The cafeteria at the ESPN campus in Bristol, Connecticut, is a monument to distraction. I’m confronted by three preposterous flat-screen TVs on the far wall. Look up. A parade of smaller screens offers a high-definition plea not to engage with your lunch companion.
Into this boulevard of broken attention spans enters Dan Orlovsky ’17 (BGS), ESPN’s NFL analyst, 20 years removed from a storied career as the UConn quarterback who propelled the football program into national prominence. He absolutely looks the part, dressed in a slim-fit suit that straddles the line between blueberry and robin’s egg. There’s no tie but a sharp blue-gridded white dress shirt and stylish salt-and-pepper stubble. His hair is perfect.
Aside from developing a reputation as a great football analyst, Orlovsky has become known for his pile of oddities, which he embraces. (“I told you I’m weird,” he reminds me during our conversation.) Food is a big one. Today, he arrives with what looks like a chicken avocado salad. But because there is no lettuce present, his lunch resembles an entrée from the apocalypse, a hillock of (seasoned?) browns and beiges specked with green. There was his memorable admission on Twitter that he uses a bath towel around 30 times before it’s removed from the rotation — presumably with tongs into a hazmat bag.
At work, Orlovsky has a “maniacal desire to be the best,” says Laura Rutledge, the host of “NFL Live,” his main gig. “He preps like no one I’ve ever seen in my entire life for anything that he does.”
Orlovsky, 41, does not do these things to perpetuate an image. Everything has a reason, even the bizarro food choices. Why introduce something new and possibly disruptive? Then he can’t spend time with his family or do his job. That’s not how to win the day. When you help resurrect a college football program and get drafted by a National Football League team, that credo isn’t ridiculous. It’s required. Lack the drive to excel while reducing the game’s din and violence to its necessities and you’ll be prowling LinkedIn by your 25th birthday. Orlovsky spent 12 years in the NFL; the average career lasts a hair over three.
Why, he wonders, can’t the principles that made him a millionaire in the NFL work away from the football field?
Every day Dan Orlovsky tries to answer that question.
