This Alabama Quarterback Wants to Be Your Insurance Salesman

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One day three years ago, Jake Coker’s job attracted a television audience of more than 26 million. As the University of Alabama’s starting quarterback, he threw two touchdowns to help the Crimson Tide beat Clemson University in the national college football championship. On Monday, when Alabama and Clemson meet again for the title, Mr. Coker will be performing in front of a smaller crowd—a few regional business owners in Alabama. He will try to make them fans of property and casualty insurance. “If your building somehow gets destroyed,” Mr. Coker says, “you need to be covered.”

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Among Mr. Coker’s local competitors in Mobile, Ala., is one of his college rivals, former Auburn football captain Reese Dismukes. His other regional foes include former Auburn quarterback Ben Leard and former Georgia stars David Greene and Matt Stinchcomb. Most of them played quarterback. Nearly all of them sell the same particular type of insurance: commercial property and casualty, which covers damages such as fires and related liabilities. “We compete against each other just like we did back in our playing days,” says Mr. Leard, a senior vice president at J. Smith Lanier & Co., a Marsh & McLennan Agency LLC company.

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“When you call somebody and you say your name, that light goes off and they know who they’re talking to,” Mr. Coker says. “It kind of gives them a blanket of trust.” The league of quarterbacks-turned-insurance-salesmen spans the country. Tony Graziani, who helped lead Oregon to the 1996 Cotton Bowl title and spent four seasons in the NFL, sells property and casualty, along with health and life insurance in Bend, Ore. “Love it,” he says.

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