As the biggest sport in the US, the spotlight on the few athletes talented enough to compete in the NFL can seem blinding, but it also burns out quickly for most players. The Tom Bradys of the world are rare, and the average NFL career might not even make it to the end of a player's first contract. Where do they go from there? For former NFL offensive lineman Clint Oldenburg, life beyond football became football of a different sort. No, not soccer. Drafted by the Patriots in 2007, Oldenburg is today the production director of Madden NFL, and arguably the face of EA's team that builds the annual and exclusive NFL sim. He was the first NFL player to make the jump into Madden game development, but since then, there's been some emphasis within EA to bring in other NFL vets to help build the Madden games.

I recently got to chat with Oldenburg about moving from the field to the studio, the game's…let's say passionate fanbase, and the sage advice from history's most intimidating mumbler, Bill Belichick, that still helps him in the studio at EA Tiburon all these years later.

"At the time that I came on, there was not [an emphasis on hiring ex-players]," Oldenburg told me. "However, in the meantime, since I've kind of grown through the company, that is something that I've actively owned and turned it into, let's say here, some sort of pipeline." The former lineman is now in his 12th year on the development team and explained to me how it all began.