DeAngelo Evans is trying to turn his failed football dreams into a successful business.

[Eric the Red]

OTHER OPTIONS

 

DeAngelo Evans is trying to turn his failed football dreams into a successful business.

 

By BILL REITER

The Kansas City Star

 

ATLANTA | DeAngelo Evans barrels through the front door of P-Diddy’s restaurant, an enclave for the hip and rich, for athletes who have made it. He wears black slacks and a purple silk shirt, and his thick, low body moves powerfully across the room like the running back he once was.

 

But the athlete — the once-great runner who was supposed to be next great thing, who ran for 130 yards and three touchdowns for Nebraska in the inaugural Big 12 championship game 10 years ago — is almost entirely gone, washed away by bad luck, all that promise of an NFL career no more.

 

Lost.

 

“I’ll just say, I’m happy but I’m not content,” he says quietly.

 

After years of sulking and sadness in his hometown of Wichita, Evans turned his near-brush with greatness into a business plan: managing the money of athletes who did make it.

 

That idea has brought him to Atlanta, and to Justin’s Restaurant just outside downtown. Soul music thumps from speakers. Valet attendants open heavy wood doors. And DeAngelo Evans sits, his cell phone at his side, waiting for the next important phone call, trying to explain how a man picks himself back up after such a hard fall.

 

“I didn’t handle it well,” he admits.

 

He looks across the restaurant, at the empty tables that will soon be filled with people he could have been like. People he should have been like.

 

He shakes his head.

 

“I would have been a perennial All-Pro,” he says. “No doubt. There’s no question I’d be a perennial All-Pro if healthy. But that’s not what happened.”

 

•••

 

The kid coming out of Wichita was so good, people compared him to hometown hero Barry Sanders.

 

“I’ll tell you, he was the best. The best,” said his mother, Earnestine Evans. “He was on the road of greatness. He could have held his own with Barry Sanders, walked with him, matched him.”

 

Schools lined up for the 5-foot-8 power runner with killer speed. He ran angry. He ran with heart. He was the state’s all-time high school rushing leader, in front of even Sanders. This was the young man who walked two miles to practice as a boy because his parents didn’t want him playing football.

 

“He was always working, going the extra mile,” said younger brother Derrick Evans, a 24-year-old law student at Notre Dame. “He was so focused. If anyone wanted it, it was him.”

 

Evans signed with Nebraska, spurning his home state for one of the best football programs in the country.

 

He was spectacular from the start. As a freshman, he ran for 168 yards one week against Kansas State, and then for 105 the following week against Baylor.

 

In the Big 12 championship game between Texas and Nebraska — a game that included running backs Ricky Williams and Priest Holmes — Evans, taking advantage of teammate Ahman Green’s injury, arguably outran them all.

 

His numbers were as gaudy as his talent: 32 carries for 130 yards and three touchdowns.

 

Things would never be better.

 

He missed the entire 1997 season because of a groin injury. He played in only three games the following year because of a tailbone injury and turf toe, and he followed up the season with arthroscopic knee surgery.

 

“I have been battered with injuries,” he said. “In college, I only played 31 out of close to 60 games.”

 

In 1999, Evans abruptly quit at Nebraska. A heated — and very public — series of events followed, including Evans’ criticizing then-coach Frank Solich, Evans asking to return to the team, and media reports that the team voted not to allow him to return.

 

“I definitely think it was a mistake the way I handled it,” he said. “No question.”

 

Evans transferred to Emporia State, a Division II school in Kansas, still telling reporters he planned to play in the NFL. Solich declined to comment for this story.

 

“DeAngelo made a foolish, hasty, young mistake,” his mother said. “I sat back and watched and didn’t know what to do.”

 

But she knew her son could run. Everyone did. Even then, from scouts to fans to family, people believed Evans was on his way. In 2001, after graduating, he attended an all-star game for second-tier prospects. Once again, he was remarkable.

 

But all it took was one play. A flare route to a receiver. Evans ran toward the ball. Then, pain.

 

“Somebody was trying to be Superman and tackled the person running the route, and they got slung around and they leg-whipped me,” he said. He stopped and repeated it again, as if he still couldn’t believe what happened. “I got leg-whipped. I got leg-whipped.

 

“Monty Beisel got slung around, hit my knee, and I was done.”

 

Done with football. Done with any thought of the NFL. Done with the riches he’d planned on, the life he could have given his family. His ACL and MCL were torn. The doctor took one look, shook his head, and said, “I’m sorry, DeAngelo.”

 

“It was just the killer injury,” said his mom, Earnestine. “It just never healed right, in order to go play in NFL. That ability was gone. It never came back.”

 

Everyone knew it was over for DeAngelo Evans.

 

Everyone but him.

 

•••

 

He spent two years trying to come back. Two years that included another surgery, endless rehabs, firing his agent and replacing him with his younger brother.

 

Six months later, the New York Giants agreed to come to Wichita to see what he could do, and it turned out he couldn’t do much.

 

“I didn’t run well,” he said.

 

He rehabbed more. He lived in his mother’s home and got by substitute teaching. He went to Philadelphia for a month to work out with a trainer. And still, when he stepped before the scouts in 2002 for the last time, he was too slow.

 

It was over.

 

He hung up his cleats. For years he’d fed his ambition on the dream of the NFL. Now that path was closed.

 

It was six years after showing the world what he could do in the Big 12 championship game, and here he was: nowhere.

 

“It was sadness,” he said. “I tried to keep it down, but I came down with a deep feeling of failure. You go through a moment where — and this didn’t last for just a moment, it lasted two to three years — of embarrassment, of trying to avoid people, of not wanting to answer questions.”

 

He hid in his hometown and struggled with the loss, pretending everything was fine and coming up with a plan for the rest of his life.

 

“Those years there were longings and wishes and regrets,” his brother said. “He just went and got his investment license and got certified. He buried that (sadness) down deep.”

 

Evans had taken a job as a financial adviser with Waddell and Reed in Wichita when he got an idea: Why manage the money of rich businessmen when he could manage athletes’ money all by himself?

 

“It’s hard for a 55-year-old CEO with a million dollars to trust a 25-year-old black man with his money,” Evans said. “That’s just the real world. But, I said to myself, it is not hard for a 23-year-old football player who knows DeAngelo’s story and knows he’s been through his tracks to do that.”

 

The thought sparked a business to use his sports contacts to become a financial planner for athletes. The disappointment wasn’t gone, but there was finally something that could start to take its place.

 

“He couldn’t find a job here,” his mother said. “After substitute teaching and things, he decided, ‘Maybe it’s time to move out of the state, time to move away and make my new life.’ He just needed a paycheck, pay the bills. And that was it.”

 

DeAngelo says he raised money and began scouring the country for clients. After two years, he says he’s landed clients from seven professional sports teams in football, baseball and basketball.

 

He refuses to divulge the details — the names of his clients, or how many he has — because he says professional athletes demand their privacy.

 

“It’s about relationships, and DeAngelo is very good at starting relationships, not only with athletes, but their families as well,” said Jeromy Gensch, Evans’ partner in After The Game Sports Inc. “That’s the key to what DeAngelo’s been doing — targeting juniors and seniors in college who are about to get into that level of contract signing and bonuses.”

 

Working from Wichita wasn’t ideal. He needed to be where the action was.

 

Three weeks ago, the once-great football player packed all his belongings into his Dodge Durango, climbed behind the wheel and headed for Atlanta.

 

“It was time for him to start his life,” his mom said. “To start over again.”

 

•••

 

Evans is sitting in P-Diddy’s restaurant, and even now, with all he’s lost and how far he’s come, you can hear the anger in his voice. This is a young man who may have accepted his fate, but it’s still easy to hear his disappointment with it.

 

“Yeah, it’s hard,” he says, “because I deal with egotistical parents, egotistical players. Sometimes I wish I could throw my film in. My feeling is this: 95 percent of the kids that I walk into a deal with, I don’t feel like they’re half the player I was. A lot of these guys feel like they’re being hunted, and can treat you any way. I’m like, ‘Look, I was in your situation, and when I was doing it, I was doing it a hell of a lot better than you are.’ ”

 

But there are good things that come with his new career. He believes he can help young people avoid the mistakes he made, and the mistakes he never had a chance to make.

 

“The vast majority of NFL players, when they retire, are broke: 65 percent,” he says. “A lot of people that are getting the money aren’t coming from money, and money’s a generational thing. If you don’t come from it, how do you know how to keep it? Making money’s the easy part. It’s keeping it that’s hard.”

 

Evans believes that maybe God put him on this path to do some good, to be more than a rich athlete.

 

“I don’t think I would be the person I am, as sensitive to the issues of others and the problems of others without going through what I went through,” he says.

 

He mentors high school kids now, trying to teach them things he learned the hard way. He mentors college athletes like Kansas wide receiver Matt Bouwie, hoping his loss can be someone else’s gain.

 

“He was here working with these kids this summer, and the kids he worked with just exploded. Just exploded,” said Larry Randall Sr., whose son played football with Evans at Emporia State. “This boy needs to be somewhere coaching college football.”

 

All this good, maybe it helps Evans bury down thoughts of injuries, of what might have happened if he hadn’t left Nebraska. Maybe it’s as important to moving on as the business plan he thought up back home.

 

“I tell these kids, ‘I don’t want you to make the mistakes I made in my life,’ ” he says.

 

He waits a moment and collects himself. There are so many what-could-have-beens, and this one, as much as any, takes him back. He goes on.

 

“If I’d had a DeAngelo Evans in my life…”

[AR Husker Fan]

It's too bad that this story isn't madatory reading for all athletes. They all think that they are going pro, and so few make it, for so many reasons...

[Touchdown Tommie]

This guy has a lot of opportunities to help the athletes understand what can and most likely will happen in their lives. With what he is doing now and what he will do in the future should make him feel pretty proud.

I agree AR, ALL athletes should read this or find someone like Evans.....

[MCAT800]

His crying put me to sleep

[NUpolo8]

Would you like some BBQ sauce with your myopia there Deangelo?

[zoogs]

It's a difficult road for the athletes...so easy to mess up...it's a good thing he's doing something with his experience. So much potential....agree with AR, more athletes need to read this. It's a humbling story and offers the kind of perspective that gets lost in the kind of recruiting we're doing today.

[BGREDSTUCKN IA]

I am glad to see that he has found a new path. He was a great athlete. From what the article said and from what I read in "Diary of a Husker," Evans could have never stayed at NU and been successful. I hope he helps lots of the young athletes and gets them on the right path to success.

[Bo Big Red]

OTHER OPTIONS

 

DeAngelo Evans is trying to turn his failed football dreams into a successful business.

 

By BILL REITER

The Kansas City Star

 

ATLANTA | DeAngelo Evans barrels through the front door of P-Diddy’s restaurant, an enclave for the hip and rich, for athletes who have made it. He wears black slacks and a purple silk shirt, and his thick, low body moves powerfully across the room like the running back he once was.

 

But the athlete — the once-great runner who was supposed to be next great thing, who ran for 130 yards and three touchdowns for Nebraska in the inaugural Big 12 championship game 10 years ago — is almost entirely gone, washed away by bad luck, all that promise of an NFL career no more.

 

Lost.

 

“I’ll just say, I’m happy but I’m not content,” he says quietly.

 

After years of sulking and sadness in his hometown of Wichita, Evans turned his near-brush with greatness into a business plan: managing the money of athletes who did make it.

 

That idea has brought him to Atlanta, and to Justin’s Restaurant just outside downtown. Soul music thumps from speakers. Valet attendants open heavy wood doors. And DeAngelo Evans sits, his cell phone at his side, waiting for the next important phone call, trying to explain how a man picks himself back up after such a hard fall.

 

“I didn’t handle it well,” he admits.

 

He looks across the restaurant, at the empty tables that will soon be filled with people he could have been like. People he should have been like.

 

He shakes his head.

 

“I would have been a perennial All-Pro,” he says. “No doubt. There’s no question I’d be a perennial All-Pro if healthy. But that’s not what happened.”

 

•••

 

The kid coming out of Wichita was so good, people compared him to hometown hero Barry Sanders.

 

“I’ll tell you, he was the best. The best,” said his mother, Earnestine Evans. “He was on the road of greatness. He could have held his own with Barry Sanders, walked with him, matched him.”

 

Schools lined up for the 5-foot-8 power runner with killer speed. He ran angry. He ran with heart. He was the state’s all-time high school rushing leader, in front of even Sanders. This was the young man who walked two miles to practice as a boy because his parents didn’t want him playing football.

 

“He was always working, going the extra mile,” said younger brother Derrick Evans, a 24-year-old law student at Notre Dame. “He was so focused. If anyone wanted it, it was him.”

 

Evans signed with Nebraska, spurning his home state for one of the best football programs in the country.

 

He was spectacular from the start. As a freshman, he ran for 168 yards one week against Kansas State, and then for 105 the following week against Baylor.

 

In the Big 12 championship game between Texas and Nebraska — a game that included running backs Ricky Williams and Priest Holmes — Evans, taking advantage of teammate Ahman Green’s injury, arguably outran them all.

 

His numbers were as gaudy as his talent: 32 carries for 130 yards and three touchdowns.

 

Things would never be better.

 

He missed the entire 1997 season because of a groin injury. He played in only three games the following year because of a tailbone injury and turf toe, and he followed up the season with arthroscopic knee surgery.

 

“I have been battered with injuries,” he said. “In college, I only played 31 out of close to 60 games.”

 

In 1999, Evans abruptly quit at Nebraska. A heated — and very public — series of events followed, including Evans’ criticizing then-coach Frank Solich, Evans asking to return to the team, and media reports that the team voted not to allow him to return.

 

“I definitely think it was a mistake the way I handled it,” he said. “No question.”

 

Evans transferred to Emporia State, a Division II school in Kansas, still telling reporters he planned to play in the NFL. Solich declined to comment for this story.

 

“DeAngelo made a foolish, hasty, young mistake,” his mother said. “I sat back and watched and didn’t know what to do.”

 

But she knew her son could run. Everyone did. Even then, from scouts to fans to family, people believed Evans was on his way. In 2001, after graduating, he attended an all-star game for second-tier prospects. Once again, he was remarkable.

 

But all it took was one play. A flare route to a receiver. Evans ran toward the ball. Then, pain.

 

“Somebody was trying to be Superman and tackled the person running the route, and they got slung around and they leg-whipped me,” he said. He stopped and repeated it again, as if he still couldn’t believe what happened. “I got leg-whipped. I got leg-whipped.

 

“Monty Beisel got slung around, hit my knee, and I was done.”

 

Done with football. Done with any thought of the NFL. Done with the riches he’d planned on, the life he could have given his family. His ACL and MCL were torn. The doctor took one look, shook his head, and said, “I’m sorry, DeAngelo.”

 

“It was just the killer injury,” said his mom, Earnestine. “It just never healed right, in order to go play in NFL. That ability was gone. It never came back.”

 

Everyone knew it was over for DeAngelo Evans.

 

Everyone but him.

 

•••

 

He spent two years trying to come back. Two years that included another surgery, endless rehabs, firing his agent and replacing him with his younger brother.

 

Six months later, the New York Giants agreed to come to Wichita to see what he could do, and it turned out he couldn’t do much.

 

“I didn’t run well,” he said.

 

He rehabbed more. He lived in his mother’s home and got by substitute teaching. He went to Philadelphia for a month to work out with a trainer. And still, when he stepped before the scouts in 2002 for the last time, he was too slow.

 

It was over.

 

He hung up his cleats. For years he’d fed his ambition on the dream of the NFL. Now that path was closed.

 

It was six years after showing the world what he could do in the Big 12 championship game, and here he was: nowhere.

 

“It was sadness,” he said. “I tried to keep it down, but I came down with a deep feeling of failure. You go through a moment where — and this didn’t last for just a moment, it lasted two to three years — of embarrassment, of trying to avoid people, of not wanting to answer questions.”

 

He hid in his hometown and struggled with the loss, pretending everything was fine and coming up with a plan for the rest of his life.

 

“Those years there were longings and wishes and regrets,” his brother said. “He just went and got his investment license and got certified. He buried that (sadness) down deep.”

 

Evans had taken a job as a financial adviser with Waddell and Reed in Wichita when he got an idea: Why manage the money of rich businessmen when he could manage athletes’ money all by himself?

 

“It’s hard for a 55-year-old CEO with a million dollars to trust a 25-year-old black man with his money,” Evans said. “That’s just the real world. But, I said to myself, it is not hard for a 23-year-old football player who knows DeAngelo’s story and knows he’s been through his tracks to do that.”

 

The thought sparked a business to use his sports contacts to become a financial planner for athletes. The disappointment wasn’t gone, but there was finally something that could start to take its place.

 

“He couldn’t find a job here,” his mother said. “After substitute teaching and things, he decided, ‘Maybe it’s time to move out of the state, time to move away and make my new life.’ He just needed a paycheck, pay the bills. And that was it.”

 

DeAngelo says he raised money and began scouring the country for clients. After two years, he says he’s landed clients from seven professional sports teams in football, baseball and basketball.

 

He refuses to divulge the details — the names of his clients, or how many he has — because he says professional athletes demand their privacy.

 

“It’s about relationships, and DeAngelo is very good at starting relationships, not only with athletes, but their families as well,” said Jeromy Gensch, Evans’ partner in After The Game Sports Inc. “That’s the key to what DeAngelo’s been doing — targeting juniors and seniors in college who are about to get into that level of contract signing and bonuses.”

 

Working from Wichita wasn’t ideal. He needed to be where the action was.

 

Three weeks ago, the once-great football player packed all his belongings into his Dodge Durango, climbed behind the wheel and headed for Atlanta.

 

“It was time for him to start his life,” his mom said. “To start over again.”

 

•••

 

Evans is sitting in P-Diddy’s restaurant, and even now, with all he’s lost and how far he’s come, you can hear the anger in his voice. This is a young man who may have accepted his fate, but it’s still easy to hear his disappointment with it.

 

“Yeah, it’s hard,” he says, “because I deal with egotistical parents, egotistical players. Sometimes I wish I could throw my film in. My feeling is this: 95 percent of the kids that I walk into a deal with, I don’t feel like they’re half the player I was. A lot of these guys feel like they’re being hunted, and can treat you any way. I’m like, ‘Look, I was in your situation, and when I was doing it, I was doing it a hell of a lot better than you are.’ ”

 

But there are good things that come with his new career. He believes he can help young people avoid the mistakes he made, and the mistakes he never had a chance to make.

 

“The vast majority of NFL players, when they retire, are broke: 65 percent,” he says. “A lot of people that are getting the money aren’t coming from money, and money’s a generational thing. If you don’t come from it, how do you know how to keep it? Making money’s the easy part. It’s keeping it that’s hard.”

 

Evans believes that maybe God put him on this path to do some good, to be more than a rich athlete.

 

“I don’t think I would be the person I am, as sensitive to the issues of others and the problems of others without going through what I went through,” he says.

 

He mentors high school kids now, trying to teach them things he learned the hard way. He mentors college athletes like Kansas wide receiver Matt Bouwie, hoping his loss can be someone else’s gain.

 

“He was here working with these kids this summer, and the kids he worked with just exploded. Just exploded,” said Larry Randall Sr., whose son played football with Evans at Emporia State. “This boy needs to be somewhere coaching college football.”

 

All this good, maybe it helps Evans bury down thoughts of injuries, of what might have happened if he hadn’t left Nebraska. Maybe it’s as important to moving on as the business plan he thought up back home.

 

“I tell these kids, ‘I don’t want you to make the mistakes I made in my life,’ ” he says.

 

He waits a moment and collects himself. There are so many what-could-have-beens, and this one, as much as any, takes him back. He goes on.

 

“If I’d had a DeAngelo Evans in my life…”

That was a great read.

[T_O_Bull]

It's too bad that this story isn't madatory reading for all athletes. They all think that they are going pro, and so few make it, for so many reasons...

 

Totally agree, AR.

>>>T_O_B

[illnino]

It's too bad that this story isn't madatory reading for all athletes. They all think that they are going pro, and so few make it, for so many reasons...

 

Totally agree, AR.

>>>T_O_B

 

[True2tRA]

I was watching that 1996 Colorado State and the Kansas State game today. I have a lot of games on old VHS tapes. I had forgotten just how good Evans was. I never really did know his whole story, but man I sure enjoyed watching him run. He would have been great.

 

This link came up number two on the page when I google searched his name. Thanks for posting that article OP, good read.

[RedRedJarvisRedwine]

WTFffff??

[In the Deed the Glory]

“That’s the key to what DeAngelo’s been doing — targeting juniors and seniors in college who are about to get into that level of contract signing and bonuses.”

 

Ummmmmmmmmmm...

 

I guess what we are saying is he is a sleazy agent coaches don't want around their program? The author should be a pitcher in the Majors with spin like this.

[NUance]

Holy Necro bump! Great read. But a little dated. I wonder what DeAngelo is doing today?

[robsker]

DeAngelo is (was at the time of that article) still really arrogant. That article shows how immature and cocky he still is (or, again was when that story was written). That is too bad. All credibility is lost with this statement...

 

“because I deal with egotistical parents, egotistical players. Sometimes I wish I could throw my film in. My feeling is this: 95 percent of the kids that I walk into a deal with, I don’t feel like they’re half the player I was. A lot of these guys feel like they’re being hunted, and can treat you any way. I’m like, ‘Look, I was in your situation, and when I was doing it, I was doing it a hell of a lot better than you are.’ ”