Former Jacket Rocker uses life experiences to teach others in new book

Former Georgia Tech linebacker Albert Rocker made headlines back after the 2010 season when he went pro early. Rocker didn’t leave the Flats for life in the NFL, but instead entered the corporate sector taking a gig at Microsoft that has led to an impressive career and now a book “Do it Anyway” about his journey, making positive choices in life and charting new paths. JOL caught up with Rocker to get insights on his life post-Tech, his decade-plus relationship with Geoff Collins who helped bring him to the Flats and more.

Rocker has spent much of his post-Tech life in the corporate sector, but he was compelled to write a book to help people make significant changes in their lives in an easier to digest format than the majority of self-help books. He uses his own personal story as a way to relate how change can be good for you and how to adapt to it to create the type of outcomes you want from your life.

“I just started writing, I didn’t know how to write a book, but I kept writing. The book was originally going to be about my transition from sports into corporate America. I was going to share stories about what I did to help other student athletes come behind me and take the same career trajectory as I did,” Rocker said. “It really turned into more much than that. It turned into a book about change. I realized that same change I went through at Georgia Tech which at the time was the biggest transition of my life, it will happen over and over in my life. I carefully studied my transition and process of change into corporate America and made it a book about that. It is a about the process of change and what they want to change in their lives.”

After giving up football, Rocker found himself without a charted course and that is what led to the writing of his book.

“Leaving Georgia Tech was a shock because you don’t have a baseline of what your career is going to look like,” Rocker said. “For the first time I found myself not the star player and I think a lot of athletes have trouble figuring out where they fit in the world after they stop playing. You have to relearn what it means to play a different role on the team. That experience for me along with other experiences like moving every three years because of the military and my father and having to help my mother or starting over on a new football team or whatever. I kept having to prove myself again. I’ve had to constantly transition and change that was what helped me identity the path to teach individuals. Throughout the nine chapters in the book I describe my journey and taking authors and content that have come before me like Brenė Brown or Malcolm Gladwell and concisely editing it so it is very consumable for readers to read and then applying within my own life experiences so it is easy for readers to read it.”

Faith and experience have guided Rocker throughout his post-Tech years, and he has used years of experience in volunteer work and other avenues to generate the content for his book.

“What I teach in the book is universal and it is a faith-based book, but I don’t necessarily press my beliefs or what I believe on others. Throughout the book you will find a process for actualizing change. I’ve worked with addicts, people with very bad triggers like shame or guilt and things that are bad in their past and what have you. I’ve developed the content around these individuals I’ve studied. It is simple and easy to understand, but also effective. There is so much self-help and a lot of it is overwhelming, so people don’t start in one place or another, you don’t start, people find it daunting. I do throughout the book how it is easy to change specific things about their life and make it easy for their brains to comprehend.”

Throughout his life Rocker moved around from school to school as military assignments moved the Rocker family around the country. He ended up in Alabama and on the radar of major programs as a junior in high school ultimately leading to his signing with the Jackets.

“I ended up at Georgia Tech. I went to high school for a year and my dad was in the military, so we moved every two to three years. My sophomore year I moved to Huntsville, Alabama where I attended Sparkman High School. That is where I started getting recruited as a junior and when I started getting recruited my first offer was from Vanderbilt and my second offer was from Georgia Tech. It was very early on during my junior year when I knew I wanted to go to Georgia Tech.

That is when Geoff Collins entered the picture for Rocker building a relationship that has lasted to this day.

Coach D (Joe D’Alessandris) was recruiting me and coach Collins was the recruiting coordinator at the time. My first visit was after Tech offered me. When I met coach Collins for the first time that is when I knew I wanted to go to Georgia Tech. The crazy part about it and it is something I tell coach Collins to this day, when I first met him it was the way he made my family feel that was the biggest reason why I came to Georgia Tech,” Rocker said. “It was going to be Duke, Vanderbilt or Georgia Tech or some other high academic school that could provide the type of education I felt like I needed to be successful. It was how coach Collins made me and my family feel like his family that made me go to Georgia Tech.”

Ironically when Rocker arrived on campus in June of 2007, Collins had already left to join Nick Saban’s first staff at Alabama.

“When I got to Tech coach Collins had already left for Alabama when our 2007 class arrived,” he said. “I was there from 2007 to 2010 until I left to go work for Microsoft.”

Rocker says the vaunted 2007 class was a mixture of recent success having gone to the ACC Championship game the prior season and the personalities driven by coach Collins’ in the recruiting office.

“We had just gone to the ACC Championship and a couple of bowl games, but until the class came together, that is really what brought the energy and led to a lot of the success that carried over from 2007 to 2012 when the last of those kids were out of the program,” Rocker said.

Rocker spent most of his career on the Flats as a special team’s player as he played under three different defensive coordinators during his four years on the squad and three seasons on the field. Most of his memories involve things he did off the field helping prepares his teammates rather than specific moments of glory on the gridiron.

“I remember being a leader. Learning to be a leader in different ways versus being the star player or athlete. When I came to Georgia Tech everyone on the team had been the guy where they came from. Understanding, learning and growing based on life experience in the sport all made a difference and I learned a different level of leadership there and how I look at a leadership. Leadership is more than what you did or what you put on the scoreboard; I feel like my impact was more than whatever I did on the field. I feel like it was in the locker room in the hearts and minds of the kids I was around.”

After the 2010 season, Rocker made the toughest choice of his life at that point to end his football career a year early and take a major offer from Microsoft as an account executive.

“I used my faith in the Lord to make me comfortable with my decision. When you realize and look back at a situation you can self-access and see what you are competing against and that is what I did. I had Brad Jefferson to the right of me and other players on the team who were as athletic gifted as I was and more talented. Looking through my lens of faith and putting my trust in God that there was something bigger and better for me, didn’t necessarily involve me continuing to play football. It was one of the most humbling moments of my life. It was also one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my life.”

Rocker had some trouble disconnecting from his team and reconnecting on a different level as a former teammate in the first year or two after his retirement from football.

“I felt like I had something to give them, I just wasn’t prepared to give it to them yet,” he said. “When I went to Fan Day the following fall, it was one of the hardest moments, seeing my teammates and knowing I wasn’t going to play with them again. There was something about the way they looked up to me as a leader that I could tell they thought I owed them something and I felt like I had something to give. That wasn’t necessarily something for me, but for anyone in my situation. Then one day I felt compelled to compile some lessons I learned in a book that could drastically change their lives.”

The literary medium isn’t the only way Rocker is trying to get into media. He has started a movie production company with former teammate and linebacker Osahon Tongo. One of their first duties is to raise money for a film project in Atlanta. The duo hit up coach Collins for a sales call reuniting them for the first time in many years.

“It is funny because with most friends you can pick up right where you left off even after a long period of time and that is exactly how it was with coach Collins. Osahon Tongo and I went to work with coach Collins on pitching him a movie concept. Osahon is a movie director out here and we started a company called Endless Sky. I’m the chief revenue officer and Osahon is the chief creative director and we are going to start producing movies. So, we were pitching him on the movies and when we went in there, it was my first-time seeing coach Collins in nine year. I felt just like the first time I walked into his office down there going toward the locker room in 2006 as a recruit. It was like we never spent any time away from each other. I think that comes from the authenticity of it. He is a player’s coach and players understand when a coach is truly genuine and care about them. Coach Collins is one of those coaches who possesses that, and it is something you can’t fabricate.

Tongo and Rocker hope to begin filming their movie this summer and they will be using a mix of private and crowd funding.

Rocker’s book is on pre-order via his Aspire Beyond website https://www.aspirebeyond.org/do-it-anyway/