Austen Lane knows the exact date and time he promised his head trainer they would make it to the UFC one day.
That night Lane had gone to a bar in his tiny hometown of Iola, Wisconsin, to ring in the new year. As the party stretched into early morning, however, he found himself feeling less and less like celebrating.
After four seasons on four different NFL teams, Lane was staring down the end of his professional football career and—at 27 years old—wondered what he'd do next.
"I kind of had to face reality that I probably wasn't going to get picked up by another team," Lane tells Bleacher Report.