Nick Reed in 2009. (Getty Images)Nick Reed was one of the Pac 10's all-time sack leaders as a star for the Oregon Ducks, but he didn't hear his name called until the seventh round of the 2009 NFL draft. The Seattle Seahawks took the undersized pass-rusher there, and after one season in the dumpster fire that was the Jim Mora "era" in Seattle, Reed received an injury settlement and moved around the league, trying to stick somewhere. He signed a futures deal with the Chicago Bears and made the team, went to Tampa Bay after his release, and was cut by the Minnesota Vikings in August of 2012. That release led Reed to a calling he had seen coming for a long time -- he wanted to be an Air Force pilot, and that's what he's training to be now.

"When I was a kid my dad was in the Navy," Reed told CBS' Jason La Canfora during the fourth week of his current training at the Air Force Academy, "and he was flight surgeon -- a doctor for the pilots. So he would come home and talk about that stuff with me, and I think that's how I kind of got into it and knew that was something I wanted to do. Most kids want to be an astronaut or a pilot. I guess I never really got out of that stage."

Reed almost made that move the year before. The Bears told him that he made their team on Sept. 1, 2001. 10 days later, he received word of his acceptance into the Air Force.

"It kind of put me in a tough position, because it's hard to pass up the NFL," Reed told La Canfora, "but this is also a job I always wanted to do. So I decided this would be here for me in a couple of more years and I was still young enough that it wouldn't pass me up."

Now, Reed gets up every day at 4:30 in the morning, and he's hard at work in a process that rivals or exceeds anything he ever saw when he was trying to make the NFL. He began a nine-week "Super Boot Camp" last month, and though he's all in for his new life, there are still pangs when he thinks about how his football career turned out.

Tom Heckert is joining the Denver Broncos front office (Getty Images)

In the two seasons since Hall of Fame quarterback John Elway took over as the executive vice president of football operations for the Denver Broncos, the franchise has won back-to-back AFC West championships as the team's personnel department has assembled one of the league's deepest rosters.

The Broncos' personnel department is getting a boost this offseason as the team officially announced the hiring of former Cleveland Browns GM Tom Heckert as their director of pro personnel.

“With more than 20 years’ experience in the NFL, Tom brings a tremendous amount of knowledge and insight to our personnel department," Elway said in remarks released by the Broncos. "He has worked in several different capacities for multiple teams, and his diverse background in talent evaluation will be a strong resource for the Broncos."

Heckert spent 10 seasons as a scout and personnel executive with the Miami Dolphins before spending nine seasons in the upper levels of the Philadelphia Eagles' personnel department. The Browns tabbed Heckert for their general manager vacancy in 2010 and he was fired after the team won just 14 games over his three seasons at the helm of the franchise. However, during his brief time with the Browns, Heckert assembled a solid core of players for new general manager Mike Lombardi to build around and his firing was due more to the franchise's recent change in ownership than Heckert's ability to find and retain talent.

Via @kaepernick7 on Instagram

Hey, it's not everybody that can get the First Lady of the United States to pull off his trademarked move, but Colin Kaepernick did just that.

Kaepernick and Michelle Obama have teamed up to help promote physical education in schools in the "Let's Move" campaign, which might explain why the 49ers QB was as casual as you can get away with when meeting a member of the First Family. He posted this shot on his Instagram account on Tuesday.

Here, for your viewing pleasure, is video from February of the First Lady getting some kids into shape, with help from Kaepernick, Serena Williams, Bo Jackson and others:

If President Obama Kaepernicks after his next State of the Union address, you'll know who talked him into it.

-Follow Jay Busbee on Twitter at @jaybusbee.-

Other popular content on Yahoo! Sports:
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Don't tell Mike Ditka that Tim Tebow can't succeed. (Getty Images)

Someday, when President Mike Ditka is sworn into office, all our problems will be solved. International tensions will be cleared up with a clothesline hit, a good cigar, and a steak. Fiscal deficits will be eradicated by the trading of multiple draft picks, the national anthem will be replaced by a simple cry of "DA BEARS!", and nickels will be the size of manhole covers. In the meantime, we'll have to dial our expectations down, and satisfy ourselves with Ditka's evaluation of one Timothy Richard Tebow, who's been out of the NFL since the New York Jets released him on Apr. 29.

Some would tell you that the former Heisman Trophy winner and first-round pick of the Denver Broncos is out of the NFL for good, at least as a quarterback. But Ditka, the ex-tight end and head coach of the Chicago Bears, who also served that latter function for the New Orleans Saints for a little while, believes that Tebow has a place in the NFL. Moreover, he's willing to go out on a limb in his current capacity as an NFL analyst.

[Also: Tim Tebow tops Forbes' list of most influential athletes]

From the Chicago Sun-Times, and his "4 Downs with Ditka" column, here's Ditka on Tebow's pro football future:

“I think [Tebow] can play quarterback in the NFL, but whatever offense you run might have to be tweaked a bit. This kid is a talent and he proved it in college. He is an outstanding leader. Now, does he have an unusual throwing motion? Yes. But there a lot of quarterbacks that didn’t have a perfect throwing motion. Some of them turned out to be great quarterbacks because they were great leaders. I really do think there’s a place for him. If not at quarterback, I think he could play tight end. If I was in the league and coaching today, I would take a chance on him at quarterback.”

Ditka has an interesting history with quarterbacks.

Plenty of athletes play golf, but few play it well enough to get called "a hell of a golfer" by no less than Tiger Woods. Tony Romo does, however; he's spent many of his recent summers trying to qualify for the U.S. Open, and he has little trouble finding his way to the top of pro-am leaderboards.

Of course, Romo has another job, one where his employer has just doubled down on him and signed him to a six-year, $108 million contract extension. And with that contract comes the likelihood that Romo will spend more time on the turf and less on the green.

Tucked away in an ESPNDallas report is this tidbit: Romo has declined to play in several pro and amateur tournaments, and will not try to qualify for the PGA Tour's HP Byron Nelson Championship or the U.S. Open. It's impossible to read this and think it doesn't have something to do with Cowboys owner Jerry Jones' recent pronouncement that he'll expect much more out of Romo now that the ink on the contract has dried.

“Tony is going to have more time, more presence, not only in the offseason but when the season starts, beginning Monday, assuming we played Sundays," Jones told the Dallas Morning News last week. "He’s going to have more time on the job. A part of what we agreed with was extra time on the job, beyond the norm. That doesn’t mean that he didn’t have a lot of time on the job, but extra time on the job, Peyton Manning-type time on the job."

Romo's career to date has been a study in could-have-been.

This isn't a very good idea at all. (@SBergerBOSTON)

Arizona Cardinals defensive back Tyrann Mathieu's struggles with substance abuse are well-documented. His history got him booted off the LSU football team before the 2012 season, and dropped his value as a draft pick precipitously in a year -- from Heisman candidate and dynamic team-altering player to third-round draft pick and calculated risk.

Many people are in Mathieu's corner, hoping that he'll be able to figure his life out and live up to his impressive potential. However, there's one store in the Phoenix area more interested in targeting a potential customer than any of those other factors. A head shop called Bud's Glass Joint (ha, ha -- we get it on all three counts) put an ad in the Phoenix New Times, claiming that they have what the Honey Badger is looking for. Of course, the proprietors of this establishment could mean that they think Mathieu would enjoy the live glass blowing exhibition, but given the mention of "Home Grown Hydrophonic" underneath, we're thinking not.

[Also: Vikings release outspoken punter Chris Kluwe]

One of the reasons the Cardinals took Mathieu is his relationship with fellow LSU alum Patrick Peterson. Mathieu lived and trained with Peterson for a time while he went through rehab and tried to turn things around, and it's easy to imagine a scenario in which Peterson, the team's first-round pick in 2011 and one of the best pass defenders in the game, told the Cards' brass that he'd help Mathieu try to get past a past in which he cancelled two pre-draft team visits, and reportedly failed more drug tests than he could remember while in college. Mathieu started his football path again with a positive combine performance (and a negative drug test).

"I couldn't think of a better team to go to,' Mathieu said after the Cardinals selected him, possibly to play free safety. "I spent so much time out there with Patrick, that became sort of like my second home. The whole time, I was telling myself, 'don't cry.' I know I'm on the right track."

Williams and Marzouki in happier times. (AP)A Super Bowl ring isn't the only piece of jewelry on Buffalo Bills defensive end Mario Williams' mind. The former Houston Texan is suing to get back an engagement ring from former fiancée Erin Marzouki.

According to a suit filed in the Harris County state district court in Texas, Williams gave Marzouki a 10.04 carat engagement ring worth $785,000 in February of 2012. When their relationship ended in January of 2013, Marzouki refused to give the ring back. The lawsuit alleges that Marzouki never intended to marry Williams, but was in a relationship with him just to acquire gifts. It also alleges she charged $108,000 to an American Express card he gave her, and $230,000 in other luxury items.

Both etiquette and laws dictate whether engagement rings should be returned. Emily Post says to give the ring back.

"If the engagement should be so unfortunate as to be broken off, the engagement ring and all other gifts of value must be returned," Post wrote in her 1922 book, "Etiquette."

[Also:

People stand in line at a May 2 job fair at Sun Life Stadium. (Getty Images)

Now that the Florida Legislature has let a vote lapse that might have passed a hotel tax facilitating up to $380 million in subsidies for Sun Life Stadium, Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross has gone on the attack. Ross, who has owned the team since 2009, blasted Speaker of the House Will Weatherford. Ross claimed that Weatherford backed out of a promise to let the stadium improvements go to a vote.

Last week, the Dolphins held a job fair at the stadium, while knowing that the project may not go forward.

[Also: Did Tony Romo cut back on golf as part of a 'work like Peyton' mandate?]

"Tonight, Speaker Weatherford did far more than just deny the people of Miami Dade the right to vote on an issue critical to the future of our local economy," Ross said Friday in an official team-released statement. The Speaker singlehandedly put the future of Super Bowls and other big events at risk for Miami Dade and for all of Florida. He put politics before the people and the 4,000 jobs this project would have created for Miami Dade, and that is just wrong.

"I am deeply disappointed by the Speaker's decision. He gave me and many others his word that this legislation would go to the floor of the House for a vote, where I know, and he knows, we had the votes to win by a margin as large as we did in the Senate. It’s hard to understand why he would stop an election already in process and disenfranchise the 40,000 people who have already voted. I can only assume he felt it was in his political interest to do so. Time will tell if that is the case, but I am certain this decision will follow Speaker Weatherford for many years to come."

The decision to refuse a vote seems to have had immediate, and possibly far-reaching, effects on the team. Not only will Sun Life and the Dolphins be on the outside looking in for any future Super Bowl bids without improvements, but team CEO Mike Dee has intimated that the Dolphins aren't a lead-pipe lock to stay in Miami on a no-matter-what basis. While Dee stopped short of saying that Ross might move the team, he told WFOR-TV that another owner might down the road.

"I don't think it's an option for Steve Ross, but for a subsequent owner? The Dolphins are one of the only franchises in the National Football League that do not have a long-term lease with their community."

Dee said that the team wanted $3 million per year for the next 30 years from the state, to which Ross would pledge a 70 percent payment for all the stadium improvements. But the team wants to make it very clear -- without a private-public partnership," as Dee put it, Ross has no intention of putting up his own capital.