Passion found in Pittsburgh

The passion for football has returned for Jeff Ogden.

When the string played out on his playing career, the former Eastern Washington standout tried his hand at coaching, but he did too much too quickly – four jobs in less than two years – and simply burned out.

He went from coaching at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh to NFL Europe to high school to time in the Miami Dolphins camp before settling back in Pittsburgh.

“After playing all my life and coaching, I needed a break,” he said on a recent visit to Cheney.

But it’s still a bit of a shock to learn how the over-achiever has resumed his career.

“Now I’m coaching a women’s football team in Pittsburgh, the Pittsburgh Passion,” he said.

It’s true, you can look it up.

“Oggie” is the co-head coach for the team that plays in the Independent Women’s Football League, which comprises more than 40 teams across the country.

“It’s everything you would imagine it to be, it just happens to be women,” Ogden said. “I would say, honestly, they could compete with some pretty good high school programs. Most of our (linemen) are between 275 and 300 pounds. We have women that were college volleyball players, a WNBA player, a power lifter with world records. We have strength, speed, great athletes. There is some good hitting out there.

“If you were to come out you wouldn’t know they were women. If you couldn’t see their pony tails you would think you’re watching some pretty good high school football.”

Teresa Conn, a former player, is the other head coach and owner.

“She deals more with the girl thing; it leaves me to the football stuff,” Ogden said. “Dealing with women as women, there are more emotions. You have to be gentler with your words. There is crying, not from hits but from things that are said. We have to air them out.”

Ogden’s day job is owner of a fitness club in Pittsburgh.

“I was tired of moving,” he said. “It’s a nice little town so I just stayed. There’s no rhyme or reason why.”

Coaching women is just one more chapter in an amazing life story where the chapters don’t seem to fit in a way that leads to the NFL.

Ogden was born with foot problems that led doctors to believe he might forever walk with a limp. A top-ranked youth gymnast, he wanted to play tackle football but at Snohomish he never really found a position. He bounced from receiver to running back to quarterback, as well as defense, his senior year, all the time battling an almost unbearable back injury.

With little interest from football coaches, he pole vaulted at a junior college for a year before walking on at Eastern, where his brother played.

And in his first three years he caught 10 passes.

“I was just hoping to play my senior year,” he said. “That was really the first playing time I received for the most part. I attribute it to coaching (and) a good work ethic.”

He credited two professors in particular, recent inductees into the EWU Hall of Fame, gymnastic coaches Maxine Davis and Jack Benson.

“They helped instill a lot of good values,” Ogden said.

Then he went out and caught 57 passes for a school record 1,148 yards and 13 touchdowns, helping the Eagles win the 1997 Big Sky Conference title and advance to the semifinals of the national playoffs.

Blessed with good speed, he had numerous free agent opportunities. He picked Dallas because a new coach was coming in with an offense that emphasized multiple receivers.

“Once I got down there it was a case of doing anything I could to get noticed, trying to stand out, not blend in,” he said. “That was the biggest challenge.”

The way he remembers it, in the last preseason game a veteran receiver dropped a ball that hit him in the hands. Then Ogden, who was trying to make his mark on special teams, was called on to play, out of position.

“I knew the play and caught the ball with one hand with a guy draped over me,” he recalled. “One of the coaches told me later I made the team with that catch. It was just one of those things. There is such a fine line, coming up with a catch versus not making it can make all the difference. I think that was the defining moment.”

In that same game Ogden was leveled by a linebacker and could barely drag himself off the field. He returned to the game, “even though I didn’t want to go back in. My body was about broken.”

The head coach, Chan Gailey, noticed, telling Ogden that was toughness he could count on.

In 1998 he played in all 16 games, making eight catches, returning three kickoffs and running one reverse. His second season he had 12 catches, 12 kick returns and four punt returns. Then he departed for Miami. He caught only eight balls in the two seasons combined, but in the first returned a punt for a touchdown and in the second caught a touchdown pass.

His career ended with three games in Baltimore in 2002.

He still wasn’t done taking big hits. He was involved in a near-fatal car accident last year.

“It was a head-on car accident,” he said. “I broke a bunch of things from my head to toe. Obviously I’m on my feet now, grateful to be alive. If you lay in bed for four months and can’t move, it’ll get you to think about a lot of things. All my life I’ve had obstacles in front of me to overcome. Each one prepares you for the next one. That was the toughest one but they all gave me the tools to do that.”

And the passion to do them well.