Adam Gase has accomplished a lot in coaching as the coordinator of a record-breaking Broncos offense, and at age 35 he will likely accomplish a lot more. But he almost quit his coaching career just as it started.
Gase told reporters today that in 2002, when he was a 23-year-old graduate assistant at LSU, he strongly considered taking a job selling insurance back home in Michigan.
“I remember sitting in an Applebee’s, interviewing with a guy for an insurance salesman job and him basically telling me if I want to move back to Mount Pleasant – and actually thinking that’s what I was going to do. Thankfully, three buddies from college talked me out of it,” Gase said.
Low-level college assistants sometimes work full-time hours for part-time pay, and Gase said that while he was doing that at LSU -- and simultaneously struggling through graduate school -- he thought it might make more sense to take the steady paycheck that the insurance job was offering.
“I thought it might not work out,” Gase said of coaching. “It ended up working out pretty good. I think there might have been some college loans – that might have been part of it. When you’re making about eight grand a year, it’s tough to pay everything off.”
But Gase found a way. And that paid off.