Playing special teams might be the closest a man will get to a game of human pinball.
For the most part, it's the lowest rung on the NFL food chain, where rookies bide their time until they earn the right to start, and where undrafted free agents scratch and claw to prove they belong. The best special teams players sacrifice their bodies on a regular basis, and it's not a surprise that every kickoff or punt ends in a tangled pile of limbs and shoulder pads.
Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo is a millionaire because he does it about as well as anyone in football. He has been named to the Pro Bowl three times as a special teams player, including last season with the Ravens. He's so good at what he does that in 2008 the team signed him to a four-year contract worth $4.9 million even though it had no plans to use him in its regular defensive rotation.
Ayanbadejo's special teams skills might even be the least interesting thing about him. A history major at UCLA, Ayanbadejo's passions cover a wide variety of fields, touching on everything from theater and architecture to politics and economics. He occasionally writes opinion pieces for The Huffington Post - including one this year in defense of same-sex marriage, and another against the bank bailout - and he says his dream job, when he retires from the NFL, is becoming UCLA's first African-American athletic director. He's hoping to get an MBA in sports and business administration in the next few years.
"Football is my career, but my hobbies are my passion," Ayanbadejo said. "I have so many more interests. Right now I'm living my dream, but there is a dream after this dream. People who are overachievers don't just stop at one thing. They're always moving on to the next thing. I really want a world championship with the Ravens, but I also really want to wake up one day and be the athletic director at UCLA."
A job in sports is just a means to an end, Ayanbadejo believes. He wants to use athletics as the carrot that encourages people to change their lives through education. When he was at UCLA, he co-founded an organization whose members volunteered to spend six hours a week in elementary schools teaching kids the arts, which were being cut from school curriculums for financial reasons. He also was one of the students who went to the UCLA administration to protest the dwindling number of African-Americans being accepted for enrollment who weren't athletes. In Chicago, he annually hosts the opening night of the Hip Hop Theatre Festival, which showcases local performers.
