Football is not often considered a thinking man’s game in the same way as, say, baseball, which frequently elicits careful analysis and has a long tradition of thoughtful literary works displayed on many bookcases.

That perspective helps put Mike Oriard’s contributions to the game in a remarkable light.

His first book, The End of Autumn, is a memoir of his football-playing days and is considered by many as the best book written about the game by a former NFL player.

A teammate on the 1971 Kansas City Chiefs remembers Oriard as being “a tall, quiet, observant man who did not seem to fit in with the rowdier, veteran Chiefs.” Indeed, at many stops along the way, Mike Oriard broke the mold of what many think of as a “typical” football player.

A high school valedictorian in Spokane, Washington, he came to Notre Dame as one observer noted, “a kind of skinny kid who we didn’t think would last three days.” But Oriard persevered. After a position switch from defensive line, he became the backup center to Tim Monty in 1968, and the starter, co-captain and second team All-American in 1969.

“For me, it was a fairytale experience at Notre Dame, my rise from walk-on freshman to being captain as a senior,” Oriard says. “Leading the team onto the field in my first game as captain, and then going to midfield for the coin toss before my last game, the 1970 Cotton Bowl, remain my most vivid memories of that time.”

Oriard was pursuing a Ph.D. while he played in the NFL, of which he says: “That was my great fortune. Football was always secondary to me, and I didn’t have any sort of crisis when it ended: ‘Football’s over, what do I do now, where do I go with my life?’ I really feel like I got the best that our system offers to kids and adults without having to deal with much of the bad stuff at all.”

Mike’s journey continued to Corvallis, Oregon, where he spent more than three decades as Professor of English at Oregon State University. There, he wrote several additional books, including two seminal works on the early history of football, and how it came to acquire such great popularity in the U.S.: King Football and Reading Football. A productive scholar, he’s written a total of eight books, and was named a distinguished professor at Oregon State.

“I’ve been more successful as an English professor than I ever was as a football player, in terms of the way we judge those things,” he says. Yet he takes pride in what he accomplished in football. “The fact that I played professional football and played at Notre Dame—that’s a part of me that sustains me at times. It’s something I know about myself, and I know it’s relatively rare. It’s been a real positive thing for me, even in an academic life that’s been so far removed from football.”