By Dan­ny Barletta
The Dai­ly Campus
April 6, 2021

UConn quar­ter­back David Pin­dell throws a pass in a game against UMass on Oct. 27, 2018. Pho­to by Char­lotte Lao, The Dai­ly Campus

For­mer UConn quar­ter­back David Pin­dell has been on quite a jour­ney since grad­u­at­ing in 2019, but now he is final­ly back on the field play­ing for the fans — literally. 

Pin­dell is the quar­ter­back for the Glac­i­er Boyz of Fan Con­trolled Foot­ball, a new sev­en-on-sev­en league based in Atlanta where fans call the plays through an app in real time. Yes, the fans watch­ing on Twitch get to vote on what play a team should run next. The quar­ter­backs’ coach then gath­ers the results of the vote on an iPad and relays the win­ning play his play­ers through the micro­phones in their hel­mets. It’s a bizarre twist on America’s most pop­u­lar sport. 

Even though it’s not quite what Pin­dell had in mind for his first pro­fes­sion­al snap in a live game, he’s mak­ing the most of the oppor­tu­ni­ty and hav­ing a good time. 

“I enjoy it,” Pin­dell said. “I just missed being able to have that cama­raderie with the guys and being around prac­tice com­pet­ing, trash talk­ing and stuff like that … It’s fun just being out there play­ing football.” 

Pin­dell has wait­ed far too long for that. When he left UConn, he had the expec­ta­tion that he would play pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball. He had just set school records for rush­ing yards (1,139) and touch­downs (10) by a quar­ter­back in a sin­gle sea­son, and he added almost 2,000 yards and 19 touch­downs through the air as well. He had also been in con­tact with mul­ti­ple NFL teams ahead of the draft. 

“The like­ly chance of me get­ting signed to a team was pret­ty high,” Pin­dell said he was told. “They said I could go from [a] late sev­enth-round draft pick to a pri­or­i­ty free agent signing.” 

But nei­ther of those things hap­pened. Pin­dell did get a cou­ple of brief oppor­tu­ni­ties, but noth­ing panned out. He was invit­ed to mini-camps with the Min­neso­ta Vikings and Tam­pa Bay Buc­ca­neers, who want­ed him to play oth­er posi­tions like run­ning back, wide receiv­er and punt return­er. Pin­dell tried his best, but hav­ing nev­er played those posi­tions before, he end­ed up get­ting cut. 

“I had no back­ground or no knowl­edge of the run­ning back posi­tion or receiv­er in terms of play­ing it,” Pin­dell said. “I didn’t even know how to take a hand­off. I didn’t even know how to catch punts and stuff like that … It was like, dang. It felt like all that draft train­ing went to waste, because all that train­ing as a quar­ter­back just for me not even to be able to show one small snap as a quar­ter­back. It was a lit­tle frustrating.” 

But Pin­dell nev­er stopped train­ing and was always dri­ven by the goal of play­ing at the next lev­el. For those who know him best like Chris Brooks, Pindell’s train­er and men­tor since high school, that came as no surprise. 

“David is a hard work­er,” Brooks said. “I like his path. It prob­a­bly could have been a lit­tle bet­ter, but you got to take advan­tage of the oppor­tu­ni­ties and sit­u­a­tions that come to you. At no point in time would David ever let his hard work be relinquished.” 

Pin­dell did get an oppor­tu­ni­ty as quar­ter­back when the Mon­tre­al Alou­ettes of the CFL signed him at the end of the 2019 sea­son. He was the team’s back­up for the final three games, but he nev­er actu­al­ly got to play and was released fol­low­ing the sea­son. He con­tin­ued to train and was sched­uled to work out for the Dal­las Rene­gades of the XFL and a few oth­er CFL teams when COVID-19 hit and put every­thing on hold. 

Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, Pin­dell got a job at a ware­house com­pa­ny but con­tin­ued to work out as much as he could. He post­ed all his train­ing videos on social media, hop­ing some­body would notice. 

Well, it turns out some­body did notice. In ear­ly 2021, rap­per Qua­vo, best known as one of the mem­bers of Migos, mes­saged Pin­dell on Insta­gram ask­ing him to join his team in FCF. Pin­dell was hes­i­tant when he saw how dif­fer­ent the league was — only sev­en play­ers, a 50-yard field, no spe­cial teams, etc. At first, he made up excus­es to not play because he thought it was a fake league, but when Qua­vo was per­sis­tent, he decid­ed to give it a shot. 

“I was like you know what? I’ll just do it because I’m not los­ing out on any­thing else,” Pin­dell said. “It’s Qua­vo, a big-time name, and they pay. So even if it’s good or bad foot­ball, I’m get­ting paid to play foot­ball. I got down here, and it’s some­what decent football.” 

There are some big names attached to this league. Besides Qua­vo, oth­er own­ers of teams include for­mer WNBA star Renee Mont­gomery, for­mer NFL star Mar­shawn Lynch and cur­rent NFL cor­ner­back Richard Sher­man, who is actu­al­ly a co-own­er of Pindell’s Glac­i­er Boyz. Notable play­ers include for­mer Heis­man Tro­phy win­ner John­ny Manziel, for­mer Flori­da State quar­ter­back Deon­dre Fran­cois and for­mer All-Pro receiv­er Josh Gor­don. The pay is pret­ty good as well. Pin­dell makes $1,450 a week as a start­ing quar­ter­back plus bonus­es for things like win­ning the game or being the game’s MVP. 

Pin­dell has per­formed well in the league’s first sea­son. He actu­al­ly scored the first touch­down in FCF his­to­ry, a nifty 10-yard run through defend­ers that brought him back to his days at UConn. Over­all, in the four-game reg­u­lar sea­son, he rushed for 135 yards and three touch­downs and threw for 176 yards and four touch­downs. He helped lead the Glac­i­er Boyz to an appear­ance in the league’s first cham­pi­onship game, deemed “The People’s Cham­pi­onship,” where they lost to the Wild Aces. 

Pin­dell is hope­ful that his play will open up anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty at a high­er lev­el, but he knows that may not hap­pen because the league is so different. 

“I’m a real­ist, I’m real with myself,” Pin­dell said. “The stuff we do here in terms of quar­ter­back play, I wouldn’t say it’s as real as 11-on-11 … So I would say it’s kind of hard to get film from this, but at the end of the day, you still got to make plays and stuff, so that’s what I try to do.” 

Pin­dell has been liv­ing in the FCF bub­ble at a hotel in Atlanta. He said the play­ers spend all their time in the hotel except when they go to the prac­tice facil­i­ty or to Infi­nite Ener­gy Are­na, where the games are held. At the hotel, he said the play­ers can hang out in the ball­room and play games, or they can go to the weight room and work out. But, a lot of time he just relax­es in his room. He said he doesn’t mind it at all. He’s just tak­ing this oppor­tu­ni­ty for what it is. 

The biggest dif­fer­ence in Pindell’s atti­tude now com­pared to when he left UConn is that he’s no longer depend­ing on foot­ball for sta­bil­i­ty in life. The rea­son for that is because he has found new pas­sions: teach­ing and coach­ing. Between a cou­ple of his foot­ball gigs back in 2019, Pin­dell had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to help coach foot­ball at his alma mater, Oak­land Mills High School in Colum­bia, MD, where he also got to serve as a sub­sti­tute teacher. 

“I nev­er imag­ined myself teach­ing, but when I did it, I real­ized how fun it is and how much I enjoy being around kids and talk­ing to them,” Pin­dell said. 

Brooks believes that Pin­dell would thrive in that type of coach/teacher role because of his lead­er­ship skills. 

“His best attribute is that he is a great leader,” Brooks said. “I think lead­er­ship isn’t just vocal. It’s phys­i­cal, vocal, doing the right things. That’s what allows you to be a great mentor.” 

It seems like Pin­dell has found his call­ing when­ev­er his foot­ball career is over, but that hasn’t hap­pened just yet. Pin­dell said he will con­tin­ue to chase his NFL dream for the rest of this year, with a spe­cif­ic focus on the XFL’s return in 2022 for his next oppor­tu­ni­ty. If that doesn’t work out, then he said he’ll be ready to hang up the cleats and move on to his next chap­ter with no anxiety. 

“I want to play foot­ball to have fun, and I know there’s some­thing else that I can do as far as teach­ing and train­ing kids,” Pin­dell said. “If foot­ball doesn’t work out, I’ll be sta­ble doing that.”