Bosworth hopes to educate young players

Armed with his own high-profile experiences, former Oklahoma football great Brian Bosworth is in the midst of a project he hopes will help guide young players not so familiar with the spotlight.

“I’m trying to create an atmosphere where kids understand that a four-year stage in their life is an opportunity to turn that into a 40-year career,” Bosworth said Thursday from Malibu, Calif. “You’re not going to be a 40-year professional athlete. You might be a four-year professional athlete. You might be a four-game professional athlete. You might be a four-day guy. You might come in and get cut, but you’ve got to take advantage of that four-year opportunity to get an education.”

Bosworth said he is writing and producing the independent project and chose the production company of Sir Ridley Scott.

“I went with that company because I felt like they get it from a sports standpoint. The project has changed organically from my original plan to where it’s going to end up. I was going to compare Blue Chip athletes to kids who don’t get that kind of notoriety, kids more along the lines of ‘The Blind Side,’ kids who come out of nowhere. This guy who became an all-pro, where did he come from? On the other side, you have this blue-chip athlete, yet his flame isn’t blue. His flame is a flickering orange that’s almost out. Why doesn’t he have the motivation when he’s been given all of God’s gifts and everybody’s pulling for him?

“What I’m finding out more and more is today’s kids are so cocky when they come out of high school. You can’t teach them. You can’t coach them. They act like they already know it all. It takes me back to my time. I think I was kind of one of those guys, but I was also very humble and I was very scared. I had a big self-esteem problem. I thought, ‘I don’t know if I can make it here, man. This is Oklahoma. This is big-time. I don’t know if I am big-time yet. I’ve got to figure that out.’ I had to go through an inner journey to find out if I had big-time in me.