Mike Phair may be new to the X League but the veteran NFL coach has connections to Japanese football that go back over three decades.
“I played at Arizona State,” he said. “Our defensive coordinator Kent Baer knew Osaka and all the college football programs there. Every year he had been bringing out players (to Japan). Basically guys that had no chance of playing in the NFL, that weren’t going to get drafted.
“So (in 1993) he asked me, ‘Mike, do you want to come out to Osaka, Japan, and play football?’ I said ‘absolutely.’”
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