At this point, former NFL linebacker, longtime Tennessee Titan and recent Modern Era Pro Football Hall of Fame nominee Keith Bulluck is well into his post-playing days. It's been three, almost four years now since he traded taped cleats, neck rolls and the bright lights of the gridiron for MBA classes and the steady thrum, if not exactly thrill-a-minute excitement, of business meetings and portfolio-building. But for Bulluck, even these twilight years, even these golden days in the sun enjoying what he built for himself during a decade-plus NFL career, haven't dampened his football spirit, haven't lessened his love for the game.
"I follow the game, period," Bulluck told Headlines & Global News recently. "I do some radio stuff, some television stuff, some analyst stuff when it comes to the NFL. But I enjoy watching it as a fan. I enjoy watching the new players that are up and coming in the league. I like watching some of the older players that were younger players when I was playing that are still out there doing their thing. As a retired guy for several years now, obviously I'm well into my life as I know it now, but I definitely still enjoy the NFL on Sunday and Monday as well."
Bulluck may now be enjoying the game as a fan, but it really wasn't all that long ago that he was creating impact plays using his sideline-to-sideline speed and bringing ballcarriers down with the kind of active, controlled aggression that allowed him to anchor the Titans defense for about eight seasons, that allowed him to orchestrate an NFL career that saw him named All Pro three times. A career that saw him patrol the Will linebacker spot in then-Titans head coach Jeff Fisher's 4-3 defense, the "see-ball, get-ball" position, to the tune of 1,293 career tackles, 18 interceptions and 21 sacks, five seasons leading the Titans in tackles and one season, 2004, leading the entire league.
And now, it's a career that has him courting a potential Hall of Fame bid.
Bulluck, after seemingly grappling with the emotion of the moment, after initially struggling to find the right words, admitted that the HOF nomination wasn't something he was really expecting, unbelievably happy though it made him.
"I guess it was - yeah, it was something I never really expected," he said. "After however many years to get that nomination, it was just awesome. It was an awesome feeling. To do something for so long, to play in Nashville in the market there. I was All-Pro more than I went to the Pro Bowl. To hear that, it was definitely very gratifying."
Still, while Bulluck knows he owes much to the league, it's not as if there aren't questions about his future, questions that have only developed in the very recent past thanks to a series of medical advancements coupled with a handful of wretched incidents related to the health of a number of former NFL players. Bulluck sees the concerns over concussions swirling in the media, he sees the recent studies done which point to the predominance of CTE in former players - a study released earlier this month revealed that of the 91 brains of former NFL players studied, 87 showed signs of CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy), a brain disease associated with concussive hits - he knows that repeated head trauma associated with the game has become a hot-button topic and an issue that has begun to plague any number of the league's one-time stars. In fact, it's something that pushed Bulluck to undergo a series of tests recently aimed at determining his own neural health.
"You know what, I'm not even worried about my chances," he said with a self-assured laugh. "It is what it is at this point. All I know is that someone has to debate it. Like I said, someone has to debate it, and there are a lot of great ones that are already in, there's a lot of great ones that aren't in and there's some more that haven't been nominated that will definitely get nominated, so just to be in the conversation is enough for me."
At this point, Bulluck is just happy to be mentioned in the same breath as fellow recent nominees like former Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre, Pittsburgh Steelers offensive lineman Alan Faneca and everybody's favorite popcorn machine, wide receiver Terrell Owens. Relative fame or infamy aside, Bulluck feels a sense of deep pride knowing he's viewed in the same light.
"What it means is that you were looked upon as one of the top players of the day that you played the sport, in the modern era or what we would consider the modern era of football," he said. "I know the gameplan that went into trying to stop these guys, how good they were, so to be mentioned in that breath, in a sentence with those guys, it's pretty amazing."
That doesn't mean that Bulluck didn't harbor some frustrations during his playing days, especially as he saw players he considered contemporaries and garnering Pro Bowl nods he felt more rightly belonged to him.
"It used to bother me that I felt that when I did eventually get on the field that I was playing just as well as some of the players that were thought of as the top players."
But thanks to the elite coaching he received from the likes of Gunther Cunningham and Danny McGinnis, Bulluck was able to ignore the haters, overcome concerns with how he was viewed by fans, by players and coaches across the league. To, in his own words, realize that he can really only focus on the "things [he] can control," to focus on himself.
That focus may have never brought him a Super Bowl - despite playing 11 seasons in the league, Bulluck never won or even appeared in Super Bowl. In fact, he he was drafted by the Titans in 2000, the year after they appeared in Super Bowl XXXIV, and he left the league in 2011, the season the Giants emerged victorious from a shocking upset over the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI - but it brought him something better.
It brought him sustained NFL success. It brought him a Hall of Fame nomination. And it brought him the comfort and the surety of knowing that he left it all out on that field every snap, every game, every season of his career.
"It doesn't bother me to this day," Bulluck said, a sort of thinly veiled longing in his voice. "I mean, I would have loved to have played [in a Super Bowl]. I feel I played hard enough, I put my heart and everything into this game, and I tried to help my team to a Super Bowl and it just didn't happen," he said, his voice firming. "And it happened to me, I was on teams that were possibly Super Bowl contenders, but, hey - the experience alone of playing in the NFL for 11 years at a high level is a great memory."
Bulluck may be well into his post-playing days, settled in and enjoying the fruit of 11 years' worth of hard, body-bruising, high-impact labor. But it's clear that with certain aspirations left unfulfilled, certain goals not met, that same focus that drove him to compete, to thrive at an elite level as an athlete for so long, is now the impetus behind a second career, a new life that's still centered on making the most of what he can with what he has, of bettering himself and, more importantly, striving for more.
While the NFL may no longer be the crux of his daily existence, it's certainly not fading in Bulluck's rearview mirror either. It's a part of him, for better or for worse, and it will remain with him, in the cricks and cracks in his body, in tired muscles rubbed calm in the deepening light of the early-morning sun, in the flare up of old injuries, too insistent to ignore, in the interview requests, begging him to relive the glory days, to shield his eyes from the bright lights of memory, and it will remain with him on the screen of his television, of his computer, now and, likely, forever.
The only question is - will the game do the same for him?
