Growing up in Washington, Missouri, David Hoffmann was a hard-nosed kid with a strong right arm. He starred for the Washington High Blue Jays in football, where he played quarterback, as well as basketball and baseball. He captained all three teams.
Hoffmann hadn't given much thought to college. Others had.
One day his football coach asked, “What are you going to do about all these letters you’re getting from colleges?”
Hoffmann looked at him.
“I thought they just kind of sent those out to everybody,” he says.
Eventually, he narrowed it to two scholarship offers: football at Wake Forest or football and baseball at nearby Northeast Missouri State. He liked the idea of Wake Forest, but Northeast Missouri State was only three hours away.
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His father said, "Dave, if you go to Wake Forest, I'll never get to see you play."
Family and his love of baseball won out, and he headed to Northeast Missouri State.
He tore up his knee during football preseason and was redshirted. By spring, he had recovered and was the baseball team's starting second baseman.
At the first home game, his football coach called him over.
"I'm going to see you at spring practice tomorrow," the coach said. "You're done with baseball."
“But coach,” Hoffmann protested, “I got a letter that says I can play football and baseball.” “That’s before you got hurt and didn’t play football your freshman year,” his coach said. “Now, I need you and you need to be there.”
Chairman David Hoffmann chose to attend the University of Central Missouri instead of Wake Forest because his now-wife, Jerri, was going there.
Hoffmann was sorely disappointed. “That just didn’t sit well with me,” he says. “I did what he said, because I was on a scholarship. And I did quite well in football. It was between me and another young guy to start at quarterback. But it just ate at me that I wasn’t playing baseball.”
The following spring, Hoffmann broke his thumb and separated his shoulder in football practice. “I got through all that, and I was healthy again,” he says, “but I’d never gotten over not being able to play baseball, and I just didn’t feel the same about things.
“Wake Forest called me and said, 'Hey, we heard you might be thinking about leaving Northeast, and our offer still stands.’
“Meanwhile, though, I’d gotten engaged to Jerri, my high school sweetheart, and I asked her to marry me. She said yes, and I asked her daddy, and he said yes, but then I went and told her dad I’d been offered a scholarship at Wake Forest, and I’d like it if Jerri could transfer there to go to school with me.
“He said, ’She’s not going to go to Wake Forest.’”
That settled it.
"So, I quit football and transferred to the school where she was, the University of Central Missouri. And we got married, and I worked my way through school.”
He chuckles.
“I always say I married her for her money. When we got married, she had $300 and I had $100.”
Hoffmann baled hay and waited tables to pay his way through college. He graduated with a degree in industrial safety and occupational health before beginning the business career that would eventually make him a billionaire.
