http://www.espn.com/college-football/sto...e-football

Quote:One day after Swinney landed the head-coaching job in 2008, he told his athletics director he needed Davis on board as the director of player personnel. Davis had been working in fundraising for the school, but Swinney saw in him a perfect mixture of experience and passion for not just what happens on the field, but for building a life off it. Davis' personality is infectious -- part preacher, part coach, part fortune teller. He looks like he's still in game shape, but as he gleefully points out, Swinney didn't hire a five-star player.

"Those days are over," Davis said. "He wanted a five-star man."

With a focus on everything from volunteer opportunities to internships in the business sector, resume writing to networking with CEOs, the program Davis dubbed the P.A.W. Journey -- an acronym for "passionate about winning" -- is perhaps the most robust of its kind in the nation. It features a three-person, full-time staff and myriad resources dedicated exclusively to providing off-field experiences to the football team.

Outside Davis' door, there's a boardroom table, a photo montage of former star QB Deshaun Watson -- one picture of Watson in a suit, another at work on a Habitat for Humanity build, another of him studying at a desk -- and a list of Clemson's academic All-Americans. The decor is intentional, said Allison Waymyers, who joined the P.A.W. Journey team last year. These offices, in the same building as the locker rooms and coaches' offices, provide a haven from football.

Waymyers is actually a South Carolina graduate who left a job in nuclear procurement to work for Clemson after a chance meeting with Swinney at a local steakhouse. Swinney knew Waymyers had a well-stocked Rolodex, and he wanted her to use those connections to help his players. Less than a year into the job, she has already introduced dozens of business leaders to current Clemson players, sent a handful of Tigers on a mission trip to Haiti and helped seven players land summer internships at Adobe headquarters in Silicon Valley. She got a text from one of Adobe's executives just a few days into the internship, lauding Clemson's players and noting his desire to hire them upon graduation.

"I've had players leave this office crying, giving me high-fives, hugs, lifting me off my feet," Waymyers said, "because they got the interview of a lifetime."

Not surprisingly, this is exactly the type of story Swinney likes to tell when he gets in front of a crowd of boosters or in a living room with parents of a top recruit. Yes, he has a team coming off a national title and a football building with a whiffle ball field and a golf simulator, but those are all perks that last just a few years. For the big-money donors, for the recruit's mom and dad, for the fans who cling to the highest ideals of amateurism, the P.A.W. Journey program is the real selling point. Other football programs are taking notice, too.

Quote:Ron Coccimiglio likes to joke that he simply hung around the offices at Cal so long that someone finally decided to offer him a job. He played there from 1977 through 1980, but when he returned nearly a quarter-century later, it was as a volunteer. He had enjoyed a successful business career, and he wanted to help the new generation of players figure out what comes after football.

The result is one of the oldest programs in the country dedicated entirely to helping football players think about their futures off the field. Coccimiglio named it the L.A.B. program, short for "life after ball." He has an article from Business Insider on his desk that he has shown to nearly every player who has cycled through his office. It illustrates the brief tenure enjoyed by most NFL players and the high rate of financial problems that often follow a professional football career. Like Clemson's Davis, Coccimiglio is the guy who teaches the tough lessons about how fleeting all this football glory really is.

"A lot of kids think, if they can get three years in the NFL, they're set for life," Coccimiglio said. "Our guys realize they're not. That's a starting point."

Coccimiglio is armed with more than one magazine article to prove his point. His support staff includes Tarik Glenn, a 10-year NFL veteran who returned to Cal to help mentor players professionally, and he has brought in speakers such as former Cal teammate Ron Rivera, now head coach of the Carolina Panthers, to talk about the need for skills that go beyond the football field. It's about creating buy-in from the players before Coccimiglio can offer the tools they'll need to thrive away from football.

Cal's program is focused on mining its own resources, which include an impressive array of football alums now leading big companies around the Bay Area. Coccimiglio started hosting on-campus roundtables to let players meet professionals ranging from tech CEOs to a captain at a local fire department. During the spring, players come straight from practice, often still in sweatshirts and shorts, to network with executives in expensive suits, but given the demands of football, that's the way business has to be done. And it works.

"I go to the events for selfish reasons," said Doug Brien, a former Cal kicker with a 12-year NFL career who went on to launch a successful real estate company. "I'm trying to get an inside track on certain guys to get them in as interns and try to hire them when they graduate."

It's a win-win arrangement, really. Cal's players get a taste of the world outside football, building networks for their Plan B. The alumni get first crack at young talent they hope to hire in a year or two. The school builds its alumni network, with the interactions with the football players in a professional setting helping to drive fundraising from donors.

Quote:As much as programs like P.A.W. Journey and L.A.B. are designed to woo parents of top recruits, the sales pitch for the players sometimes needs to be a little more direct to grab attention away from football. That's part of the reason programs like those at Clemson and Cal are focused entirely on football. The time demands on football players are immense, and too many opportunities for professional growth are missed in exchange for a few more hours in the weight room.

"People come into college, and when they're recruited, their mindset is so much different," Southern California senior Steven Mitchell said. "You have all these people in your head talking about four stars, five stars. You get here and you're here for a few years and you're not that first-round pick, and then you start thinking about something else."

Quote:Southern California's player development program isn't as robust as Clemson's yet, but the school sees the growth potential. It's Los Angeles, after all. Image matters, and selling experiences like Mitchell's to incoming recruits makes a unique pitch. In fact, the school has asked veteran players to help interview player development staff in order to craft a program that fits their needs, but the benefits work both ways.

"The program has a contact list of employers looking to have a relationship with these students, and that often intersects with your donor base, too," said Denise Kwok, the director of USC's student-athlete academic services. "We're interested in developing those relationships. It's access to the best student-athletes, and people know they make great employees. That's a program we can brand and market and package."

That, in essence, is what drove Clemson's P.A.W. Journey program. Davis had a vision, and Swinney bought in. Those skills Swinney was developing on the field translated so easily to other avenues, and Davis didn't want that going to waste.

"They know all their work during the week culminates with a big game on Saturday," Davis said. "We wanted to do the same thing transitioning from this market into the world. For a coach to recognize that and say, 'I'm going to have someone dedicated to that just like I have someone dedicated to my running backs or quarterbacks,' that's the power."

This is something that a lot more colleges should be doing. Once college athletes see that they can have this big network of former athletes and understand the advantages, they'll know how to use it after their playing days are over.