planned. He had a huge arm and some hype when he signed with BYU and we had some huge expectations for him after the VA game but unfortunately BYU ended up losing lots of games. He wasn’t the guy but one of the QB’s BYU had at the time. It didn’t work out and he admitted it and learned from it.

Here are some comments he made about it.

Bret: When I was a BYU, I had a severe shoulder injury my sophomore year. It took me about two years to recover from that. I never really fully recovered. I went from being able to throw the ball… at the peak of my playing career and my arm strength, I could throw the ball 80 yards in the air. Not that throwing the ball far is the mark of a great quarterback. But just to illustrate the digression of my throwing ability, I went from being able to throw the ball 80 yards in the air to about 60 yards in the air, 65 yards in the air. I lost a significant portion of arm strength and it never really came back.

Charan: Now, just so we have a comparison of a regular human being and Bret Engemann, I think I could throw the ball maybe 10 yards in the air.

Bret: Come on.

Charan: All right, all right, 11. No, I’m just kidding, but 65 yards is still insanely far, I would think.

Bret: Yeah, sure. Sure.

Charan: Right? Was that a significant thing that you were like, “Okay, I can’t. It affects me.”

Bret: It wasn’t incredibly significant. I had to completely change my style of play where I used to be able to force balls into tighter coverage, and I couldn’t do that as effective anymore. So, I had to learn. In some ways, it was good for my football career because I had to learn better how to dissect coverages and anticipate throws better, but I think in the eyes of NFL scouts, I was always damaged goods.

Charan: Interesting.

Bret: And then so many things happened in my football career. We had a new coach come in-

Charan: At BYU?

Bret: BYU. Gary Crowton came in. LaVell Edwards recruited me. I played for him for the first two years. Got hurt in the middle of year two, missed the rest of that season. Had to red-shirt the following season because my shoulder was still recovering, and then Gary Crowton came in the following year while I was red-shirting, and it was … With him, for whatever reason, we didn’t really jive. It almost seemed like he was wanting to start anybody but me. It was a weird situation, but I ended up earning the starting spot in spring ball against his wishes, I’ve come to learn, and played that season. He kept putting me in and out of the games, pulling me from time to time.

Bret: And then, when it came time to decide if I was going to come back for my senior season, I went in for my end of the year meeting with the coaches and essentially … I’ve never talked about this before. Essentially they invited me to leave. Basically it was like-

Charan: Are you serious?

Bret: Oh yeah. I’m not going to say who it was that I met with, but they basically said, “Look, no matter what you do in the off-season, no matter how well you play in spring and in fall, we’re going to start the younger guy. We’ve got a younger team. We’re going to rebuild, so I think you can stay here if you want and be the backup, but that’s all you’re going to be, no matter what.”

Charan: At BYU?

Bret: Yeah. “Or, you can go down a level and play Division II or you could go into the draft and see what happens.” So, the decision I made, in hindsight, was the wrong decision. I should have stayed for sure.

Charan: Oh, really?

Bret: I think I should have stayed. For many reasons, but I think, primarily, because it had an effect on me. I felt like I quit on something, essentially. And then, when I left and entered the draft early, I didn’t really have enough tape, I didn’t have enough experience, so NFL scouts — I was a huge risk. I was really unknown, so I didn’t end up getting drafted, and I had about four teams that were interested in signing me as an undrafted free agent: the Ravens, Rams … They all start with R … Redskins and Raiders. I decided to sign with the Raiders out of those and went to training camp.

Bret: But when you go undrafted, your path to become a starter and being relevant in the NFL, it’s infinitely more difficult.

Charan: Man. That’s why I didn’t go.

Bret: That’s what I was thinking.

Charan: I was like, “You know what?” And I was just going to sign up as a water boy but I was like, “You know what? Even that, I’m not going to be drafted as a water boy. There’s just no way I’m going to make it.”

Bret: They don’t do that anymore?

Charan: You know, I think back then they would have, but I just decided it just wasn’t my path. It wasn’t my path.

Bret: You weren’t really passionate about H2O.

Charan: Dude, that’s crazy. I didn’t know about all that stuff at BYU that happened to you and everything like that.

Bret: Yeah, some of it, I’ll admit, was self-inflicted, but there were some variables there that were out of my control that were pretty frustrating.

Charan: Well, let me ask you this. Looking back now, what have you learned from that whole experience?

Bret: That’s a good question. Well, I think, like I mentioned before, you live and learn, obviously, through life, and I think the thing that I regret the most, as I said earlier, was leaving early. Just because I felt like I had unfinished business. I felt like I, in some ways, was letting my family down. I grew up loving BYU football. It was everything to me. I felt like I just let a lot of people down, and in some ways, I let myself down by allowing somebody else to influence me to make a decision I didn’t really feel good about, but it’s a decision that I have to live with and that I made.

Bret: So, I think, just, if anything, it’s taught me we’re all motivated by human beings to either pursue pleasure or to avoid pain. That experience in my life has taught me how painful it can be to quit on something. And it seems like more people are wired, at least through my experience, to avoid pain than they are to gain pleasure. That really motivates people. I don’t want to experience that pain. I don’t want to feel that burn or that heartache. So, I think that’s probably the biggest lesson I took from that is just I’m never going to quit. Never going to quit on anything again. It’s just too painful.



More stuff about his life here where the interview notes came from. https://blog.lemonadestand.org/bret-engemann-former-quarterback-at-byu-handsomest-contestant-of-the-only-season-of-the-bachelorette-that-never-filmed/