But the NFL is a “greedy institution.”129 Its demands are voracious, gnawing at players’ minds, bodies, and souls. It claims players’ exclusive and undivided loyalty, clamoring for their unwavering commitment. The NFL pressures players to abandon competing interests. It insists that players go “all in” if they’re going to succeed. In effect, the NFL ravenously devours the men who play its game in order to create the players that make the league successful. You’re either inside the bubble or you’re out.
Like other greedy institutions, the NFL gets its way because it is also immensely rewarding.130 Providing material incentives beyond most dreams, the league effectively steers players away from outside options. For most players, it’s the only game in town. The NFL doesn’t have to be overtly coercive. Rather, it infiltrates all aspects of players’ lives so that they view everything through the NFL prism. The game’s priorities become their own. Separate spheres of interest dissolve. Not only is the NFL greedy, it’s “omnivorous”—indiscriminately all-consuming. It wants more than just 60 minutes on Sundays. It insists on players’ lives.
3
THE END
What does it mean, to go out on your own terms? There is no perfect exit.1
Why is it so hard for players who’ve earned millions of dollars, who’ve been battered and broken, to walk away while they still can? Why don’t they simply sit back and enjoy the well-deserved fruits of their talent and labor? Why can’t players simply leave the bubble and get on with their lives? Former All-Pro Michael Strahan offers a possible explanation:
That’s the tough thing about professional athletes. . . . It’s over and you are in your mid-thirties. . . . You wake up one morning and they tell you you’re not doing something that you’re used to doing for your entire life. What’s your next step? That’s the biggest challenge, I think, for most professional athletes.2
It’s a shocking scenario, fraught with change, uncertainty, and anxiety. For many players, “the end” is traumatic because of how it begins, with the immediate, shocking displacement Strahan so eloquently describes. Although many former players endorse this explanation, if we look closely at what actually happens to most players, Strahan is slightly off the mark. The end is seldom so straightforward, not nearly as dramatic. It’s unlike almost any other retirement. In fact, the term “retirement” seldom describes the end of an NFL career because players often don’t realize that their careers are over. They don’t retire; they get fired, and they may not even know it.
That’s what George Koonce discovered. He played in the NFL for nine years, a starting middle linebacker with the Green Bay Packers from 1992 through his last game with the Seattle Seahawks in 2000. He was a defensive stalwart for two Super Bowl teams. He signed two multiyear, multimillion-dollar contracts. His career was three times longer than the average NFL player’s. But when he reached the end, it wasn’t how Michael Strahan suggests.
At the age of 31, Koonce started 15 games for the 1999 Packers. In week ten, he injured his shoulder. Team physicians told him it would require surgery but he probably couldn’t further aggravate the injury. He could take pain-killing injections and play out the rest of the season or he could immediately go on injured reserve, have the surgery, begin rehab, and start preparing for next season. The Packers were going through a rough season: major coaching changes, up-and-down play, a good possibility of missing the playoffs. Koonce wanted to play—for the team, for his pride, and yes, for the money. He had recently signed a long-term contract and wanted to show the Packers that he was worth their investment. So he played. He took painkilling shots before every game and sometimes at halftime, and played for the rest of the season.
After the final game, Koonce did the normal season-ending exit interviews with coaches and the team medical staff. They scheduled him for surgery, which he had about a month later in February 2000. Shortly thereafter, Koonce’s agent called to tell him that the Packers wanted him to “renegotiate” his contract. Before the 1999 season, Koonce had signed a four-year, $10.75 million pact that was considered quite lucrative for a middle linebacker. Now the Packers were asking him to restructure the deal—a euphemism for a pay cut. The team was contractually obliged to pay Koonce his negotiated salary for the upcoming years, if he remained on the roster. But remember: NFL contracts aren’t guaranteed. If a player is released, his contract is void. A request to restructure a contract usually carries the implied threat that if the player doesn’t agree to decreased compensation, he’ll be released, and there will be no compensation. Koonce and his agent opted for the downscaled contract. This wasn’t the first time he’d been asked to renegotiate a deal. The Packers had cut his salary under similar circumstances in 1997 after he underwent surgery for a torn ACL.
About three weeks later, Koonce got another call from his agent: “On March 15, the Packers are going to release you.” Suddenly, Koonce wasn’t a Packer. “When I got the phone call I was using the Packers’ facilities for my rehab and treatment. I was getting ready for next season. When I got the phone call I was no longer allowed to use the facilities. So I went back to North Carolina.”3 Injured, without a job, virtually without a home, Koonce never considered retiring. He headed back to ECU, where, as a courtesy to a valued alum, the athletic department allowed him to use their training facilities and trainers.
Koonce had been close with his agent; they spoke almost daily for nine years. They were fellow ECU alums, friends as well as business associates. He said he would put out the word across the NFL that Koonce was now available. Koonce also contacted his former teammate Johnny Holland, a Seattle Seahawks coach at the time: “I reached out to Johnny and he knew my situation that I had been released from the Packers. . . . I asked him to put in a word with Ted Thompson [Seattle director of player personnel] and Coach Holmgren [head coach and general manger of the Seahawks].” Then, for months, Koonce and his agent waited.
I didn’t hear anything. The only concrete conversation or information that I got was from my friend Johnny. He said he was going to talk to Ted Thompson, and he was going to give a message to Coach Holmgren. Coach Holmgren called me in June and asked me if I wanted to be a part of their organization. Coach Holmgren said, “George, I’m going to give you the veteran’s minimum.”
Koonce had played for Mike Holmgren in Green Bay before Holmgren departed for Seattle after the 1998 season, taking the reins of the Seahawks as both coach and general manager. He took several members of the Packers’ organization with him, including Thompson and Holland. For a short time, the Seattle organization was jokingly called “Green Bay Northwest.” But it was still the NFL, and Koonce signed a one-year contract for the veteran’s minimum salary of around $600,000. It was a considerable pay cut, even from his restructured Packers contract. Regardless, it was a roster spot and Seattle assured Koonce that he was part of their plans.
Koonce started all 16 games for Seattle in 2000. He was second on the team in tackles. On December 3, in a 30–10 throttling of the Atlanta Falcons, he returned an interception 27 yards for a touchdown. Apparently, Seattle’s minimal investment paid off. After the final game—a 42–23 loss at home to Buffalo—Koonce went through the year-end exit interviews and packed to return to North Carolina where he would work out in the off season. He knew he’d played on a one-year contract, and that there were no guarantees for next season. Like everyone else in the league, Koonce knew that “N-F-L means not for long.”4 But as he left town, no one suggested that his days in Seattle were numbered. He figured he’d be back for at least one more year.
There was nothing mentioned about me not coming back. It was more like, “It was a very disappointing year for everyone. You know the record [6–10]. George, you played well.” I didn’t really know what was going to happen, so I was in constant contact with my agent trying to get clarity. In retrospect, nobody was honest with me, letting me know my career was done.
Koonce had been living in an executive condo in Seattle—a temporary, short-term rental—so h
e had little more than a couple of suitcases as he departed from the Seattle airport. Back in North Carolina, he waited on word from his agent. January passed. Nothing. Trepidation crept in: “For the life of me I couldn’t believe that I could go from starting 16 games and being second on the team in tackles to completely out of the National Football League. I thought that it might be, ‘George, you’ll have to take a backup role.’ But in my case that didn’t happen.” Months passed. His agent said he’d put out feelers across the NFL, but nobody called. Finally, Koonce reached out once again to his friend Johnny Holland:
“Johnny, what’s going on in Seattle?” He said, “George, I think we’re going to go with a guy named Levon Kirkland [who had recently been released by the Pittsburgh Steelers].” I said, “Really?” I had trouble believing what I was hearing. Johnny said, “George, I can’t really figure it out. I thought you had a really good year for us.” . . . Officially, I didn’t hear any of this from Seattle. If I didn’t know Johnny, I wouldn’t have had any explanation.
Seattle was out of the picture—suddenly, but, in retrospect, not surprisingly. There were incentives built into Koonce’s 2000 Seattle contract stating that if he played 75 percent of the defensive snaps from scrimmage he would be paid an additional $300,000—increasing his salary for the year by about 50 percent. As the 6–10 season wore on, however, and the organization realized they were out of the playoff chase, his playing time declined. He found himself more and more on the sidelines, even though there was no drop-off in his on-field productivity. In the end, he didn’t hit his incentive goals. Maybe this was a message Koonce had ignored. Looking back on the 2000 season, he now admits that subtle signs of depression were creeping into his life. He began to wonder if each trip to an away game would be his last time to play in that particular stadium.
By May 2001, at age 32, Koonce was still out of a job, but not out of hope. He religiously continued his training, working out four or five days a week under the supervision of the ECU training staff: “I’d schedule my day around when I could work with the strength and conditioning coach at East Carolina. When he wasn’t training student athletes, he was taking me through a regimen to get me ready for the upcoming season.” A season that never came.
The NFL draft passed. Spring and summer mini-camps came and went. Training camps were about to open in July. No job offers. Nothing.
I’m asking my agent, “What’s going on?” I talk to the [Cleveland] Browns, I talk to the [Kansas City] Chiefs. They’re like, “If someone goes down, we’ll bring you right in.” That goes on for the whole season, that type of conversation. I’m still training, working out. On Sundays I watch the Packers’ games. All this time, all my agent says to me is, “George, you need to stay ready.” Nobody called. I kept saying, “I can play. I can go back to the stats, and with the right opportunity I can do that again.”
And there was no paycheck coming in. Koonce was on his own, living on savings, working out, staying ready. 2001. 2002. Nobody called. Not even his agent. In January 2002, Koonce met his wife-to-be, Tunisia. In their early conversations, they talked about his career, his plans. “I told her I was getting ready for next season.” But by now, there were more than just traces of depression:
I didn’t realize everything that was going on at the time, all the drinking, trying to hide and mask the pain. I wasn’t doing cocaine or anything like that but I was drinking. . . . I was very depressed. The only time I wasn’t depressed was when I was doing something football-related.
Koonce was in a real-life limbo. For him, his career wasn’t over; he hadn’t retired. But Tunisia forced Koonce to confront some harsh realities. “She said, ‘George, that’s great that you want to stay in shape and you want to play, you want to hook on with a team. But how about you add some other things during your day, like going to school? Maybe get a job.’”
Initially, Koonce resisted. He had a job: getting ready for next season. But Tunisia planted the notion, and Koonce trusted her judgment.
One day, jokingly, I said, “I need a job, these bills keep coming in.” She said, “Well, George, you have a job.” I said, “What’s that?” She said, “You own over 100 apartments. [Over the years, Koonce had invested in rental properties.] Why are you having a management company run those? You can do it yourself.” I said, “I got to work out. I need to be ready. I can’t do that and do all my workouts and all that stuff.” She said, “George, you need to think about that.” Then, when the season came around in 2002, I said, “Tunisia can you help me? I want to run those apartments.” She said, “I have a letter all ready. It’s a letter to send to the management company. I read your contract with them. You can terminate it with 30 days’ notice. There is an apartment open at the complex. You need to turn that into an office.” I said, “OK.” And that’s how it all got started. Later, she kind of took me by the hand and said, “George you need to sign up for these [college] classes.”
But there was no fairytale ending to Koonce’s career crisis. Managing his apartments and going back to school for his master’s degree, Koonce continued to work out, continued to stay ready. Midway through the 2002 NFL season, Tunisia finally confronted him. “George, you’re done. It’s all over.” That’s when Koonce didn’t speak to Tunisia for a couple of weeks. Then came the car crash a few months later. Slowly, George Koonce began to redefine himself. His old identity didn’t surrender easily. His NFL dreams didn’t die overnight. It was the end of 2003 before Koonce began to think of himself as something other than an NFL player.
Perhaps he finally became an “ex-player” in November, when Tunisia persuaded him to apply for a job in the ECU athletic department.
I did the interview. I thought I’d done well and they offered me the job. For $36,000, but I was disappointed. Tunisia was waiting for me as I walked across campus and she asked me about the interview. I said it went OK, and she asked if I got the job. I said, “Yeah, they offered me the job but for only $36,000. I told them I would have to think about it.” Tunisia said to me, “How much they going to pay you?” I said, “$36,000.” She said, “How much you going to make if you don’t take the job?” I said, “Nothing.” She said, “Do you know how much people make in the real world?” I said, “No.” She said, “Turn your ass around and go right back there and sign that contract.” I did, and that’s probably when I really truly knew I was never going to play again.
Koonce’s story may not typify all NFL players, but it’s a more common scenario than the one Michael Strahan describes. The end seldom comes suddenly, cleanly, in unambiguous terms. It’s more like removing a Band-Aid slowly than suddenly ripping it off—an agonizingly drawn-out pain.
Uncertainty
Official NFL retirements garner a lot of attention, perhaps because they’re so rare. Occasionally, a player decides enough is enough and formally announces his retirement. Everyone remembers that Hall of Famer Barry Sanders walked way from the game suddenly, apparently of his own volition, even though he was within striking distance of several cherished NFL rushing records. John Elway and Ray Lewis famously announced their retirements, then took flight on the wings of Super Bowl victories. Others go out with less fanfare, but with finality nonetheless. Hakeem Chapman, a veteran from the 1960s and 1970s, talks about calling it quits:
I was playing with the [Team 1], and they traded me to [Team 2] just to get rid of me, because I was making more money than the quarterback. So, I went to [Team 2] . . . and I was making more than their starting quarterback. . . . I was released, but everybody wanted me to play, and I said I don’t want to play anymore. I might get hurt. So, that’s how I left it. . . . They offered me a bigger contract in [Team 3] to come up there and play. No way, José! I was finished!5
Clean breaks like this are exceptions to the rule.6
Injury makes the decision for many players. Some injuries are life altering, as was the case for former Lion Mike Utley, who was hurt on a routine tackle in 1991 that left him paralyzed from the chest down. Injuries
dramatically ended the careers of Joe Theismann, Sterling Sharpe, Michael Irvin, and dozens more. For many others, however, injury starts the player down a painful, tortuous slope, effectively terminating a career, even as the player tries to prolong it. Hundreds of players try to “bounce back” but find their physical skills so compromised that they slide to the bottom of rosters, and eventually into football oblivion. Former running back Gary Ellerson, who found himself out of a job in the 1980s, was one of them:
When I was released by the Detroit Lions, I tried to hook on with the Indianapolis Colts, only to flunk my physical. . . . The flight home was truly a low point in my life. I remember sitting around for almost a year, rehabbing my knee, and hoping that some NFL team would still give me a chance. It never happened.7
Even barring injury, many players don’t realize that their playing days are over until well after the fact. In recent years only about a quarter of retirees indicate that they called it quits without trying to sign on with another team after being released.8 Countless players cling to any prospect of playing again, trying to catch on with team after team. Some call this “running laps”—the perennial rite of players signing with teams to fill out rosters for training camps, being cut during preseason, then resigning when spots open up due to injury or players’ failure to perform.9 Some players are signed and cut a half dozen times or more before they finally throw in the towel. In a 35-month span from 2001 to 2004, for example, long snapper Mike Solwold was signed and released seven times before his career was over.10
Is There Life After Football? Page 10