Former USC football players get edge in business but must perform

Former University of South Carolina football star Bobby Bryant still encounters adoring Gamecocks fans as he helps them replace their cracked automobile windshields.

Fifty years ago, Bryant was a first-team All-Atlantic Coast Conference cornerback at USC. He went on to play in four Super Bowls with the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings.

Returning here in 1985, Bryant is part of a legion of former USC football players in business in the Columbia area.

The capital city presents an environment tailor-made for former USC football players and other ex-Gamecocks to pursue business careers. Over the decades, dozens of them have pushed a wide range of merchandise and services, including cars, insurance, fences, fitness, real estate, sports paraphrenalia, pine straw, legal advice, beer and more.

“That’s been a great assist in my business career because most people are sports fans,” Bryant said. “In South Carolina, most people are (USC) or Clemson fans. The background I had with (USC) really helped me.”

As a sales representative in the automobile glass replacement business, first with Harmon Glass in 1985 and then Quackt Glass starting in 2005, access to South Carolina insurance companies was vital. Football gave Bryant that access. “I could get in the door,” he said.

“When they heard it was Bobby Bryant, they were much more amenable to saying, ‘Sure, come on in, we’d love to meet with you,’ ” Bryant said.

Bryant, 71, said he still receives three or four fan letters a week, many with bubble gum cards, asking for his signature. Just this week, he got a letter from a Vikings fan in England who sent him a picture and asked for an autograph.

Former USC player Syvelle Newton, who worked in car sales for several years in Columbia, said good business protocol sometimes forced him to “slow the roll’ on the enthusiasm of fans seeking autographs and reminisces in favor of making a sale.

“You accept it on some terms, but sometimes you have to shut it down,” Newton said. “When you’re a player, you’re a figure to most. You’re a figure to whoever is honoring you as a Carolina football player.”

When he was at USC, people rarely asked Newton about his education, Newton said. Nor were they eager to talk about possible internships or potential career paths.

“It’s more like, ‘Hey man, that catch you made or that run you made was fantastic – I really enjoyed it – do you think you could sign this for my son?’ It’s never like, ‘What can I do to help you’ ” pursue a career outside of football. “That’s what the players deal with.”

Former players also must deal with that in business as some potential customers want to talk football rather than about buying a product or a service.

Still, being a former player helped, Newton said, because of the instant connection made between the fan/customer and the former player.

Armed with a degree in media arts, Newton is in his first year teaching graphic arts at Blythewood High School.

Besides the ease of connecting with potential customers, former USC football players and other former athletes also benefit in business from the lessons taught on the field, track or court.

Bryant, Newton and others said learning time management skills, punctuality, commitment, team work, hard work, discipline and other “soft skills” was vital to their success.

USC officials say the lessons learned outside the classroom from playing sports is one of the biggest benefits of being a student-athlete.

“I know there are a lot of companies that like to hire athletes just because of what they have been through,” said Ryan Brewer, a running back from 1999 to 2002. “Some call it time management, but it’s work ethic.”

Brewer, who owns Ryan Brewer Enterprises, provides fence work in the region, employing about 30 people and sending out six trucks a day. Brewer didn’t come into the business as a rookie.

After playing football in Europe for a year, Brewer started selling fencing, railing and columns in Columbia that were manufactured by his grandfather in Ohio. He did not know where the venture would lead, but it has “snowballed” into a full-fledged fence company, whose portfolio stretches from condominium projects to the Carolina Walk across from Williams-Brice Stadium.

“There is nothing that the work world can bring to me, personally, that is going to make me say, ‘Oh, I can’t do this,’ ” Brewer said. “I’ve been through the ringer. From winter workouts to the number of hours we spent trying to get ourselves physically and mentally better every day (while in college) – work is a snap. Work’s easy.”

The worlds of sports and business are kingdoms, said Todd Koesters, an assistant professor in USC’s Department of Sport and Entertainment Management. Being an athlete gets you a key to the kingdom, he said.

“Athletes here have those opportunities – there’s lots of people who know them. The question is whether or not they have the sustainability to back it up,” Koesters said.

Former Gamecock football player Langston Moore, a lineman who played in the NFL, returned to the area to work as a sideline reporter for the USC radio network, a real estate investor, an author, motivational speaker and fitness coach. He said bouncing back from a loss in football taught him tremendous lessons about life and work.

“The thing, I think, that separates athletes the most, and you’ll find it from the best business people, is their ability to handle adversity,” Koesters, the USC assistant professor, said.

“To be able to handle tough situations and thrive beyond that is what I see in the athletes ... They understand that failure is a part of life. It’s how you deal with that failure that creates the success.”

This story was originally published September 15, 2016 at 9:20 PM with the headline "Former USC football players get edge in business but must perform."