Former Buckeye Braxton Miller enjoying next phase of life

The Springfield native and two-time Big Ten Most Valuable Player can still be found on a football field from time to time, but he’s no longer the one dancing in and out of potential tackles.

He leaves that to his 8-year-old son, Landon, whose flag football exploits are not surprisingly the subject of plenty of videos on Miller’s phone.

Injuries cut short Braxton Miller’s football career after three-plus years in the NFL, but he was not lamenting that during an interview in Urbana last week.

Aside from enjoying being a father, Miller has plenty to keep himself busy.

That starts with developing his personal brand through his company, Charg1ing.

The concept he dreamed up while still at Ohio State has become reality, and it is growing.

Miller runs a flag football league and AAU basketball program under the umbrella, and he is part of a group looking into the possibility of purchasing the campus of what was Urbana University and converting it into a prep school.

“Charg1ng is something fun I do with the kids and staying active around sports and keep myself in the spirits of sports,” he said.

The inspiration for the name came to him at a low point in his young life. That was 2014 when a shoulder injury sidelined Miller for what would turn out to be a national championship run by the Buckeyes.

“I had to figure out what I was going to do,” Miller said. “I didn’t know if I was going to be able to play football again, so I created something that was going to stick with me, stick with my son that’s going to be here forever and last.”

He came up with the “charging” theme because it seemed appropriate both to his situation at the time — and the future.

“One of the things that tied into me was I had to refocus my whole mind, my whole body and recharge my whole mental state so I came up with the word ‘Charg1ing,’” he said. “Everybody’s looking to get to 100 percent, and we never get to 100 percent, so I just kept it as Charg1ng.”

That is not all Miller is into these days.

A lover of technology, he’s also become involved in a blockchain/crypto currency company called PAC Protocol that he described as “pretty much a 2.0 version of Dropbox.”

“We are the biggest data storage company out there as of right now,” he said. “We’re doing a lot of things with that. A lot of things are really positive with blockchain because it’s really encrypted. Nobody can tap into what you’re doing. There’s a lot of hackers out there. I got my website hacked before. I got my Twitter hacked, my Facebook. So that’s why I really encouraged myself to get into something that’s really secure and that I can understand.”

When it came to learning more about crypto currency, Miller found himself in a unique position — at least for him.

The guy who had been a big name on a football field since his freshman season at Wayne High School in the fall of 2007 was suddenly an anonymous fan looking to another well-known person for guidance in a new field.

That person was Tyler Winklevoss, an Olympic rower and investor who is best known in pop culture for a dispute (along with his twin brother and others) with Mark Zuckerberg regarding the founding of Facebook while they were all students at Harvard.

“I reached out to Tyler Winklevoss on Instagram not knowing if he would hit me back, but he did,” said Miller, who described Winklevoss as a mentor in the digital currency world. “I got into blockchain, got involved with crypto currency and after that it was great. The space is wonderful.”

Meanwhile, his place in the non-virtual world is Dublin, a suburb of Columbus.

“I enjoy the area and it’s one of the top school districts my son can attend,” Miller said. “I can get my feet grounded and give back to the community with the kids in my AAU program, my flag (football) league, my camps, etc. Columbus has been great to me.”

Still, he hasn’t forgotten his hometown or his high school alma mater.

Miller said he recently gave $50,000 to Inside Out Youth, a Springfield non-profit focused on helping area kids.

“Everything I knew from Springfield is nothing is given to you,” Miller said. “You’ve got to work for things you want in life, and going through the process and the struggle really builds your character.

“That’s what I tell people when I say I come from Springfield. It molded me into the person I am today, and I love Springfield to this day,” he said.

He also remains close to some of the people he met at Wayne, where he led the Warriors to the state championship game as a senior and also played basketball.

“Wayne really takes care of you like a family,” he said. “Some of my best relationships to this day are from Wayne. I didn’t know it was like that before I got there, but it’s pretty much like a brotherhood like Ohio State. Everybody stays in touch with you and with one another. It’s a community-based city, so I love it a lot. Going out there changed me into somebody I never thought I could achieve to be, but I’m here to this day and I’m happy I went to Wayne.”