Eric Osteen is on a mission. Several missions, actually.
He left the Army in May after five years of active service, most recently as a Signal Corps captain, and is adjusting to civilian life. He's newly acquired a house with his wife, Erin, an anesthesiology resident at Wake Forest Baptist hospital. The couple expects their first child in January. Osteen additionally is enrolled in a two-year MBA program at Wake, paying his own way.
"It's an exciting time. I have a lot going on, but that's how I like it," says the 28-year-old graduate of West Point.
Osteen also successfully petitioned the NCAA for a fourth year of eligibility, qualifying him to join the Wake Forest football squad as a walk-on graduate student. He's competing with four others for kicking chores. "He just kind of dropped in our lap," Wake coach Dave Clawson, who turns 51 this week, told Demon Deacon Digest in July. "He's probably more mature than I am, which isn't saying much."
Military veterans were scattered throughout football in the mid-20th century, but are rare today. Osteen is the 10th man since 1957 to play the sport at Wake after serving in the military but the first since the early 1970s. Read More