Is There Life After Football?

by James A. Holstein

  Many NFL alumni turn down the volume on the ethos and manage their financial circumstances responsibly, adroitly, and conservatively. Spending isn’t a personal compulsion or an irresistible cultural imperative. It isn’t necessarily contagious. Most players avoid the “broke” syndrome. Vestiges of the ethos may keep former players from bragging about their conservative lifestyles or their tax-free municipal bonds, but their success stories also need to be told.

  It goes without saying that self-discipline is the foundation of these stories. They also include chapters about sensible, supportive wives and families, and concrete plans for life after football. Prudence and foresight are cross-cutting themes. Hakeem Chapman—who grew up in the same Compton neighborhood as Tommy Jones—offers compelling reflections.

  Prepare for tomorrow. That means look at the things that you want to do with your life. Do you want to be in a position where you are comfortable? That worried me a lot. . . . The kids now, they [should be buying] the things that you need right now, not what you want. That is the key thing. Later on, you can buy what you want. . . . There are players, they sign a $10 million guaranteed thing [contract], OK. They don’t realize that the government gets one third of it, 35 percent. Then they [players] are going to go for [big ticket items that lose their value]. . . . You should buy the things that you need, not the things that you want.86

  While there’s no strict formula, the trick is to resist the NFL imperative to live large. Rod Smith, formerly of the Denver Broncos, points the way. Smith graduated from college with three business-related degrees but no ticket to the NFL. He wasn’t drafted in 1994, went to training camp and was cut by the Patriots, made the Broncos practice squad, and eventually became a stalwart wide receiver. His humble beginnings taught him some important lessons:

  I had a chance to be in the NFL, but not a chance to be in the NFL lifestyle, because I didn’t have the income for it. I didn’t come into the NFL with money. I started on the practice squad making $60,000 my first year. It was a whole lot of money to me, but nothing in comparison to the lifestyle of the guys I was around in the locker room. I was making $3,000 a week and people around me were making $100,000 per week. You could get caught up in that.87

  Smith’s first lesson was clear: Beware of “livin’ large” beyond one’s means. It stuck with him, and he remained frugal, even as his contracts grew:

  The most luxurious thing I bought was my house. I wasn’t a big jewelry or car guy. I don’t have Ferraris and Bentleys. I had a motto that I lived by, “There are two places I want to look good at: home and practice.” Most guys get caught up in looking good on the streets. If you have to show people you have money, you’re not rich.88

  Smith’s caution was reinforced by fear—fear that it could suddenly end and he would be out in the financial cold, even if he was, by the latter part of his career, making good money:

  I snuck up on my locker for 14 years. I saw them fire people, and when they did, the first thing they did was take their name off of the locker and put their stuff in a trash bag. That was my fear. For 14 years, I walked up to my locker, saw my name and thought, “I have one more day.” I was always in fear that one day they were going to decide I wasn’t good enough. I took advantage of every day and went to work.89

  It’s especially significant that this is Rod Smith talking: a 12-year veteran; twice All-Pro; three time Pro-Bowler; two Super Bowl rings; holder of the NFL record for catches, yards, and touchdowns by an undrafted player. If his fear of failure was eventually unfounded, it was powerful motivation to keep his eye on the eventual financial prize and stay focused on the big picture. Smith worries that today’s players lack the work ethic, the foresight, and the humility to maximize their prospects: “You have these guys who call themselves celebrities now. They are not professional football players. As soon as the reality show is over, real life hits, your career is over and you are broke. If you look down and there aren’t cleats on your feet, that’s a problem.” Smith’s apprehension about his career ending made him “more conservative” and ultimately more financially successful. “That fear has me here [after retirement], living the way I want to live.90

  When all is said and done, we’re left with opposing images of financial lives after football. One has players literally spending themselves into oblivion during and after their careers, supporting family and friends, livin’ large, taking bad advice, and making bad investments. A competing vision shows young men conscientiously building financial security, spending conservatively, investing wisely, partnering with sound advisors and, above all, planning for life after football. Why, then, do so many players choose the extravagant path?

  There’s no simple answer. Players and circumstances differ. There’s one thing former players have in common, however. They’ve been in the bubble for years. Consequently many have had little responsibility for managing the mundane details their lives. As William Rhoden suggests, the “football machine” creates dependency. Players show up to play, Andrew Brandt reminds us, and colleges and the NFL take care of the rest. But who takes over when the end arrives? No matter how many times they’re warned to plan for the long term, many players fail to see the big picture. What captures their attention? It’s the locker room culture, the NFL player ethos, and the hypercompetitive, hypermasculine atmosphere in which they’re totally immersed. It’s the allure of livin’ large. These influences are fundamentally incompatible with financial life outside the bubble.

  6

  WHAT’S NEXT?

  “What do you want to do after football?” “After football? There’s nothing after football!”

  —NFL quarterback Tom Brady1

  NFL players hold their dream jobs, but former players are “out of work” with time on their hands. They are “exes”—out of the bubble, no longer gridiron gods. “What’s next?” is a complicated question with significant financial and identity implications most men their age don’t have to face. Understandably, most former players want continuity in their work lives, but there’s no NFL seniors league. They’re not expressly looking to duplicate the NFL experience, but they do search for elements that made life in the bubble so satisfying. This process sometimes leads them to unrealistically narrow their options.

  More Myths

  Like the “broke and bankrupt” myth, there are several problematic narratives about NFL players’ work lives after football. The first is that most players are financially “set for life” and never need to work again. A second holds that former players are broke and can’t seem to find and hold respectable jobs. They wander aimlessly, living in the past, complaining about the present, and fading quietly and desolately into oblivion. While elements of these narratives are often true, they’re also crude caricatures.

  Given the shortness of the average career, most former players are in their twenties when their playing days are over. Only a very few are older than 35. And like others of their age cohorts, they typically settle into jobs to support themselves. The NFL Player Care study found that around 70 percent of former players say they are “working now” in some capacity. It’s hard to know exactly what this means, especially since the study doesn’t specify precisely what “working” means. Nearly 30 percent of those surveyed are over age 65—typically considered the retirement threshold. We wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t have jobs. Over half the players surveyed have reached 55, the age when full NFL pensions kick in—another good reason not to hold a job. Nevertheless, most NFL alumni are working at something. Younger alumni (30–49), however, are about 12 percent less likely to be working than men of the same age in the general population (78 percent versus 90 percent), but older alumni (50-plus) are about eight percent more likely to be currently working (66 percent versus 58 percent). Overall, former NFL players appear to be better off financially than their age peers, as a group. These statistical trends correspond to several noteworthy challenges in former players’ lives.2 (See Appendix 2 for a brief summary of retired players’ in
come. There’s no good estimate of their current total worth.)

  Recently, the Wall Street Journal noted that “just 49.2 percent of NFL retirees between 30 and 49 years old had jobs within a year of leaving the league.”3 Highlighting these “poor employment figures,” the article implies that former players have trouble finding work, largely because they lack the background and training necessary to hold 21st-century jobs. The NFL and the NFLPA have been sensitive to this narrative for years. Embedded in this perspective, however, is a fundamental misunderstanding about the end of NFL careers. As we’ve seen, most players don’t consider their football careers to be over for a year or two after they’ve played their final games. The fact that only 50 percent of former players have jumped into new jobs during that year in limbo isn’t surprising. Most don’t consider themselves to be finished with football. Their failure to find new jobs hardly indicates, by itself, that players are unemployable.

  That’s not to say, however, that finding jobs is easy. Accounts of post-career financial failures often implicate players’ inability or unwillingness to find work after football. Not only do we hear of players going broke, but stories abound of players waiting idly for opportunity to come their way, bouncing from one venture to another, or mismanaging businesses. We’re told, for example, that less than one half of one percent of former players have historically been able to make successful transitions to business careers.4 Nevertheless, this simply doesn’t jibe with the Player Care study or other systematic research. Indeed, the percentage cited is so small that even anecdotal evidence challenges the assertion. As with similarly audacious statistical claims, it’s hard to know where such figures come from and how they are derived. Regardless, the media have taken note and increasingly highlighted post-NFL problems.

  Unfortunately, there’s little systematic data on what sorts of jobs players pursue after they finish with football. There’s no inventory of where they work or in what capacities. Given their proven willingness to work hard, their ability to learn complex plans and procedures, their capacity to analyze situations on the fly, and their discipline in pursuing success diligently, players have succeeded in just about every career imaginable: doctors, lawyers, business tycoons, investment managers, politicians, judges, coaches, teachers, preachers, movie stars, and owners of bars. But not everyone succeeds, and their challenges and failures aren’t arbitrary or capricious. There are some notable patterns to former players’ work lives—both successes and failures—that emerge in relation to the unique circumstances of living in the bubble for years, then confronting an involuntary and uncertain ending.

  Starting Up, Starting Over

  Refusing to concede that their playing days are over, many players spend months, if not years, working out and trying to make a roster. This keeps them out of the job market for a year or two, with long-term implications. It took George Koonce a couple of years to go back to school and get a job in athletic administration. Others have similar stories. They are often “paralyzed,” and sometimes the paralysis isn’t temporary. Recall, for instance, how Brandon Gold ended his career. He stayed home, relaxed on the beach, worked out, read the Bible. But somewhere along the way he realized he had another life to lead. That involved a decade-long struggle.

  [Finding] a job is extremely difficult. I have humbled myself so much now. I will do whatever. . . . I’m a great guy, but I don’t know what I am supposed to be doing. . . . You have to reinvent yourself . . . and you are going to need to do something totally normal.5

  Gold is ambivalent about assuming new professional statuses and roles. He was “humbled” after all the excitement, glory, and money of the NFL. He needed to become someone new, doing something “totally normal.” Money and identity were both at stake. These dilemmas resonate throughout Tommy Jones’s saga:

  [Entering a new profession] wasn’t going to pay me the type of money that I want right now. I wasn’t thinking about [the job] being beneath me. Yeah, that was part of it. . . . I was used to having checks for thousands, and to just be on a salary for $15 an hour, I just couldn’t do that.6

  Entangled in family finances and poor decisions, Jones had fiscal qualms, but also had ego problems. He put off getting his college degree or getting onto an alternate employment path. Suddenly, he was 15 years down the road, having made little progress. “I kind of put everything on the back burner. I wasn’t even thinking about going to school at that time. . . . To be honest, the years just went by. . . . It was tough to swallow at first, and for four years after retirement, I didn’t want to get a job.”7 A decade later, Jones had no steady job or source of income. He’d dabbled in some investment schemes in the clothing and recording industries, but those failed. While he still had plans, he remained captive to his initial post-football inertia and lofty expectations.

  Aversion to the Ordinary

  Gold and Jones both allude to the ego sacrifices entailed in taking ordinary jobs, doing something “totally normal.” One of the most frequent observations former players make about their football careers is how exciting they were, how much players craved the intensity and attention that were part of the bubble. Hakeem Chapman, a veteran of five Super Bowls, sums it up:

  There is nowhere in the world you can go and get that same feeling you got when you were out there on that football field playing ball. You didn’t have that type of excitement when you got married or with the birth of your child. You can’t find it anywhere. You played in the Super Bowl. You tell me [where] to find that kind of excitement that you had in the Super Bowl. I’m still searching for it—that high.8

  Having been special for years, players love the adulation. They’re virtually addicted to the excitement and attention. Doing something else for a living pales in comparison. So, when Tommy Jones balks at taking a mundane job—“Not necessarily that that was beneath me to do, but I just didn’t want to do that right now”—he’s looking down from a lofty professional pinnacle. It’s hard for another line of work to measure up. Recall George Koonce’s reaction to the initial job offer he received to work in the ECU Athletic Department for $36,000 a year.9 He was insulted. His agent was appalled, and egged him on: “He said, ‘George, you got to be kidding me.’ He said, ‘You need to go up there and tell them to kiss your ass.’”10 The mundane job and the ordinary salary had Koonce on the verge of declining the job offer, until reason, in the name of Tunisia Koonce, took over. Koonce was disheartened by the same realization many former players have—that few jobs will actually pay them the amounts to which they had become accustomed—but his wife helped him adjust to that reality.

  Some players are humiliated when they’re confronted with being normal—taking ordinary jobs. That doesn’t prevent then from going to work, but it may steer them into particular kinds of occupations. Throughout our research, we’ve come across relatively few former players who hold conventional, salaried, nine-to-five jobs. To be sure, many are self-employed and set their own hours. Others are professionals, who by definition, work until the job is done. Whereas there was a time when former NFL players would turn to teaching, or sell cars or insurance, younger alumni are more likely to be entrepreneurs or cobble together combinations of money making activities that generate income, but that don’t constitute a conventional professional résumé. It’s not necessarily due to an aversion to work. Rather it’s a desire to maintain a high public profile, combined with a penchant for control over personal time and effort—a desire to be their own men, not someone else’s employees. Players want to continue being distinctive in some capacity, not just one of the crowd. And they hope for jobs that provide a modicum of the excitement they used to feel in going to work: jobs in entertainment or the mass media; professions with tangible, immediate payoffs; high-risk, high-reward occupations and business enterprises. They’re looking for jobs that embody the NFL ethos and resemble aspects of the bubble. They’re not exactly spoiled by success, but their past success shapes how they evaluate prospects for the future.