With the average NFL career under four years, most athletes must choose an alternate vocation shortly after college graduation—and for a number of former footballers in the metropolitan area, a transition into real estate has become a natural fit.

“As I started to look at the transition from the sport I had been playing, it looked like the components that had made me successful in one discipline would do the same in the next,” said Gary Beban, senior executive managing director for the Chicago offices of CB Richard Ellis and a former Heisman Trophy winner for UCLA and quarterback for the Washington Redskins.

Beban was picked in the second round of the 1968 NFL draft but his football career lasted only two years. It was during his off-seasons that Beban began working in real estate, following in the footsteps of some of his teammates.

“Upon returning to Los Angeles and visiting with them in the off-season and their gaining knowledge about the industry and getting more excited about it, I decided that I’d try to jump in as well,” he said.

It is a similar story for former Notre Dame and St. Louis Rams linebacker Michael Goolsby, who is now a sales associate at The Staubach Company’s Midwest industrial services division, in Chicago.

“Based on my experience at Notre Dame and in the NFL, I had met a lot of successful people and it seemed like a lot of these guys I was playing golf with and having dinners with were involved in some capacity with corporate real estate,” he said. “I just kind of put two and two together and said let’s give this a whirl.”

The transition wasn’t as easy for former Northwestern running back Darnell Autry, who spent two seasons in the NFL with the Chicago Bears and Philadelphia Eagles. His journey into real estate led him through New Jersey, Los Angeles and Las Vegas before finally catching on at Staubach’s Chicago office in November of last year.

“I was a casino host (in Las Vegas)” Autry said. “While I was there, I met a guy who did commercial real estate. He was a developer and he gave me a background on what he did and ultimately what brokers do. So when I decided to come back to school (at Northwestern), that was in the back of my mind.”

Most former NFL players see many similarities between the football field and selling real estate. Former Bears and Atlanta Falcons quarterback Kurt Kittner, who led the University of Illinois to a Big 10 championship in 2001 and is now a broker at Staubach, found the competitiveness of real estate sales most appealing.

“It’s a very competitive business, as is football,” Kittner said. “You’re going out and fighting and doing the same things you would on a football field.”

Beban has spent his entire career, 37 years, with CB Richard Ellis, and served as president for 12 years. He sees similarities in hard work, intensity and the team dynamic.

“Hard work is one similarity, and believe me, those games are hard work,” said Beban. “I’m not sure (former players) realized how hard they worked when they were playing. Strategy and planning, executing that plan, it’s the same as on a ball club.”

Most athletes agree that the aspect of teamwork, fostered in a sport that relies on teamwork more than any other, is strongly present in the world of real estate.

“There’s a strong team culture around here and I think that fuels us in every meeting that we go into,” said Autry.

For Goolsby, the group dynamic is what attracted him to real estate in the first place.

“Ideally, you’d like to take a team approach to pitches, to winning business, to transacting deals and that’s something that I noticed right away,” Goolsby said.

Kittner also believes that the collaborative approach makes the transition from football to real estate much easier.

“The team atmosphere, you’re not just working on your own,” he said. “We share a lot of information. That makes it a lot easier to learn about the market and grow within the company.”

Building a solid game plan, whether it’s on the football field or in the board room, is also aided by utilizing a joint effort. While playing for UCLA, Beban found that game-planning was one of the main factors in his team’s success.

“We had great game plans,” said Beban. “We were always confident we had the best plan going into the game and all we had to do was execute and we would win. That happened a lot. That’s the same that goes on in this business as well.”

Name recognition is also helpful for a former athlete trying to sell real estate. It allows him to get his foot in the door, where others may not have been able.

“I suspect that I saw some people that other folks didn’t get to see,” Beban said.

But even though being a former NFL player may get someone to answer the phone, it means nothing when it comes time to closing a deal.

“It’s a talking piece is what it is. It’s a conversation starter,” said Goolsby. “But at the same time, I’ve really tried to focus on becoming a professional, a businessman in a sense as opposed to being known as a football player. You have to make it work for you, but at the end of the day, you have to be competent as well.”

Beban has found that being a former football player can sometimes act as a roadblock when trying to generate new business.

“Folks might want to talk about football for maybe a minute, then after that you really need to know your business,” he said. “In some cases you need to know it stronger than others because there can be a sense that, maybe this athlete doesn’t really know his business and is trying to get by on athletic name versus the business profession itself. There’s actually a driver to be more proficient than others.”

Both Beban and Autry played in the Rose Bowl, arguably the biggest stage in all of college football, yet both believe that the business world presents a more daunting challenge than any individual game.

“Running a company, leading a company and strategically trying to determine the future direction is much tougher than playing in the Rose Bowl,” said Beban. “You can dodge a 250-pound lineman but you can’t dodge the board room.”

Autry also thinks that closing a real estate deal is far more difficult than being a running back.

“While there are tons of similarities, it’s a very complex business,” he said. “It’s a very knowledge-based business. There are a lot of little facets to the business that your team helps you learn and experience. So there’s a lot more that I have to learn in this business than in football.”

Yet, even though a number of former NFL players can seamlessly transition from football to real estate, many find the change too overwhelming.

“I think sometimes it’s hard to transition the intensity (from the football field to the business world),” said Beban. “I think a lot of athletes coming across today, especially the ones who have been very successful, have a real hard time starting at the bottom of the ladder, starting over.”