'Reality' helps Kelvin Grady find a home on the football field at Michigan

For three weeks in May, Kelvin Grady spent eight mindless hours a night on his feet at the Amway plant in Ada, screwing tops on bottles of lotion, trying to figure out his life.Â

Grady had left the Michigan basketball program a month earlier, after an unsatisfying sit-down with coach John Beilein. A prominent role player at the beginning of the year, Grady barely got off the bench in the Wolverines’ NCAA tournament loss to Oklahoma, and Beilein couldn't promise that would change.

So Grady gave up his scholarship and moved home to Grand Rapids. He thought about transferring, but with no appealing offers he got a job as a temp working the 11 p.m.-7 a.m. shift at Amway through the staffing company Manpower.

Every day, his co-workers reminded him of the life he left. “We loved seeing you on TV,” they said. “We loved watching you play.”

And every day, Grady, who made about $10 an hour, thought to himself, “What am I doing?”

“Same thing every day,” Grady said. “Thinking, wondering, working. It was life. It was reality. I was in reality. This is kind of almost like a dream world almost. To be here and play a sport at a big-time college for big-time coaches and you’re doing big-time things. You’re getting a check at the same time.

“It was a humbling experience.”

Grady played basketball, worked out and slept by day, and at night, before heading off to work, he usually talked with his older brother, Kevin, a fullback on Michigan’s football team.

It was during one of those conversations that Kevin suggested his brother, an all-state running back as a senior at East Grand Rapids High School, give football a try.

Michigan coach Rich Rodriguez had long joked that the shifty point guard would make a good football player, and Kelvin, after a stern lecture from his brother about taking the sport seriously, joined the team in early June for off-season workouts.

“I told him, if you do this you have to be full-hearted into it because it’s a full-time commitment,” Kevin said. “We got guys who have left here who weren’t committed to it. I didn’t want him to be a guy who was half-hearted and in his brain didn’t know if he wanted to be here or he didn’t want to be here.”

While Kelvin waded in at first, not knowing how much rust he’d have to knock off, it wasn’t a month before he started telling his father, Kevin Sr., how good it felt to be wanted again.

“He said, ‘I can tell when somebody likes me, and they really like me,’” Kevin Sr. said. “I said, ‘Son, what do you mean, like you?’ He said, ‘They’re excited for me to be here, they believe in me.’ And once he heard that word, they believed in him, his swagger came back.”

With his swagger back, Grady looked like the player who once rushed for 2,000 yards in a high school season.

He made a quick impression during two-a-day camp in August, and when the season started earlier this month he was second on the depth chart at slot receiver, playing about half of the game behind starter Martavious Odoms.

Rodriguez said Grady’s two years playing college basketball helped him transition to football.

“We found out early in camp that, boy, this guy’s got some skills and he can help us, and then after we put the pads on and reconfirmed what we thought coming in, that he had a chance to help us,” Rodriguez said. “What we didn’t know was how quickly he would learn. He’s been a very, very quick study.”

Grady said he’s still learning on the football field. He played the sport in high school because it was “something to do” - basketball was his true love - and until now he’s never had to run routes or block linebackers on the perimeter.

His three-week sabbatical from college sports taught him valuable life lessons, too. How hard real-life work is, how lucky he is to be at Michigan, and not to take his amazing opportunity for granted.

“I’ve been to the bottom of the bottom and it’s like I’m back, and I love it here,” Grady said. “I’m a Michigan man and this is where I’m supposed to be at.”

Dave Birkett covers University of Michigan football for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached by phone at 734-623-2552 or by e-mail at davidbirkett@annarbor.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.