Safety Josh Kristoff leaves his house at 8:30 a.m. every day for classes and often doesn’t return until after 9 p.m.
The redshirt junior, who played his way into a starting role on Ohio’s defense last season, spends the majority of his afternoons at football practice before he devotes his evenings to the fourth floor of Alden Library tutoring his fellow teammates.
In the day of Johnny Manziel, the public’s view of collegiate student-athletes has become clouded, especially those who don helmets and shoulder pads on Saturday afternoons.
But Kristoff, along with several of his teammates, puts in hours when the pads are off and proves that the larger-than-life persona that college football players often garner isn’t anywhere near the truth.
For some, the $2,271 stipend for living off campus during the summer doesn’t cover all expenses.
Jason Grooms, who is the Assistant Athletic Director for Football Operations, takes care of most things happening outside the football field for the Bobcats, including helping players find employment.
“We send out a letter to all the businesses in town,” Grooms said. “Over 600 letters go out. And we also send them to the chambers of commerce to get that word out and hopefully initiate a conversation with some businesses and business owners about opportunities that might be there for our guys.”
He said he has several faithful businesses that will always hire his players, because they’ve had a good history of employing Ohio football players in the past.
The jobs are given on a first come, first serve basis, with players having to seek out Grooms for employment opportunities.
That was the case with defensive lineman Ty Branz, who went to Grooms before the summer of his junior year in hopes that he could find a way to earn money during Summer Intersession.
Branz, along with several other teammates, worked for Ohio Realty the past two summers as “handymen,” moving furniture, cleaning out unoccupied houses and doing yard work.
With the employment also came an attempt to balance school, sports and work.
“It’s pretty crappy,” Branz said. “You’re working all day, then going to practices right after, and then class and stuff like that.”
Often times, however, players seek out employment opportunities on their own.
Redshirt senior running back Beau Blankenship saw a chance to pursue a job that he’d been interested in during his sophomore year, applying to be a personal trainer at WellWorks, which is a health and wellness facility located within Grover Center.
He recruited redshirt senior linebacker Keith Moore to join, as Moore, an exercise physiology major, had a passion for physical fitness and that career field.
For them, the job creates minimal job constraints. Though they do work almost every night weekly, it’s generally only an hour per day and their class schedules are light as they both have their degrees.
But not all are that lucky.
Working three nights during the week and two days during the weekend, all while taking 18 credit hours, proved “hectic” for sophomore running back Daz’mond Patterson, who applied to work at Kroger this past off-season.
His daily schedule during last year’s Spring Semester consisted of taking classes, going to football practice and conditioning, then rushing to work in the evenings while having to make time to eat.
“I was in a very tough financial situation at the time,” Patterson said. “I had to do what I had to do to pay my bills and to live, pretty much. I had a meal plan, but sometimes you can’t make it to a meal and there are some things not included in the meal plan that you actually need. We as athletes can’t take money, so I might as well work for mine.”
ch203310@ohiou.edu
@C_Hoppens
