Is There Life After Football?

by James A. Holstein

  By the time elite players are knocking on the NFL’s door, they’ve been treated as special people for most of their lives. Their self-images and self-esteem can’t help but reflect the ways they have been perceived and treated. Elite players come to see themselves as others do—or at least as others say they do. It’s a social psychological truism: when people treat you as special, you view yourself as special.76

  The Dark Side of Special

  But as they come to see themselves as special, players come to expect special treatment. To be fair, this isn’t in every realm of life, nor on every occasion. But elite players routinely expect singular consideration within the context of their daily lives on campus—and maybe even back home. Mundane details aren’t their concern. They have to “take care of business” as it relates to their athletic lives, but that business is carefully mapped out for them. If they fail to register for classes, someone will work things out, smoothing over any bumps along the way. Their material circumstances are taken care of. When you’ve lived four years in a luxurious athletic dorm, why should you expect less? Kids want your autograph. Coeds want to date you. And, at the end, the pros come knocking. By this time, expectations can run high—realistically or not.

  The darker side of such expectations, however, is that elite athletes sometimes lose sight of conventions, rules, and regulations by which most everyone else abides. If rules don’t always apply, they’re easy to overlook or forget. Most of the time, it’s minor stuff. If a player stays up late watching Letterman and his grades begin to slide, perhaps the athletic department can find ways for work to be made up and grades salvaged. But this, over time, may lead to chronic irresponsibility in the academic realm that can seriously jeopardize the chance of earning a degree.

  Sometimes flaunting the rules leads elite players to run amok legally. Instances of property crime, assault, and sexual misconduct are unfortunately common. While public opinion certainly decries athletes’ misbehavior, systematic evidence is equivocal regarding whether college athletes are more prone than other male students to legal transgressions.77 But two aspects of this situation are clear. First, when student athletes run afoul of the law, and those situations come to light, the athletes are generally thrust under a bright spotlight.78 At the same time, colleges (and especially athletic departments) are notorious for downplaying, mishandling, or even covering up student-athlete–related campus crime.79 Serious offenses may never reach campus police officers or their off-campus counterparts because complaints are funneled directly to university or athletic department administrators. When violations are acknowledged—even serious ones such as sexual assault—they may be processed as “student conduct violations” rather than legal transgressions, thus allowing colleges to shelter student-athletes from public scrutiny under student privacy laws such as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).80 If things get really bad, colleges may pull out all the legal stops. They (or their agents, alumni, or boosters) often provide athletes with the best legal defense available, as well as institutional resources and power that can help insure palatable resolutions to sticky legal situations.81

  There’s certainly an obligation on the part of colleges and athletic departments to protect the rights of their student-athletes. Nevertheless, bailing them out of legal jams (both literally and figuratively) condones, if not encourages, the sort of selfish, undisciplined, or antisocial behavior for which college players are becoming increasingly well known. Repeated instances of hooliganism at college powerhouses such as the University of Miami, campus sexual assaults, academic shenanigans, and illicit financial gains cast a spotlight on college players that’s extremely unflattering. Helping athletes escape these encounters relatively unscathed contributes to feelings of entitlement and invulnerability.82

  Relinquishing Responsibility and Control

  William Rhoden is quite critical of how special treatment of young elite athletes shapes their lives and identities. He decries the effect of loading young athletes onto the conveyor belt that transports boys and young men into the mills of the “sports-industrial complex” where their talents are exploited while their selves are distorted.83

  The Conveyor Belt introduces young people to the worst ills of the contemporary sports-industrial complex while they are still young and impressionable. It’s at the camps where many first learn about the gifted athlete’s limitless entitlement. The better athletes learn that no wrong is too great to overlook, if not erase—that no jam is too severe to get out of. The Conveyor process makes a future star feel he is above the fray from an early age. Isolated on the Belt, the young athletes become accustomed to hearing “yes” all the time and having adults fawn over them and give them second and third chances because of the promise of their talents. The end result is often as evident on the crime blotter as in the sports section. No matter how focused and disciplined they are on the court [or field], young athletes are not given any restraints off the court [or field].84

  But the process does more than condone bad behavior. With others treating them as special, allowing them to bend the rules, and bailing them out, elite athletes inadvertently cede control of their lives to others who help them capitalize on their talent. This has the debilitating effect of preventing the players from learning to manage their own affairs—to take care of the consequential details of their own lives. Star players are steered through life without having to actually look out for themselves. When they are constantly allowed to go to the head of the line, get special help with assignments and exams, have the academic “bar” set conveniently low, perks become expectations.

  Taken to extremes, the process fosters a pernicious dependency, “infantilizing” young men who are ostensibly being educated and socialized into adulthood. Many elite football players—standing at the brink of adulthood—continue to be treated like children who are incapable of recognizing their own best interests or managing their own affairs.85 At the end of the day—or, more precisely, at the end of their college careers—too many big-time football players are less prepared to venture into the real world than are their non-athlete counterparts. They have been academically and socially sheltered, so that even if they earn college degrees, they haven’t acquired the academic and social skills, knowledge, aptitudes, attitudes, and sense of adult responsibility that usually constitute a college education.86 Nevertheless, it’s unfair to blame colleges for all players’ educational shortfalls. After all, for many players, a college education isn’t the ultimate objective. It’s merely the “final audition” for the NFL dream.87

  Restricted by the Dream

  By the time players reach the threshold of their NFL dream, they are thoroughly committed to its fulfillment. Their reactions on draft day—“I’ve worked all my life to make this dream come true”—are equal parts cliché and reality. No one makes it to the NFL without talent, effort, and commitment—an all-consuming personal investment of body and self. Becoming a football player is all that matters.

  This commitment requires sacrificing nearly everything in the name of football. Sociologists Patricia and Peter Adler contend that elite athletes submerse themselves so completely in their athletic roles that they lose sight of other interests, activities, and dimensions of their selves.88 They live in the company of athletes, work in the company of athletes, and relax in the company of athletes. There lives are isolated sanctuaries from the rest of the world. As their social worlds and experiential focus narrow, they neglect or abandon other aspects of their identities, becoming totally engulfed in the athlete role. This “role-engulfment” sneaks up on players. They start out playing a game that’s fun. They become enamored with the peripheral rewards that come to those who are good at the game. If they’re successful, by the time they reach adulthood, they’re swallowed up by the athletic role and have deemphasized all others. Their immersion is so complete that they become dependent on football to provide their sense of self identity and worth.

  Role engulfment is not necessar
ily insidious. It’s probably characteristic of most highly successful people, especially professionals. But it represents a trade-off, a commitment to specialization. It restricts one’s circles, especially social networks. For elite athletes, this often involves a sort of encapsulation in a peer culture where members share norms, values, experiences, knowledge, myths, heroes, hopes and, of course, dreams.89 Engulfment in football is necessary for elite players to achieve the dream. They incrementally modify, reduce, or bargain away other roles and commitments, as well as the attitudes, aptitudes, knowledge, and skills they comprise. As troubling as this sounds, however, it’s merely a radical version of what nearly everyone experiences as they assume adult roles. We narrow and specialize. We embrace particular activities and attitudes and abandon others. Elite football players experience this to the extreme, at a relatively young age. The rewards can be superlative. The costs are sometimes subtle and they may not be apparent until much later in life.

  Some argue that engulfment in football leaves elite players at the threshold of adulthood ill prepared to meet its challenges. Echoing many of William Rhoden’s sentiments, Troy Vincent, former Pro Bowl defensive back and past president of the NFLPA, implies that the seeds of NFL retirees’ problems have already been sown before players reach the pros. Troubles begin when players are told about their special brilliance while they’re still in high school, especially when college recruiters come courting. Players are easily spoiled by the resources and luxuries of college life, the adulation of fans, and the perks of stardom. They’ve been overindulged by “enablers” for years; it’s somebody else’s job to take care of their problems. From here, suggests Vincent, it’s a slippery slope to real troubles once the special treatment ends.90

  As compelling as this argument may be, its implications and conclusions are too simple. Players’ experiences before and during college are dramatically diverse. Not all players depart college entitled, irresponsible, uneducated, and spoiled. Michael Oriard may be atypical, but his path illustrates possibilities, contingencies, and options that confront most aspiring NFL players.91 Oriard grew up in a white, middle-class family in Spokane, Washington. He was a star at Gonzaga Prep, a first-rate Jesuit high school. Valedictorian of his class, he graduate with a 4.0 GPA and scored 1460 on his SAT. He had several options coming out of high school, but loved football and wanted to play for Notre Dame. With no scholarship offer, Oriard nevertheless enrolled at South Bend as what might today be called an “invited walk-on.” By his junior year, he worked his way into the starting lineup and as a senior was named team captain and second team All-America. He was drafted in the fifth round by the Chiefs.

  Along the way, Oriard earned his degree in English and won a prestigious Danforth fellowship for graduate study in English literature. As extraordinary as Oriard may be, none of this came easy. Two years of football practice without actually playing in a game takes its toll. Football didn’t hurt his studies, but it consumed virtually all his non-study time during the season and a considerable amount in the off season. As he earned playing time, on-field success, and recognition, any concerns he may have had about his engulfment in football began to fade.

  But Oriard wasn’t totally engulfed. He lived in regular student dorms and his friends were mainly non-athletes. By his own account, “The only difference between me and my engineering roommate was that I spent my weekday afternoons in football pads and cleated shoes.”92 Oriard also took his studies seriously. Starting out as a physics major, he eventually switched to English. Around the time Oriard was at Notre Dame, about 75 percent of the scholarship athletes in football were liberal arts or business majors; the other 25 percent were mostly engineering, premed, or prelaw.93 All of the seniors on the football team in Oriard’s class graduated in four years. His fellow starting offensive line mates had a 3.4 GPA. When he graduated, Oriard was not only in the NFL draft, but he was accepted into the Stanford University Ph.D. program in English literature. The Stanford graduate school is to English lit what the NFL is to football—the big leagues, to be sure.

  In light of this experience, Oriard reflects on his career leading up to the NFL:

  I played football . . . without making a single academic sacrifice. My daily schedule during the season was a Spartan one . . . but it was manageable. It also . . . was aided by my lack of any social life in the all-male environment of ND. . . . I left Notre Dame in 1970 with the best education the university could offer me, as well as a full college experience.94

  When Oriard speaks of “education,” he implies something beyond what he learned in the classroom. Certainly, his scholastic experience was superb, but he was also “educated” by having to navigate student life with a minimum of outside management. While he concedes that life on the ND campus was isolated, he was never cut off from other students. He was caught up in the activities and traditions of Notre Dame in the same way as fellow students—not just fellow football players. He left college for the NFL in pursuit of one of his dreams, but he kept another intact when he also enrolled in graduate school.

  I wondered how those two lives would mix. Should there be any conflict, graduate school would come first. I might play football for a few years, but teaching would be my lifelong profession. . . . Football offered the supreme challenge any player can face. Would I be good enough? As a kid I had dreamed of playing for the Los Angeles Rams. At twenty-two, I was less intoxicated by fantasies than I had been at eighteen, but I was fired by the realization that yet another dream might become a reality.95

  Oriard went onto an “average” career in the NFL (three years with the Chiefs, plus a final half season in the CFL), and an exceptional career in English literature, earning his Ph.D. from Stanford, then working his way up to the rank of distinguished professor of American literature and culture at Oregon State University, where he also served as associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts until his recent retirement from academics. He published seven books and dozens of scholarly articles on his way to becoming, arguably, the country’s foremost cultural historian of football.

  Michael Oriard and George Koonce took different paths to the NFL. Koonce was a more accomplished football player, while Oriard was the better student. One is black, the other white. One grew up in modest financial circumstances; the other was more comfortably middle class. One went to public schools, the other to private, religious schools. While it’s tempting to argue that the foundations for life success are determined in players’ formative years, it’s painting with too broad a brush to suggest—as have Troy Vincent and others—that players start down a slippery slope to ruin from the minute they encounter the myriad temptations and indulgences that come their way because of their special talents and special treatment. Oriard and Koonce aren’t necessarily models of how to deal with life leading up to the NFL. Rather, they illustrate diverse adaptations to the disparate and varied contingencies of their early years. Generational differences, race, social class, economic circumstances, family background, geography, playing ability, and just plain good or bad fortune vary from player to player, from life to life. These sociological, psychological, cultural and economic factors can all make a difference in later life outcomes.

  There clearly are some red flags, however, that signal possible potholes down the road. We would be injudicious, even foolish, to ignore them. At the same time, we shouldn’t single out a few key factors, taken out of context, and blame them for players’ later troubles. Perhaps seeds have been sown, as Vincent suggests, but ultimate outcomes are far from automatic. What we might learn from Koonce and Oriard is that players enhance later life outcomes by keeping options open as they pursue their dreams.

  2

  INSIDE “THE BUBBLE”

  Man, we all lived in a bubble. . . . The team took care of everything. They had you scheduled all day, everyday. It was our lives. But I loved it. And the fans—everybody loved us. In Green Bay, we could do no wrong. Everyone wanted to do things for you. People just wanted to say hello and
wish us well. Our meals were always “comped.” I never had to park my car.1

  NFL players live in a distinctive world of their own, a social sphere George Koonce calls “the bubble.” It’s an apt shorthand for saying that players are immersed in a cultural, structural, psychological, and experiential world that insulates them from many mundane aspects of everyday life. The NFL may be the most totally encompassing of professional sports institutions. It provides year-long training regimens, training camps away from all distractions, team facilities that cater to every need, and rules dictating behavior, comportment, and attire, both on and off the field. NFL players gladly hand over their lives because there’s so much at stake: the dream, the money, the fame, the belonging. Life inside the bubble instills a powerful “NFL player ethos” that comprises a unique worldview, a set of habits and expectations, and way of life that can’t be matched.

  Of course, life in the bubble isn’t uniform. Players differ and teams treat them accordingly. Conditions vary over time. Back in “the day,” the NFL was less professionalized and certainly less lucrative, but the bubble was there, even if it wasn’t totally encompassing. No description of a social world can be complete, so what follows is a brief sketch of life in the NFL, its culture, and the player ethos that constitute the bubble. It comes with a reminder: like all bubbles, this one is fragile. The average NFL career lasts only 3.5 years.