Friday, April 24, 2020 | General, Football, Chris Harry
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By: Chris Harry, Senior Writer
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — In a perfect world, Alex Anzalone would have awoke last Monday in New Orleans and headed for Saints team headquarters in Metarie, La., for the start of the NFL club's offseason training program. Obviously, this is anything but the perfect world.
Anzalone, a former linebacker at Florida and now with three NFL seasons behind him, is a long way from Metarie. He's actually in Bellaire, Fla. — on the Pinellas side of Tampa Bay — where he and his wife, former UF soccer player Lindsey Cooper, have settled down. On Wednesday, Saints coach Sean Payton staged a Zoom meeting with his team and announced its offseason program had been canceled. Payton told his players to stay home, take care of their families and train on their own, with a goal of coming back this summer in the best shape of their lives. Good thing the 6-foot-3, 241-pounder already set up a make-shift gym in his garage and taken advantage of the wide-open field in the park down the street to occupy his time.
He also has his laptop, which is coming in awfully handy.
"Might as well make the best of the time," Anzalone, now 25, said earlier this week.
With the element of the unknown brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic, Anzalone has taken the opportunity to go back to school and continue pursuit of the master's degree in business he put a semester's worth of work toward during the fall of 2016, his final season with the Gators.
The last few months, he's committed an hour or so a day into a corporate entrepreneurship course, which when done he'll file next to his other completed courses — like organizational creativity and managerial economics — and maintain progress toward that advance degree.
Linebacker Alex Anzalone as a Gator in 2015.
Anzalone graduated from UF in August 2016 with a degree in sports administration, then entered that fall in the master's business program. His 2016 season was cut short after eight games when he broke his forearm at Arkansas. Anzalone bypassed a fifth season of eligibility, entered the NFL draft, and despite the injury was taken in the third round by the Saints with the 76th overall selection.
"I started back into [the class work] during the [2019] season," said Anzalone, with 32 games and 12 starts on the back of his pro football card to date. "I knew that when the offseason came around I'd want to take some classes, but then it all just worked out that the world shut down. It became a good way to pass the time and keep on learning."
Unfortunately, it was another injury that reopened his academic opportunity. Anzalone played all 18 games (with 49 tackles, two sacks, two forced fumbles, one interception) during the Saints' 2018 run to the NFC Championship Game. He was the defense's No. 1 inside linebacker the first two games of the '19 season before a shoulder injury in Week 2 against the Los Angeles Rams proved season ending.
When the Saints placed him on injured reserve, Anzalone had some extra time on his hands.
"That got the ball rolling," he said.
Enter Jane McNulty, then an associate director of student services in the UF College of Business and advisor for the master's of science and management program, which began available online just last year. McNulty got the ball rolling on Anzalone's behalf last fall and helped ferry him the work up until her retirement in March.
"Normally, it would be very difficult for somebody in his position to do this, but to be perfectly honest I knew Alex was somebody who could handle taking a class, even during the season at the NFL level," McNulty said. "He's is very bright, very conscientious and I knew he would be successful."
McNulty found out quickly that Anzalone was a little different. It was early in their time working together four years ago she learned Anzalone was a passionate animal lover, and that the family's dog in Pennsylvania was sick and about to put down. It broke Anzalone's heart that he could not be home at the time. He showed McNulty a picture of him FaceTiming a goodbye to his pet.
"And he's carried on that love for animals," she said.
That figures to be a daily pose for the two, at least for the near future.
"I'm not in a big hurry," said Anzalone, who thinks he can finish the degree in a year; two at most. "I'm going to take my time and make sure to really learn the information."
