Minter: Retired from the NFL, but still going strong

Monday, October 15, 2007
By Joshua Cooley

BPSports.net

 

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (BP)—Mike Minter goes through a ritual every Sunday, which isn’t surprising considering he’s a 10-year NFL veteran. Every weekend is met with great anticipation and preparedness. By game time, he typically has worked himself into a frenzy.

Then he plops down on the couch and turns on the TV.

Minter, a former Carolina Panthers star, abruptly retired before this season started, ending a distinguished career in which he set multiple defensive records for Carolina. He might have shed his shoulder pads and helmet, but, with remote control in hand, he still takes Sunday afternoons quite seriously.

“My kids know. My wife knows,” Minter said, laughing. “They know I want to be by myself – watch the game by myself with no distractions. Fortunately, they understand. I probably can’t get away with it for too long, but at least right now they’re sympathetic.”

Minter, 33, was once one of the top safeties in the NFL. After a standout career at Nebraska from 1992-96, during which the Cornhuskers won consecutive national championships, he immediately made an impact with a young Panthers franchise, setting team records in all-time tackles (953), forced fumbles (16), fumble recoveries (8), interceptions returned for a touchdown (4) and interception return yardage (421).

During the 2003 season, he helped lead Carolina to Super Bowl XXXVIII, where only Patriots’ kicker Adam Vinatieri’s last-second magic thwarted the Panthers’ bid for their first championship.

Early last offseason, Minter announced his intentions to play one more year before hanging up his cleats. But on Aug. 7, after a week’s worth of feeling the age in his knees, he announced his retirement.

“The first few days of camp, it was creeping through my mind: ‘Man, they’re not going to go through the whole season,’” Minter said. “And if I can’t be 100 percent for my teammates, I can’t be on that football field. One, I respect them too much, and two, I respect the organization too much to just be there.”

During his career, Minter was a tireless philanthropist, earning the Panthers’ 2005 Walter Payton Man of the Year Award. Because of all his achievements on and off the field, the greater Charlotte area thanked him in a unique way. Local radio station 96.1 FM “The Beat” collected thousands of signatures on an 8x8-foot “thank you” card and presented it to Minter before a packed studio audience on Aug. 31.

“Things like that blew me away,” he said. “You don’t know the impact you have on people. I tell people now it’s like dying and going to your own funeral – you hear all the things people think about you. In a sense, it’s like death and new birth.”
Although retired, Minter is still going full speed. His Minter Group corporation oversees a myriad of business ventures, including Minter Properties (high-end real-estate development in N.C.), Minter Consulting, IMAJ Salon and Spa, Recruits Unlimited (a recruiting service for high school athletes) and USBA Hoops (youth basketball). In 2005, he and several Carolina teammates started Ruckus House, a growing chain of faith-based child development centers in North Carolina. And he also hits the corporate speaking circuit.

When Minter does something, he does it big. He is currently in discussion with Lowe’s, the home improvement retail chain, about creating a reality TV show based on the efforts of Oklahoma Land Management, a subgroup of Minter Properties, which is in the process of revitalizing run-down Randlett, Okla. (pop. 161), near Minter’s hometown of Lawton. Think “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” – except for an entire town.

In all of Minter’s endeavors, perhaps most remarkable is the fact that he reverse-tithes on all his business income, giving 90 percent to church-related ministries.

God “has put a desire for business in my heart to fund the ministry,” said Minter, who accepted Christ in college. “That’s why I started all my businesses.”

Minter is just as passionate about charity work. He is currently a spokesman for the Salvation Army Boys and Girls Club, the National Kidney Foundation and the National Guard Youth ChalleNGe Program. He is also a board member of the YMCA of Greater Charlotte, which sent him as part of a humanitarian trip to the West African countries of Senegal and The Gambia last March. Minter plans to return and maybe even build some Ruckus Houses there.

“He has always been so caring with people,” said Kim Minter, Mike’s wife. “That’s his main concern. He loves to give back.”

This fall, Minter is also hoping to launch a series of Saturday night family rallies at high school football stadiums in the Carolinas – and hopefully one day across the country – that will feature music, dancing, marching bands and, ultimately, the gospel message.

“There are so many attacks against families,” Minter said. “We need to refocus on what’s the best – the way we spend time with our families. It’s all about celebrating families.”

If that’s not enough, Minter is also the head coach of his 10-year-old son’s football team and a defensive coordinator for his 12-year-old son’s team. And he recently became an ordained community pastor at his church, King’s Way Baptist in Concord, N.C.

“When he came in [to the NFL], I could see he previously was involved in ministry, but he has deepened his convictions on walking with God and reading Scripture,” Panthers chaplain Mike Bunkley said. “He knows what is true Christianity, biblical Christianity.”

Sunday afternoons might still be about Panthers football, but now Minter’s life is about so much more.

“I feel like I’m more popular now than when I was playing football,” he joked. “It’s amazing how God has given me the platform of football to speak his name. It couldn’t have been a better time for me to walk away from the game. I’m seeing how God is using retirement and football – and what I’ve built through football – to change lives. It has been unbelievable.”