Duck Defensive End Stars in CBS Comedy 'Ghost'

“And instead I drank an entire village-worth of it. No one’s ever done that. It had never been seen before and everyone’s losing their mind.

“And I was like: Is this a good thing or a bad thing? And when I saw the shaman laughing, I realized it was OK and just joined in on the laughter and it actually turned out to be a wonderful thing.

“But for a brief moment, I almost vomited and got kicked out of this tribe.”

The pilot didn't get picked up. Long could have been a real-life Bear Grylls, the guy who gets parachuted out into the wild and skins a dead camel to keep warm.

After Oregon Devan had a tryout with the Panthers, cut after getting injured in training camp. He said to the UO Alumni magazine, “Essentially, I lost my identity. The Devan Long that I had come to know identified as this football player; had a number after my name that was just taken. The rug was pulled out from under me. I was lost for a while.”

Long drifted. He did odd jobs, lived on the beach, tried to write screenplays. A comic and a storyteller in the locker room as a player, he was naturally drawn to acting.

He told Bryan Cairns of CBR, "Do a lot of athletes become actors? I know a lot of athletes want to become actors, but when they are faced with the stark reality of, ''You have to start back at the bottom of the food chain and work your way up again,'' I think a lot of them fail on that. Unless there is a straight-across leap… If you are a big enough star in whatever sport you are in, then you can cross over. The big agencies are like, ''Hey, we've got you here. We are going to put you in this movie, and we are going to make it work.'' It's not for everyone."

"But [for] the ones that do stick it out, the similarities are pretty clear. Acting is a team sport. Football was a team sport. We have coaches. We have directors. You have producers and managers. At the end of the week, you put up a game on TV. Everyone gets to watch it. We practice all week. We have a TV show at the end. If the show is good and gets good ratings, you keep going on. If your team sucks, you guys lose, and everyone gets fired. There are a lot of similarities in the preparation. It's more emotional and memory-oriented as far as learning what your story is versus football, where you have to learn all your plays."

As a Duck, Long racked up 24.5 sacks and 32 tackles for loss, three sacks in the 2003 Civil War. He fought off back and hamstring injuries that cost him part of spring practice, rarely missed a workout. In his redshirt year, 2001 on a No.2-ranked team, he was five-time scout team player of the week. Football taught him persistence, toughness.

In Hollywood he got a few commercials, then small character roles. He played a serial killer in "The Rookie." On "Bosch" he was Hart, the enforcer for an Oxycontin ring. In the DC Comics universe he became Flex Mentallo of "Doom Patrol."

About five years ago he got the call to audition for a role as a Viking on a new CBS sitcom called "Ghosts."

After the show became a hit, five years on CBS and streamed on Paramount, Long said to the Seattle Times, "Up until now, Hollywood has said my face does not look funny ... But I love making people laugh." The Viking thing came naturally, a voice he used to do out with friends, having a few drinks. Once he pranked his grandma, pretending to be a befuddled Russian mechanic. 

Growing up on Fidalgo Island in Anacortes, Washington, at seven he was mauled by a bear and learned to use a bullwhip. In high school he played wingback and inside linebacker, first team All-Northwest League.

Thorfinn haunts an old house in the Hudson Valley. He wears bearskins soaked in wolf's urine. He died in 1007 after being hit by lightning, loves cod, likes reality TV, hates the Danes. He has a crush on Flower, the hippie girl who died in the '60s after being mauled by a bear at an outdoor concert.

“I’m part Norwegian, and so I’ve always been kind of in touch with my Viking heritage,” Long explained. “On my 30th birthday, my mom gave me, like, a custom drinking horn. I had a Viking nickname that my family gave me, and that was like my alter ego for forever. I just loved getting to be a Viking because I’ve always had this strong connection to those roots in my ancestry. So when I got the role, I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I got this guy, done deal.'”

For Long, Thorfinn was a reflection of himself. “He’s kind of like me in real life. He speaks before he thinks, which is refreshing. Sometimes that’s the people you want to be around because you know that you’re getting the authentic version. You know you’re not getting anyone who’s trying to game theory or manipulate you. Instead, you’re talking to someone in real-time who’s showing you exactly how they feel about everything.”

A busy shooting schedule keeps him away from Autzen, but he says he still follows the Ducks.  “I love the program and what they’ve done. I love that every year Oregon’s in the mix. I’m so proud to have been part of it and to see how far they’ve come. Anytime I see anyone wearing an Oregon hat or shirt I look at them and yell GO DUCKS!”

He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and son, enjoys surfing and cooking, a long way from the days of being flat broke with no direction.

“With acting and football, you have to learn the playbook. You’ve got to learn the offense—we practice, we rehearse, and they call action; and you’re playing the game—the ball snaps, and you’ve got to throw it all out there and see what happens."

"Sometimes you make a play. Sometimes you drop your line. Sometimes it’s a good scene, and sometimes it’s a bad play, but at the end of the day if you have more good scenes, more good plays, you have a good team and maybe your team makes the playoffs or doesn’t get cancelled. 

“It’s all about doing your job, relying on others, and having fun.”