Thursday, May 2, 2013
BY Jeff Roberts
Staff Writer
The Record
The burden he carried was his alone.
No one was coming to Roman Oben’s rescue. The teammates who lined up alongside him for 12 seasons had moved on.
There was just his wife sitting helplessly beside him that July morning in 2008. There was only Linda there to listen when he broke down in the car on the way to church.
Oben understood the end of his NFL career was inevitable. The Kinnelon resident planned for it as far back as his rookie year with the Giants in 1996. He earned his master’s degree. Interned for two members of Congress.
But it still wasn’t enough to prepare the former left tackle for life after football.
"I just started tearing up," said Oben, his deep voice resonating above the clanking forks and muffled conversations in a Little Falls diner. "This is the rest of the your life. ...
"What the heck am I going to do? What can I put into my life that gave me the same passion?"
The void that confronts many former players after retirement hit him hard that first summer after leaving the NFL, just as he normally would have been packing up for training camp.
Oben, 40, serves as a warning that even the most conscientious are not immune to the struggles related to career transition. But he’s also a symbol that retired players can reinvent themselves when the all-consuming world of football no longer needs them.
Oben would become a familiar presence on Giants pre- and postgame broadcasts and found Oben Flag Football, which offers youth instructional clinics in a non-contact setting in communities throughout the area. But first he had to address the adjustment disorder he faced related to that transition.
"I was always a little underpaid. Teams used my knee [condition] against me," said Oben, who played for the Giants, Browns Bucs and Chargers. "So you go into that second phase of life – at least I do – with a chip on your shoulder, that you’re so determined to succeed. I’m not going to become a statistic.
"It just took me awhile to understand my place in this world."
Last week’s draft will make millionaires of a new class of young men. But despite hitting the athletic lottery, they soon may find the windfalls of money and fame all too fleeting.
And that influx of talent will spell the end for a number of veterans who then will face their day of reckoning.
"This is something that we’ve been dreaming about our whole lives – playing in the NFL," said retired receiver James Thrash, the NFL’s manager of player engagement. "For many of them, it starts before [age] 12, 13.
"A lot of guys’ identity gets wrapped up in what you do. We struggle with allowing our jobs to really give us our worth and value."
And then it’s gone.
Cautionary tales abound. Terrell Owens. Warren Sapp. Vince Young. Sad stories of financial ruin. Divorce. Loss of identity.
Oben wasn’t like them. Not even close.
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