By Gene Frenette
Florida Times Union
About a month after enrolling at the Florida Coastal School of Law in 2010, it hit Kyle Brady, if only for a few moments, just how much the former NFL tight end felt out of his element.
Brady was 38-years-old, 15 years removed from his last classroom experience at Penn State. He looked around the library, suddenly questioning whether he could endure the three-year mental grind of poring through case study after case study to attain a law degree.
“You see all these youngsters in the library and I thought, ‘What am I doing here? Do I want to do this for the rest of my life?’ ” said Brady.
Looking back on his football career, which included eight seasons (1999-2006) with the Jaguars, gave Brady the reminder he needed to push himself through law school. He played for three of the toughest old-school coaches in NFL history — Bill Parcells (New York Jets), Tom Coughlin (Jaguars) and Bill Belichick (New England Patriots) — so Brady wasn’t about to back down from another difficult path after football.
“Law school was mental drudgery, as opposed to the physical drudgery of football,” said Brady. “The memorization before each exam is intense. Professors call you out and ask you to analyze a case in class. You got to be on your toes. But in a different way, I had already been down that road with all those [NFL] training camps under some pretty demanding coaches.”
Unlike a lot of NFL players, Brady got an early jump on planning for his post-football career. He took a law school admissions test in 2005, just as a potential option. Brady dabbled in broadcasting as a player, then worked as an analyst for NFL Europe and the Big Ten network after playing his last season with the Patriots during their 2007 Super Bowl run.
“[Broadcasting] is a good career, but I looked at it as a temp job,” Brady said. “The drawback was it prevented you from pursuing something real and lasting. Deep down, I thought, ‘Why don’t I challenge myself?’ I got decent at football in the first half of my life, so let’s see if I can get on something new.”
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