Is There Life After Football? (12 page)

The titles of recent books about the NFL offer a revealing glimpse of the NFL ethos:
Bloody Sunday; In the Trenches; The Ones Who Hit the Hardest; Blood, Sweat and Chalk; The Fire Within; Next Man Up; Coming Back Strong; Never Give Up on Your Dream; Where Men Win Glory; Boys Will Be Boys: The Glory Days and the Party Nights of the Dallas Cowboys Dynasty; Badasses; Football Hero; More than a Game
. Taken together, these titles adumbrate diverse components of the player ethos, which NFL players almost universally appreciate, value, and embody.

While players may not explicitly specify this credo, it permeates most accounts of their NFL lives. At times it's been called a “code” by which players live.
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This analytic treatment of subcultural imperatives appears in myriad descriptions of other insulated communities, the prison convict code or the code of the street in impoverished urban ghettos, for example.
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Applied to NFL players, however, the imagery is far too deterministic, implying a set of rules or guidelines that govern individuals' actions. It's also too simplistic, suggesting that players merely learn the rules—both formal and unspoken—then follow them. The ethos is more of an implicit accountability structure to which players refer when interpreting their own and others' behavior. As such, it doesn't so much determine actions as it helps players constitute the meaning of their experience.
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The following are some of the key tenets of the player ethos, many of which are closely interrelated. There are additional elements that might be included, but these are the foundational principles.

Commitment, Competition, and Excitement

Players are expected to commit themselves fully to the game. One of the game's most popular, yet banal, assertions is a variation on “We have to give 110 percent.” If a player isn't giving more than 100 percent—which, of course, is literally impossible—he's probably considered a loser. But the commitment to
winning
is even more celebrated. “Winning isn't everything. It's the only thing.” Being supremely competitive is a hallmark of the NFL. Longtime NFL media analyst Rich Eisen claims that the league's players are the most prideful athletes he's encountered: “They don't like to lose. At anything. To a man, when an NFL player walks on that field, he believes his opponents are trying to take food off his table and money out of his pockets, which means they are going after his wives and kids and maybe his momma too. That's how badly they want to win.”
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The spirit of competition spills over into nearly all aspects of NFL life. Says former player and coach Herman Edwards, “These guys compete at everything. That is why they are successful.” Former NFL lineman Leon Searcy confirms this: “I competed just as hard off the field as I did on the field.”
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Every team has its player who is known to be a “sore loser,” who needs to come out on top, no matter
what the game
—going all out to win at card games, dominoes, or ping-pong in the locker room, betting $2,000 that he can do more pushups than a group of other players, betting $10,000 on golf games, spending huge sums of money on jewelry, houses, cars, and women. “It is always competitive when it comes to spending,” offers former receiver Andre Rison. “You see your teammate and he has a big chain on, and it's bigger than yours. And so you sit there and say, OK, I'm going to go buy the new 911 Porsche and pull that up to practice and see how he likes that.”
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T.J. Ward of the Cleveland Browns refers to this sort of off-field competition as “stunting.” “It means to show off. ‘I have more than you so I'm going to stunt. I got this car. I got this jewelry. I got this girl.' Anything that kinda makes somebody jealous.” Ward suggests that this sort of competition is pervasive, extending so far as players competing with one another over who has the most and biggest firearms.
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This all adds up to an exhilaration that's hard to match. One former player says he got “goose bumps and the rush of adrenaline” just anticipating a game. Another described a game as “three hours of complete euphoria.”
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Michael Oriard claims that for some, the excitement's as addictive as any drug.
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Football, he says, is “life with the volume turned up . . . 500 watts per channel and a massive subwoofer.”
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Regardless of description, a powerful visceral rush accompanies competing in the NFL. “I hit [opponent] really hard. I mean, I destroyed him. That got the adrenaline flowing. . . . I felt like the superhero Colossus from the X-Men.”
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Pursuing sheer exhilaration, both on and off the field, is central to the player ethos.

Toughness, Injury, Masculinity, and Respect

Football is controlled violence, played with a “take no prisoners attitude.”
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Perhaps the most common and sincere way players laud one another is to acknowledge their toughness, their willingness to confront violence and not back down. All-time greats Walter Payton and Emmitt Smith, for example, were relatively small men whose greatness is generally attributed to their courage, toughness, and sheer will power.
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Brett Favre is forgiven his myriad interceptions and indiscretions because he is considered perhaps the toughest, most fearless competitor the game has ever seen. On the other hand, when players want to disparage an opponent, they're likely to challenge his toughness—say he's weak or soft. Even if a player is less than a sterling performer, he can hold his head high if he's considered tough.

Toughness and masculinity go hand in hand in most men's sports, but they're magnified in the NFL.
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One former NFL cornerback says it plainly:

Every day your manhood is being challenged. [Football is] a very masculine-based world. . . . And you have to live up to that. . . . If you're ever seen as a coward, then you're pretty much not going to fit in. . . . So you got to
prove every day or every weekend on Sunday at one o'clock or whenever that you're a man. . . . I think that is unique to our profession.
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The NFL ethos constantly holds players accountable to “be a man.” Masculinity is virtually compulsory.
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Of course this is often couched in terms of toughness and competitiveness, but it is also a matter of attitude and demeanor, on and off the field. For example, coarse, brutish behavior is commonplace during most team activities and profanity is widely considered the official language of the NFL.
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Sexuality is frequently implicated. According to Mike Freeman, “Calling a player gay is worse than calling him weak or even gutless.”
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To be sure, there are plenty of positive attributes in the NFL's masculine ethos, including courage, tenacity, loyalty, and brotherhood, but the ethos also narrows the range of acceptable behaviors to a manly profile that's exaggerated into a sort of “macho” hypermasculinity.

Being a man is crucial to winning respect in the harsh and competitive NFL world. It's among the very first things that come to mind when players talk about the essence of the game. There's a culture of toughness and respect around the NFL that's reminiscent of the code of the street and culture of respect that permeates the hard lives of violent inner-city neighborhoods. It's hard won and deeply cherished.
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The violence of the NFL game makes serious injury routine. It's simply a way of life, something to be feared, but also accepted. Certainly, players don't want to injure other players. There's an unwritten rule: “Don't mess with a man's livelihood.” Inflicting pain with a big hit, however, is another matter. And accepting pain and injury stoically is a necessity. George Koonce reflects on his experience:

Guys used to say, “You can't make the club in the tub.” Early on, I was afraid to miss a day of practice, so I never missed a single practice or took a day off, even if I was hurt. We were all eager to perform, so guys would often deny the severity of their injuries. It's one thing to be injured and another thing to be hurt. An
injury is something like a broken leg, when a guy can't play. But if he's only hurt, he can play through the pain. You just suck it up, get an injection, take pain medication, do whatever you have to do to play the game. Being hurt is just part of the game
.
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The unspoken message is clear: if you're off the field due to injury, someone else will replace you. Players often conceal their injuries from coaches and trainers, “suck it up,” and find a way to play.

Players and the NFL game seem larger than life. For decades, image and reality have fed off of one another, creating a colorful mythology about players' excessive penchants and proclivities. For some players, “livin' large” is a lifestyle, a full-time commitment. It's pursuing a life that's as fast, reckless, and oversized as the bodies that play the game. It's reveling in gargantuan appetites and enormous excesses: fun, food, drinking, clothes, jewelry, women, among myriad other pursuits. It's pushing life to the fullest.
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Extravagance is the byword. For Michael Irvin, it's a dozen women. For Andre Rison, it's “making it rain. We're talking about throwing money up, and watching it come down like rain drops . . . going to a strip club and just throw your money all up in the air. . . . We have moved far beyond raining to snowing. Instead of $5 bills, now you are flicking $100 bills.” Leon Searcy fills in some details: “I'm in the car with another football player, and I bought me some jewelry, about $50,000 worth, and this guy wrote a check in the car, with the jewelry guy behind us, for like $250,000. . . . If you looked good, played good, they paid good. That was our philosophy.”
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As a corollary to excitement, livin' large can take off-field thrill seeking to decadent heights, perhaps involving gambling, firearms, or drugs.
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Livin' large is more than simply the pursuit of extravagance. It's also an attitude toward one's self in relation to norms and conventions that takes “stunting” or “stylin'” to outrageous heights. It's trying to assume mythic status, to stand outside the rules and customs that typically tame
social behavior. Livin' large, players may adopt outsized, even outrageous personas, if not personalities. Casual talk and behavior may push the boundaries of civility, typically exaggerating the hypermasculine ethos that permeates NFL environs. Livin' large isn't necessarily malicious, but it is intentionally conspicuous. It often inscribes its signature by way of flamboyant nicknames: “Hollywood,” “Neon Deion,” “Broadway Joe,” “Prime Time,” “Cadillac.” There's plenty of space for livin' large inside the bubble.

Nowhere is fellowship or camaraderie deeper than in the locker room. Indeed, the locker room becomes a home away from home. As former defensive tackle Mike Golic puts it, “You are with your teammates more than you are with your family.”
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“In that locker room,” recalls Tommy Jones, “we did everything. Hung out. Played dominoes. And then you think about the misery, the times of the wins, the losses with those guys. That is something that can never be replaced.”
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Locker room culture magnifies aspects of the family atmosphere, with a decidedly masculine twist. The locker room is the home of bravado, obscene language and crude behavior, horseplay, hijinks, pranks, and practical jokes, accounts of which can make legends of otherwise nondescript players.
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For most players, the locker room is sacred ground. To appropriate a now-popular adage, “What happens here stays here.” Signs to that effect have hung in NFL locker rooms for decades.
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Locker room privacy is sacrosanct. It's the inner sanctum where family matters stay in the family. Upholding traditional family values, however, is another matter. Remember that profanity is the language of choice in the locker room and that “macho” may not be a strong enough term to describe the locker room's ambiance. Says the wife of one NFL player, “I never let [our kids] go there. It's an adult male place. . . . They were just out there cussing and grunting and tying to kill each other. I don't want my boys around that.”
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According to the player ethos, nothing in the locker room is divulged, but everything is shared. And honesty among players is the coin of the
realm. According to Hall of Famer Jesse Dampeer, “You don't lie [to teammates] . . . so there is an aura of truth about the locker room.”
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Players will disclose legal transgressions, marital infidelity, even betrayals of the team, with the full expectation that the discussion goes no farther. It's a sacred trust that transcends other obligations. And that trust extends to the expectation for teammates to “have your back,” to stand up—even cover up—for you if the need arises. Ultimately, the locker room is a state of mind more than a physical locale.

Locker room culture is also shaped by the fact that, in recent decades, the NFL has been populated mainly by African American players. The 2013 Racial and Gender Report Card indicates that in 2012 about 66 percent of NFL players were African American and about 30 percent were white. The percentages have hovered in this range since 1990. About 15 percent of head coaches have been African American over this time, and the percentage of African American assistant coaches has been in the vicinity of 30 percent.
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This means that African Americans numerically dominate the locker room, and have for decades. In many respects, the NFL locker room turns American racial distributions upside down. Outside of football and basketball, there's hardly an American social institution where whites find themselves in the minority. This has notable cultural implications.
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African Americans are integral to team leadership. They comprise most of the star players. African American preferences (to the extent that such things might be linked to race) in music, attire, and cuisine shape the contours of the locker room. “Black style”
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sets many trends.