Is There Life After Football? (29 page)

Ask former NFL players what they've been doing with their time since retiring and many of them mention their “charity work.” They acknowledge their good fortune and genuinely want to “give something back” to the community. By and large, they are genuinely altruistic, although many aren't averse to mixing business with philanthropy. Done right, everybody wins. David Jordan's story, for example, puts charity work squarely in the middle of his post-football career and introduces some ways in which philanthropy, earning a living, and the player ethos intertwine.

The whole first year [after being cut] I just worked out. I did a lot of charity work. I got involved in the March of Dimes. Then I started traveling
the country doing a lot of different things, getting a lot of golf events for charity. As the years progressed, I wanted to do more charity work but also have a job. So I cut back a little bit on the charity work. Then, finally, two years ago, I took it upon myself that I wanted to become a world long drive competitor in golf. I made it to the world championships. So now what I do is I travel the country doing charity and corporate celebrity events, doing all different types of golf, trick shots, long-drive exhibitions. I will do charity events. I will do corporate events. Number one is making an income for me and my family, and also making money for some of these charities.
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Clearly, Jordan is playing off his NFL celebrity for both personal and charitable gain. Much of his time, and often his signature, is given for free, but he also shares in the revenue, receiving an appearance fee to assist in fundraisers. It's not uncommon, for example, for a charity autograph and memorabilia signing session or a golf outing to generate thousands of dollars worth of donations, as much as $10,000 of which may go to the former player as an appearance fee or honorarium, plus expenses.
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When they initially come into big money for the first time, NFL players' gratitude often leads them to establish charitable foundations, which the players continue to run after they have retired. Some of these become major philanthropic forces, especially if the player is a star and his commitment is abiding.
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Other foundations are well intentioned, but less than efficient in funneling money to worthy causes. Their activities tend to wane, especially when players' salaries run out after retirement. Still other foundations are thinly veiled money-making schemes, if not outright scams. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference. Individually, or through their foundations, players may provide fund raising services (e.g., motivational speeches, appearances at golf tournaments or other outings) for which they (or their foundations) are paid. The same services might also be sold to corporate entities or philanthropic organizations, with fees varying widely. Foundations may hold fund-raisers of their own, often passing along the money raised directly to established
community agencies or indirectly through other charitable organizations (e.g., the American Cancer Society).

Too often, however, little of the money donated finds its way to the causes for which it was ostensibly intended. An ESPN
Outside the Lines
investigation of 115 charities run by high-profile athletes (including NFL stars) found that most of these charities “don't measure up to what charity experts would say is an efficient, effective use of money.” Seventy-four percent of the charities fell short of one or more acceptable nonprofit operating standards, including how much money an organization actually spends on charitable work as opposed to administrative expenses and whether there is sufficient oversight of its operations. Unfortunately, too many former NFL players have been involved in questionable practices. It's not uncommon, for example, for players to use their charities to provide jobs for friends and relatives. Sometimes they use them to support indulgent lifestyles.
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To be sure, former players aren't getting rich running charitable foundations. But operating a foundation supplies former players with a bit of the “action” they lost when they retired. They deal with large sums of money. They rub elbows with the rich and famous. They place themselves in a flattering public spotlight. They get together with their buddies—often former players—to live large for a little while and experience the camaraderie of the good old days, restoring vestiges of their former lives.

Former players consistently mention a set of common job-related challenges they encounter in moving beyond the NFL. Some are largely generational, but persist in present-day laments. Others seem timeless, testing young and old alike. The most vociferous complaints come from players who retired prior to the free agency era, who never made big money. Old-timers bemoan their meager pension checks, blaming both the NFL and the NFLPA for leaving them high and dry. Some of the inequities have been addressed by recent revisions of the pension program,
putting more money in the pockets of NFL alumni across the board. Still, old-timers are never going to catch up with their younger peers. Some have already endured decades of hardship. While younger retirees have less to lament, they also know that their retirement plans aren't as good as those in other sports, MLB, for example.

Younger alumni have somewhat different concerns. Across the board, they wish they had more guidance regarding life after football. Having spent most of their lives in the bubble—being treated as special and having things done for them prior to, and during college, and certainly in the pros—they feel they were walking into the wilderness when they walked out of the NFL. Suddenly, they were responsible for taking care of personal matters that others tended to before. Jamaal McDaniels, a veteran from the late 1980s, for example, observes that “A lot of these kids [current players] don't have a clue. . . . You have to start early. You have to start getting into these kids' minds a lot earlier, so they can get a jump on things.”
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He thinks aspiring players as well as those who make it to the NFL need to be forewarned about challenges along the way, and better prepared for the issues that emerge at the end.

McDaniels felt abandoned: “I didn't have anybody to hold my hand and help me get a job, a good and decent job.” For some, mentoring or formal programming seem to be viable solutions. They regret not having more systematic opportunities to learn about financial, professional, occupational, and social challenges. George Koonce is one of them:

I didn't really have the mentors. I didn't really have the life coaches. I had [football] coaches in my life from nine years old until I turned 32, but they were coaching me to play a position. They were coaching me to strive to get better out there on the practice field and in the off season, but I didn't have anyone really coaching me per se, giving a road map or playbook to be an athletic director or a VP of administration for an NFL team. I kind of had to learn all that by chance, or on the fly. I wanted to do it. I wanted to reach my potential, but I didn't have anybody that took the time to show me
.
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Times have changed since Koonce's playing days. Players today receive a full menu of formal guidance through NFL and NFLPA programming. NFL Player Engagement and NFLPA programs address nearly every aspect of life in and after the NFL including transition advice, career building, financial training, coaching academies, and “boot camps” for broadcasting, entertainment industries, retail franchising, real estate, and capital investment.
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There's even a budding service industry cropping up around the NFL aimed at helping players deal with life away from the field. Increasingly, we're seeing the emergence of professional guides to escort players into the real world: “life coaches” or “transition coaches.” Ken Ruettgers, for example, played in the NFL in the 1980s and 1990s and prepared well for his days after football. In 2001 he started
GamesOver.org
as a resource to help athletes transition into retirement.
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In 2013, 11 former NFL players—including Troy Vincent—were trained and certified as transition coaches by the league.
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Several of the former players we interviewed expressed an interest in getting into this line of work, and a couple have already established web sites advertising their services.

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.”
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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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
.
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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.”
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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.