained concussions, a broken leg and a couple of torn muscles on the field, Edmonton Eskimo offensive lineman Dan Comiskey knows what it's like to be injured at work.

But nothing he's sustained or witnessed on the football field hit the 36-year-old Comiskey like the 2001 industrial accident that took the life of his stepbrother, Jim Smyth, who was working for Ontario Hydro. Three years later, when Comiskey's father-in-law suffered a serious head injury while working at a mine in Alberta, Comiskey decided something was missing from the work safety message being preached across the country.

"I was doing different keynotes to workers on teamwork and leadership, and it evolved into safety," says Comiskey, a University of Windsor graduate in sociology. "The tie-in was personal."

By the end of 2008, Comiskey and former teammate Bruce Beaton, now retired, had launched Dan the Safety Man, a coaching company that adapts the communication methods used by football coaches.

"It's about teaching management how to coach their employees on safety," says Comiskey from his off-season home in Kentville, Nova Scotia. "Safety is one of those things people have to buy into. A big part of that is communication between managers and their employees."

BRYAN CRAWFORD
The morning after the Toronto Argonauts' 2008 regular season ended with a loss to Saskatchewan, Bryan Crawford was back at his desk job—at Ontario University Athletics, making sure everything was in order for the upcoming weekend's football schedule. A day later he was at Queen's University, where he once starred, overseeing a university football playoff game.

"I assist with all aspects of the OUA," says Crawford, 27, a Toronto Argonaut running back and special teams player. "Communications, marketing, anything that comes down the pipe. I write a lot of reports, track TV and attendance, looking at things like the correlation between championships and funding."

Crawford studied political science at Queen's, and had planned on going to grad school, but put those plans aside when his priority became professional football. Today he works part-time with the OUA during the season, usually putting in a couple of hours in the mornings before heading off to meetings and practice with the Argos. He switches to full-time work when the season is over.

"It's fantastic because I get experience in so many areas," Crawford says. "It gives me a good education in the overall administrative side of athletics. It's definitely a path I'd like to stay on and maintain a career in athletics when the playing days are over."

JEFF JOHNSON
As an undrafted running back out of York University, Jeff Johnson overcame long odds to make it in the CFL. So the Argonaut veteran isn't at all intimidated by trying to launch a real estate career in the midst of a market downturn.

"You have to work for what you get," says Johnson, 32, who majored in kinesiology at York. "For a lot of realtors starting out, business would just come to them, and now they're struggling. I'm getting a good groundwork laid to allow me to have success."

Johnson got into real estate indirectly—through a six-year stint as a personal trainer. "Having various clients at the gym who are in real estate gave me an opportunity to see what the business is like from their perspective," Johnson says. "I always liked what I heard. And can balance it with football, and get my career after football started."

Managing both careers at the same time, however, can make for some very long days, especially during the playing season. "It is challenging getting things done," he says. "But football is very like real estate in that you get out of it what you put into it."

ADRIANO BELLI
He is known as one of the most aggressive players in the CFL, a quality he takes with him into his alternate life in the food business. Fortunately for Adriano Belli's competitors in meat products, that doesn't involve picking them up and slamming them to the ground, as he does regularly with quarterbacks.

"I'd say I'm a fair businessman," says Belli, a 31-year-old defensive tackle with the Toronto Argonauts. "I'm aggressive. I'm a gentleman. But I'm the type of guy who says, 'Let's get this job done.'"

Belli's family was in the meat business before he started Mississauga-based Old Style Foods, which develops and sells various meat products to grocery stores. Sometimes he's developing a new product; sometimes he's searching for ways to tweak the packaging and look of an existing one. "When you see a product you helped create, it's exciting," says Belli, who did a double major in sociology and marketing at the University of Houston.

Life is hectic for a player who maintains his off-field role right through the season, often doing business during the day on breaks between football meetings and practice. "Other people in business are doing it on the golf course," says Belli. "I can send an opportunity to a buyer while I'm in the locker room in my jock."