Birden sees plenty of success after pro football career

By Cliff Newell

The Lake Oswego Review, Jul 3, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (7 Reader comments)

submitted photo

Former Lakeridge star J.J. Birden, shown here catching his first touchdown pass thrown by Joe Montana, played in the NFL for nine years and then returned to Lake Oswego where he has become a very successful businessman.

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To J.J. Birden, life is like a box of chocolates.

No, Birden has not been driven to a Forrest Gump frame of mind from all the hard hits he took during his nine-year career in the National Football League.

The former Lakeridge High School grid great is now an executive with Team X 88, a company that sells a delicious dark chocolate called Xocai, which has amazing healing and restorative powers.

Birden should know. He eats it himself.

“I was banged up from my playing days, and I was sick of all the Advil, Ibuprofen, Aleve and all of the other painkillers I had to take,” Birden said. “I started looking for some natural stuff that was unprocessed.

“I started taking Xocai (pronounced sho-sigh). It’s a natural anti-inflammatory, it’s good for my knees, it even helps my blood pressure. I love this product.

“I’m a skeptic. People are always trying to get ex NFL players to try stuff. But once I tried it, I fell in love with it.”

Birden felt that what would be good for him would be good for everybody else, and so for the last year he has been with Team X 88 distributors.

He manages to fit his duties there along with his other enterprises, which include being the director of Summit Rehabilitation and Wellness Center.

Add that to his wife and three children and you’ve got a very busy guy. But Birden has always been the gutsy sort, even before the days when he challenged tiger shark-like defensive backs — when he was the smallest player in the NFL at only 160 pounds.

A product of the inner city of Portland, Birden came to Lakeridge because he was in the very last group of students who were bussed in order to achieve racial balance in schools.

While doing his part to promote integration, Birden did even more to help the Pacer football team. He was good as a junior and great as a senior, making the all-state football team.

But where Birden really shined was in track as a sprinter and jumper.

“I almost won the state meet by myself,” Birden said. “I scored 29 points. The winning team scored 31 points.”

Ordinarily someone of such athletic accomplishments would be heavily recruited. But Birden was a mere 133 pounds. NCAA Division II schools liked him a lot, but the little speedster could get nary an offer from Division I, where he was determined to play.

The best he could do was a possible tryout at the University of Oregon from Head Coach Rich Brooks.

But not until he was a sophomore.

The good news is that he got the tryout and made the Duck football team. The bad news is “I had a most unimpressive college career in football.”

Birden said, “I started as a junior, but I broke my arm against Nebraska. As a senior I twisted my arm against UCLA. I had one touchdown my whole career.”

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