One thing about athletes, they are guys of structure and guys of habit. . . . When you don’t have that in life, it is kind of like you are out there on an island.
—Anderson Smith, former Cincinnati Bengals tight end1
Speaking about post-career challenges, former players sometimes mention money or thwarted career aspirations. Surprisingly, however, they’re much more likely to lament the loss of everyday routines, the camaraderie, and the sense of common purpose.
Facing a life without structure is no picnic. “The hardest part is your daily routine,” says former quarterback Trent Green. “For 15 years, I knew exactly what I was doing in March, June, and September because there was a schedule. When you take that away, you suddenly have a lot more time on your hands. I’ve been out of the game since 2008, and I still have a tough time with it.”2 Former Vikings linebacker Ben Leber agrees: “I’m such a creature of habit, the void of not having a daily schedule, it was tough. Tougher than I expected.”3 Another retiree elaborates: “It was just very difficult for me to make my own schedule because I always had my life scheduled for me. . . . So keeping the focus and maintaining the focus throughout the day was very, very tough.”4
Many players feel this way immediately after they’re out of the league, but, for some, the feeling lasts for years—if it ever disappears. Without the NFL script and the reassurance of custom and ritual, everyday tasks and relationships are problematic. It’s unsettling for many, excruciating for some. Out on a social island, former players are metaphorically lost, socially isolated, and psychically demoralized. They find themselves morally adrift, no longer captivated by the sacred ethos and brotherhood of the locker room. Football has been the players’ refuge, their sanctuary from both large personal problems and the bothersome minutiae of daily life. Now outside the bubble, those annoying details begin to gnaw. As Derrick Brooks puts it, “Players always say the football field is a safe haven, that you can go there and block everything else out. But what do you do when that’s gone and you have to deal with life?”5
Dealing with the routine matters of everyday life can be troublesome, from issues of money and jobs to the details of how to allocate free time. The loss of structure forces former players to fend for themselves in ways they’ve never experienced, and they often lack the fundamental life skills to get by. As an NFL alum from the late 1990s points out:
From the time you wake up [when you are playing], you have an agenda on what to do, where you need to be, where you need to go, what time you need to get back. All these things are done for you so it’s almost like you’re a baby or a child while you’re playing and when you get out of there, it’s like you have to grow up. It’s time to grow up.”6
This epitomizes the infantilization William Rhoden highlights as part of the “conveyor belt” that ushers players through big-time football. Colleges and NFL teams act like surrogate parents, sheltering, nurturing, and controlling players as fully as they can. When players are let go, they’re often little better prepared to take care of themselves than teenagers leaving home for the first time. Shielded from the outside world, with others handling all mundane responsibilities, many players have been denied the opportunity to “grow up.” Consequently, managing one’s time and daily affairs is sometimes easier said than done. Troy Vincent recalls killing time in his unscheduled life by washing clothes every day until his wife told him that normal people don’t do laundry that often. So he started cutting the lawn three times a week. He literally didn’t know what else to do.7
Some ex-players seemed trapped by their freedom. They know they need to develop new social routines, but they aren’t prepared. They’ve been consummate professionals in the NFL, but haven’t ventured far afield. The mundane transactions of everyday life confound or bore them. They lack basic social skills that others outside the bubble take for granted. Anderson Smith poses the dilemma in gridiron terms:
When I was in a situation in a football game, I knew that third and eight, I need to get to that pylon down there or we ain’t gonna convert this first down. So, I got to extend my route more steps and make this head fake and a break, and make this catch. Whereas now [after retirement], you don’t know where the pylon is, you don’t know where the first down is. You don’t know which play is going to be the big play. You are playing the game without a playbook. So it is a whole different ball game. . . . When you get out here in the real world, you got to figure out what you need to work on today, what I need to do over here. How do I develop more relationships with people? How do I become a people person? How do I become able to communicate with diverse people of each age? That is really different from “This is what you need to do, Smith.”8
Without a playbook, social dexterity is at a premium, but it’s in short supply with many former players. In the bubble, they just didn’t need the full arsenal of social skills and graces most people rely on to navigate their everyday lives. Jillian Beale, the wife of a former player from the 1990s—speaking realistically, but compassionately—puts it bluntly:
You know what? They have a complete lack of people skills—most of them. They don’t know how to interact as anything but football players and teammates. They have their own ways of behaving with one another that are pretty outrageous to people from the outside. But when they end up on the outside, that’s all they know how to do. That’s how they behave and they discover outsiders aren’t really impressed now that they aren’t playing for the [team].9
To paraphrase Anderson Smith, many former players aren’t adept at social interaction, at making social connections. They don’t know how to cultivate lasting social relationships. They’re uncomfortable with people different from themselves. All these deficits may impede personal and professional growth. Even more importantly, they can stunt social lives, especially, but not exclusively, when women are involved, as Jillian Beale observes:
Most of them have trouble relating to women. For their whole lives—at least since they became football stars—they’ve had access to women sexually. They haven’t had to really relate to women as people. They just keep score. A lot of sex without relationships. Then, when they are out of the game, they can’t relate normally to women—or anyone else for that matter. Too many of them can’t change and the situation has changed for them. They’ve been special all this time and they don’t know how to behave. They’ve acted one way and once they’ve retired they don’t know how to get along in the real world. They’ve lived in a world of their own and when it ends, they don’t function very well in normal society. They’ve lived a life where the team was always there to look out for them and clean up their messes when they screw up. Once they retire, there is no one left to look out for them.10
When Anderson Smith left the game, he not only lost the structure of his life, he lost an important source of encouragement and sustenance that might have eased his transition out of football. As he puts it, “When you are out there on that [retirement] island, there is no support system for you.”11 George Koonce relates a similar experience:
I found myself alone for the first time in my life. I’d always had the support of my teammates, my friends, my family. But that just disappeared. Leaving football is like getting a divorce. You’re separated from the life and the people you knew. It’s all behind you now. Or maybe even like death, the loss is so complete. I tried to reach out to my former teammates, but it’s just not the same.12
Not only does the end of NFL careers deprive players of the basic structures of their lives, it robs them of many of their closest relationships. Players lived life in the bubble to the fullest, but almost exclusively in the company of teammates and others connected to the NFL. Stripped of that life, former players sometimes have no one to fall back on. When the free tickets and the parties run out, so do the friends and hangers-on. When the paydays stop and the there’s no money to loan, distant relatives keep their distance. When the investment capital is gone, so are the financial “partners.” Koonce recalls how others abandoned ship when he lost his job:
Everybody seemed to disappear. Your agent’s gone. I talked to that guy once, twice a day for years, and suddenly he can’t return my calls. . . . My family didn’t know what to do with me. My Mom was thinking, “What’s going on here? Is he all done?” My sisters—a bad business deal went down and they are gone. They may be at Mom’s house when I go there, but I don’t have a relationship anymore. Your uncles, all that, that’s gone.13
Even football friends and teammates slip away. Like Koonce, Anderson Smith found himself virtually on his own when he “retired.”
I went through a very lonely time, without having anyone to talk with. Your friends are going on with their season, so a lot of guys don’t really understand where you’re coming from. . . . A lot of the friends that you had in college already have a career started and they are doing [their thing].14
It’s nice to have the formal retirement resources of the NFL and the NFLA to help establish new directions in life after football. But programs and workshops can’t replace the people who’ve disappeared from the scene.
Fellow players would seem to be the most obvious source of social support, but as Smith intimates, a significant gap emerges between men who may have been virtually inseparable for years. Koonce explains the distance.
Why wouldn’t I just call some old playing buddies, or maybe somebody who’s been out of the league for a few years? Well, a player just doesn’t call another player when he’s been cut. He’s embarrassed and vulnerable. Up ’til then, the player had been the best . . . a warrior, a hero, a victor. Now what is he? He’s a failure, a has-been. He doesn’t want people to think he’s weak. So, he keeps it all to himself.15
All players fear the end, but they also refuse to believe that it will happen to them—at least not until they’re ready. The last thing they want is a reminder of their vulnerability staring them in the face. When the end comes for someone else, players feel sympathy and compassion for the other guy. They know that he’s suffering. They care about their friend and compatriot. But they also know that, sooner or later, they will walk in those shoes and they steel themselves against the prospect. Denial overpowers empathy. So, when a player is cut, he knows what his former teammates are thinking and feeling. He feels as though he’s lost nearly everything, and he doesn’t want to lose what little remains of his self-respect and the regard of others. So he won’t allow himself to suffer in public, or seek the solace of guys in the locker room. He knows that they have compassion, but he also knows their instinct for self-preservation is going to erect protective barriers. Having lived through both sides of the situation, George Koonce remembers: “When you’ve been released, it’s like you have a disease, some kind of infection. Everyone else is afraid it’s contagious. They avoid you like the plague. Players worry that they might get cut just for hanging out with you.”16
In most respects, NFL marriages are as solid. According to the NFL Player Care study, in contrast to popular belief, retired NFL players are no more likely than the general population to be widowed or divorced. In fact, they are more likely to be currently married (over 75 percent) than comparable men in the general population. Less than 15 percent of NFL marriages end within five years of retirement.17 Nevertheless, players encounter a unique set of domestic challenges that may be especially onerous because family is expected to be a solution, not the problem. It’s supposed to be a refuge from the trials and tribulations of everyday life—a “haven in a heartless world.”18 But often it’s a mixed blessing, and sometimes players end up “twice divorced”—from both the NFL and their wives and families.
One source of difficulty is the fundamental structure of many NFL marriages. Out of practical necessity, many players’ marriages are “one-sided.” Indeed, they may be one of the last bastions of the traditional gendered division of household labor.19 Due to their round-the-clock, full-time commitment to football, players aren’t around the house very much; they’re drive-by husbands and fathers. Their primary contribution to the household is financial. In return, they ask their wives to manage the household and hold down the fort socially and emotionally. Wives put their own lives on hold to help players devote their full attention to the game. Taking care of the player—managing nearly every detail of his life—often becomes an NFL wife’s full-time job. Few wives maintain their own careers outside the home.20
As a result, wives identify so thoroughly with their NFL husbands that their own lives are completely entwined with their husbands’ NFL role, status, and fate. When he’s out of the league, they, too, are cut off from a life to which they have become deeply accustomed and attached. Their routines and rituals—the structures of their days and years—are disrupted just like his. So are their identities and emotions. Player wives live in a bubble of their own, and it bursts for them, just as it does for ex-players. That makes being supportive a difficult task.21
NFL wives have their own aspirations for life after football, expectations that sometimes conflict with players’ needs. While most players’ wives don’t eagerly anticipate retirement, they typically think it will bring a much-needed equilibrium to their marriages. Many are glad to be done with the stress of game day and have had their fill of being the weekend activity director for out-of-town friends who’ve come for the game. They look forward to not worrying about football groupies hounding their husbands. Wives may even plan new post-career possibilities for themselves and their marriages, expecting husbands to be more attentive to family matters and help out more around the house. Most hope their husbands’ health will improve without the weekly injuries.22 One player’s wife explains: “He’s worked so hard for so long. Let him have his time [when he retires] to rest and golf. Then it will be my turn to be out there, and he will be the one taking the kids to practice, volunteering, and doing homework.”23 But when that moment finally arrives, players and wives may be on decidedly different pages of the new script.
Retirement typically introduces new household dynamics to players’ lives, with realigned family organization replacing the everyday structure of life in the bubble. Recalls Kim Singletary, wife of former All-Pro Mike Singletary, “[After retirement] I started saying, look, I have needs. I have interests. I have desires. I am not saying it’s all about me, but I am saying it’s going to be like 50/50 here, you know. Not all you.”24 Players typically haven’t spent much time around the house during their playing days, and, according to their wives, they may not be fully “there” when they are home. They haven’t been responsible for many household chores, and were minimally involved with childcare. After retirement, wives often demand that players do their fair share around the house—something a temporarily shamed and emotionally vulnerable player may resent. Players find out that being a good father requires more than simply hugging the kids on the field after a winning game. Being a good husband means more than bringing home a paycheck. Providing support, rather than receiving it, is a new and difficult role.
Kim Singletary says it took about five years to adjust her marriage: “We all had to retrain his energy. I really had to train him to see me, see a different side of me, see my gifts, see my talents. He had just been so used to looking at everything from his perspective.”25 And this all took place at a time when her husband was going through his football withdrawal. Everything he’d always done and been was now up in the air, at the same time that pressures mounted at home to get with a new program. If former players are being retrained, it’s often reluctantly, if not against their will.
In some instances, however, players are eager to jump headlong into family life, even though they’ve merely been drive-by husbands and fathers for years. But that can cause trouble, too, because they may not be fully welcome in this new role. A wife of a former NFL player offers the following observations about her husband and other NFL players’ reemergence as family men:
This is my turf. Who are you? You have not been here for how many months, and you want to tell somebody WHAT? The guys came back and they really didn’t know how to act. They didn’t know the family’s customs. They didn’t know the language. They weren’t familiar with the slang. They were total foreigners. My husband would come back into the home and think he had an established position, but he really didn’t, because he was never really there to establish it all those other months.26
When players retire, it may be the first time in years the couple is actually spending time together. Some NFL wives describe that first year as “unbearable.” “He would not get off the couch and he was always in a bad mood,” recalls one ex-player’s wife. “He didn’t go to any of his former team’s games—not that they ever invited him. To this day, he doesn’t watch any football on TV. Maybe it’s terrible to say, but I was done being supportive. I was sick of it.”27
This may be the gist of the family’s failure to provide a haven in a heartless world. Whereas ex-players may expect their wives to support and comfort them when they’re dismissed from the game, that backing and encouragement is suddenly problematic. Perhaps for the first time in players’ adult lives, others around them aren’t knocking themselves out to make former players feel special, to keep their lives perfectly on track.
But post-football life has its emotional trials for players’ wives, too. Many of them are as unprepared for the end as their husbands. They deny that their lifestyles might change. In the same boat as retiring players, some wives are shocked when the money stops flowing in and the spending needs to stop. Says the wife of a former player:
I never knew that I liked the limelight, but whenever my husband and I went out, we never had to wait on a table, and we never had to wait in line for anything. Now, sometimes we have to wait. Well, if I have to stand in a line, I won’t go. You get used to a certain way of living. When your husband retires, you are a commoner, and you miss the perks.28
I’d say the thing [retired players] miss the most is the camaraderie. That’s the thing guys talk about most. Not being a part of the team. They miss the locker room. They were a part of an elite group of guys . . . and a lot of those guys miss the conversation, miss the time being among their fellow teammates.29
It’s not the money or the glory; it’s the loss of the team atmosphere that hurts the most. Not being able to “hang with the boys” has profound consequences.
Part of what former players miss is the shared experience and the knowledge that everyone went through the same thing together, regardless of when or where they played. Will Siegel echoes Koonce’s observations, stressing the complete acceptance by his teammates:
It’s not just me. All the guys feel this way. I was fortunate to play for ten years. It was unbelievable. . . . But [the best thing] is the relationships you make. . . . It’s like being in the Marines. You are immediately accepted when you come back. It’s just like you have never gone. They are just acceptive, because all of us know what each individual had to do to be in that group in that period of time.30
Many players compare their relationships to the bonds that are literally forged in combat and are hard to duplicate when the battle’s over. As one retiree puts it, players literally depend on their teammates for their livelihood—if not their lives—and that common purpose and connection is hard to relinquish:
Your livelihood depends on them and you do everything with them. . . . You live with them for six weeks in the beginning, you go to work with them all during the year from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. 9 p.m., and you fly with them, and you travel with them, and then all of a sudden, it’s gone, that’s tough. . . . You play dominoes and you play cards and video games and go out and drink beer and eat hot dogs, you know, and go for a steak. . . . When we were playing, we would be with our teammates more than our wives. . . . I’ve missed that more than playing.31
Often, in moments of high passion—especially after big wins—emotions flow. “When you see people win championships,” said Ray Lewis after winning the Super Bowl, “they do it based off love.” “We were ready to die for each other out there,” added his teammate Brendon Ayanbadejo.32 Players typically aren’t this emotional. They’re more likely to use the term “camaraderie” than “love,” or even “friendship.” There’s a subtle, yet important distinction in their choice of words, because players’ sentiments generally emanate from, and are directed toward, the football milieu and circumstances, not necessarily the people involved. That’s not to say that players don’t appreciate their comrades in arms, that they don’t feel a strong sense of masculine love. But they are much more apt to say they miss “the locker room” or “hanging out with the guys” than to refer to lost friendships or deep affective ties. Listen closely as Michael Arrington speaks of what he misses most about his NFL days:
I think [it’s] the relationships that you have with the people in the locker room. You can work in a lot of different places, you can go in a lot of different environments, but there is no environment quite like the locker room and the camaraderie you have with those guys you bleed, sweat, cry, and celebrate with. A lot of those relationships you have for the rest of your life. So I think that is the biggest thing you walk away with. . . . Being around that environment . . . that is one of the biggest things I miss.33
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.34 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.35
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.36
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.”37 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.38
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.39
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.
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.