When he played linebacker at Ohio State, Andy Katzenmoyer tried to hurt people. Now he makes a living by helping people.
Almost nine years after his promising NFL career was cut short by a neck injury, the 32-year-old Katzenmoyer now has his own family and his own business, LIFT Personal Training, which he and his wife Ashleigh started in 2008.
No longer remorseful about his brief career in the NFL, he has excelled while working and maintaining privacy in his hometown of Westerville, Ohio.
“I’m a homeboy,” Katzenmoyer said. “I’m creative in my domain. I’ve always been reserved, so I don’t miss being in the spotlight.”
Today, the man known as “The Big Kat” is larger and perhaps more intimidating than he was as a player. He’s also happier.
The intense, expressionless face he wore under his helmet has been replaced with a big smile, usually seen when he watches his 2-year-old daughter, Ava, happily wander around the workplace, trying to mimic exercise motions.
Now a devoted family man and fitness guru, he works alongside his wife and a close-knit group of friends, training everyone from aspiring athletes to middle-aged men.
While Katzenmoyer’s life is now relatively normal, it’s very different from the turbulent and well-publicized lifestyle he had grown accustomed to as a football player.
After winning the USA Today Defensive Player of the Year Award at Westerville South High School, Katzenmoyer made headlines as soon as he arrived at OSU in 1996 when he became the first Buckeye to wear the number-45 jersey since Archie Griffin, a decision that incurred the wrath of many Buckeye purists.
At the time, fans wondered aloud how this freshman could have the audacity to wear Griffin’s unofficially retired number.
But Katzenmoyer wasn’t just another freshman. He was a 6-foot-4-inch, 255-pound giant that looked more like a machine than a man. He played like one, too.
He became the first true freshman ever to start at linebacker for the Buckeyes, recording 12 sacks and 23 tackles-for-loss.
As a sophomore, he won the Butkus Award, given annually to the best linebacker in college.
Any questions about whether he was worthy of wearing the number 45 were put to rest.
Always the strong, silent type, his hard-hitting play was getting all the attention on the field, but off the field his actions were receiving plenty of attention as well.
A few months after being arrested for drunken driving, Katzenmoyer was featured in two articles and the cover of a Sports Illustrated issue during his junior year, which turned his academic shortcomings into a national joke as he struggled to maintain his eligibility.
“I was blindsided so badly by that article,” Katzenmoyer said. “I was a 20-year-old kid that didn’t think about the big picture. I was at Ohio State to play football. Other than that, I didn’t know where I wanted to go.”
Despite the negative attention, Katzenmoyer had another stellar season and was selected by the New England Patriots in the first round of the 1999 NFL Draft.
After recording 107 tackles and 3.5 sacks, he was named to the NFL’s All-Rookie team, but what seemed destined to be a great career had already started to end.
During a game against the Buffalo Bills that season, Katzenmoyer collided head-on with Bills fullback Sam Gash, severely injuring his neck. The injury limited him to only eight games in his second year.
He underwent two operations to fuse two disks in his neck and was forced to retire.
So began the unusual odyssey of his post-football life.
When he returned to Westerville, Katzenmoyer made money by selling houses with his mother and working construction, but the stigma from his shortened playing career was overwhelming him.
“Back then I was still in a funk, still depressed,” Katzenmoyer said. “I couldn’t get over it.”
To make things harder, he returned to OSU to pursue a sociology degree, only to be met with a lukewarm reception from some of the faculty, many of whom were familiar with the infamous Sports Illustrated articles from his junior year.
“Returning was harder because the professors had already made up their minds about me,” Katzenmoyer said. “For them it was a foregone conclusion about what kind of student I was, and I had to go above and beyond what was possible just to get a fair shake.”
But while training at a gym in 2003, things changed for the better when Katzenmoyer met his future wife, Ashleigh, who convinced him to begin studying in the exercise science program at Otterbein College.
He now had a goal to work toward, and a partner who supported him.
In 2004, Katzenmoyer was persuaded by his high school coach Rocky Pentello to serve as defensive coordinator at Westerville South High. Although he was reluctant to return to football, doing so proved to be a valuable experience that helped rekindle his passion for football.
“When I was first offered to coach I was nervous about being around it,” Katzenmoyer said. “I didn’t want to make a commitment after the way everything went down. But committing to teaching has been a really positive experience.”
With the plan of having another child in the near future, Katzenmoyer is working to expand his business and learn more training disciplines. After emerging as an excellent student at Otterbein, he plans to return to OSU and pursue the Personalized Study Program, focusing on sociology and exercise science. He said he also hopes to work in some capacity with the OSU football team and possibly continue coaching in the future.
To this day, Katzenmoyer is still bothered by neck pain. He’s also still bothered by the reputation he had as a “dumb jock” at OSU. But now, as a grown man who is no stranger to pressure, school is just another problem that he’ll have to tackle, and this time, it won’t be an issue.
