Bradley University has not fielded a football team since the 1970s. However, one of its most well-known alumni of the last 30 years managed to make his name on the gridiron.
Former Bradley basketball star Marcus Pollard played in the NFL for 14 seasons with four different teams, all while beating the odds as an undrafted free agent.
After spending two years playing hoops and baseball at Seward County Community College in Liberal, Kansas, the Alabama native said it was the enthusiasm around basketball that led him to the Hilltop.
“There wasn’t a professional sports league, there wasn’t a bigger university close by, and to be the only show in town and energy around basketball that I remember the most [about my time at Bradley],” Pollard said.
Former Bradley men’s basketball coach Jim Molinari was in search of the tight-end type when he recruited the 6-foot- 3-inch power forward.
“We knew we needed someone who was athletic, someone who was tough and someone who was a leader, and he was all of those things,” Molinari said.
Pollard was a key member of the 1993-94 team that went 23-8 and appeared in the third round of the National Invitational Tournament. That season came only two years after the Braves finished 7-23 and tied for last in the Missouri Valley Conference.
“To make it to the Elite Eight, almost to the Final Four, was gratifying,” Pollard said. “That team was amazing.”
Pollard helped to turn around a Bradley program that had struggled in the years following the departure of Hersey Hawkins and company.
“He helped us turn the program around,” Molinari said. “He made us a winner, and I’m forever grateful for him.”
After the quarterfinal loss when NIT capped off his basketball career, Pollard decided to try his hand at football, a sport he had not played since high school. Then-Bradley athletic director Bob Ferguson connected him to Ken Geiger, a long-time Chicago Bears scout who was with the Colts at the time. After a tryout, he found himself a member of the Colts, the team he played with for the next 10 seasons of his career.
I said in a straightforward way, ‘Marcus, get a job,’
– Jim Molinari on Pollard’s aspirations to play football
“It was a big adjustment, but I was thankful to have some really awesome teammates and better coaching,” Pollard said. “That’s just the attitude and the drive to make the changes necessary to compete and play at a high level in an industry in the NFL.”
Pollard’s decision to pursue a professional athletic career off of the basketball court came as a surprise that Molinari wasn’t exactly keen on.
“He came to me after his senior year of basketball in the spring and said ‘I think I’m going to try pro football,’ and I said in a straightforward way, ‘Marcus, get a job,’” Molinari said. “He never let me live that down.”
As a reliable target for Peyton Manning during the early years of his career, Pollard played the best season of his career in 2001, where he tallied 47 receptions for 739 yards and eight touchdowns.
“I think Peyton really made my career,” Pollard said. “He was a tremendous talent, hard worker, ultra-competitive, [hated] losing and I was the same way.”
In his career, Pollard tallied 349 career receptions for 4,280 yards and 40 touchdowns. He retired in 2008. Despite that, Manning made him an offer to come out of retirement when he was part of the Denver Broncos.
“I just didn’t want to go out and embarrass him or myself, so I just stayed home,” Pollard said.
With his playing days behind him, Pollard remains active in the game. He currently works for the Jacksonville Jaguars as their director of player engagement and youth football. He is responsible for helping incorporate football in the community by hosting football camps and amateur players of the week.
The player engagement perspective deals with helping players plan for life after the game, which comes naturally to Pollard.
“We do life skills training, we do educational financial training, we do so many different aspects of helping them,” Pollard said.
Pollard also works as a scout for the Jaguars, traveling to regional draft combines.
Outside of his football career, Pollard and his wife Amani competed on the 19th season of the CBS reality show “The Amazing Race,” where they finished in third place after traveling more than 35,000 miles across the globe.
“I can’t put a price tag on the experience that show provided for myself, my wife and our kids,” Pollard said. “It was a once in a lifetime situation to visit those places and to do it with my wife and to compete and have fun and hit adversity and still continue to go.”
Through the long journey he has faced, from being an undrafted free agent who never played college football to traveling from Malawi to Panama on reality TV, Pollard said Bradley means everything to him.
“Bradley is who I am, Bradley is what I’ve achieved,” Pollard said. “If it wasn’t for Bradley University, I don’t know … I just can’t even go back before that to see what I would have accomplished.”
