Is There Life After Football? (2 page)

Still looking for trouble? Late in 2013, Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez was arrested and placed under investigation for double homicide. Ryan Leaf, the second player taken in the 1998 draft (after Peyton Manning) and retired since 2002, was arrested in March 2012 on burglary, theft, and drug charges. Four days later he was rearrested for similar offenses. Leaf pled guilty to burglary and drug charges and has been sentenced to five years in a Montana state prison. In late April 2012, Texas authorities issued two additional warrants for his arrest. Leaf is just one of several recent additions to the list of convicted felons among NFL alumni. Some examples:

• Billy Cannon: counterfeiting
  
• Thomas “Hollywood” Henderson: sexual assault
  
• Dave Meggett: sexual misconduct and burglary
  
• Eugene “Mercury” Morris and Nate Newton: drug trafficking
  
• Lawrence Phillips: multiple assault convictions
  
• Art Schlichter: forgery and over 20 gambling-related felonies
  
• Lawrence Taylor: tax evasion, sexual misconduct, and patronizing a prostitute
  

While no one can forget O.J. Simpson, his actual convictions pale in comparison to some of his fellow alums'. Former Patriot and Colt Erik Naposki was convicted of homicide and received a life sentence without parole, but the standard may have been set by Keith Wright, a defensive lineman who lurked at the fringes of the NFL from 2003 to 2006. In 2012, Wright was found guilty on 19 charges including armed robbery, burglary, kidnapping, and false imprisonment, for which he was sentenced to a combined 234 years in prison.
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The litany of horror stories goes on and on. But are they the entire story of life after the NFL? Are there other stories to tell, other chapters being written? Former players have coached Super Bowl winners and
college national champions. NFL front offices are full of NFL vets. Fans love media personalities who graduated from the NFL: Michael Strahan, Troy Aikman, Howie Long, Terry Bradshaw, Boomer Esiason, and Herman Edwards, just to name a few. The list of NFL alums among successful local broadcasters is burgeoning as talk show radio and TV employ ex-jocks to talk sports 24/7, nonstop. While they've certainly capitalized on their football fame, there's also a long list of serious actors among NFL alums, including Jim Brown, Fred Williamson, Merlin Olsen, Carl Weathers, and, of course, O.J.

But former players succeed offstage, too. Ex-Viking Alan Page is a justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court. Jack Kemp, formerly of the Chargers and Bills, was a nine-term congressman from New York and U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Steve Largent and Heath Schuler were elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. Duane Benson, member of the “badass” Oakland Raiders, was a Minnesota state senator. There's a catalog of other successful professionals—physicians, dentists, attorneys, and educators, among others—who've launched successful second careers after the NFL. Willie Davis, Jerry Richardson, and Eugene Profit have made millions of dollars in business and investments. Herbert Blumer, an All-Pro for the Chicago Cardinals in 1929, went on to become one of the foremost sociologists of all time.

In light of these contradictory stories, the question
“Is there life after football?”
demands a complex and nuanced answer. Perhaps several answers. The recent cascade of tales of lives gone awry has predisposed the popular media and sports journalists to emphasize the perils of both playing and retiring from football. But these hazards have been around for a long time. For decades, former NFL players have complained—sometimes bitterly—of being discarded and forsaken. They contend that
both
the league and their own union have abandoned retired players once they can't produce on the field. Many have decried the NFL's and NFLPA's indifference to the plight of old-timers, and the media have been especially eager to offer sensationalized accounts, sometimes corroborated with poignant, sympathetic personal stories. But the media tend
to bury more mundane success stories in the process, leaving the public with little but visions of life after football as a cataclysmic mess. And they rarely have the patience for nuanced answers. Why do relatively young, capable men who are seemingly on top of the world so frequently fall off the cliff after retirement? Why has the lucrative financial situation of NFL players not translated into rich lives after football? What are most lives after football really like?

Is There Life after Football?
offers an “insider's” look at the challenges facing NFL players when they leave the game, but it also provides an analytic distance from which to approach the many paradoxes of NFL life. The book draws upon the experience and stories of hundreds of former players as they describe their lives after their playing days are over. But it also incorporates stories about their playing careers, as well as times before entering the NFL, to provide context for understanding their current situations. The research is inspired by the NFL life and “afterlife” of former player George Koonce. Koonce initiated the project with his doctoral research on the “life course” of professional football players. This research draws upon his many years of experience in and around the NFL and its players, as well as a decade coming to grips with his own retirement. Koonce was a starting linebacker on the Green Bay Packers' Super Bowl teams of the 1990s. He also spent a year with the Seattle Seahawks at the end of his career. After continuing his education—he now has a master's degree from East Carolina University and a Ph.D. from Marquette University—he returned to Green Bay to work for the Packers in a number of off-field capacities, such as director of player development. Koonce also held positions in the athletic and advancement departments at Marquette, and served as director of athletics at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. He is currently the vice president of advancement at Marian University. His involvement with retired players has deepened as a result of his research, and he is presently a member of the National Football League Player Engagement Advisory Board.

In a sense, Koonce is the consummate “participant observer”—a researcher who has been embedded in his research subject most of his
life. He's an authentic insider who has seen and done it all. Koonce's observations and insights inform the analysis throughout the book. In addition, the other authors (Jim Holstein and Rick Jones, both sociologists at Marquette) spent dozens of hours interviewing Koonce, conducting in-depth life history interviews. These interview data also appear throughout the book, with Koonce's stock of experiential knowledge of football, the NFL, and retirement supplying the empirical bedrock for this study. In addition, the book draws upon dozens of formal, in-depth life history interviews as well as many more informal interviews conducted with former NFL players—players with experience on a variety of teams, from different eras, playing different positions, from diverse social, economic, and racial backgrounds, and experiencing varying degrees of success and financial reward in the NFL. Several other academic studies of NFL players, former players, and their families also provide revealing first-hand data. Finally, the book draws on narratives and interviews on retirement-related issues from a wide variety of media sources, citing hundreds of players.
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The sports and entertainment media provide plenty of sensationalized, sweeping generalizations and judgmental conclusions about life after football. An anecdote here and there is usually deemed sufficient to warrant the claims. But an empirically narrow, predetermined focus often distorts players' lived realities. It's likely to ignore complexity and discount the mundane. Life after football is as complex and variegated as it is in any other segment of society. It's just lived in a spotlight, or under a microscope, but there's more to discover if we recognize and honor the complexity, nuance, and paradoxes of ex-players' lives that defy easy characterization.
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Recently, head injuries have been the big story. Prior to that, money dominated the discussion, with reports of monumental TV deals and collective bargaining agreements juxtaposed with lurid tales of profligate spending and bankruptcy. Crime, domestic violence, social relationships, sexuality, isolation, and addiction claimed the sidebars. But none of these issues emerges in a vacuum. Nor do they develop in stereotypic lockstep
with media images. Like everyone else in 21st-century America, former NFL players live at the complicated intersection of race, social class, gender, and the economy. Everyone faces the mundane challenges of getting by from day to day in a world of jobs, bills, ailments, and relationships. Life after football is no different. If the challenges are distinctive, it's due in large part to the radical social changes that players encounter when they exit the game. When NFL players leave football, they encounter a version of culture shock. They aren't just retiring from a job or a career. They're leaving a way of life, entering a world that is foreign to them. They know the language—sort of—but they speak a distinctive dialect. They've seen the sights from afar, but they're no longer tourists or disinterested onlookers. Now they live in the neighborhood. The world after football for some players is so different from what they've experienced for their entire adult lives that it leaves them disoriented.

NFL players are tough, talented, and well-compensated. Their lives revolve around competition and commitment. Violence and injury lurk around every corner. Teamwork, loyalty, and camaraderie are transcendent themes, juxtaposed with individual glory and respect. Beyond question, the NFL is a
man's
world, where masculine pride and character are constantly challenged. Even though players occupy the spotlight much of the time, they also occupy a private world, shielded, if not isolated, from the mundane world of everyday life around them. They live in a “fishbowl”—an arena where they are scrutinized, but also insulated from many of the routine demands of everyday life.

When a player leaves the league, everything changes. It's not just the money or the lifestyle. The codes and principles by which players live in the NFL bubble no longer apply. Players are no longer part of the locker room culture. Everything they're used to is up for grabs. But old ways die hard; the NFL imprint is deep. How players adapt to radical post-career changes can be excruciatingly personal, even if they might seem avoidable, trivial, or absurd to outsiders. On top of that, former players are challenged daily to work things out at the intricate nexus of celebrity and oblivion.

George Koonce's personal story provides a point of departure for examining these changes. As informative as his accounts are, however, they aren't definitive. Instead, his experience provides the narrative anchor for telling the broader range of players' stories. Koonce faced his fair share of challenges and changes. He's met with plenty of setbacks and successes. But his story isn't everyone's story. Sometimes it confirms broader patterns; sometimes it serves as instructive counterpoint.

To grasp the range of challenges, we must carefully consider what life was like while players were still
in the game
, as well as the standards to which ex-players compare their post-NFL experience. Players' lives both before the NFL and while they played serve as the backdrop for their lives after football. Understanding how players carve their niches within the NFL and embody the game's culture helps us to appreciate how they make their peace with life after football.

I had dreams of being a football player since I was a little kid. It was something I wanted from as far back as I can remember, something I've been striving for from the very beginning. Sometimes it was all that mattered
.
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NFL careers start with a childhood dream. On NFL draft day, absolutely the most frequent comment by players just drafted is, “It's a dream come true!” Of course, most American boys at one time or another dream of being football players, firefighters, or superheroes. But NFL players have devoted their lives to pursuing their dream through a combination of work, talent, and opportunity. George Koonce recalls his dream.

When I was a kid, I was going to be a football player, a basketball player, something like that. When I was nine years old, but even before that, I used to play behind the houses. I would go to the high school football games with my sister. I would be up under the bleachers with a bunch of kids. I wouldn't really be watching the game. I was trying to play my own game with other kids of my own age. But I really got involved at nine years old officially, when I started playing Pop Warner. Then it was official, when I had a uniform and there were guys [referees] out there in pinstripes. About that time, I started thinking about it seriously. My mom was going to night school to become a beautician, going to cosmetology school. Like a lot of parents, she told me, “You stay out of my room when I'm not there!” Well, I went into her room, and I turned the television on and there was a Monday Night Football game on. I went and got my shoulder pads, my uniform, and put it on while I watched the game. Howard Cosell was up there talking. I think the Houston Oilers were playing. I said, “I'm gonna play on Monday night!” From that day forward, I said I am going to do everything I possibly can to make that happen. I watched the Sunday games and read the
papers. I would save my money and get the Street and Smith [magazine] from the grocery store. I would ask my grandma to buy me sport magazines. I didn't know anybody personally who ever played, but I knew from watching on television that being a big-time player was special. For whatever reason, I thought I was special, and I wanted to be a part of that scene
.
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