In 1990, one year into the NFL's short-lived Plan B free agency where teams were able to safeguard 37 of the 47 players on the roster, some including Chicago, were still learning the ins and outs and chose to leave offensive tackle Dave Zawatson, its second-round draft pick out of Cal the previous season, unprotected.
"Originally, they had indicated that they wouldn't. And then apparently after circling around to some other veteran players who they thought would be amenable to the idea of being exposed, but not going anywhere. They discovered that that was not the case. I guess they underestimated the amount of interest that veteran players would have in being free agents," Zawatson said.
"They ended up coming back to me a day before the deadline, indicating that they felt that for the continuity of their roster, they wanted to protect some of the veteran guys that they thought they had been in a position to not protect. They thought these guys had ties to the community after many years of being there.
"And so I guess it was a bit of a surprise, but it was an opportunity, too. You know, that it's a game, but it's also a business. I wanted to explore what opportunities were out there for me."
Among the opportunities out there were with the Raiders, Chiefs, Cardinals, Cowboys and Jets. He went with the Green & White.
"The Jet offer was a very good one relative to others. And the other issue was it was a new program," Zawatson said. "There was a change of the head coach [Bruce Coslet for Joe Walton] and the coaching staff in general. A new general manager [Dick Steinberg]. So I just kind of felt like there was going to be a little bit more of a clean slate there, and an opportunity to make an impression on people. I realized that, obviously, that's never 100 percent across the board, but I just felt like that opportunity was greater there."
It may have been a great opportunity, but it wasn't something the Jets were just handing to Zawatson. He was expected to earn a job. Perhaps even more so because they were moving him to a new position – guard.
"They brought in a lot of people, and I think we were all expected to compete and try to do the best as we could for ourselves. Which I guess, ultimately, that's always what's expected of you as a professional football player," Zawatson said.
"Every team has a different philosophy about what types of people they want at what positions, and things of that nature. I had a good rapport with the line coach, Larry Beightol, and had a lot of respect for what he was trying to do and the way he was teaching it.
"So I was comfortable with it. My biggest thing was at the end of the day, I was never really too terribly focused on the position and which one paid more and which one paid less. It was more just about wanting to get an opportunity to play."
With the Jets for one of his four seasons in the league, following his playing days, Zawatson returned to the Cal campus and entered a master's program in education administration. He also worked as a grad assistant coach on the football team and realized after a little over a year that it really wasn't for him.
"It was a good experience. But the one thing that I guess I ever really, truly appreciated was the amount to the degree to which staff members really, really bounce around a lot. And it can have a really difficult effect on their on their personal lives," Zawatson said.
"I enjoy sports. I like being around people who want to learn stuff. People who want to be competitive and all that, but I'm not sure that I want to pursue this with all the stuff that comes with it. That greater degree of instability. Maybe there's some other options that were out there."
There were.
With diploma in hand, Zawatson made a cross-country move to Long Island where he accepted a P.E. teaching position in the Oceanside Public School System. After three years, he made the shift into athletic department administration.
"An opportunity arose very, very late in the summer when my predecessor had an opportunity to retire that he had not anticipated. He took off and the district kind of looked around and said, 'Who knows where the keys are at?' And it happened to have been me," Zawatson laughed.
He made a move in 2006 and became the District Director of Physical Education, Recreation, and Athletics for the Great Neck Public Schools.
"We're a big district. We have two high schools, two middle schools, and they have athletic programs. We also have four elementaries and two alternative settings," Zawatson said. "And we also run the district's recreation program through my office, which includes summer camp, weekend recreation, and evening recreation for students.
"And then the last piece of my kind of portfolio of work here is any community use of facilities, which might include permits and leases, things of that nature. So it's a busy desk. I certainly have a lot of support. I have people that are supervisors below me that are like building level athletic directors, and so I'm kind of more like the general oversight person of all that, as opposed to the day-to-day."
Over his 25 years as a school administrator at Oceanside and Great Neck, Zawatson has seen how localized Long Island communities are. While it's a short drive between the two districts, they are both proudly distinctive.
"A community like Oceanside is a little bit more stereotypical Americana. You're going to have a real strong interest in football, baseball and softball. All the kinds of things that your mom and dad grew up with," Zawatson said. "And then you come somewhere like Great Neck, and because of the much more first generation and immigrant population within the school district, it's much more multi-cultural and much more interested in different types of things than I was used to.
"You have kids who are phenomenal at badminton, kids who are phenomenal at golf, and kids who are very, very interested in table tennis, which we have a big program even though it's not necessarily a sport recognized by the state. You just have a different type of interest, much more of an interest in individual sports and things of that nature.
"I mean, some things that maybe 30 or 40 or 50 years ago were really, really big here, we now have difficulty attracting enough kids or getting enough kids who have a strong baseline of prior experience in it. And so we're doing like a lot of more rudimentary instruction, trying to get them up to speed in some of the sports that maybe in Oceanside were just an inherent strength because they had kids playing from an early age and in large numbers."
Making his home in Long Beach with his wife, Panagiota, Zawatson has two daughters: Cady and Cassidy; and two stepdaughters: Angela and Georgia.
"I think I've made a successful life for myself within the profession I chose to work in. While I have my aches and pains and creaky things here and there, my health is good," Zawatson said. "I've had a good life and I hope that I have many years of it left in front of me. I'm optimistic for the future. I'm in a secure place – financially and emotionally and relationship-wise."
