Sunday, November 11, 2007
Sports

Paving the way

Ovie Mughelli opens holes for teammates—and opportunities for kids

By Julie Galich

Despite their son’s great success on the football field during his prep career in Charleston, S.C., the educational-minded and Nigerian-born parents of Ovie Mughelli expected their boy to treat the sport as a hobby, not a career. Yet a decade later, not only has the 27-year-old Mughelli enjoyed great success both performance-wise and monetarily in football, the sport has opened doors that the Falcons’ punishing and versatile fullback continues to bull forward through in order to make the world a better place.

Before all that, though, Mughelli needed to convince his strict parents, Olomide and Agnes, that football was not a Neanderthal sport, but rather a game he excelled at and had a passion for. It was not an easy task. “Yeah, I had to enlist friends, teachers, and coaches to assure my parents that I could not only do this, but more importantly, that my grades wouldn’t slip,” Mughelli tells The Sunday Paper. “In our family, A stood for awesome and B for bad. Before I started playing, they thought [football] was a brutish sport, something that big, strong, unintelligent gladiators play.”

Mughelli’s grades never suffered, and he earned a scholarship to play at Wake Forest. Despite scoring 12 touchdowns his senior year for the Demon Deacons, Mughelli’s plans were to follow in his physician father’s footsteps and head off to medical school. That planned route, though, took a detour when the NFL came calling. A powerful run-blocker with a good ability to pick up the blitz, Mughelli found his skills were coveted by professional scouts.

Selected 134th overall in the 2003 draft by the Baltimore Ravens, Mughelli quickly became known as a fierce hitter on the field who could adapt to any style of play. Yet he also dove aggressively from the outset into charity work, and continues to display a strong desire to mentor today’s youth. One of the projects of which he’s most proud is the Ovie Mughelli Football Clinic and Educational Workshop. Based in Charleston, the program—run under a charitable organization named the Ovie Mughelli Project—aims to teach youth not only about the game of football, but the importance of education.

“Being a part of the NFL has given me a platform to really help these kids with their self-esteem,” Mughelli says. “They just have low expectations of themselves because they don’t know any better. Going to college is so far-fetched to them. We teach them their foundation should be education that can lead them to do anything they want to do—whether it is sports, specialists like doctors, lawyers, engineers or an architect—really anything they want to do. My goal is to do things that positively affect kids’ lives. I feel like they really listen to what I’m saying and take it with them when they leave.”

One thing Mughelli has continued to remind himself over the years—whether at Wake Forest, scrapping for playing time in Baltimore, or today in Atlanta, where he’s earned the distinction of being the highest-paid player at his position—is: Anything you can do I can do better.

“I don’t see myself as cocky, but sometimes you have to shine the spotlight on your abilities to let people know what you can do,” he says. “You have to have a chance to prove yourself. That’s really what I want these kids to know and believe.”

When he’s not busting heads on the field, Mughelli keeps busy planting the seeds for his post-football careers. He has a mortgage and title company in place and has completed an NFL Harvard Business program. He’s keeping his options open, but wouldn’t mind pursuing something in the medical field, dabbling in acting and sports commentating, even exploring the world of fashion. Of course, he hopes to continue to build and expand his programs and workshops for children by setting up clinics here in Atlanta and in Nigeria, as well.

Now that he’s obtained a level of success in his onetime “hobby,” he says he doesn’t feel the need to shine that spotlight anymore. “Fullbacks are finally getting our due,” he says. “I think we play one of the most physically demanding positions. Today we can’t be one-dimensional. We have to be able to catch, run, block, and really love contact.”

Mughelli claims he’s just as content opening holes for runners as he is muscling his way into the end zone, like he did in the Falcons’ Week 9 win over San Francisco for his first NFL rushing score in five seasons. There were no flashy end zone dance for the roaring Georgia Dome crowd, but he says he may come up with a few celebratory smooth moves after future scores. That’s Ovie Mughelli—always looking ahead. SP