Is There Life After Football? (15 page)

In fact, many former players forswear the term “retirement,” even though it's a handy way of warding off the stigma of being cut or released. As former Bear and Packer Stanley Davis put it, “I didn't retire. They just quit calling me to come back. I don't know too many guys that played this game that voluntarily [quit].”
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Another recent retiree puts a sharper
point on it: “I didn't have no choice. I was fired and there was nothing I could do about it.”
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Given this scenario, it might make better sense of ex-players' experience if we view them as terminated employees, military personnel receiving “general military discharges,” or even “dumped partners” in divorce proceedings. Only 40 percent of older retirees (over age 50) and 27 percent of younger “retirees” (age 30–49) report leaving the NFL voluntarily.
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This means that roughly two thirds say they got fired. In light of what we know about the experiential uncertainty of the end of playing days, and given the face-saving quality of saying one “retired,” versus admitting to being “cut” or “fired,” it's safe to say that a relatively small minority of players leave the game happily of their own accord.

These inglorious endings often leave ex-players without the exit strategies, routines, and rituals that generally wrap up careers and insulate retirees from the sting and stigma of losing their jobs. After the fact, a player may call the end of his career a retirement to save face or provide a sense of “closure,” but they're usually unhappy with the outcome.
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But just as we caution against the use of the retirement metaphor, we don't want to press the “fired” imagery too far, either. While many players are actually evicted from their jobs, their departure is usually open-ended (remember, “Stay ready!”). And not all players feel displaced “with prejudice,” as the term “fired” might imply. But the imagery of “fired not retired” does help account for the anguish, turmoil, and depression that doesn't seem to accompany the orderly culmination of other careers.
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The end of any type of career might be conceptualized in terms of “role transition.” As a role, an NFL career is a set of normative behavior patterns associated with playing the game. It's an attitudinal and behavioral script for NFL players.
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Retirement is a form of role
exit
. Sociologist H.R.F. Ebaugh has explored the complexities of “becoming an ex-” and draws some fascinating comparisons among various career exits. Nearly everyone is an “ex-” of one sort or another at some point in life—an ex-student, an ex-soldier, an ex-husband or ex-wife; we all experience
role exit. Several factors make the immediate transition from one role to the next more or less challenging. Ebaugh's research shows that it matters whether the transition is intentional and voluntary, as opposed to coerced. Controlling one's destiny is important in determining how people respond to life changes. So is navigating the experience alone or in a cohort of “exes.” Graduating from college with an entire class is an entirely different exit experience from retiring as a college teacher after 30 years on the job. Whether the change is irrevocable is also key as transitions can be more daunting if there's no going back. Finally, the importance or centrality of the identity left behind makes a big difference in how “exes” feel about leaving.
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Typical retirements often spark apprehension, but generally not to the extent that we hear from former players. Consider, for example, how an ex-minister recounts leaving the clergy: “It felt a little scary. I would be a liar if I didn't say I had some fear because there's always apprehension.”
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It's a familiar refrain, but it lacks the gravity of ex-players' laments. Most “exes” admit to initially feeling “at loose ends” or “ungrounded,” but the feeling isn't as encompassing or persistent as with NFL players. In a high-profile scenario in 1981, President Reagan fired air traffic controllers for striking. Accounts of the incident reveal that those fired “experienced feelings of anger, resentment, and self-pity. . . . The majority of ex-air traffic controllers also felt sad and depressed that they were no longer able to practice a career for which they had trained long, hard hours and which most of them enjoyed.”
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This scenario would ring true for many “retired” players. They're more like auto workers who are told not to report for work anymore than the auto company executive who gets a retirement party, laudatory speeches, and a gold watch. Players don't even get a pink slip and end up sitting alone by the phone, awaiting the ultimate confirmation that no one wants them. That's a hard way to go. George Koonce recalls feeling “
like a part of me had died. I didn't know where to turn.”
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It's a version of what some have called the “social death” at the end of athletic careers.
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While NFL player transitions appear qualitatively different from most career transitions or role exits, they do resemble transitions from other elite athletic careers. The literature on sports retirements is generally more conceptual than empirical, but it points to a constellation of interrelated psychosocial factors that offer some suggestive insights into the end of NFL careers.
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First, this literature notes that a career in professional sport is much shorter than most other careers. It's a “compressed career”
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that ends abruptly, due to injury, declining skills, age, or simply being “deselected.”
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This, of course, directly implicates the degree to which retirement is voluntary, accidental, or coerced.
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Perception of control over the end of one's career is often associated with the quality of adaptation to the sport-career transition.
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While empirical evidence is slim, more general research in clinical, social, and physiological psychology suggests that perceived control is highly correlated with optimal human functioning. In the few studies on athletes, the tendency seems to hold.
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Perhaps most importantly in terms of psychological impact, sports researchers suggest that the identity implications of retirement for elite athletes have profound effects on how they feel about their lives after retirement. For athletes whose identities and self-worth are overly invested in their status as sports stars, the end of a career may set off a cascade of negative outcomes. When self-esteem is tethered to athletic excellence, the end of the athlete role can pose major social and psychological challenges. Some elite athletes are so invested in their sport that they become one-dimensional at the expense of other domains of their lives. The loss of the structure of competitive athletics, social support, and the attention that surrounds their careers may result in psychosocial problems, although there is some empirical evidence that elite athletes are not especially prone to such “adjustment difficulties.”
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Sports sociologist Jay Coakley tries to locate all this in a broader social context by suggesting that the greatest challenges confront athletes whose sports careers may have limited their social sphere to other athletes and inhibited the
development of personal characteristics, life skills, and interpersonal dexterity that non-athletes generally acquire.
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This sounds suspiciously like life in the NFL bubble.

NFL players and “exes” frequently grumble that “you never leave on your own terms.”
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While this is typically a figure of speech, there's an important literal component that provides crucial insight into players' mindsets as their careers end. Players often replace the terms “cut” or “released” with the word “deselection.” It's used in both scholarly and vernacular parlance, ostensibly to neutralize the negative connotations associated with being “fired” from the NFL. But it's not “just semantics.” It's important to the way players think and feel about themselves and their careers.

More and more frequently, players who are out of the game, or who are contemplating retirement, arrange to sign one-day contracts with the teams of their choice in order to “retire as a 49er,” or whatever the team may be. It's ostensibly a move to bolster the players' identity as a member of “his” team.
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But there's more at stake with this symbolic gesture. As they move beyond their prime playing days, many players bounce around through trades, free agency, or deselection. They lose control of their football fates, as the end sneaks up on them. Many, like George Koonce, never announce their retirement, they just fade away.
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When it finally becomes apparent that one's playing days are truly over, some players reassert control by staging “retroactive retirements.” This symbolic ritual recasts the uncertainty of the players' departure from the league with the finality of a ceremonial “retirement,” with all the attendant positive associations. It's a way of repairing damaged identity and lost esteem that accompany a career that simply fizzles out. The growth of the “Sign and Retire Club”—whose membership now includes such stars as Donovan McNabb, Tim Brown, Jerry Rice, and Emmitt Smith
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—suggests a desire among players to take control and establish, if only for themselves, that they left the game on “their own terms.” It's a way of publicly proclaiming that they were “
retired
not fired.” As they
interpretively reconstruct the ends of their careers, players once again become valued members of the “families” to which they once belonged. Ultimately, the gambit may help players deal with the disillusionment, frustration, anger, and shame they experienced during their less than voluntary exits from the NFL. By revising the last chapter in their career stories, they rewrite the terms of their disengagement, at least symbolically allowing themselves to go out on their own terms.

There's typically some remorse—a bit of sorrow—at the end of any career; teachers, accountants, and engineers are usually a little sad to see it end, even as they look forward to retirement. But it's different for many NFL players, who typically feel profound loss. George Koonce recalls that a released player
“is a dead man walking. That is what they called you.”
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Will Siegel recalls the feeling when he was cut: “It was like losing your best friend, and that is you.”
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Stanley Davis, a former teammate of Koonce's, put it even more dramatically: “I lost the love of my life. . . . Everything you ever dreamed about, everything you've ever driven yourself for, is taken.”
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Former New York Giant Tiki Barber was virtually paralyzed with despair when he retired: “I couldn't figure out what to do next. . . . It was strange to not have people telling me what to do because that was all I'd ever known. All of a sudden there was a malaise taking over me.”
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For former offensive tackle Roman Oben, it took six months for the pain to set in. In July, when he would normally be packing for training camp, “I just started tearing up. . . . This is the rest of your life. . . . What the heck am I going to do? What can I put into my life that gave me the same passion?”
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Players often feel like they're sinking ships. There's nothing they can do about it and they're going down alone. As Koonce recalls,
“I was totally numb. It took me to a dark and lonely place. I was embarrassed to talk with friends in the league.”
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Many players
feel
cast aside and abandoned, no matter how ready they are for retirement. So they shelter and subdue their feelings, often
in self-imposed isolation. They'd like to “tough it out,” as they've always done, and that means swallowing their emotions and sheltering their masculine pride. Leaving the game puts their identities at stake—especially their
masculine
identities. In a sense, when they can't be football players, it's hard to be the
men
they once were.
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It's not just their jobs that disappear. So do the foundations of masculine identity and the camaraderie that underpin their character. Without the bubble and its locker room culture, players lose the primary sources of who they are as men, as warriors or gladiators, and they are left at a loss, feeling unfulfilled and empty. The loss is painful and depressing. As Koonce recalls, “
I was in denial. I lost confidence and I was out of my element when that call never came. I felt like I had nobody to talk to who understood what I was going through. When you leave the NFL, you are basically on your own.”
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Without football, many players find themselves at loose ends. Tiki Barber turned on the TV, watching an endless cycle of reruns: “You've been replaced on the field and you've been replaced in people's minds. That's when you start getting depressed.”
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For him, each set of DVDs was another way to avoid dealing with the uselessness he felt now that he was out of football. But escape isn't the only motive. Ex-players frequently say they took time to “decompress” after a lifetime of physical and mental duress. It's not uncommon for them to “take a break”—a year or two to “unwind” or “heal up.” Recalls an eight-year veteran cornerback, “I gave myself about three, four, or five months just to kind of, you know, make the transition. . . . I've been playing football—I've been doing this for about twenty-five years, you know, so I just wanted to give myself some time.”
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A fellow defensive back from the same era chimes in: “I kind of felt I need to go ahead and give my body rest anyway. . . . I said, ‘You know, I need to take some time off.' I took about a year, year and a half off where I really didn't do anything other than just letting my body recover from years and years of just pounding.”
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(Both players had suffered chronic injuries during their playing days.) Players also reinvolve
themselves with their families after years of being drive-by husbands and fathers. “I was able to spend time with family, my wife, my kids . . . really enjoy life because I started at the age of eight, and played football every year. . . . You're always trying something to train your body and to be the best you can be.”
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