Now this football star is all the Rage.

• Position: Roman Gabriel's management of arena football team Charlotte Rage

Former NFL star Roman Gabriel's father-in-law gives him a hard time about managing the Charlotte Rage, a team that mixes head-banging football with the thud of heavy-metal music. But his former teammates understand. "Most of them are working like myself at different things and realize the importance of trying to find some things that can happen," says the man who played in the National Football League for 16 years and was once the NFL's top draft choice.

That was in 1962, when the Los Angeles Rams got the N.C. State All-American quarterback for $15,000 a year. Today, a top draft pick makes that much each quarter. "I look at the kind of money that's out there today and can't believe it," the Wilmington native says. "In one year, you can be set."

But Gabriel, 52, is far from set. That's why he's involved in arena football, a sport that gets about as much respect as professional wrestling. And that's why he recently signed up as a charter member of the Quarterback Legends Club, a 46-member group of former NFL greats trying to capitalize on what was. The likes of Otto Graham, Roger Staubach and Terry Bradshaw have a three-pronged mission: keep kids off steroids, support charities and generate some cash from their likenesses on mugs, sweat shirts and posters.

"It's a way to give something back to the game," Gabriel says, "and, hopefully, make back a little of the money we missed."

The son of a Filipino waiter and cook on the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, Gabriel's football career...