All out of Luck: the use and abuse of NFL players
Words by Dominic CausleyTodd
For the past few weeks I’ve been trying to write an article to get Sydney Uni students excited about the upcoming start of the season. Initially it was going to be a team by team analysis like we did with the EPL, but let’s be real... none of you are going to read 8000 words about the finer workings of the NFL. Then I decided to write about the storylines that you would want to follow this year. Things like how will Antonio Brown fare without a hall of fame calibre quarterback, or is this Cleveland offense more high powered than the Rams, Chiefs and Saints, and how for the first time the AFC South is the division to watch.
We were almost ready to publish... then on August 24 that got flipped on its head when Andrew Luck shocked the football world by announcing his retirement. That was when I realised that wasn’t the story here, I don’t need to write about how great the 100th season of the NFL is going to be, the sports headlines and the media attention on Michael Dickson and now Valentine Holmes will do that for me. The story here isn’t about Andrew Luck either, at least not specifically, the story here is about how, even by the standards of professional sport, the NFL uses and abuses almost everyone who ever puts on a helmet and steps out onto the gridiron.
Watching the press conference where Luck announced his retirement, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. This is potentially the most sure-fire talent to enter the NFL this century. Luck was arguably the most talented quarterback since Payton Manning and Brett Favre. And here he was, broken, physically and emotionally turning his back on the sport that he loves. Now NFL fans were very quick to turn around and blame the Colts organisation for ending Luck’s career and they’re not wrong. The Colts did basically the same thing to Peyton Manning. Then came the comparisons to Calvin Johnson and Barry Sanders. These were two more players that were generational talents, arguably the best to ever play their positions, who retired in their prime. And these comparisons are valid but we look at these cases through the perspective of fans watching some of the greatest football players ever to hang up their cleats. This isn’t just about Indianapolis or Detroit or Green Bay misusing the freakish talents that end up on their roster, this is about the complete disregard for all NFL players as people.
When we think of professional athletes, especially in high profile, commercial, American leagues like the NFL we think of people who are living the dream. Who get paid millions of dollars every year to throw a ball around, retire in their 30s and never have to work another day in their life. The reality is that this characterisation of the NFL lifestyle exists only for the few. The Russell Wilsons, Aaron Rodgers, Aaron Donalds, Khalil Macks and Kirk Cousins of the football world who are getting huge pay days. Russell Wilson is getting more than $50 million every single season from now until the end of 2023. That man is set for life. It is a similar story with the other top 10 to 15 earners in the league. But even with all that cash flying around the average salary for an NFL player is $480,000. $480k is a whole lot of money but it’s not the same as the average person having a job paying like that. These careers will last only a few years, with half of them being less than three. That’s making a grand total of a million dollars over your entire career, and then that’s the end of their life long dream. These players are being taken advantage of and exploited, churned out by a corporate entertainment system built on greed.
What I have come to realise recently is that we view these players as commodities. We have a set dollar figure to how much they’re worth, we talk about trading these players between teams like kids trading lunches in the school yard. We talk about how to use certain players in certain schemes and situations. These people get reduced down to pawns. And you can make the argument that this is their job, they turn up every day to tackle people or score touchdowns, then they go home just like everyone else. But the difference is most people’s careers will last from their 20s up until at least their 60s. The average NFL career lasts 3.5 years. An entire lifetime of work, playing football every-day from high school to university. Fighting every day to maintain your spot on a 53-man roster all through college, putting your body on the line day in and day out and not getting a dime for it. Literally being exploited by universities and the NCAA as a commodity to generate income. Finally you get through that and have a chance to finally play at the top level and it all being over in less than 4 years. These people’s lives mean nothing to us as consumers and even less to the NFL.
Sure, these players can leave the NFL and go get other jobs or go back to college but it is what is expected from them day in day out that makes this system abhorrent. 99% of those who play American football in any serious capacity will have chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). Their job will literally give them brain damage. This isn’t always something that sets in when these players make it to 60 and 70 either. Everson Griffen, a star member of the Minnesota Vikings defence had a break-down last year. His brain and mental health was damaged to the point of a psychotic episode which required him to be admitted to a mental institution, aged 30. This neurodegenerative disease is just added on top of all the physical injuries that they will accumulate and never quite recover from. By the time they reach their 40th birthday most NFL players will have more health issues than they will have had starts. If we then consider the fact that they live in America with the American health system which they will be relying upon for the rest of their lives those 4 years of that 6-figure income isn’t stretching as far as it appears. A former NFL player said that “football players retire the same way JFK retired from politics”. Every single one of these players will need to see an orthopedist, a general practitioner, a gastroenterologist, a joint-surgeon, a psychologist/psychiatrist, a neurologist and a dentist regularly. This is just the average player who retires after four years because they got cut or just got sick of the pain. This isn’t the Bo Jacksons or Ryan Shaziers who suffered a single injury that threatened their future of walking, let alone playing football.
The current system forces people to commit their entire life to the sport from their 13th birthday onwards. It is literally all that they know. There isn’t anything else for them in regards to career options when this is all over. Only the big-name players get coaching or media jobs and they’re the ones with money anyway. Football is a hard, brutal sport that is slowly killing everyone who plays it and the NFL takes everything that it can from everyone who plays and then leaves them for dead.
On top of the impact that playing professional football has on the player’s health and livelihood when they exit the league is the fact they are treated like cattle during their career. People can wake up one day and be told that they are being traded to the other side of the country. They then have to move with their families and their jobs and education etc. and start with a new team without any choice. For example, in April 2013 Darrelle Revis woke up to be told that he was no longer playing in New York and would be traded to Tampa Bay. Revis had two kids at this time and was told to go live on the other end of the country. Even for the best defensive back in the league these players have little to no agency regarding their future.
As for what we should do about this, I have no idea.This issue is horrific and cruel to its core, and yet I love watching and playing football. I get genuine joy from watching huge hits that leave people unconscious, I love getting involved in the story lines that the media pumps out, I love talking about potential trades and contract dramas and how players come back from injury. But something needs to change here and I don’t know what. I’m can’t tell you not to watch the NFL this year, because I sure as hell am going to be glued to the screen whenever the New York Giants take field. So maybe, when people like Andrew Luck, Calvin Johnson and Barry Sanders walk away from the sport we shouldn’t boo them the way Colts fans did on the weekend, we should be concerned about what on earth they could be put through to make them walk away from their life’s ambition.