BMoreIllini
- Baltimore, MD
Thought this forum could use a bit of a feel good story after what happened on Saturday. Some back story on how I stumbled upon this - there's a TV show on HBO called Ballers, it stars Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as a former NFL player trying to make it post-retirement as a financial advisor, etc so that young NFL players don't make the same financial mistakes that he made. A bunch of current and former NFL stars and personalities appear on the show all the time. Anyway, during the credits after an episode I see: Producer: Rashard Mendenhall. I thought to myself, "Surely that's not the same Rashard from "The Beloved". I did some digging on Wiki and IMDB and sure enough it was. Rashard retired from the NFL at the young age of 28 and achieved his dream of being a writer and producer, I can only imagine how awesome it is for him to be able to write on a show that features the NFL and football on forefront of the storyline and get to work with stars like The Rock, Mark Wahlberg, and current NFL stars that appear on the show. He's even said that some episodes are loosely based on his experiences. Funny enough, a story line in the current season is a player who is contemplating leaving football for other interests, also at 28. I wonder who that could be based on.... His role for the show range from story editor to staff writer to writer to producer.
I thought it was a cool story for a guy from U of I to retire on his terms when other interests outweighed playing football (he cited travel and writing as two big reasons)and he's become successful off the field. Here's an article from before the show even came out that features Rashard:
https://www.mensjournal.com/adventure/rashard-mendenhall-the-real-player-behind-ballers-20150701/
I thought it was a cool story for a guy from U of I to retire on his terms when other interests outweighed playing football (he cited travel and writing as two big reasons)and he's become successful off the field. Here's an article from before the show even came out that features Rashard:
https://www.mensjournal.com/adventure/rashard-mendenhall-the-real-player-behind-ballers-20150701/