CSFL Success( Off the field)

As college commencement ceremonies get underway across the nation (albeit in virtual fashion), yet another generation of sprint football alumni will enter the real world on their various career paths. How the CSFL’s Class of 2020 will impact the nation off the field remains to be seen — but what we do know is how their predecessors have fared in that task. 

In the spirit of graduation season, the CSFL Hub is taking a look back at some of the most notable sprint football alumni. For the sake of brevity, we’ll look at only the former players (though there’s no shortage of accomplished sprint coaches as well, such as former NFL Pro Bowler Sean Morey and Detroit Pistons “Bad Boys” General Manager Jack McCloskey). Here are some of the most successful men ever to lace them up in the CSFL:

Robert Kraft – Columbia ‘63

No matter your thoughts on the Patriots’ cheating allegations, or the prostitution charges that Kraft faced in 2019, there’s no questioning that a man with six Super Bowl rings — well, five, not counting the one that Russian politician Vladimir Putin stole from him — has had an immensely successful career. Kraft became the Patriots’ CEO/Owner entering the 1994 season, having been in that position ever since, and it’s almost impossible to hyperbolize the organization’s accomplishments in his time there. 

In the franchise’s history before Kraft’s arrival, the Patriots only had one Super Bowl appearance — a 46-10 loss to the Bears in the 1985 season — and only four total playoff wins. Circumstances were at their worst right before he arrived, as the Patriots went a combined 19-61 from 1989-1993. As for the 26 seasons since? Ten Super Bowl appearances, six Super Bowl wins, a 33-15 record in playoff games, and a 291-125 regular season record, all of which are tops in the NFL in that span. Outside of the Patriots, Kraft also owns the MLS’ New England Revolution, and is the chairman of The Rand-Whitney Group, a Massachusetts-based packaging company.

In his playing days, Kraft’s career was unfortunately less prosperous. According to NESN, Kraft was only able to play one varsity season of lightweight football for Columbia’s program (which went on to dissolve in 1977) before suffering a career-ending injury. Nonetheless, Kraft, who proceeded to go to Harvard’s business school, was inducted into the Columbia Athletics Hall of Fame in 2012, and the Columbia football stadium is named after him to this day.

Donald Rumsfeld – Princeton ‘54

Having served in various political roles across five different decades, Rumsfeld is best known for being the U.S. Secretary of Defense in two different stints. One came under President Gerald Ford in the 1970s, and the other came under President George W. Bush in the 2000s. His latter term is more notable, as the 9/11 attacks and the start of the Iraqi War both came during Rumsfeld’s second tenure. Rumsfeld oversaw the country’s attack on Afghanistan, which resulted in the overthrow of Osama bin Laden’s terrorist group, the Taliban, but he also faced criticism for the controversial use of torture of Iraqi prisoners. Rumsfeld resigned in 2006, and has been retired from politics since.

Not much is known about Rumsfeld’s contributions on the field to Princeton’s program (which dissolved in 2016), but he was the subject of a 2009 “New Yorker” piece discussing the Ivy League football backgrounds of several prominent politicians. In 1950, Rumsfeld was a reserve QB on Princeton’s full-size freshman team, but he played the remaining years of his college career on the lightweight program and switched to offensive tackle. Rumsfeld had some bad timing, unfortunately; Princeton won its first league championship since World War II in the fall of 1954, just after Rumsfeld graduated.

Seth Berger – Penn ‘89

For most members of this list, the reader’s question is “what did this person do after college?” For Berger, the more appropriate question is, “what hasn’t he done?”

Anybody born since the mid-1970s who has ever touched a basketball is familiar with AND1, the basketball clothing and footwear company best known for its shoes, streetball videos, and sponsorship of NBA players like Stephon Marbury and Rafer Alston. Berger was one of the co-founders of the company in 1993, and he was largely responsible for AND1’s explosion in popularity up until he sold it in 2005 for “an undisclosed seven-figure amount”. 

But while AND1 is what Berger is most known for, he’s accomplished plenty more over the past 15 years. Berger, the subject of a thorough 2018 Bleacher Report profile, has been the head varsity boys basketball coach at Philly power Westtown High School since 2007-08, and has built an absolute powerhouse of a school that went only 3-15 in his final year as an assistant. Westtown has already won two state championships, and its 2016-17 team featuring eventual NBA players Mo Bamba and Cam Reddish has been referred to as one of the best in high school history. As if that wasn’t enough, Berger is also the Manager of the Philadelphia 76ers Innovation Lab, an incubator for aspiring start-up companies which can grow their businesses from the 76ers’ facility in Camden.

Yet despite almost all of Berger’s post-college career ventures coming on the hardwood, his time at Penn was defined by his work on the gridiron. Berger was a four-year varsity letterman for Bill Wagner’s sprint program as a receiver and defensive back, and he was both a team captain and team MVP during his senior year in 1988. While Berger’s career didn’t come during a strong period for the Penn program, the 1988 squad was the first Penn squad to go .500 since 1976. And his career overlapped with some pretty notable figures as well.

Beau Biden – Penn ‘91

Biden, the oldest son of 2020 Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden, had his own career in politics before passing away due to brain cancer at age 46 in 2015. Most notably, Biden served two four-year terms as the Attorney General of Delaware, choosing not to run for a third term in 2014 after he had already been diagnosed with cancer. Prior to that, he served a year on active duty in the Iraqi War, and he was posthumously given the Legion of Merit Award by Army Chief of Staff General Raymond Odierno.

On the field, Biden was a two-year letterman for Penn, in both the 1988 and 1989 seasons. The 1989 season was even better than the prior year for Penn, as the Red and Blue finished above .500 for the first time since 1961.

Eric Furda – Penn ‘87

The 1980s were indeed a notable time for Penn sprint football, as yet another key figure came in the form of Eric Furda. Furda has served as Dean of Admissions for his alma mater since July 2008, helping bolster the reputation of a school that most ranked T-6th nationally in U.S. News’ 2020 college rankings. Furda gained even more notoriety in the fall of 2019, when a clip of him yelling at the officials during the Week 3 Eagles-Lions game at Lincoln Financial Field went viral once his identity was revealed.

On the field, Furda was, as a 2015 profile from The Daily Pennsylvanian states, a legend. A four-year starting center, Furda was a team captain as a senior in 1986. The highly-touted recruit helped a team that was winless in his freshman season build a culture to the point where it was finishing in the top half of the league by the time that Biden’s and Berger’s careers were finishing.

Vincent Viola – Army ‘77

Kraft is not the only major sports team owner with sprint football roots, as Viola has owned the NHL’s Florida Panthers since 2013. Though the Panthers have not been able to break through for their first-ever Stanley Cup title in his tenure, the 2015-16 squad led by Jaromir Jagr did win the Atlantic Division for the first time in franchise history. Viola also started electronic-trading firm Virtu Financial in 2008, and he conceived and funded the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point shortly after the 9/11 attacks.

Viola was a two-year letterman for the dynasty of Army sprint football, doing so in both 1975 and 1976. He is the only person on this list to have been part of a championship team, having played for Army’s undefeated 1976 group that collected the Black Knights’ sixth title in seven years.

Steven ‘Hoodie Allen’ Markowitz – Penn ‘10

Markowitz — whom we can refer to as Allen, for all intents and purposes — began his post-graduation time simultaneously working for Google while trying to build his music career, but quickly decided to devote his full attention to the latter. That decision has worked out, needless to say. Two of Allen’s albums have reached the Top 10 of the Billboard 200 upon being released, and his most notable single, “All About It (feat. Ed Sheeran)”, cracked the Billboard Hot 100 as well. Allen’s most recent album, “Whatever USA”, dropped in August 2019.

For the sprint program, Allen was a reserve defensive back who lettered once, in 2007. He did not record a stat for a team that finished in third place with a 4-2 record.

What about Jimmy Carter?

Type “sprint football” into any search engine, and the first two names you will see are Kraft and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. Among the websites to mention Carter as a prominent sprint football alumnus are SB Nation, the New York Times, Philly Magazine, and even the NCAA itself. But if you do your research, we can see that this is a prime example of the dangers of spreading rumors.

According to the USNA’s website, Carter graduated from the Naval Academy in June 1946. Navy sprint football’s first season of existence, via page 18 of the team’s media guide, was in the fall of 1946. This alone doesn’t rule out that Carter could have played for the team after commissioning as an officer. But Carter does not appear on the team’s list of all-time lettermen, nor does his name show up even once in the media guide. It’s fair to say that if an eventual U.S. President had played even a snap for the Navy program, his name would be somewhere in that document. Thus, we can say beyond reasonable doubt that Carter did not play for USNA, contrary to popular belief.

Though many more sprint football alumni have gone on to promising careers, this group stood out for its accomplishments in a variety of fields over the years. Only time will tell if any members of the Class of 2020 will join the ranks of the CSFL’s off-the-field legends.