In this case, the customer was definitely right.
Chris Toth, an All-American offensive tackle, can now smile at the memory. Sometimes, it’s funny how things work out. And sometimes, it makes for a good story.
Toth, a 6-foot-6, 325-pound senior for Aurora University, was talking to a reporter Tuesday at Spartan Athletic Park in Montgomery shortly before the start of football practice.
It’s a far cry from three years ago. The 2017 Sandburg graduate was home in Orland Park working as a salesperson at an Apple store, thinking he was done with his favorite sport.
“This family came up to me and I was selling their daughter a phone,” Toth said. “The mother then asked, just out of nowhere, ‘What are you doing here?’
“I was like, ‘What do you mean by that?’ She said, ‘You look like you should be playing sports somewhere.'”
Toth told her he had played football but it didn’t work out.
“You’ve gotta get back out there,” the woman responded.
He did for AU, which went 8-3 last fall and opens the 2022 regular season at noon Saturday against Hope in Holland, Michigan.
Not long after that conversation, Toth ran into a former high school teammate who was playing for AU. He said the team was doing well in coach Don Beebe‘s first year.
He suggested Toth consider playing for the Spartans.
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“I had two more years of eligibility left and thought I might as well use them,” Toth said.
Along his parents, Tom and Gail, Toth met with Beebe and came away convinced.
“He really emphasized a family-like structure and was super positive,” Toth said of Beebe. “I was super impressed and informed him my goal was to go to the NFL.”
That goal is more realistic than it might sound.
Toth’s father Tom, also a Sandburg graduate, played at Western Michigan and was drafted by the New England Patriots in the fourth round in 1985.
Tom Toth played five years in the NFL, mostly with the Miami Dolphins, followed by a short stint with the San Diego Chargers.
Now, he works as a personal trainer.
Chris said his parents never pushed him toward the sport.
“If there was a sport, my friends and I played it,” he said. “Football was just the one that stuck more, the one I wanted to start taking more seriously.”
It also was the one he wanted to play at the next level, although he said in high school, “I was really nobody. I had maybe one Division II offer. I felt very unknown.”
It’s an aspect that changed quickly. Toth played two seasons at DuPage before receiving an offer from coach Lovie Smith and Illinois.
He spent the summer in Champaign but didn’t stay.
“There were some complications,” Toth said. “It didn’t really work out. I went home and was basically done with football, I thought.”
Then, the pandemic hit, extending his hiatus until that customer spoke up.
“I didn’t know her at all,” Toth said. “But I went back.”
And he drew plenty of attention.
He’s one of three all-conference offensive linemen — joined by Minooka’s Jalen Cole and Bolingbrook’s Jackson Nazos — who return for the defending Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference champs.
Last season, 21 NFL scouts came to check out Toth in practices at AU. And the interest continues.
“Chris grew to like it here and is a really quiet, unassuming guy who’s done an amazing job,” Beebe said. “He’ll get a (NFL) shot, there’s no doubt.
“He reminds me of a guy, Ben Bartch, who played for St. John’s against us in the playoffs in 2019. They’re almost identical in size.”
Bartch, who was drafted by Jacksonville in the fourth round in 2020, is one of the Jaguars’ starting guards.
“I’ve definitely fallen in love with the game again,” Toth said. “I guess you could say I was having my doubts a couple years ago, but I’m fully back, even more so than in high school.
“Coach Beebe and this school have just brought the love back for me. I can’t get enough of it now.”
It’s true customer service.