Is There Life After Football? (32 page)

To be sure, Arrington thinks the relationships are important, and many last for years. But it's the
environment
that promotes and sustains them. This doesn't diminish the friendship that is certainly a vital component of camaraderie, but it underscores the situational nature of those friendships. They're based on the locker room and its special culture.
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According to Tommy Jones, it's a unique environment former players aren't likely to duplicate because of its special demands:

Being in the locker room, I know everybody misses that. . . . That camaraderie, you can't replace that with nothing else, not even money, really. . . . We were in the trenches fighting. . . . That is all we did. We didn't work a regular job. That is all we did all of our lives, and us, the select few to get to that level, that right there is a special thing that can't be replaced.
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Stanley Davis has similar recollections, especially of the spirit of “one for all, and all for one.” There's a special bond that comes from feeling like you and your teammates are taking on the entire world, with everyone rooting against you.

It's the camaraderie, the brotherhood that you're in, that gang mentality really. Us against the world. You know, you got my back and I got your back. . . . People ask me that all of the time: “Well, have you seen the guys?
Are you still hanging out with the guys?” You never get to [hang out] like you used to do it. So it never lives up to it anymore. You see them every now and then, but it's not the whole gang in the locker room, where it's all for one and one for all, like the fucking Musketeers.
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But it's more than just a siege mentality or bonding against a common threat. Hanging out with the guys was
fun
, in a way that's off-limits to most grown men. Charles Nobles is up-front in his assessment: “Honestly, it was the camaraderie, playing with guys and just having that group of guys come together and just fun. It was
fun
.”
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For Walter Canady, a running back from the 1970s, the camaraderie meant he was able to be himself, exactly the man he wanted to be.

That is what you miss the most. The big thing is you are around guys, and you know guys get criticized about this and that, and so people like to take shots at guys. In the locker room, you can be exactly who you want to be. You can be as ridiculous as you want to be, and nobody judges you on that. Guys tell their stories, or they do silly things, but nobody is judging them. So you miss your boys . . . when it is gone all of a sudden, it is a big hole in your life.
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Canady is hinting at a bigger picture of the locker room culture. Accounts of NFL life—fiction, nonfiction, biography, exposé, or technical descriptions—are full of tales of locker room hijinks, trash talking, practical jokes, card games, dominoes, sexual escapades, and wild adventures. Nothing is too outrageous in this bastion of masculine solidarity. As Canady says, no one judges, and everybody's got your back. It's the player ethos.
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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.
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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.”
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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.

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
.
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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.
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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.
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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.

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
.
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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.
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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.”
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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.”
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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.
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