Is There Life After Football?

by James A. Holstein

  Of course these are recent developments, resources not available to older alumni. But many younger alumni seem uninformed about their availability. Despite vigorous efforts by the NFL and NFLPA to develop and publicize these resources, most players and former players fail to take advantage of the opportunities. According to Troy Vincent, NFL vice president of player engagement, his office is aggressively promoting its programs and if players aren’t taking advantage of the league’s workshops, boot camps, internships, career counseling services, and other programs, it’s their own fault. “The player today,” says Vincent, “has to make a conscious effort not to engage, because the service and program offerings are robust. There is no excuse.”49

  Despite the proliferation of development programming, some players and alumni mention internships as a possible missing solution. As we’ve heard, younger alumni feel that their older counterparts had a post-career advantage because they held jobs in the off season. Internships are touted as the contemporary equivalent. The NFL has recently developed a wide-ranging internship program and the NFLPA is in step with its own programming.50 Occasionally, internships lead directly to jobs, but that’s the exception, not the rule. Recently, for example, David Howard, who has signed with four teams since 2010, but has not played in a regular-season NFL game, turned an internship at Merrill Lynch Wealth Management into a full time position as a financial planner. His managing director at Merrill Lynch says Howard brought a skill set that’s impossible to teach: “Work ethic and discipline. I attribute a lot of that to a tough Ivy League academic regimen and from the requirements of pro sports. David is hungry and has great determination.”51

  This underscores an aspect of internships that players and alumni sometimes fail to grasp. An internship isn’t a job offer or a promise. It’s a glimpse into how an organization operates, how it looks from the inside. It provides limited on-the-job training, but interns usually aren’t given serious management-level responsibilities. They are more likely to be “gofers” or perhaps allowed to shadow organization members without substantial responsibilities. Internships aren’t entry-level positions or even management traineeships. This means, of course, that it’s unrealistic to expect an internship to turn directly into a job.

  Internships, however, are an excellent way for players to get a feeling for post-NFL career tracks, and to find out whether they might be interested in, and suited for, particular careers. But players must pursue those career tracks at their own initiative. They need to bring something to the table, so to speak. Like David Howard, they have to demonstrate a skill set that makes an employer want to hire them and a work ethic that will impress prospective employers. Today’s players have a prominent role model to follow: NFL commissioner Roger Goodell began his NFL career as an intern in the league office, clipping newspaper stories and performing other menial media-related tasks.52

  Last, but certainly not least, many NFL players contend that education is a prevalent barrier to career development, but also a surefire remedy to the problem. Brandon Gold, as we’ve seen, has had a rough time gaining post-NFL traction, and he views education as part of the problem:

  I’m a former NFL player. I have a lot of confidence. I’m good looking. I’m a white guy. I have a lot of going for me. . . . But I realized once I was in the real world, to be a high school coach, you need a degree. If you want to be a college coach, you need a degree. . . . It is important, I realize now.53

  While myriad others echo the sentiment, less than half of NFL alumni have degrees when they leave college. Today, the NFL provides special resources to assist payers in finishing their degree requirements (see Appendix 2), and eventually around 80 percent of alumni get their degrees. But it still remains a challenge, as Daryl Gatlin notes: “They encourage players to get their education and go back to school, but it is really hard to get away and go back if your school is not in the city that you are playing in, because the obligation in the off season is a lot greater now.”54 George Koonce summarizes much of what he’s seen, both during and after his NFL career:

  Education is the key building block to success. It does not matter what arena you go into. You can be a teacher, an accountant or an attorney, but education has to be at the forefront. On the job, you have to be able to process information and think strategically, that’s where education comes in. In many cases, NFL rookies are handling significant amounts of money for the first time in their lives. If they had an educational base in finance, they would be better prepared to make that money work for them. Having an educational base helps immensely.55

  These observations reveal a subtle distinction regarding education that eludes many players. There’s a difference between getting a degree and getting an education. Otis Tyler puts it this way: “Many players go to college and even get a degree, but they don’t have a clue about how they are going to use it, how they are going to make something out of the rest of their lives.”56 In college, while majoring in “eligibility,” many players earn degrees that might have little to do with their occupational designs after football. This is not to say that education for education’s sake isn’t valuable, but degrees in “recreation and leisure” or “hospitality business” may be of little use if a former player wants to go into teaching, real estate, or investment banking. Similarly, if players don’t take the college experience to heart, they may not develop those analytic and critical thinking skills to which Koonce alludes, which could be assets in a wide variety of post-football ventures. Having a college degree probably isn’t the panacea that some players imagine, but it’s an available resource that opens otherwise blocked career paths.

  Success Is in the Details

  While there’s no recipe for success in life after football, success stories are instructive. There’s one legendary tale circulating among former NFL players that we’ve heard several times. Willie Davis played for the Green Bay Packers in the 1960s and is often lauded for making the perfect transition from the NFL to a productive life after football. Players repeat Davis’s story in glowing, broadly romanticized terms. As their story goes, Davis came out of a small college to become a Hall of Fame defensive end and team captain for Vince Lombardi’s Packers dynasty of the 1960s. When he retired, Davis parlayed his football connections into a lucrative career as a beer distributor, then as owner of a fleet of radio stations. As his empire grew, Davis eventually sat on the boards of over a dozen major corporations and several universities.57

  For many players, Davis embodies the ideal approach to life after football. They view his success as the optimal confluence of personal achievements on the field and ripe business opportunities off it. To be sure, these are two significant factors, but to modify the timeless cliché, success is in the details. There are significant aspects of Davis’s remarkable success that most of his NFL admirers overlook.58 For example, during his playing days, Davis actually worked in the brewing industry—even during the season—assuming positions of managerial responsibility, not just doing public relations appearances. He also worked tirelessly to earn an MBA from the University of Chicago, one of the world’s most prestigious and demanding graduate programs. He made the dean’s list, and got an education, not just a degree. Along the way, he conscientiously cultivated both skills and relationships in the business world.

  After retiring from football, Davis took two jobs. He began a seven-year run as a major network broadcaster, and he used money he saved from his playing days to buy a beer distributorship in South Central Los Angeles. He was no absentee owner. He built a floundering distributorship into a thriving success by literally loading his trucks and delivering his product in order to make sure his customers were satisfied. Within a few years, Davis parlayed his business and media acumen into the purchase of several radio stations, which then became the cornerstone of his multimillion-dollar financial empire.

  Davis’s story offers several lessons in how to move from one successful career to another. First, financial success didn’t necessarily follow fro
m football fame. Indeed, for Davis, they grew simultaneously, side by side. Like so many other successful retirees, Davis lived his life on parallel tracks, and put supreme effort into both. Typically, players who achieve post-career professional success have actually been living “dual lives” or riding multiple tracks while they were in the NFL. Players who didn’t put all their eggs in the NFL basket—who moved beyond the indulgences of the bubble—were generally ready to step into other lines of work when their NFL careers ended. They were willing to invest more into their second jobs than just their names.

  Davis got a formal education, not just a degree. But he also got a priceless practical education by learning his businesses from the bottom, up. He wasn’t averse to starting on the ground floor—even at the “advanced” age of 35—and didn’t expect to be handed anything simply because he was a football star. Like other ex-players who have been successful after the NFL, Davis lived by the adage, “You need to work as hard at your second career as you did at football.” He was also fond of saying, “Luck is when preparation meets opportunity,” to explain his career success.59 The details of his life make it clear that Willie Davis worked at being prepared, never waiting for opportunity to capriciously bless him with success.

  Hakeem Chapman, quite a success in his own right, underscores many of the lessons we learn from Willie Davis. His counsel is straightforward and unpretentious, yet eloquent:

  Educate . . . and prepare. . . . [Get to the players] before they get intoxicated, before they get addicted, before they get the lights, and the camera, and the action. You talk to them before that, and say, “Hey, this is going to have an impact on you. . . . You are going to be a little crazy for a while, but remember, the game is only a short period of time.” I would tell them to think back to how hard they worked to become a professional athlete. Think of the hours and hours of weight room and sweat and effort and blood and sweat and tears, and then find you a profession. . . . Find you something you like. Get involved somehow. Any kind of job. It doesn’t matter where you start. Don’t expect to be the CEO. Expect to be the low guy on the totem pole. And that is an advantage, because you can understand the business as you work your way up. And work as hard at that business as you did at becoming an athlete. Take it with the same degree of seriousness. Put the same passion into it, the same heart into it, the same need, the want, the fire, the hunger. Then if you work anywhere close to how you worked as an athlete at your business, you will succeed. It is so simple. Just to change the focus a little bit. Change the focus from your game to your job. But it takes the qualities. It takes the preparation. It takes commitment. It takes discipline. It takes all the things that you have, or you would have never played the game at a high level. So you have everything you need, just refocus it.60

  7

  PLAYING WITHOUT A PLAYBOOK

  One thing about athletes, they are guys of structure and guys of habit. . . . When you don’t have that in life, it is kind of like you are out there on an island.

  —Anderson Smith, former Cincinnati Bengals tight end1

  Speaking about post-career challenges, former players sometimes mention money or thwarted career aspirations. Surprisingly, however, they’re much more likely to lament the loss of everyday routines, the camaraderie, and the sense of common purpose.

  Facing a life without structure is no picnic. “The hardest part is your daily routine,” says former quarterback Trent Green. “For 15 years, I knew exactly what I was doing in March, June, and September because there was a schedule. When you take that away, you suddenly have a lot more time on your hands. I’ve been out of the game since 2008, and I still have a tough time with it.”2 Former Vikings linebacker Ben Leber agrees: “I’m such a creature of habit, the void of not having a daily schedule, it was tough. Tougher than I expected.”3 Another retiree elaborates: “It was just very difficult for me to make my own schedule because I always had my life scheduled for me. . . . So keeping the focus and maintaining the focus throughout the day was very, very tough.”4

  Many players feel this way immediately after they’re out of the league, but, for some, the feeling lasts for years—if it ever disappears. Without the NFL script and the reassurance of custom and ritual, everyday tasks and relationships are problematic. It’s unsettling for many, excruciating for some. Out on a social island, former players are metaphorically lost, socially isolated, and psychically demoralized. They find themselves morally adrift, no longer captivated by the sacred ethos and brotherhood of the locker room. Football has been the players’ refuge, their sanctuary from both large personal problems and the bothersome minutiae of daily life. Now outside the bubble, those annoying details begin to gnaw. As Derrick Brooks puts it, “Players always say the football field is a safe haven, that you can go there and block everything else out. But what do you do when that’s gone and you have to deal with life?”5

  Languished Life Skills

  Dealing with the routine matters of everyday life can be troublesome, from issues of money and jobs to the details of how to allocate free time. The loss of structure forces former players to fend for themselves in ways they’ve never experienced, and they often lack the fundamental life skills to get by. As an NFL alum from the late 1990s points out:

  From the time you wake up [when you are playing], you have an agenda on what to do, where you need to be, where you need to go, what time you need to get back. All these things are done for you so it’s almost like you’re a baby or a child while you’re playing and when you get out of there, it’s like you have to grow up. It’s time to grow up.”6

  This epitomizes the infantilization William Rhoden highlights as part of the “conveyor belt” that ushers players through big-time football. Colleges and NFL teams act like surrogate parents, sheltering, nurturing, and controlling players as fully as they can. When players are let go, they’re often little better prepared to take care of themselves than teenagers leaving home for the first time. Shielded from the outside world, with others handling all mundane responsibilities, many players have been denied the opportunity to “grow up.” Consequently, managing one’s time and daily affairs is sometimes easier said than done. Troy Vincent recalls killing time in his unscheduled life by washing clothes every day until his wife told him that normal people don’t do laundry that often. So he started cutting the lawn three times a week. He literally didn’t know what else to do.7

  Some ex-players seemed trapped by their freedom. They know they need to develop new social routines, but they aren’t prepared. They’ve been consummate professionals in the NFL, but haven’t ventured far afield. The mundane transactions of everyday life confound or bore them. They lack basic social skills that others outside the bubble take for granted. Anderson Smith poses the dilemma in gridiron terms:

  When I was in a situation in a football game, I knew that third and eight, I need to get to that pylon down there or we ain’t gonna convert this first down. So, I got to extend my route more steps and make this head fake and a break, and make this catch. Whereas now [after retirement], you don’t know where the pylon is, you don’t know where the first down is. You don’t know which play is going to be the big play. You are playing the game without a playbook. So it is a whole different ball game. . . . When you get out here in the real world, you got to figure out what you need to work on today, what I need to do over here. How do I develop more relationships with people? How do I become a people person? How do I become able to communicate with diverse people of each age? That is really different from “This is what you need to do, Smith.”8

  Without a playbook, social dexterity is at a premium, but it’s in short supply with many former players. In the bubble, they just didn’t need the full arsenal of social skills and graces most people rely on to navigate their everyday lives. Jillian Beale, the wife of a former player from the 1990s—speaking realistically, but compassionately—puts it bluntly:

  You know what? They have a complete lack of people skills—most of them. They do
n’t know how to interact as anything but football players and teammates. They have their own ways of behaving with one another that are pretty outrageous to people from the outside. But when they end up on the outside, that’s all they know how to do. That’s how they behave and they discover outsiders aren’t really impressed now that they aren’t playing for the [team].9

  To paraphrase Anderson Smith, many former players aren’t adept at social interaction, at making social connections. They don’t know how to cultivate lasting social relationships. They’re uncomfortable with people different from themselves. All these deficits may impede personal and professional growth. Even more importantly, they can stunt social lives, especially, but not exclusively, when women are involved, as Jillian Beale observes:

  Most of them have trouble relating to women. For their whole lives—at least since they became football stars—they’ve had access to women sexually. They haven’t had to really relate to women as people. They just keep score. A lot of sex without relationships. Then, when they are out of the game, they can’t relate normally to women—or anyone else for that matter. Too many of them can’t change and the situation has changed for them. They’ve been special all this time and they don’t know how to behave. They’ve acted one way and once they’ve retired they don’t know how to get along in the real world. They’ve lived in a world of their own and when it ends, they don’t function very well in normal society. They’ve lived a life where the team was always there to look out for them and clean up their messes when they screw up. Once they retire, there is no one left to look out for them.10