For many years, Major League Lacrosse players were well-known for simultaneously working on Wall Street while playing professional lacrosse. As years went on, players made an effort to work in the lacrosse industry, either with equipment companies or as coaches. In 2017, players are taking on a new field: media. MLL players now can be found on television, radio, streaming networks and podcasts.

As most lacrosse conversations go, the talk about players in media starts with Paul Rabil.

On Tuesday, the website SportTechie named the world’s 20 most tech-savvy athletes. The list featured household names such as LeBron James, Derek Jeter and Tom Brady, and it also featured Rabil, something which made him very proud.

“It’s great validation for a lot of the innovative work we do. I say ‘we’ because I have a team of employees that helped me,” he said. “I feel that we are being recognized for a lot of work we had to earn and didn’t come to us because we were part of a mainstream sport. We want to broker bigger audiences, branch out beyond lacrosse, and hopefully have them cross over. That’s our goal with our messaging.”

The New York Lizards midfielder is active on Facebook and Twitter, uploads his story to his YouTube page, co-hosts a show on Sirius XM with Paul Carcaterra, and just launched a podcast that focuses on the modern athlete as a player and entrepreneur.

Rabil has a lot on his plate, but his media endeavors are a priority.

“My approach is while the platforms are available to be there, it’s opportunity,” he said. “You can approach media two ways. The first is monetize and look at yourself as a company. As long as you have something to say and an audience to listen to it, you have opportunity. The second is to serve as conversation around a business. Athletes are using it to tell their story.”

Rabil’s latest venture — his podcast “Suiting Up” debuted on May 15 with a conversation with New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick — was an opportunity to enter a space he enjoyed.

“With podcasting, a lot of us are really active, whether we’re training in the gym or in a city or walking to or from work, in a car,” he said. “We’re often in transit and being able to listen, to curate the conversation, that’s interesting. That medium is becoming more and more popular. It was an area I wanted to be in. I was consuming a ton of podcasts. It’s a great way to learn.”

While the topic isn’t directly about lacrosse, talking to current athletes about balancing their careers with business ventures that supplement their income is not a foreign concept to professional lacrosse players.

Rabil may be the most noticeable lacrosse player in the media, but he said he can’t be the only one, and he isn’t.

Ryan Flanagan, Rabil’s teammate on the Lizards, has been working on ESPN’s lacrosse broadcasts since 2012, joining as an analyst at the same time as former Boston Cannons attackman Ryan Boyle.

“I love it,” Flanagan said. “I’m going to watch the games anyway, but it’s cool they give us a chance and encourage us to do the game.”

Flanagan began in the booth, but has since transitioned to studio analysis. Similarly, Boston Cannons midfielder Josh Hawkins is a studio analyst with Lax Sports Network and co-hosts a show, “Tilt and Flow.”

“I bring a different opinion, angle, a different story in terms of how I started playing and why I love the sport,” he said. “Being a black lacrosse player in a white-dominated sport, it’s a unique perspective, one we haven’t seen before in terms of mainstream media or media for our sport. I fell in love with it right away, and I saw an opportunity to share my story and perspective on the sport.”

Sharing stories is also the main reason Florida Launch midfielder Steven Brooks agreed to co-host “The Baggataway Podcast” with Gary Boylan, one of his fellow coaches at Paul VI in Fairfax, Va.

“It’s getting guys, coaching, players, stars, to open up about the game of lacrosse and hear their story,” Brooks said. “There’s always talk about how lacrosse has changed their life. It’s allowing those people to give the platform to discuss themselves and how lacrosse has helped them succeed or get through a rough patch.”

Brooks was able to pinpoint the moment he fell in love with his new job.

“I think it was when we finally interviewed Bill Tierney,” he said. “All I could think is, ‘Don’t ask something stupid, so you don’t burn a bridge.’ I asked him how he got into lacrosse, and Princeton, and he started talking about these stories and [Gerry and I] looked at each other in awe. There was a complete silence, and we’re like, ‘Oh no, we’re doing the interview.’ We got to the point where we were listeners. We forgot we were the interviewers.”

While they work for different media outlets, these players all have one thing in common: They did not have any media training prior to their new positions. Brooks never took a journalism or broadcasting class, though he did attend Syracuse, which has one of the top journalism programs in the nation. Hawkins was a communications major at Loyola, but he said his focus was more on public relations and marketing.

They all needed to learn on the job and faced several challenges. A common one is critiquing the league they play in and players they team with or oppose.

“We can’t do a weekend recap of the MLL,” Brooks said. “I don’t feel comfortable talking about a certain individual if I don’t know them well enough. You’re in this game, and the last thing you want to do is piss somebody off.”

Unlike Brooks, Hawkins will venture into negative territory, but admits it too is his biggest challenge.

“I have bosses,” he said. “I have head coaches. I have relationships throughout the lacrosse community that you can say whatever and say the wrong thing, being cognizant of what you’re saying but being real. I feel like I haven’t been fake or said things I regret later on.”

“It’s not easy, but it’s why people like to challenge themselves,” he added. “I’d go with walking that line as an analyst/player, not making people angry but making points and certain topics compelling. I’d have to put that as the hardest thing.”

On the flipside, the players face criticisms of their work and platform. Lax Sports Network has its share of detractors, but Hawkins explained the organization’s goal.

“We’re just a very young group that is motivated to continue to push lacrosse where everyone wants to see it go,” he said. “Investing in broadcasting and investing in watching and consuming the sport is something we’re trying to push and grow fans. Any way we can do that, we’re trying to do. We’re collaborating with everyone, from Inside Lacrosse to US Lacrosse Magazine, and not step on toes or push anybody out. We’re not competing. We’re just trying to collaborate.”

As MLL players transition into media and enjoy the process, they see it as something more players will get involved in. Flanagan wants them to know what they could be getting into, however.

“Every year, there’s so many guys interested in getting into calling college games,” he said. “It’s a lot harder than it looks. ‘It’s easy. I talk lacrosse every day.’ But when you have to articulate something and have a producer in your ear and are watching a replay, it’s harder than anything you’ve done.”

The newcomers may seem like some to competition, but Brooks welcomes the collaboration.

“I was talking to Tommy Schreiber and I said, ‘Hey, I see you’re starting a podcast,’ and he’s like, ‘Go figure. We start two weeks after you,’” Brooks said. “I said, ‘I don’t care.’ We want to help each other out.”

Rabil said that collaboration is essential not only to building individual brands, but the brand of lacrosse as a whole.

“In the influencer community, take YouTube, two influencers will do cross-channel campaigns. They’ll star in each other’s content, and both of their subscribers will grow,” he said. “Featuring Scott Rodgers, doing stuff with Kyle Hartzell, and sharing what Ned Crotty is doing or Rob Pannell, that’s a way that, one, you can create a platform for your peers to improve their following, and two, have more substantive content. It’s more dynamic and more interesting to see as a viewer.”

Since the dawn of MLL, a selling point of the league has been the players, both their talent on the field and their personality off it. With players as members of the media, not only do they get to show their own personalities, but they also share the stories of others. It is one way to grow the game.

“When I was first on Twitter, I’d tweet every day I was going to work out,” Rabil said. “That worked at first because it was a novelty. Now, no one wants to hear that. They know that. You’re a professional athlete. It’s how you create a unique message.”

“I think the more players that are successful in building off-field brands and having dynamic conversations with them,” he added, “the better our sport will grow.”