The Game Plan

A walk-on at Kansas State who was taken in the second round of the 2002 NFL draft by the New York Jets, Jon McGraw went on to play 10 pro seasons in the NFL, making stops with the Detroit Lions and Kansas City Chiefs along the way. For all his success, including winning the prestigious Ed Block Courage Award in 2011, the process of playing football wasn’t always a great experience for the hard-nosed safety. The daily grind took its toll and he felt his focus was suffering.

Toward the end of his career, McGraw stumbled across the concept of Process-Oriented Psychology. Instead of focusing on the end result, he learned to find purpose in the day-to-day aspects of the job and found joy in the sport again.

This ultimately led McGraw to pursue an entrepreneurial path after football, sharing what he’d learned with other pro athletes and corporate executives working in high-stress environments. He co-founded Vision Pursue alongside his business partner, Russ Rausch, a former hedge fund operator. Today, Vision Pursue works with high-profile clients in sports and business, including the Miami Heat, the San Francisco 49ers, and FedEx.

The Game Plan is a weekly SportTechie podcast hosted by venture capitalists Jay Kapoor and Tim Katt. The show features professional athletes and their business interests beyond sports.

You can follow us on Twitter (@thegameplanshow) and Instagram (@gameplanshow) for show news and updates, to recommend guests, and for bonus content! Subscribe to the Game Plan on Youtube for lots more content as well.

Follow co-hosts Jay Kapoor (@JayKapoorNYC) and Tim Katt (@Tim_Katt) for all things sports, media, tech, and venture capital.

Question? Comment? Story idea? Let us know at [email protected]

When Jason Campbell walked away from football in 2015, it was not for a lack of interest from NFL teams. Instead, Campbell had fallen out of love with the game and was struggling with the idea of being relegated to backup roles on struggling teams that weren’t going to be in Super Bowl contention. Fast forward to today and we see an older, wiser version of Campbell who stands by his decision to retire.

While learning from veterans such as Mark Brunell during his playing career, Campbell laid the groundwork for life after football by creating business relationships and being smart with his money. Jason is now an investor, entrepreneur, and podcast host. But he hasn’t left football completely behind. He now also works as a football analyst for his alma mater, Auburn University, where he led the Tigers to an undefeated season in 2004.

We cover all this and more in The Game Plan, including one early investment opportunity in a well-known ridesharing service that served as a hard-won learning experience for Campbell. 

Huge thanks to our mutual friend Albert Sye at Mean Circle for making the introduction to Jason and for being a great friend and supporter of the show!

The Game Plan is a weekly SportTechie podcast hosted by venture capitalists Jay Kapoor and Tim Katt. The show features professional athletes and their business interests beyond sports.

You can follow us on Twitter (@thegameplanshow) and Instagram (@gameplanshow) for show news and updates, to recommend guests, and for bonus content! Subscribe to the Game Plan on Youtube for lots more content as well. 

Follow co-hosts Jay Kapoor (@JayKapoorNYC) and Tim Katt (@Tim_Katt) for all things sports, media, tech, and venture capital.

Question? Comment? Story idea? Let us know at [email protected]

To tell Femi Ayanbadejo that he can’t do something is to place a bet on his success. Known for his smash-mouth, do-anything approach to playing running back in the NFL for 11 seasons, Ayanbadejo has carried his tenacity off the playing field into entrepreneurship as founder of HealthReel—a virtual health assessment app powered by NASA technology.

During his playing career with five teams, mostly with Baltimore and Arizona, Ayanbadejo connected with the athletic trainers and medical personnel in ways that most players don’t. Those relationships and his obsessiveness about health and achieving optimal performance inspired him to start his own gym and human performance center. His curiosity still not quenched, he sold his equity in the company and enrolled at Johns Hopkins University,  where he earned an MBA focused on Digital Health.

Today, Ayanbadejo aspires to bring impactful and inspiring health data to everyone who wants it!

The Game Plan is a weekly SportTechie podcast hosted by venture capitalists Jay Kapoor and Tim Katt. The show features professional athletes and their business interests beyond sports.

You can follow us on Twitter (@thegameplanshow) and Instagram (@gameplanshow) for show news and updates, to recommend guests, and for bonus content! Follow co-hosts Jay Kapoor (@JayKapoorNYC) and Tim Katt (@Tim_Katt) for all things sports, media, tech, and venture capital.

Question? Comment? Story idea? Let us know at [email protected]

As outside general counsel to the USWNT players’ association, Rocky, the older Collis brother, has led the way in counseling the players in a highly publicized legal battle with U.S. Soccer around equal pay and better playing conditions. His work has led him to also join forces with Megan Rapinoe, Christen Press, Tobin Heath and Meghan Klingenberg (a former guest on the podcast) to create a new for-good apparel company, Re—Inc.

Luke, meanwhile, has had a bent for making a societal impact off the field by serving as a field organizer for Stacey Abrams’ Georgia gubernatorial campaign in 2018. This was on the heels of leading the Philadelphia Soul to back-to-back ArenaBowl Championships in the previous two years.

Today, the brothers have reunited on a new mission that is driven by their mutual love of sport. Motivated by the expert training and evaluation they sought out as professional athletes, they now hope to democratize elite coaching for all athletes. They have joined forces with renowned biomechanics coach Tom House and elite mental performance coach Jason Goldsmith on a new training app called Mustard. Rocky is the CEO; Luke is the Launch COO and Head of Product. Mustard, of course, is thought of as the secret sauce of throwing, as in, “Put some mustard on it!”

The Game Plan is a weekly SportTechie podcast hosted by venture capitalists Jay Kapoor and Tim Katt. The show features professional athletes and their business interests beyond sports.

You can follow us on Twitter (@thegameplanshow) and Instagram (@gameplanshow) for show news and updates, to recommend guests, and for bonus content! Follow co-hosts Jay Kapoor (@JayKapoorNYC) and Tim Katt (@Tim_Katt) for all things sports, media, tech, and venture capital.

Question? Comment? Story idea? Let us know at [email protected]

Three Super Bowl Rings, Two Careers, One Approach to Doing Business: How Lonie Paxton Embodies The Patriot Way

In New England, all the Super Bowl trophies, the Hall of Fame players and the stern look on Bill Belichick’s face can be summed up in one mantra: The Patriot Way. Simply put, that means always doing your job at the highest level, whether you get any part of the glory or not. For our guest Lonie Paxton, that was especially true, as no one flies under the radar more than long snappers—unless, of course, you mess up.

A 12-year NFL veteran, Paxton spent his first nine seasons in Foxborough, Mass., winning three Super Bowls. He was the long snapper on Adam Vinatieri’s game-winning 48-yard field goal in Super Bowl XXXVI. (If you remember him at all, you might remember him as the lineman who sprinted downfield and pantomimed making snow angels in the end zone to celebrate.)

Paxton, who spent the final three years of his NFL career in Denver, took his lunch-pail approach to football and applied it to pursuits off the field, building a successful career as an advisor and partner to companies including Red Bull and GoPro. In this week’s episode of The Game Plan, he retraces that journey and explains how he never let the moment get too big—on the field or off.

The Game Plan is a weekly podcast hosted by venture capitalists Jay Kapoor and Tim Katt. The show features professional athletes and their business interests beyond sports.

You can follow us on Twitter (@thegameplanshow) and Instagram (@gameplanshow) for show news and updates, to recommend guests, and for bonus content! Follow co-hosts Jay Kapoor (@JayKapoorNYC) and Tim Katt (@Tim_Katt) for all things sports, media, tech, and venture capital.

Question? Comment? Story idea? Let us know at [email protected]

Hearing Tina Charles recount the emotions she felt when meeting a man whose life had been saved by one of the 425-plus portable AED devices that her foundation has purchased and installed to date, it's easy to forget that she’s in the middle of what is surely a Hall-of-Fame basketball career.

Charles, 31, is the Center on the Washington Mystics. A two-time national college champion at UConn, she was the first pick of the 2010 WNBA draft and won Rookie of the Year that season. Two years later, she was league MVP. She’s a seven-time All-Star and two-time Olympic gold medalist.

Her impact goes far beyond the hardwood. She’s active with her non-profit organization, speaks out for social justice reform, and has even produced her first film. She shares the encouragement she received from famed New York filmmaker Spike Lee, leading to her eventual premiere of the film at Tribeca Film Festival. You can follow Tina Charles on Twitter (@tinacharles31) and Instagram (@tina31charles). To learn more about her production company, visit Thirty-One Enterprises.

Slight Correction: We noted in the intro Tina's high school Christ The King was in Brooklyn, it's actually in Queens, NY

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The Game Plan is a weekly SportTechie podcast hosted by venture capitalists Jay Kapoor and Tim Katt. The show features professional athletes and their business interests beyond sports.

You can follow us on Twitter (@thegameplanshow) and Instagram (@gameplanshow) for show news and updates, to recommend guests, and for bonus content! Follow co-hosts Jay Kapoor (@JayKapoorNYC) and Tim Katt (@Tim_Katt) for all things sports, media, tech, and venture capital.

Question? Comment? Story idea? Let us know at [email protected]

This week's episode of The Game Plan features New Orleans Pelicans shooting guard JJ Redick, who is also the co-founder of ThreeFourTwo Productions.

In our conversation . . .

The Game Plan is a weekly SportTechie podcast hosted by venture capitalists Jay Kapoor and Tim Katt. The show features professional athletes and their business interests beyond sports.

You can follow us on Twitter (@thegameplanshow) and Instagram (@gameplanshow) for show news and updates, to recommend guests, and for bonus content! Follow co-hosts Jay Kapoor (@JayKapoorNYC) and Tim Katt (@Tim_Katt) for all things sports, media, tech, and venture capital.

Question? Comment? Story idea? Let us know at [email protected]

Years ahead of his time, Jay-Z declared, “I'm not a businessman; I'm a business, man.”

Much in the same way, the greatest athletes in the world are more than just entertainers on the courts and fields—they are brands and enterprises unto themselves. Properly cultivated, athletes can position themselves to turn the millions they make playing sports into potentially billions in generational wealth. Those are the crossover names we remember long after they’ve stopped playing. The Magic Johnsons. The Roger Staubachs. The Michael Jordans.

SUBSCRIBE HERE: Don’t Miss an Episode of The Game Plan

Those kinds of entrepreneurial and investment journeys are at the heart of The Game Plan, which is joining forces with SportTechie to bring you Season 2 starting Nov. 23. We’ll drop a new episode every Monday, highlighting insights from athletes who are making the transition from people who simply endorse checks to those who write them.

The conversations that co-hosts Jay Kapoor and Tim Katt have with athletes are always wide-ranging, highlighting their successes and working through the challenges they face when it comes to business ventures and investments. But our bottom line with this podcast isn’t about money—it’s about giving you an open and honest look at what makes our guests more than just athletes.

Be sure to tune into the final episode of Season 1 of "The Game Plan" as Jay and Tim take a look back and highlight some of their favorite moments from the past year including audio clips from Super Bowl Champions, Olympic Gold Medalists, All-NBA team honorees and Hall of Famers.

Listeners new and old will enjoy listening to these highlights, as well as the color commentary of The Game Plan hosts Jay Kapoor and Tim Katt. We explore why these moments really stood out in a season full of insight, authenticity, and emotion.

Featured guests include:

Jay and Tim also wrap the episode with key takeaways from Season 1 of The Game Plan including:

✍🏿 Athletes-Investor strategy

🔌 The power of humility and authenticity

🗣 Dispelling the "Broke Athlete" narrative

🤸🏼‍♀️ The exciting future for women's sports

Special thanks to Will Richardson and Meghan Roxas for all of their help in producing and promoting Season 1 of The Game Plan.

Be sure to follow co-hosts Jay Kapoor (@JayKapoorNYC) and Tim Katt (@Tim_Katt) for all things sports, media, tech, and venture capital.

Follow The Game Plan on Twitter (@thegameplanshow) and Instagram (@gameplanshow) for show news and updates, to recommend guests, and for bonus content!

NBA World Champion and host of "The Delly Podcast" Matthew Dellavedova joins The Game Plan to discuss his off-court leap into tech investing and podcasting including:

😇Forming his own investment syndicate on Angel List

🎴 Investing in store-of-value assets like cryptocurrency and trading cards

🇦🇺 Australia as a hotbed for sport science innovation

💸The one thing he wishes he had done differently at the start of his investment career

Dellavedova shares with Tim and Jay how he first started to learn about venture investing in Milwaukee of all places (while playing for the Milwaukee Bucks), and how his Aussie roots have influenced his investment interest areas in sport science and biometrics. We also discuss why trading cards have skyrocketed in value over the past year, and the influence the Covid pandemic has played on asset values.

In this episode, Dellavedova gets candid about the investment lessons he has learned over the years including one key thing he wishes he had done differently when he first started writing venture capital checks. We go deep on the things our guest looks for in a company when making an investment, and how important it is to align with the right people both on and off the court.

On the court, Matthew Dellavedova is best known as the point guard for the NBA's Cleveland Cavaliers where he won an NBA World Championship with LeBron James and Kyrie Irving in 2016. Dellavedova has been in the NBA since 2013, and prior to that, he played college basketball for Saint Mary's College where his number 4 was retired. He is a proud Aussie who has appeared for the Australian National Team in both the 2012 London Olympics and the 2016 Rio Olympics, as well as multiple World Cups.

You can follow Matthew Dellavedova on Twitter and Instagram (@matthewdelly), and subscribe to "The Delly Podcast" wherever you listen to The Game Plan!

Follow co-hosts Jay Kapoor (@JayKapoorNYC) and Tim Katt (@Tim_Katt) for all things sports, media, tech, and venture capital.

Follow The Game Plan on Twitter (@thegameplanshow) and Instagram (@gameplanshow) for show news and updates, to recommend guests, and for bonus content!