COWBOY IS RIDING HIGH Ex-Dallas star still shooting for success
JASON BELL’S career was driven by one simple characteristic – he wouldn’t take no for an answer.
Rejected by every NFL team in the 2001 draft, the then-23-year-old from Long Beach, California convinced Dallas to give him a chance as a free agent.
With the Cowboys, Texans and Giants, it led to a seven-year career, twice the length of the average NFL stay, where rejection and injuries featured prominently only for him to keep bouncing back.
Back surgery finally called time on his playing career at the age of 29 but his is a lesson in determination for Kansas City, Tennessee, San Francisco and Green Bay as they do battle tonight for the two places in next month’s Super Bowl.
“From when I was young, playing in parks, I never backed down. Whatever my destiny was, I always had to prepare myself to run towards a challenge,” Bell said.
“I had an opportunity, which a lot of people don’t have. But my opportunity wasn’t given, I had to take it.”
Now living in London and featuring twice a week on the BBC’s NFL show with Mark Chapman and fellow ex-player Osi Umenyiora, Bell is talking at the NFL offices before picking up fiveyear-old daughter Anaiya, who he co-parents with former partner, singer Nadine Coyle.
But his life after football had less certain beginnings until he found help from the league.
“I knew I was going into finance after football but retirement is a dark, lonely place,” he said.
“I went to business school and the NFL had a programme that helped me pay for half of it.
“The NFL has done a good job of educating players to educate other players because that’s who you’re going
to call. You’re going to call your friends, or a guy you played with is going to reach out to you.”
The financial advice he prepares for players today and his TV work have kept him in the game, and Bell’s new life in London has brought him a personal relationship with fans who have taken to stopping him in the streets.
“Dudes just walk up to me and they are the coolest people,” he said. “I was walking through London one day and there was this guy.
“He came across the street and said, ‘I want to tell you this, and this, and that’ and then he was gone.
“And because I’m a fan of people, that’s how I act. I want to tell them I appreciate them and then that’s it.
“I enjoy London life, all the cultures, I enjoy the cultural life. You’re close to everywhere.”
Bell’s favourite quarterback today is Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes, and he thinks the youngster will lead the Chiefs to the Super Bowl, where he expects them to meet San Francisco.
“Mahomes is the brilliant combination of why kids should play a lot of sports,” he saod. “His baseball background and what he can do with that ball. He is perfect for that city.”