FLORHAM PARK, N.J. -- Josh McCown was a 31-year-old husband and father, living away from his family for 10 weeks in a Crowne Plaza hotel in Cromwell, Connecticut. This was autumn 2010, when he was out of the NFL after eight seasons. Instead of returning to his home in Texas to start his life after football, which might have been the logical thing to do, he played quarterback for the Hartford Colonials in the now-defunct United Football League.
It was a career reboot in an unfamiliar city, the midpoint between New York and Boston and the middle of nowhere on the football map.