[Photo:  condenast.com]

While Steve Young fulfills all the requisite duties of a former star quarterback, he’s never too far from schmoozing with people connected to HGGC, the middle-market PE firm he co-founded a decade ago. The firm has a niche within a niche - it specializes in acquiring majority stakes of enterprise software companies worth $300 million to $500 million - and it uses Monday Night Football games as marketing events.

When the season begins, Young and his partners buy a luxury suite for virtually every Monday matchup. Young, HGGC CEO Rich Lawson, and a handful of others from the firm travel from NFL city to NFL city, meeting with portfolio companies, acquisition targets, and customers.

Young turns out to be the rare ex-jock who’s actually good at private equity - doing original research to find takeover targets, learning how to model deals in Microsoft Excel, and helping to manage the companies after acquisition. HGGC has generated an average annual yield of 66% over the last 3 years, according to a firm presentation obtained by Bloomberg News.

Young says he may have quit ESPN years ago if not for his private equity partners, who like him to keep a high profile. When he works a Monday Night game for the network, he spends no more than an hour or two at the stadium preparing his commentary, he says; the rest of the time, he’s holed up in HGGC’s suite, cramming for deals. Once the game starts, he barely watches the action. A couple of transactions, he notes, have even been agreed to with handshakes in the suites.

“My wife hates football, and my kids don’t really care,” Young says. “I see myself as a deal guy first. I’ve put football behind me. Roger Staubach once told me - and I’ll never forget it: ‘When you retire, run. Never look back.’ ”

[Click to continue reading about Young’s Mormon upbringing and life on the way to becoming a HOF quarterback and successful PE executive.]