The Game: Hip-hop’s gangbang slanger had a promising college basketball career before drugs deaded it.

“I had a scholarship to Washington State, but my hoop dreams deflated because of drug allegations during my freshman year,” he says. Before that, he had played with Tayshaun Prince, Gil Arenas, Tyson Chandler and Baron Davis – all making millions in the NBA now.

via Hoopshype

Tim Commerford: Rage Against The Machine’s bass maniac was a pro baseball prospect before an injury turned him into a musician: now he’s a near-professional mountain biker in addition to his bottom-end pursuits.

Commerford hops on his Intense Uzzi VPX whenever he wants to go for a spin. “I’ve bought so many of their bikes over the years,” he says. “My bike is flickable – you can hit jumps on it and climb on it.”

via Rolling Stone

Bruce Dickinson: Iron Maiden’s epic vocalist is an internationally-ranked fencer – and even owns his own fencing gear company, “Duellist”!

Incongruous as it may seem, the man who wrote and recorded Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter for the Nightmare on Elm Street 5 sound track was also the seventh-best foil fencer in Great Britain during the 1988-89 fencing season.

via Maidenfans

Tommy Guerrero: Guerrero was a pro skater before becoming a don of downtempo funky grooves; Rolling Stone even put Guerrero’s Soul Food Taqueria album at #3 among 2003’s best releases.

Guerrero made his name in skateboarding in 1984 when, as a young teenager, he entered the first streetskating competition, held in Golden Gate Park. The only amateur involved in the event, Guerrero won, beating out 15 well-known professionals.

via KQED

Nelly: This St. Louis multiplatinum rapper was a fierce competitor on the field,  working his way up through baseball’s minors before the lure of the streets, and then hip-hop, got him.

I won an MVP trophy with the St. Louis Amateur Baseball Association. I didn’t even start. I was a sub on this team. This was like an All-Star game where we had athletes from different teams, different mixtures. We had like the only black team in the league, basically.

via ESPN

1. Richard Ashcroft: Before he was singing bittersweet symphonies with The Verve, this psychedelic shaman was considered a top candidate for a pro football/soccer career. Apparently, he took part, albeit briefly, in the Legends football match against Germany in June.

“My leak was the football. To the age of thirteen years he was one of the best in the football team of the school. At the age of fifteen to being present at Soccer Bobby’s Charlton School. The football was replaced by another obsession: The music.”

via Myspace

2. Greg Dulli: This dark and stormy confessional rocker was a high school baseball and football hero before he became an anti-hero in the Afghan Whigs.

“I played basketball all through school and then even played in this 30-and-under league for a little while. It’s funny, as long as I’ve known him [Lanegan], I guess we’ve never been around a basketball court, but at some point this run [we should]. We threw a baseball on the last Twilights tour, in North Carolina, and my arm hurt for a week after that. But Mark pitched in high school.”

via Pitchfork

3. Scott Weiland: The STP/Velvet Revolver frontman wasn’t always a scrawny junkie – he once played basketball on his Orange County high school team.

“I started playing music as well and when I hurt my back junior year, it was right before the season started and I told the coaches that I didn’t think I was going to continue. So I said I think I’ll continue with my band, and I was in the Magical Ensemble, this top singing group in school. The varsity football coach and wrestling coach told me how I was going to ruin my life and I was letting everybody down.”

via  Journal Gazette

4. Rod Stewart: Mr. “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” was making his way up the ranks of junior soccer clubs before rock stardom struck.

Very early, Stewart realized that soccer was a chance for him to earn a good living. He practiced hard everyday, and in his late teens he signed an apprentice contract to play with the Brenton Football Club.

via Oral Cancer Foundation

5. Topper Headon: Few people know that the ‘Human Drum Machine’, drummer for the Clash was an ambitious footballer that seemed to come to music by fate.

This punk rock drummer who played for the Clash remains hugely underrated, so it comes as a surprise to learn that he arrived at the profession by accident. Aged 13, a broken leg put paid to his footballing ambitions and it was a doctor who suggested the drums as a way of venting his frustration. Within six months he was playing for a jazz band in a Dover pub.

Via The Independent