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Former NFL player Delvin Hughley has a passion for helping others
Delvin Hughley had NFL stints with the Denver Broncos and the Baltimore Ravens. (Courtesy: Dalvin Hughley; @dhugh2/Instagram)

Former NFL player Delvin Hughley has a passion for helping others

BOULDER, Colo. (BVM) — Professional sports is a promised land for many young athletes worldwide. What many of these athletes don’t realize, however, is that longevity in professional sports is incredibly short. Take the NFL, for example. The average career length for an NFL athlete is only four years. 

So, what do pro athletes do after their time in the spotlight? Unfortunately, the harsh reality for many pro athletes is that they do not have a plan after sports. This has led to a vast majority of former professional athletes going bankrupt after they retire from sports. Sports Illustrated estimated that 78% of former NFL athletes and 60% of former NBA athletes have gone bankrupt or see financial hardship within their first two years of retiring from pro sports. 

This isn’t the case for every former professional athlete, though. Take former NFL player Delvin Hughley. He spent two years in the NFL with two different teams. Eventually, he transitioned to the Arena Football League where he spent an additional six years before retiring from pro sports. But Hughley is the model for what professional athletes should do after they retire. 

Hughley’s football journey began before he even set foot on a football field. 

“I admired the game as a kid,” Hughley said. “I would always sit in front of the TV when football was on and watch it. Then as I got older, around grade school, I became infatuated with it.” 

Not long after the infatuation for the game began to build, Hughley became old enough to play at 8 years old and started his football journey. 

At 14, Hughley started attending Anniston Highschool in Anniston, Ala., where he actually took some years off football. 

“I got burnt out because back when I was in high school, it was the ‘old school’ game of football,” he said. “Coaches never took it easy on the players.” 

In this time off, Hughley became a standout basketball player for Anniston. But when Hughley’s senior year rolled around, he made a huge decision. 

“All of my friends were playing and pushing me to join the team,” Hughley said. “So I decided to go out and play senior year. Which ended up being the best decision I could have ever made.”

Hughley began lighting up the stat boards in his senior year. So much so that by the fourth game of his senior year, he had received multiple full-ride scholarship offers. Joining the football team senior year, he never thought about going pro or making it to the NFL. It was so far from his mind, in fact, that when his coach told him he was becoming a prospect, he had no idea what it meant. But given that the opportunity was presenting itself, he decided to take advantage of it. 

After his senior year had wrapped up, Hughley began the college recruitment process, taking visits to different schools interested in him. But Hughley’s preference for college was local. Just down the road from Anniston was Jacksonville State University. Hughley’s interest was with Jacksonville State, but the school was quite late getting to the scholarship offerings. 

“The crazy part about it all was that since they were so late offering me a scholarship, I was already playing basketball at the time,” Hughley said. “They saw me playing basketball and offered me a football scholarship.” 

Once in college at Jacksonville State, Hughley ended up redshirting his freshman year. The goal of doing this was to improve both his mental and physical capabilities on and off the field. All of this work paid off. Hughley ended up starting as a redshirt freshman and never looked back. Hughley was a full four-year starter at Jacksonville State and even received All-American honors his senior year. 

As a result of his standout college career, Hughley received a lot of attention from NFL scouts and NFL media. Hughley was even included on Mel Kiper’s 2001 ESPN Sleeper of the Week board. Another notable player to be included on this same board was Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson. 

Although there seemed to be reasonable interest in Hughley, there was still an obstacle holding him back — the small college he attended. Mel Kiper even made a note of this. 

“The big question is the level of competition,” Kiper said in his 2001 Sleeper of the week board. “Hughley hasn’t been pressured to match up in man coverage against top-flight wide receivers on a game-to-game basis.”

These worries about Hughley came to a head during the draft. Hughley ended up slipping to become an undrafted free agent. 

“The odds were stacked against me. But with hard work, anything is possible,” Hughley said. “So I told myself that I’m going to work hard and give my all.”

Work hard he did. Eventually, Hughley made the opening day roster for the Baltimore Ravens. But after his first year with the Ravens, he ended up being cut and then picked up by the Denver Broncos. After this, Hughley was cut again at the end of only his second year in the league. 

“I didn’t put my head down,” Hughley said. When one door closes, another one opens.” 

This other door that opened was the opportunity to play pro football in the Arena Football League.

Hughley spent six total years (2003-2008) between two teams in the Arena League: the Indiana Firebirds and the Colorado Crush. (Courtesy: Delvin Hughley; @dhugh2/Instagram)

Around season four of six in the Arena league, Hughley realized that his career was close to coming to an end. Injuries were slowly starting to pile up during the seasons and took a toll on his physical ability. 

It was at this point when Hughley realized the need for a post-professional sports plan. 

“In football terms, I was ‘old,’ but in regular life terms, I was still very young, in my early 30’s,” Hughley said. “So I started looking ahead and asking myself what I was going to do after football.”

This move by Hughley proved to be an incredibly beneficial one. In 2008, Hughley suffered a horrific career-ending knee injury. However, Hughley’s forward-thinking allowed him to fully recover from his knee injury and smoothly transition into his new personal training career. 

“The key things that I learned from football were discipline and accountability,” Hughley said. “Everybody has an individual job to do which is where both aspects go a long way. The concepts of accountability and discipline stretch into all aspects of life, especially with family, friends, and especially work.” 

In January 2019, Hughley started working as a youth services specialist with the Colorado Department of Human Services. Hughley is working with youth (under 18), especially at-risk youth, incarcerated in youth service centers. 

“Once I started playing professional football, even when I was in college, I would go back and talk to the local youth,” Hughley said. “I would tell them there are better things in life than their current situation. You do not have to just accept it.” 

“Through my upbringing and my experiences growing up, it wasn’t ‘bad’ per se, but in the area, I grew up in, it was pretty rough and tough, and it still is to this day. But there are opportunities to get out of that situation. When you have a kid incarcerated in a youth service center, that is kind of the last straw. I can get to those kids daily and tell them, ‘Hey, look, this is not the thing you need to be doing.’’’ 

Hughley preaches the lessons of accountability and commitment that he learned while playing pro football to the youth. 

“Like football, if you make a mistake, you can’t blame the guy next to you; you have to be accountable for your own mistakes,” Hughley said. “And it is that idea that I try to get across to the youth,” Hughley said. “We all make mistakes, do not sit there and blame others for your mistake and the situation you’re in. You have to take accountability for yourself and your actions.”

Hughley has had great success in this career as well. 

“I have seen so many kids get out and contact me to tell me what they are doing with themselves,” Hughley said. “I have also run into kids I have worked with at their jobs, which is all amazing to see.” 

Hughley plans to continue working and moving through the Colorado Department of Human Services and plans to continue working as a personal fitness trainer to keep helping and changing as many people’s lives as possible. After all, that is his primary passion, to help other people make positive changes in their own lives.