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Post-Miami options? Mullins is thinking outside the box
Senior linebacker has one request if the NFL doesn't work out: No desk jobs, please.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
DETROIT — Clayton Mullins would like to play football in the NFL after he leaves Miami University.
But if the senior linebacker from Fairborn can't spend his future Sunday afternoons knocking running backs silly, maybe he'll find himself working on top of a mountain. Or deep in a cave, or forest, or desert. Or even working undercover.
One thing seems certain about Mullins' future: There likely will be plenty of action involved.
Last year's Mid-American Conference Defensive Player of the Year was asked what job he would like when his football days are finished. His brain started swelling with ideas.
"The FBI," Mullins said Tuesday, July 29, at the annual MAC Preview at Ford Field. "Geology. Forestry. Oil companies, working to help solve the energy (crisis). I'd like to go into the armed services, but my mom hasn't liked that idea from the get-go. I'm all over the place on where I'd like to go after graduation. There are a lot of options out there."
For now, Mullins' mind is focused strictly on football. Miami's most valuable player and the MAC's leading tackler in 2007 will begin practice with his teammates Sunday.
He will play the weak side on what could be one of the more robust linebacker corps in the nation this fall. Senior Joey Hudson will hold down the middle. The strong side will be handled by Caleb Bostic, or Chris Shula, or Ryan Kennedy, or a combination of all three.
Mullins almost certainly will get a chance to play pro football next year, either as a draft choice or a free agent. But if it doesn't work out, he can live with it. He has only one demand of whatever profession awaits him.
"I couldn't sit behind a desk, locked in a cubicle, feeling like a trained animal, being told what I should be doing," he said.
"The spring before last, I took a research trip for geology. We went to Zion Canyon National Park in Utah. We'd go out and map rock formations, but it snowed 12 inches, so after one day we left and went to Death Valley (National Park in California), looking for geological formations, mapping things out."
Mullins, the son of John and Gwen Mullins, majors in sociology. But his interests are wide-ranging, and almost all of them include the outdoors. He loves to fish. The person from the pages of history he would most like to meet is Daniel Boone. One of his favorite TV shows is "Deadliest Catch," an entertaining program which explores the perils of crab fishing in Alaska.
"There isn't much crab fishing in Ohio," he said with a grin.
No matter.
When Aug. 28 rolls around, he'll seek a different kind of catch when Vanderbilt visits Oxford in the season opener.
Contact this reporter at (513) 820-2197 or pconrad@coxohio.com.
