By Mark Eckel | Engagement Insider
These were not good times for Luther Broughton.
The former tight end for the Philadelphia Eagles and Carolina Panthers was being told his NFL career was over at the same time that his marriage was also ending.
“It was tough,’’ Broughton said. “I’m not playing ball any longer. I’m going through a divorce. What’s next?’’
Next for Broughton turned out to be a MBA from the University of Phoenix. That degree led him to his second career as a mortgage underwriter for Quicken Loans.
“When I finished playing I was still up in New Jersey, but I knew I had to get back home to Charlotte (North Carolina),’’ Broughton said. “The transition from leaving the game is difficult. I wasn’t prepared for it. But I made myself prepared.’’
Broughton played from 1997-2001 for the Eagles and Panthers as a back-up tight end and special teams player. He went to camp with the Chicago Bears in ’02; and again with the Green Bay Packers in ’03, but didn’t make either team’s final roster.
“It was crazy,’’ Broughton said. “I used to use my credit card all the time. I would use it all summer and then when I got my first check when the season started I would just pay off my bill. I did it every year. Now, there was no check. It all fell on me. There was a lot of pressure. I mean it wasn’t the end of the world. But here I am 29 years old and I don’t have a job. This was the real world.’’
A world Broughton wasn’t quite ready to enter.
“As a player, you never think it’s going to end,’’ he said. “You’re never ready for it to end. I wasn’t ready to stop playing. Listen, every player in the game goes into it thinking they’re going to be a star. Nobody says, ‘I’m going to play a few years as a back-up.’ You strive to be a starter and then strive to make the Pro Bowl. I thought the same thing.
“It never happened for me and then you realize how tough it is. But going through that transition may have helped me in my life after football.’’
Broughton, with some advice from friends, got into the banking world on the sales side of mortgages. And then the bank crisis hit.
“I was doing well,’’ he said. “And then it all went to hell. Everything became so tight; it was just a tough business. You could be the best salesman in the world, but banks just weren’t giving out loans. You’re expecting to make $10,000, or so, a month and now you’re making $1,000 a month.’’
As the business slowly got better, Broughton went to the other side of it. Instead of selling mortgages, he became an underwriter.
“I like my job,’’ he said. “I really do. I enjoy what I’m doing.’’
Broughton, always affable during his playing career, stays close to the game and his favorite sport, basketball, through a new adventure – sports talk radio. He’s the co-host of a once a week show on national radio and is enjoying that as well.
“I would have liked to have gotten into coaching, but that didn’t happen,’’ he said. “I tried, but I couldn’t get a bite anywhere. So I gave up that dream. Now, I’m doing sports talk radio and that’s a lot of fun. I never had an ego, even when I played, so I didn’t think people cared what I thought about sports and didn’t want to hear me talk about sports. And then people started to tell me they do want to listen to me talk about sports.’’
Broughton is having a good time with his new gig. It keeps him close to the games he loves and gives him a break from “the real world’’ if just for an hour a week.
“I’m having a lot of fun,’’ he said. “I’ve always been a sports fan. Even when I was playing, I remember coaches in Carolina talking to me and they were surprised how much I knew about the history of the game, and just the game itself. I was a sports junkie, I still am.’’