Is There Life After Football?

by James A. Holstein

  Kevin Best puts everything in perspective. While he’s more analytic than many of his colleagues, the bottom line is basically the same:

  Camaraderie is something where you are in an intimate setting with someone, and you are able to enjoy that experience together. . . . Billy Herbert and I would play hooky while the rest of the players were out practicing special teams. They were running special teams, so we would come out here and play golf, sometimes two or three balls a hole. That is the kind of thing that you miss. . . . The flights going to an away game or coming home from a game or heading to practice. The days off. All of that kind of stuff. . . . You had guys in the locker room from all over the country. All walks of life. And that [the locker room environment] is the common denominator.40

  Best eloquently captures the essence of NFL camaraderie: a sense of familiarity and trust, fellowship, team spirit, common bonding, shared goals—solidarity built on the NFL ethos. But there’s an almost imperceptible restraint in the way former players describe the missing camaraderie. As much as they enjoy each others’ company, players know that teammates are transient. They can be traded or cut at any time. Free agents move from team to team, especially later in their careers. When speaking of trades and other roster moves, players uniformly observe that “it’s a business” and relationships are bound to be transitory. Mike Golic, a former defensive lineman, chooses his words carefully: “Most of the guys you play with, most of the guys in the locker room, you consider them ‘acquaintances.’ I guess I wouldn’t call them friends. They were guys I worked with, guys I hung out with. But when the season ended we’d sort of go our separate ways.”41 Golic is a gregarious man, and was certainly an integral and well-liked member of any locker room he inhabited. But he draws an important distinction. Locker room camaraderie is an intense and highly valued workplace relationship, but it may not reach the depths of enduring friendship.

  Nearly everyone working outside the NFL has had workplace friends who are stalwart companions eight hours a day, five days a week, on the job. The work week would be intolerable without them. When one retires or moves to a new position, everyone extends heartfelt best wishes, promises to “get together,” and vows that “nothing’s going to change.” But everything does change. At first, the e-mail keeps flowing. But lunch once a week becomes an occasional get-together on Friday after work. Maybe a phone call every now and then to “catch up.” Eventually it’s a Christmas card or e-mailed announcement of a child’s graduation. It’s no different for NFL players. When their careers end, they’re embarrassed and they steer clear of their teammates, and their teammates avoid them “like the plague.” A few of the guys stay in touch, and some make a point of getting together. But mostly it’s running into one another at alumni reunions, autograph signings, or charity golf outings. The joy on these occasions is heartfelt, but it serves mainly to remind former players of the camaraderie they once had and the locker rooms that they can never share again. They miss the guys, but they miss life in the NFL bubble even more.

  Cut from the Congregation

  Many players take their eviction from the bubble in stride. They revel in their newfound family lives, and many build new social circles and meaningful careers and pastimes. But for some, it exacts dramatic changes that players can’t anticipate. Losing the locker room is obvious. Shifts in marital dynamics probably shouldn’t come as a surprise. But other collateral consequences of leaving the NFL are hard to foresee.

  In other walks of life, for example, when dramatic challenges and changes lead to personal turmoil, some individuals may turn to what’s typically considered an ultimately stabilizing source: religion and the church. Many players, George Koonce included, seek spiritual support in dealing with their departure from the NFL:

  I went to church. I tried to keep myself as busy as possible with bible study on Wednesday and going to church on Sunday. I did that for the second year out of the game. The first year I drank. Then I cleansed my system and did not drink anything for six months. I fasted and prayed for three months.42

  For Koonce and many others, religion is a major source of solace. Without diminishing the importance of spiritual commitment, however, in one very important way, former players’ religious lives may let them down. The NFL Player Care study found that former players and alumni claim to be more religious and attend church services more than their counterparts in the general population.43 Religion seemingly plays an important role in the lives of NFL players and teams—for better or worse. It can bond a team, or at least groups of players, or it can be divisive, providing the basis for judgment, factions, and cliques.44 In many respects, however, this is no different from the world outside. In the NFL, however, there’s one important difference. Teams organize their players’ spiritual lives just like they organize everything else. That is, the team has a hand in most of the practical details of players’ religious lives. When Andrew Brandt listed the ways in which the league regiments players’ lives, he mentioned meetings, practices, workouts, meal, transportation, recreation, and team prayers. He left out bible study, fellowship groups, and chapel services. NFL teams often have team chaplains, usually selected by, and certainly approved by, the organization itself. Occasionally, religious leaders, such as Reggie White, emerge from the ranks of the players. Religious services are scheduled on Sundays, and sometimes during the week. Weekly bible study groups are common, typically held in team facilities and attended exclusively by team and organization personnel. In effect, players in the bubble are served up “room service religion.”

  For many active players, this is a convenient and highly valued source of fellowship and spiritual support. For some, it’s a launching pad for bigger and better ministries and “good works” after their playing days. Players such as Reggie White, Tony Dungy, and Bart Starr have gone on to become influential spiritual and community leaders, especially reaching out to former players. But room service religion lacks the broader sense of community—literally widespread congregation—that typifies most organized religion. Getting their religion along with their training table meals and their physical therapy, NFL players aren’t fully integrated into a broader religious community in the same fashion as their outside counterparts. They have team prayers, team chaplains, team prayer meetings, and team bible study groups. The team chaplain accompanies the team on the road. Services are held right in the team hotel. Religion is delivered directly to the player’s door, just like room service burgers and fries.

  This is not to imply that it’s spiritually deficient or superficial. To the contrary, most religious players in the NFL take their spirituality quite seriously, even if the NFL ethos demands an occasional compromise. But the fact that players engage in the formal and social aspects of religion and worship within the guarded confines of the bubble makes the experience one more source of insulation from the real world.

  Players get a homogenized version of religious practice and a homogeneous blend of fellow worshipers. They don’t contact the broad range of congregants one often finds in a thriving community church—people of different ages, backgrounds, and genders. They don’t form social relationships with fellow spiritual travelers from outside their inner circle. While this may or may not be spiritually limiting, it deprives players of a social support network to which they might turn when their playing days are over. When NFL careers end, and players are cut from the team, they may also be cut from their church. Whereas a congregant who loses his job, goes through a divorce, or is otherwise displaced can turn to members of his church community for support, the former player is “deselected” from his spiritual home at the same time that he’s cut from his team. He’s left on his own—perhaps not spiritually, but definitely socially. There’s one more page missing from his playbook.

  8

  TRIALS OF TRANSITION

  After everything I went through, I still felt like something was missing. It was like things were upside down and I wasn’t sure which way to turn. It just felt strange and
I didn’t know what to do about it. I’ve been very fortunate to get my life together but something still doesn’t feel quite right.1

  Why doesn’t retirement feel right for so many NFL players? They undergo many of the same processes of role exit that confront other retirees, but something’s qualitatively different. The sports retirement literature suggests that most elite athletes are likely to move successfully out of their sports and into other satisfying life endeavors.2 While this is largely true for NFL players, too many of them never seem to “get over it.” Otis Tyler, for example, has done very well for himself. He has a rich family life and a healthy local media career. But ask him about his 25-year transition into life after football: “Oh, God, I think we are all still transitioning. I feel like I’m doing OK, but I’m not there yet. . . . We’re out there on an island, just drifting. And that can last for a long time.”3 Why? Drew Raymond, a wide receiver from the 1990s, has an answer: “Man, when that bubble breaks, you just don’t know what to do. It’s all you know. You never get used to that new life.”4

  Culture Shock

  The key here is the “new life.” When they speak of transition, former players seldom focus on new jobs or different roles. Instead, they lament the passing of a way of life that they’ve experienced since they were boys. An anthropologist overhearing their conversations might say former players were experiencing something akin to “culture shock.” Culture shock is the process of disruption and adjustment to an unfamiliar environment that sets off emotional, behavioral, psychological, and cognitive crises for those involved. It can arise in any new situation—moving to a foreign country, going away to college, taking a new job, even entering a new relationship—that has consequences for patterns of behavior or identity. Under these circumstances, we lose our cultural cues and bearings, the familiar signs and guidelines that keep us “on course” in dealing with our daily lives and interactions. When this happens, a person can feel like a “fish out of water.” With familiar cultural props removed, anxiety and frustration set in.5

  It’s easy to see NFL players experiencing culture shock at the end of their playing days. They’re not just out of the game; they’re out of the bubble. But culture shock is generally short-lived, a passing phase. Why might it persist for NFL players where others seem to adapt more quickly? Again, we’ve heard the answer before: “When that bubble breaks, you just don’t know what to do. It’s all you know.” Is this overly dramatic? People from other walks of life manage major life transitions without as much lingering trauma. But very few individuals exist in an environment so completely captivating as the NFL bubble. The bubble establishes patterns of acting and interacting that are deeply engrained. Its way of life is all encompassing. It provides players with a cultural toolkit that they habitually use to craft the everyday features of their lives. At the same time, however, the bubble also insulates players from other ways of seeing and doing everyday life. Players are short-handed when it comes to adapting to other circumstances. We’ve seen how undisciplined spending, “livin’ large,” uncertain job prospects, flagging social support, and injury pose serious challenges as players move out of the NFL. These can certainly be daunting problems. But not all players succumb to them. Nor are these challenges the source of many former players’ disenchantment with life without football. And it’s not just losing jobs or changing roles. These can be radical changes, to be sure, but viewed simply, they are parts—not the totality—of players’ lives. Something more radical is going on. Perhaps the scenario resembles the circumstances where military personnel are discharged from active duty, or even when prisoners are freed from incarceration. When they leave the bubble, NFL players change worlds. They literally swap realities, often against their will and frequently not to their liking. The cultural imperatives inside the bubble are so pervasive and enduring that, as a practical matter, they’ve become the very structures of a player’s consciousness.6 Some players are lost without them.

  This may seem exaggerated. Is the bubble, with its player ethos and locker room culture, so unique and powerful that players can’t adjust to other circumstances? A recent locker room controversy offers a unique window into the cultural milieu that dominates NFL players’ lives. In November 2013, offensive tackle Jonathan Martin—an African American—walked away from the Miami Dolphins’ training complex to seek treatment for emotional distress. Through his agent, he said that he could no longer tolerate the emotional abuse he was taking from Dolphins teammates. Debate immediately erupted on several fronts, often centering on whether Martin was simply unwilling or unable to put up with the typical “hazing” to which younger NFL players have traditionally been subjected. Some argued that he was being maliciously “bullied” by veteran teammates. The conversation took a serious turn when Martin released an incendiary transcript of a voicemail message left on his phone a few months earlier by teammate and fellow offensive lineman Ritchie Incognito, who is white.

  Hey, wassup, you half-nigger piece of shit. I saw you on Twitter, you been training 10 weeks. I’ll shit in your fuckin’ mouth. I’m gonna slap your fuckin’ mouth. I’m gonna slap your real mother across the face [laughter]. Fuck you, you’re still a rookie. I’ll kill you.7

  Incognito has a longstanding reputation as an NFL “badass.” A key member of the Dolphins offensive line, he was voted into the 2012 Pro Bowl. But he is also known as one of the NFL’s dirtiest players and most outrageous characters. Throughout the controversy, no one challenged this depiction, nor did Incognito deny his actions or words. For his part, Martin was known as a “soft” player who seemed strangely out of place in the tough-man’s world of the NFL, even though he had been a two-time college All-American and second round draft choice. Initially, the bullying accusations seemed entirely plausible, given Incognito’s background and the damning voicemail, and he was quickly suspended by the Dolphins.8

  As time passed, however, new pieces of the puzzling story began to emerge. Fellow Dolphins reported that Martin and Incognito had been close friends. Black and white players alike denied that Incognito was a racist. Alternate explanations recast acts of intimidation in terms of practical joking and solidarity-building rites of initiation. Moreover, Martin himself was portrayed as willingly going along with the jokes. Indeed, teammates said Martin had played the incriminating voicemail for them, and they laughed along with him. To them it was one more instance of Incognito’s outrageous “macho man” persona. Evidently, no one at the time—including Martin—took Incognito’s rant seriously. Indeed, text messages were ultimately released in which Martin exchanged seemingly light-hearted, vulgar insults with Incognito that approximated the tone and content of those sent by Incognito.9 Eventually, teammates began to explain the entire mess within the context of everyday locker room banter and a request by the Dolphins organization for Incognito to bring Martin out of his shell and toughen him up.10

  Regardless of what develops out of this scenario, the terms of the discussion provide telling insights into the culture of the NFL and its inner sanctums. This cultural environment—the NFL bubble—provides players with a field of consciousness that is so different from other everyday social worlds that former players are lost and disoriented when they have to fend for themselves. If the worst impressions prevail, they would underscore a racist strain that runs through the league. But that’s certainly not a version to which most players subscribe. Indeed, players, black and white, commonly say that there’s less racism in the NFL than in any other setting they’ve experienced.11 Fellow players dismissed Incognito’s racial slurs as familiar, good-humored banter—almost terms of endearment—between teammates that demonstrated a genuine lack of racial animus rather than racially motivated contempt. Nevertheless, Incognito’s words still stand, “nigger” prominently among them. Racist or not, they inscribe a crude vulgarity upon the NFL scene.

  Amidst all the protestations, players tacitly acknowledge that the NFL locker room tolerates virtually any form of aggression as long as it contribut
es to a winning edge. There’s a “take no prisoners” attitude that’s demanded in the NFL. As players interpretively packaged the Incognito–Martin rift as an instance of normal locker room behavior being misunderstood or gone awry, the powerful contours of the NFL player ethos became obvious. Toughness is the foundation of the ethos, so, from players’ perspectives, Incognito wasn’t culturally out of line. As the discussion evolved, it quickly became apparent that no one thought it was OK for one player to bully or seriously harm a teammate. But it was just as clear that crude language and rough treatment—especially cloaked in humor—aggression, and intimidation are bywords of the NFL locker room. It’s a world where it’s normal for veterans to use intimidation to toughen up the new guys. While many players initially thought that Incognito may have gone too far—perhaps lost perspective on how much “razzing” Martin could take—the practice of “toughening up” itself was never fundamentally questioned. It’s OK to use threats and humiliation to further team ends. “Winning’s the only thing.”12

  There were several other culturally revealing twists to this scenario as well. Many players and observers asked why Martin didn’t fight back. Why didn’t he just punch Incognito in the face? Said teammate Tyson Clabo: “If Martin had a problem, he didn’t show it. . . . I think that if you have a problem with somebody . . . [you should] stand up and be a man.”13 Others point out that the NFL is full of bullies. That’s how they got there and that’s how they keep their jobs, through aggression and intimidation. Those are supreme virtues when directed on the field, and if they spill off the field, well that’s part of the package. Every player in the NFL is a little crazy, they all admit, and sociopaths are often vital to winning. Backing down, on the other hand, is a sign of fatal weakness. “You can’t let [a bully] see that it [hazing and intimidation] got to you,” comments Mike Golic. “If you let this be known [that there was hazing or bullying going on], if you go public, you won’t be able to go back into the locker room.”14