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After 7 Years In The NFL, Spencer Paysinger Is Showing Off His Skill Off The Field
Former Miami Dolphins Linebacker Spencer Paysinger is a great role model to current and former NFL... [+] players. (Photo by Doug Murray/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Spencer Paysinger played seven years in the National Football League as a linebacker for the New York Giants, New York Jets, Miami Dolphins and Carolina Panthers. The odds were against him playing even a single season after he was undrafted coming out of the University of Oregon in 2011, but Paysinger ended up fulfilling his dream -- playing in the NFL and not playing football past the age of 30.
The 29-year-old Paysinger says that it was always his desire to hang up his cleats before turning 30 so that he would be able to make football a part of his life, but not his entire life. He has seen far too many players suffer when they retire from the NFL and he was uninterested in becoming trapped into a state of depression. Furthermore, Paysinger had his mind set on being an entrepreneur and wanted to use football as a tool to open doors to future opportunities.
In speaking with Paysinger, he is absolutely on the right track between being part of a TV show that is set to launch Fall 2018 on The CW and creating an investment fund with other professional athletes to invest in early stage companies. There appears to be a lot that current athletes, former athletes and businesspeople with zero athletic capacity can learn from Paysinger's pursuits.
The importance of embracing an escape from a daily job.
Paysinger was in a tough spot. He wasn't drafted by an NFL team and it happened to be in the year that the league locked out its players based on a labor dispute and inability to come to terms on a new collective bargaining agreement. But fortune struck and he ended up being signed by the Giants, and he realized that this was an opportunity to potentially change his life.
Most people in Paysinger's situation would have slept little and focused almost all time on football; however, Paysinger was wise to not overextend himself. He decided to spend an entire day at the movies during his first off-day. It was an escape for him from the stress of studying, playing and pretty much everything football-related.
"The escape to me is almost as important as playing," says Paysinger, who was able to maintain his regular escapes to the movies, and even write his own stories to pitch to producers, during his seven year NFL career.
"Use what you have to get what you want."
It is a quote from the 1998 comedy, The Players Club, which is one of Paysinger's favorite quotes. If you do not have many resources, but you have anything that may be of value, put that to work.
Paysinger knew he had a very valuable platform just by being an NFL player, and when doors opened he ran through them. For instance, a good friend of Paysinger's connected him to film producer Dane Morck during Paysinger's first year with the Dolphins. When they first met, they realized that they played football at rival high schools in California.
Morck mistakenly believed that Paysinger lived in Beverly Hills because he played football at Beverly Hills High School. Paysinger corrected the producer, revealing that he grew up in South Central L.A. And commuted every morning to Beverly Hills. That led to Paysinger writing a one-page treatment basically highlighting his story of avoiding the violence in the area he called home and then dealing with affluent teens with heroin addictions at 15 and 16 years of age and endless allowances at Beverly Hills High. Warner Bros. Television Group President and Chief Content Officer Peter Roth read the treatment, worked with Paysinger for about a year in developing a pilot and now The CW will feature it. All because Paysinger used what he had to get what he wanted -- an outlet for his creative side.
Never let your job define who you are.
Coming into the NFL, Paysinger's goal was to only play until he was 30-years-old and then wanted to get out. He had seen a few cases of people who accomplished a lot of interesting business ventures while being in the league, but also witnessed people fall pretty hard after being in the NFL.
"I never subscribed to the idea that football needs to be the pinnacle of who you are and what you're doing in your life," says Paysinger. "I've seen a lot of guys who can't get beyond their playing days. I wish football as a culture bred more than just a football player. It has the ability to be an incubator and transition players properly."
Paysinger has additional advice for those currently in the league.
"Today, a lot of players potentially lose themselves in the notoriety and popularity that comes from the game," adds Paysinger. "Who are you as a person? Who are you away from the game? I don't bad mouth football, but I also know that it has a long trail of tears and heartbreak and animosity built up by past players who feel that they put so much into the game and didn't get a lot out of it after."
A closed mouth doesn't get fed.
Paysinger says that this is a very popular quote in NFL locker rooms -- that players are taught to use their skills and open their mouths to get what they want. That is what Paysinger has done since retiring, and it extends far beyond the TV show he has helped developed.
He has been crafting a sort of cult among current and former NFL players. It comprises individuals like Prince Amukamara, Jelani Jenkins and Kelvin Sheppard. Roughly twenty of them chat on a daily basis on a private Slack channel, looking over pitch decks sent by companies looking for investments.
Paysinger has also developed an investment fund called Afterball LLC with the tighter circle of Amukamara, Jenkins and Sheppard. His intention is to keep the fund strictly managed by athletes. Thus far, the group has invested in Virgin's Hyperloop One and This Bar Saves Lives, which donates food around the world to underserved communities from every nutrition bar sold.
Quite literally, Paysinger is helping feed others. He is an example for current and former NFL players to follow as they struggle with what to do in life after football
Darren Heitner is the Founder of South Florida-based HEITNER LEGAL, P.L.L.C. And Sports Agent Blog. He authored the book, How to Play the Game: What Every Sports Attorney Needs to Know.
An NFL Player Had An Idea. Now It's A TV Show With Taye Diggs.
Alden GonzalezOct 17, 2018, 07:21 AM ET
CloseESPN baseball reporter. Covered the L.A. Rams for ESPN from 2016 to 2018 and the L.A. Angels for MLB.Com from 2012 to 2016.
LOS ANGELES -- It's a typical work day in Florham Park, New Jersey. Spencer Paysinger, a Super Bowl-champion linebacker, needs to prepare for another New York Jets practice, but something else consumes him on this midweek morning in August 2017. Warner Bros. Executives are back in Los Angeles trying to sell a show -- his show -- to the networks, and Paysinger must scramble to produce a three-minute pitch video to seal the deal.
Paysinger convinces one of the assistant trainers, Ezron Bryson, to let him borrow Bryson's office for five minutes, then props his tablet on a pile of books and begins speaking into it. Five minutes quickly turn to 15, then suddenly 20. Paysinger can see the large digital clock on the weight-room wall continuing to tick down, knowing he will pay a $5,000 fine if it reaches zero and he's late to practice.
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Thirty minutes have now elapsed. Players start scrambling out of the room. Bryson taps on the glass wall with noticeable urgency. Thirty minutes turn to 45.
Finally, Paysinger finds his rhythm. He begins by telling his imaginary audience that the central character of this potential TV series isn't rooted in fiction but inspired by the living, breathing football player sitting before them. He talks about the struggle of his adolescence and how, in spite of it, he is still here, in the NFL, living out his dreams, better for it all.
Then Paysinger jolts.
He rushes into an empty Jets locker room, grabs his jersey and a pair of pads, slips on one shoe, sprints down the hall and makes it onto the grass while his teammates stretch, finally exhaling with only seconds remaining on the giant clock.
"My heart was racing," Paysinger says now, "but I played it off like I had been there the whole time."
Paysinger, retired from the NFL since the start of the calendar year, is the inspiration behind The CW show "All American," which airs Wednesdays at 9 p.M. ET and stars Taye Diggs and Daniel Ezra.
The drama series uses fictional names and takes some creative liberties, but it stands as a direct snapshot to the juxtaposition of Paysinger's adolescence -- a star athlete from a rough neighborhood in South Central L.A. Who played high school football in the affluence of Beverly Hills and didn't seem to fit in either place.
Those who led the charge on this show -- people named Peter Roth, Robbie Rogers, Greg Berlanti and Dane Morck, among others -- used Paysinger's video to begin every pitch meeting.
It probably never happens without it.
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"It's a real story, it's inspired by a true story, and so it's good to put a face to that story," Rogers said. "Hearing it from Spencer himself was very important."
Transitioning to life after the NFLPaysinger never planned to play in the NFL beyond the age of 30. He overcame the drugs and violence of his hometown to earn a scholarship to Oregon, then landed with the New York Giants as an undrafted free agent in 2011 -- the lockout year -- and contributed on special teams for a team that won it all.
Four years with the Giants led to two years with the Miami Dolphins, followed by a training camp stint with the Jets, a three-month layoff, a three-week stretch with the Carolina Panthers and, on Dec. 29, 2017, the release that sent him into retirement.
"I remember sitting in my locker that day, packing all my stuff, smiling," said Paysinger, who turned 30 in June. "I never wanted football to be my highest peak."
Paysinger admittedly can't sit still for very long. He managed to do so long enough to grab coffee in West L.A. Earlier this summer and talked about how retirement always "scared me to death," a fear that pushed him to create the type of safety net that eludes most NFL players.
Paysinger once attended the Athlete Transition U business combine in New York City, then sent a letter to commissioner Roger Goodell and executive vice president of football operations Troy Vincent, urging the NFL to adopt the five-day crash course.
Paysinger is officially a consulting producer on "All American," but he also opened a coffee shop in his neighborhood, Hilltop Café, and helps run an investment fund called Afterball LLC, which aims to help football players find themselves after their playing careers suddenly end.
"It's a form of PTSD that athletes go through after sports," said former Pro Bowl tight end Martellus Bennett, a friend of Paysinger's who has found his niche by creating a cartoon series for kids. "You have to think about it like -- that is their life's work up until that point. Like, you've been training from a young age, college, you go to college with the idea of going to the NFL, you make it, you get your dream job at 21, and then your dream job spits you out at 25. And then what?"
'I want it to be a career'Paysinger's biggest passion is screenwriting, a love that began before high school, when he and his uncle would burn six hours every Friday and Saturday at the movies. Paysinger remembers the stress of his rookie season and how a trip to the cinema would quickly put him at ease. It became a routine. Every Tuesday, he went to the movies by himself.
Paysinger began writing his own material in 2014. He downloaded the scripts for his favorite movies -- the first was "Pulp Fiction," the second was "Pineapple Express" -- and studied the way writers crafted their stories. He began watching movies with subtitles, downloaded script-writing software, looked into UCLA classes and even began a website, cutandpays.Com, to house his rough ideas.
"I don't want this to be one shot," Paysinger said. "I don't want this to be, 'Hey, you're the guy who had that one show. What are you doing now?' I want it to be a career."
An idea comes to lifeThe process for "All American" began in 2015, when one of Paysinger's friends, former NFL tight end Schuylar Oordt, introduced him to his roommate, Morck, who at that point was still trying to find himself as a producer. They met at an apartment complex in Mar Vista, California, during Paysinger's bye week in October and hit it off when they realized they played against each other in a big rivalry game between Beverly Hills and Palos Verdes Peninsula high schools.
When Morck asked what it was like growing up in Beverly Hills, Paysinger corrected him.
"I don't want this to be one shot. I don't want this to be, 'Hey, you're the guy who had that one show. What are you doing now?' I want it to be a career."
Paysinger, whose new show "All American" airs Wednesday at 9 p.M. ET on The CW.He told him he got into Beverly Hills High through the multicultural program and described his commute to school each morning, which included 4 a.M. Wake-up calls.
Paysinger told him about that time gunshots rang out after a championship baseball game at a local park. And that time his mom became exceedingly concerned because Paysinger wore the wrong colors to school. And all those times he had to sleep at his grandparents' house because it was too late for him to ride a bicycle into his neighborhood.
"One of the things that I always found interesting about Los Angeles was the stark contrast in communities that are just sitting side by side," Morck said. "That was always interesting to me because you grow up here and you kind of stay in your pocket, and you kind of dealt with what was in front of you. I also realized at the same time I was talking to someone who had found success in a hard space, and he was a modern-day kind of hero in his path, in his journey, and that really appealed to me."
Paysinger kept sharing stories as the year went on. He soon got a call from Morck's childhood friend, Rogers, a producer and former professional soccer player whose fiancé at the time was Berlanti, one of the biggest TV producers in Hollywood.
Soon, Paysinger was meeting with Roth, the chief executive at Warner Bros., and writing treatments about the struggles he faced. The CW bought the rights in the second meeting. They found a director, Rob Hardy, and a writer, April Blair. They identified a premise -- "an outsider in two worlds" -- and assembled a cast and crew. By April 2018, they shot the pilot.
Paysinger watched it on a couch in the studio lot and "nearly passed out."
"I'm holding my wife's hand and I feel like I'm about to break it because my heart's beating so fast," Paysinger said. "Think about it -- if this s--- sucked, how am I going to show this to people?"
'Football players are not dumb, at all'Ezra, a young British actor, plays Paysinger in the show. His character is named Spencer James, and, like Paysinger in high school, he is a star wide receiver who finds a coach (Billy Baker, played by Diggs) who gets him into Beverly Hills High, igniting turmoil. (It's basically "The O.C." meets "Friday Night Lights.")
The fictional names helped Paysinger separate himself from the show and approach it from a bird's-eye view.
His main objective was to shatter stereotypes of the inner city.
"I wanted to tell the story of, 'We're a lot more similar on these different sides of the track than you guys think,'" Paysinger said. "Being from South Central, and knowing how South Central is portrayed in Hollywood as this desolate area with gang violence, drugs, everything -- they have to realize that the sun shines there as long as it shines in Beverly Hills. The one thing I want the viewers to see is South Central is also a beautiful place. It's a wonderful place. It's a place that I call home to this day. I think we've been able to do that."
Paysinger drove Diggs and Ezra around his neighborhood as they prepared for their roles, taking them to his house and his schools and his barbershop and his local swap meet.
While still an active player, Paysinger read scripts and helped Blair write some of the football scenes. Now he is a full-on, ever-present member of the crew with his own director's chair (Ezra's chair says "Spencer;" Paysinger's says "Real Spencer").
In the show, Paysinger can often be seen patrolling the sidelines as a nondescript assistant coach. But Paysinger also provides Ezra with occasional insight as to how he would have approached certain situations. He sits in the writers' room to contribute anecdotes. He participates in the production meetings to learn as much as possible.
"They've really welcomed me into the creative process," Paysinger said, "and I appreciate that."
"That's why when I got cut, I wasn't sad. It wasn't surreal to me. It was just like, 'Man, I'm ready for this.'"
Paysinger, on the time he started writing a script during a defensive meeting.Paysinger wants to eventually lead other projects, including one on mental health among athletes. He wishes to someday create works like Donald Glover, the multitalented actor, director and musician who inspired Paysinger with his hit show "Atlanta."
"Being a part of this project has really helped me dispel a lot of stereotypes when it comes to athletes and sports," Diggs said. "Football players are not dumb, at all. But there is that perception."
When it all clickedPaysinger can vividly remember a Thursday defensive meeting while he was with the Panthers late in the 2017 season. An idea popped in his head for a story about a kid whose barber suddenly goes missing, a big deal in Paysinger's community. Paysinger began writing about all the hurdles the boy went through to locate his barber. He started building the character, created several subplots, and before he knew it, six pages had been filled out.
His defensive coordinator, Steve Wilks, was on Page 16 of the install, while Paysinger remained on Page 3.
"That was the moment I knew I was ready to walk away from this game," he said. "That's why when I got cut, I wasn't sad. It wasn't surreal to me. It was just like, 'Man, I'm ready for this.'"
'All American': 5 Huge Changes The Show Made To Spencer Paysinger's Life Story
The CW sports drama All American follows an inner-city teenager named Spencer James (Daniel Ezra), who aspires to become a professional football player in the NFL. Although real-life football player Spencer Paysinger inspired the series, the show has changed a few things about his pre-life career. Here's a list of changes the television show made to Paysinger's life story.
Spencer's acceptance into Beverly Hills High School is completely different in 'All American'
Daniel Ezra and Spencer PaysingerAraya Diaz/WireImage The show starts with Spencer James transferring from South Crenshaw to Beverly Hills High School. Coach Billy Baker (Taye Diggs) recruited him to play for the Beverly Eagles and win them a state championship. To attend the school, Spencer had to live with Billy's family in Beverly Hills. However, the real story behind Spencer Paysinger's acceptance into Beverly was different from the show's depiction.
According to Newsweek, Paysinger had multiple family members working at the high school. As children, his father and uncles received a permit to go to school. They returned to the high school and became coaches/teachers. In turn, he attended the school as part of the multicultural program. So, Paysinger didn't have to stay with a faculty member's family to go to Beverly.
When Spencer won the state championship with Beverly Hills High School, he transferred to South Crenshaw High. Spencer went back to Crenshaw to win the state title for his neighborhood. However, that didn't happen to Spencer Paysinger. Throughout his high school career, Paysinger only attended Beverly Hill High.
According to PopSugar, he resided in South Central Los Angeles and would commute to Beverly Hills every day for school. In 2006, he graduated from Beverly after playing two seasons with the football team. Although the change showed Spencer's talent in the series, the change does alter his journey to the NFL.
The former NFL player wasn't shot in high schoolOne of the biggest turning points for Spencer was getting shot in All American. After leaving an event with Olivia (Samantha Logan), Spencer got shot in the shoulder by an unknown assailant. Throughout the second season, he is grappling with the aftermath of his injury.
The shooting put Spencer's football career in jeopardy. In the end, he made a full recovery and returned to the field. As the show progresses, the narrative revealed Coop (Bre-Z) was responsible for Spencer getting shot. He was able to move on from the incident after opening up to Coop. However, this did not happen to Spencer Paysinger in real life. Paysinger never had a gunshot wound that threatened his football career.
Spencer Paysinger wasn't an All-American in real lifeSpencer and Jordan Baker (Michael Evans Behling) is named All-American high school football players in the sports drama. To clarify, the term All-America describes outstanding U.S. Athletes in football or any given sport. However, Paysinger never earned the title in high school. His most significant achievement was becoming the Ocean League player of the year in college.
Paysinger didn't win a state championship in high schoolIn the CW series, Spencer won the state championship for Beverly Hills High School. However, Paysinger never won the state title in high school. He had a successful career in high school, but that didn't include winning the California state championship. In his junior year, the Beverly Hills Normans finished the football season with a 9-1-2 record. Unfortunately, the team never made it to the championship finals. But, Spencer James came close to winning a second title for South Crenshaw High School.
All American Season 4 airs Mondays on the CW at 8:00 p.M. ET.
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