Before his final collegiate season at BYU, Eli Herring thought the NFL was going to be out of reach for him. But one day, his colleague at the college’s mechanical shop showed him a copy of the USA Today, and things changed. Herring, a behemoth of an offensive tackle, was named in the Top 30 prospects of the 1995 NFL draft. Herring was “blown away.” But his mother’s words rang in the back of his mind, reminding him of an important thing.

“Remember, if you choose that, you’ll have to play on Sunday. You’ll have to play on the Sabbath,” she used to tell him early on, Herring told BYU.

By the time the draft rolled around, everyone wanted a shot at Herring simply because of his physicals. At 6-foot-8 and 330 pounds, any he would make any offensive line a real threat for defenses. But Herring told his school’s front office to draft a letter to all 30 NFL teams: he was not going pro. As a devout Mormon, Sunday was the day for the Lord. He couldn’t be spending it playing games in the NFL.

“I knew two things,” Herring told BYU, about his thoughts as he wrapped up his senior season. “I knew, barring injury, I was going to play great football and make a lot of money. Or, I was going to know for myself that the Sabbath was so important that I needed to set that career opportunity aside and pursue something else.”

Herring told the LA Times in 1995 that had the games been on a Saturday, he’d “be very interested.”

Front offices had a field day learning that he will not go pro. When Herring asked about the response to the letter from franchises, he was told that everyone had reached out and asked about his decision. And as the news spread, Herring’s situation got more and more attention. He joked that he was more famous after deciding not to go pro than he was in the months before. But he was firm on his word; Herring was not playing in the NFL.

Still, the then-Oakland Raiders took a flyer on him in the sixth round. Team executive Bruce Allen flew to Utah to meet with Herring and broke down the monetary value of the contract he was foregoing. He would have received a salary of $500,000 over three years. But Herring decided that he wanted to become a high school math teacher. This would leave Sundays free for him. The role would have paid him around $22,000 annually. They probably thought they could have moved the needle since it was loose change when compared to an NFL salary.

The Raiders later sent linebackers coach Fred Whittingham to meet him. Whittingham happened to be a Mormon himself. He gave his own perspective as a Mormon working in the NFL. Herring listened and remained polite and patient throughout the process. He was given examples of Mormon players like Steve Young, who were very active in the league. But Eli Herring was dead set on his decision.

An NFL contract is generational wealth. A lifetime settlement, so to speak. And not an easy decision to make for even the most principled of men, which Eli certainly was. During this time, he and his wife, Jennifer, already had an 18-month-old daughter. The obvious choice for anyone in his position would be to sign that player contract. But Herring was simply not appealed by any of it.

31 years since that eventful decision, Eli Herring is now a math teacher at Mountain View High, in Utah. He also doubles up as the assistant head football coach of the same school’s team. But if he was given a chance to go back in time and choose otherwise, he would have very likely refused.

Refusing the NFL was “never a regret” for Eli Herring

Herring is now 56 years old. His students have no idea that their math teacher was once sought after by almost all the teams in the NFL. He still lives in the very city that made him a hero. But Herring has moved on from this glorious past in his life. According to Deseret News, he had no football memorabilia in his home from his BYU days. But there was “never a regret” about his decision, he said.

“Sometimes you wish you had more money,” Herring told the publication, laughing. “But I’m pretty confident I live in the top one percent of the Earth’s population in terms of income. I make a nice living. I’ve never been on a cruise. Maybe someday I’ll go on a cruise. But 99.9 percent of the Earth’s population hasn’t gone on a cruise.

“In terms of temporal things, the Lord has blessed us and blessed us and blessed us. We’ve been blessed abundantly both temporally and spiritually.”

Herring still keeps the responses he got from the NFL execs and everyone else about his decision. Some were understanding of his decision, while some were not so kind. There were also letters from members of the Latter-day Saints Community that urged him to reconsider. The Jewish community and the Seventh-Day Adventists tried to flip his perspective, who consider Saturday as the Sabbath. Herring keeps all of these letters not as a reminder of what could have been, but simply because it was a part of his life.