Fw: [Retired NFL Players] Life after football | Fumbling for identity

Sent: Dec 19, 2006 9:45 AM
Subject: Life after football | Fumbling for identity

By Greg Bishop
Seattle Times staff reporter
December 18, 2006

Ken Ruettgers' football funeral unfolded before his eyes. The Green Bay
Packers, his teammates for 12 seasons, were in the Super Bowl. He sat
in the stands, 34 and recently retired. The stadium swelled to
capacity. He felt empty and removed.

His picture flashed across the screen at halftime, same as every player
who retired or passed since the last Super Bowl. So Ken Ruettgers
turned his attention toward Ken Ruettgers. The man in the picture, the
football player, smiled. The man in the stands, the former football
player, waved goodbye and wondered: Who am I?

"It felt like a eulogy," Ruettgers says. "My teammates were in the land
of the living, and I was with the living dead. Of course I wanted them
to win. But a part of me didn't want them to win without me."

Ruettgers assumed that he alone suffered from transition torture, the
crisis evoked from losing an identity forged for decades on the
football field. Then Tom Neville, a former teammate suffering from
depression, broke out of a psychiatric ward and into an apartment
manager's office in California. He ended up dead, shot in a police
standoff.

Other teammates were going through divorces, bankruptcy, addicted to
painkillers, alcohol or drugs. He remembered them as warriors, fearless
and famous and indestructible. And so many of them were failing.

He watched the tears pour out of athletes at news conferences
announcing their retirements. Emmitt Smith. Troy Aikman. Andre Agassi.
All grieving what Ruettgers calls "identity foreclosure."

The concept led Ruettgers to create an organization called "Games Over"
to help athletes deal with transition. He studies, talks and writes
about lost identity. He found one common denominator in that work -
to some degree, they all go through it.

Retired offensive linemen struggle with an old question posed by Norm
Evans, who played for the Houston Oilers, the Miami Dolphins and the
Seahawks.

If you are what you do - and you don't - who are you?

"It's like you're an adult with an umbilical cord in your hand, walking
around and looking for a place to plug it in," Evans says. "And there's
nobody there to help you. It's like, 'Hey, you're an adult, you should
figure this out for yourself.' When, in a lot of ways, guys are
handicapped."

Ruettgers views the NFL as a high-school locker room extended into
adulthood. The players are technically adults, only more enabled and
entitled. He compares them to lions raised in the San Diego Zoo, then
suddenly dropped back into Africa at retirement.

He cites one study that found 90 percent of elite athletes look forward
to retirement. What the study left out, Ruettgers says, is they look
forward to retiring to utopia after a 20-year career filled with Pro
Bowls and Super Bowls. Then they get there. Bills need to be paid.
Wives and kids have needs. And life goes on, whether they're ready or
not.

These are the trials of transition.

Players retire at the age most peers are climbing the corporate ladder.
Having already reached one pinnacle themselves, they are weary of
starting from the bottom or scared of failing at something new. John
Michels, former Packers offensive lineman, compares it to going from
CEO of your personal athletic corporation to starting over in the
mailroom.

Many lack basic qualifications outside of football. One study conducted
by the NFL Players Association found that 70 percent of current players
have not completed their college educations. Worse yet, when Art Kuehn
played for the Seahawks from 1976 to '82, two of his teammates couldn't
read.

"Just because you can push around a 300-pounder doesn't mean you're
going to figure out the rest of it," says Blair Bush, a retired NFL
veteran who lives in Seattle. "That qualifies you to be a bouncer is
about all."

Former players miss the locker room, miss the friendships and the
structure. Jim Sweeney, a 16-year veteran who retired in 1999, says
players go from having 52 best friends to seeing them occasionally. He
calls the camaraderie an "addiction," the transition a "tug of war."

Some are tugged right back into the locker room. The faces are the
same, but the vibe changes after retirement. They hang around until
something clicks, until they understand - they aren't a part of it
anymore.

"It's just not the same," says Grant Feasel, who played for the
Seahawks from 1987 to '93. "It's like the 'Wild Kingdom,' where the
predator gets one of the gazelles and the herd just keeps on running."

Gone is the structure that dominated their lives. The days planned to
the minute. The satisfaction of receiving a grade each Sunday, a finite
and immediate evaluation.

"Imagine if every day of your life as a grown-up you were handed an
itinerary," says Ed Cunningham, retired lineman and current
broadcaster. "Then one day you walk into the real world and have to set
your own alarm, make your own résumé, find your own job."

Sure, the money helps - if it's still around. When Reggie McKenzie
was director of player programs for the Seahawks, he knew one player
who didn't realize until after he retired that he owned eight cars
purchased by his agent and doled out to women he never met.

When McKenzie went into the locker room to urge Seahawks to sign up for
a 401(k) investment program - the league matched $4,500 and players
were eligible to put in $13,000 annually - they literally ran from
him.

Bill Curry felt as prepared as possible for his transition. He held a
diploma from Georgia Tech, worked every offseason for practical
experience and played one season after a horrific knee injury, bracing
himself for the next phase.

Instead, he went into a tailspin. He suffered from a low-grade
depression sparked, in part, by the 1974 strike during his tenure as
president of the Players Association. He spent too much time wallowing
and eating, not enough time working out.

One day he found himself sitting in a bar, watching Carlton Fisk smack
a home run off the foul pole in the World Series. Curry made up his
mind right there. Time to get in shape. He woke up the next morning,
went running and fell to his knees after eight minutes, vomiting. He
heard a voice coming from within.

"You know, this is going to kill you."

Curry pulled his life together. He started distance running, went into
coaching and scouting, later analyzing football.

His experience is typical. The first two years of transition are the
worst.

Players are coded with immediacy DNA, and their jobs depend on staying
in the moment, concentrating from one play to the next. When they're
running down kickoffs, they can't bother with future transitions - or
they will reach those transitions a whole lot sooner.

Ruettgers coaches high-school football in his spare time. During a
recent practice, another coach told a receiver to bounce up after a big
hit, to never let them see him hurting.

"I chuckled to myself," Ruettgers says, "because that's how, as
athletes, we're trained up. To not admit weakness, to suck it up and
endure. So that keeps a lot of guys from seeking help and support."

What follows: depression and chemical dependency.

The Center for the Study of Retired Athletes collected data on more
than 2,800 retired players. It found that about one in 10 were
diagnosed with clinical depression and nearly half were being treated
with anti-depressants. It also found a higher number of clinically
depressed players between age 35 and 45 - the range in which many of
them retire.

Several describe football as a coping mechanism. When it's gone, they
turn that rage inward - or find another way to cope.

Alcohol, cocaine and marijuana kept Bob Newton from reaching his
All-Pro potential in 11 seasons with the Seahawks and Chicago Bears.
Retirement only accelerated his spiral into more drugs and more
alcohol, and, eventually, into treatment.

Now a counselor at the Betty Ford Clinic, Newton estimates 10 percent
of NFL players suffer from the same chemical dependency that led to his
failed marriage and five arrests for driving under the influence. He
also says that excessive drinking behavior remains acceptable in the
NFL.

Newton checked into a treatment center in Monroe in July 1983, shortly
after he retired. That same day, the Seahawks checked into training
camp.

The fear of failure works as a motivator in sports and a hindrance in
business. Football is zero-sum. Business is cost-benefit.

Ruettgers compares the first two years of transition to the first days
spent working out. The hardest part, always, remains the first step in
the door.

His came after acquiring an MBA and a real-estate license, when
Ruettgers took an entry-level job with a publishing company in Oregon.
He caught on quickly, immersing himself in software skills and author
relations the same way he immersed himself in game plans. The company
soon promoted him to editorial director.

"Which is pretty typical for athletes," Ruettgers says. "But you don't
know that you can do it. And you don't how to do it, how to apply it,
until you're in it. One of my biggest fears was, 'Do I have what it
takes?' "

The key: funneling passion somewhere else. Kuehn tried memorabilia and
sales before he ended up at a job fair in Tacoma, teaching certificate
in hand. He's now an assistant principal at Interlake High School in
Bellevue.

McKenzie ran into Hall of Famer Merlin Olsen at Shea Stadium in New
York shortly after he retired. McKenzie asked him about transitioning.
Olsen told him, "If you can walk out of one door into another, then the
transition is a whole lot easier." So McKenzie worked in a variety of
jobs for the Seahawks, then went into business for himself and expanded
his successful youth foundation in Detroit.

Retired NFL veteran Curt Marsh started by purchasing a vending-machine
business. It made money but left him unfulfilled. He even tried
creating a slogan, but when, "Don't take candy from strangers, buy it
from me," was the best he could come up with, he wisely shifted gears.

Marsh became a world-champion disabled weightlifter, a supervisor for
the city of Everett and an accomplished public speaker. Passion found.

"If you have that kind of personality, and you aren't able to find it
somewhere else, you'll be very passionately depressed," Marsh says.
"You don't lose the passion, it just goes somewhere."

Michels didn't worry about working right away. Instead, he set a
short-term goal to prove that life existed outside football. He
obtained his pilot's license in a month, flying every day in a
four-seat Cessna. Flying provided the same sense of accomplishment.

"That was when the lightbulb went on," Michels says. "That helped me
realize what I needed to do was find a new passion."

Norm Evans played from 1965 to '78, during an era when players worked
during college and the NFL offseason. He slaved at a construction site
and in a refinery. He drove a bread truck and washed cars and mowed
lawns. He went on a speaking tour after the Dolphins finished the 1972
season undefeated. He started a publishing company.

He even prepped beef cattle with a hose and soap and water while in
college.

"Black Angus," Evans says. "This guy would bring them to a show in
Texas. It's February, it's freezing, and I'm giving these cows a bath
for a buck an hour. I'd do anything I could to make a few bucks."

Evans currently works for Pro Athletes Outreach in Issaquah, teaching
players to become role models. Players in his era looked at football as
a head start. Even a first-round pick like Marsh, who played from 1981
to '86, never made a million dollars in his career.

Players in today's NFL don't need to worry about making money in the
offseason. They don't really have an offseason. The assumption, then,
is that their transition will be easier. But retired players believe
the opposite. Current players are less ready for the real world, more
sheltered and less experienced. Not that any retired players feel sorry
for them.

"Guys work 10 months out of the year playing football," McKenzie says.
"They don't have an opportunity to prepare themselves for life after
football. You're going to see a bigger slide. And the slide will be
bigger because of the dollars."

Like this: A former teammate called Cunningham, who retired in 1996, in
a panic. He had been out of the game for eight months and woke up, 34
years old, sobbing, unsure. Another teammate started smoking crack and
ended up in jail.

"Most guys leave the game and struggle and flounder," Michels says.
"You read over and over about guys who became addicted to drugs,
bankrupt. They need guidance. You come from this career where you are
catered to, and you're thrown in the world where nothing is given to
you, people don't care about you anymore."

Especially offensive linemen, the indistinguishable and anonymous
brutes up front. They don't retire with the name recognition of
quarterbacks or running backs or wide receivers. They retire large and
lost.

"My knee [injury] was more than a physical problem," Michels said. "My
dreams were attached to it. Guys need to be told that it's OK to grieve
this thing."

Retired offensive linemen are consumed by the torture of transition,
the crisis of identity. They talk and think about the game more than
they want to, more than they said they would. They are not alone. Ask
any retired athlete.

Ruettgers' advice? Focus on the three M's - money, marriage and
mission. Go back to school, finish diploma requirements or pursue an
advanced degree. Leaf through business cards accumulated during a
playing career. Go to marriage counseling.

"Most retirements - what do you do?" Ruettgers asks. "You get a gold
watch, go on vacations, live the golden years. These guys have their
whole lives in front of them."

They have football funerals to attend. Marriages to fix. Identities to
find.

These are the trials of transition.

Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company

--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Retired NFL Players" group.
To post to this group, send email to Retired-NFL-Players@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to Retired-NFL-Players-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Retired-NFL-Players?hl=en
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---

David E. Garnett
President
iAM Solutions, LLC
703.926-9134 - mobile