Once the Cheering Stops: The Life of a Retired Pro Athlete

Sometimes when people ask me what I want to do after I graduate, I tell them that I'd like nothing more than to do nothing but watch Netflix for the rest of my life, which is absolutely not true. Don't get me wrong-- I love marathoning such quality titles as "That 70's Show" or "One Tree Hill," but there's no way I could ever spend all of my time moping around in sweats, watching Netflix and generally feeling sorry for myself before an inherent feeling of uselessness set in. For many professional athletes, however, post-retirement is alarmingly similar to my theoretical post-grad plans; often after they retire, professional athletes spend a lot of time indoors, perhaps streaming TV shows and movies for hours on end, and ultimately feeling sorry for themselves.
And why wouldn't they? Looking back on life and realizing that your life's "high point" was in your early to mid-twenties doesn't instill a sense of motivation or enthusiasm for the future by any means-- in fact, this exact sentiment is why so many ex-professional athletes cite depression as one of the main things they struggled with after hanging up their jersey for good. After retirement, unless an athlete has been very careful with their finances, there's a good chance that they will run into money troubles-- according to Sports Illustrated, 78% of NFL players are bankrupt within two years of retiring. The lifestyle they lead while playing isn't sustainable in the longterm, which ends up being something that many pro-athletes have had to learn the hard way. Another thing athletes struggle with after they retire is a colossal identity crisis. If a person spends their whole life fine-tuning a set of skills as specific as playing sports, then that's the most established part of their developed "self," so giving up the game is, in fact, giving up a large part of themselves. I am by no means a professional athlete, but when I think about being done with crew after college, I have a tiny freakout, because for the past three years, I've been recognized as Emily Connelly: Rower. I can't imagine if my whole life was focused around the sport and my career had a blatant expiration date like those of professional football or basketball players.
In the ESPN movie "Broke," the idea of professional athletes as competitors in every walk of life was very striking-- the living lavishly wasn't necessarily because all of the athletes get drafted to the NBA, MLB or NFL and then suddenly acquire a thirst for fifty-six thousand square feet and a cherry red Lamborghini, it's because culturally, it's what they're expected to want. In a way, competing with other men (always men-- when was the last time you saw a WNBA player in a Maserati? My guess is never, since in 2012 the average salary for a WNBA player was $72,000 annually… um…) is what US society expects their athletes to do, and in becoming big spenders, professional athletes are playing into cultural blueprints of expectations. In order to be that caliber of athlete, your competitive drive has to be immense, so why wouldn't translate into off-court interactions?
Transitioning from making millions of dollars a year to making virtually no money calls for a fundamental lifestyle alteration, but after participating in an enterprise of excess for however long one's contract (and body) allows, I don't imagine that cutting back comes particularly easily. When I quit my summer job before college, I had a hard time adjusting to my new means, and I worked at a grocery store. I can't even begin to fathom how difficult the fiscal shift is for retiring athletes.
I think the "here today, gone tomorrow" nature of professional athletes careers contributes to their longterm short comings-- when you're on top of the world, there's a feeling of invincibility, untouchableness. Many of the athletes in the movie discussed getting caught up in the spending and spending machine, and losing themselves in the process. The wise scholar Young Jeezy once said, "gotta stay true to who you are and where you came from, 'cause at the top will be the same place you hang from," which is a sentiment that was deeply manifest in Broke. In failing to plan for their futures and getting too caught up in appearances, the fall from grace for many professional athletes has catastrophic and painful repercussions. But as the only woman in the film said, "Nobody feels bad for you when you've squandered away millions of dollars." That's true. Us little people just sit here, think about how stupid they are with their money, and then find solace in the statement, "I would never do that." It's easy to make judgement calls when it's not (and likely never will be) your money.

Author's note: Young Jeezy is not actually a scholarly source. I know.

Sports, Politics, and the Olympics

Jesse Owens, Olympic gold medalist in the 1936 Berlin Games.
Owens won four gold medals, even in the face of adversity (America!)

Mass media and the Olympics seems like a given in society today, but it wasn't always so. In fact, mass media was such a novel platform for spreading ideas that when the German Olympic Committee decided to install closed-circuit television systems in the track and field stadiums, gymnasiums, and other Olympic venues built specifically for the purpose of the 1936 games, Adolf Hitler saw the games as the perfect opportunity to promote his fascist government and the ideas of a superior aryan race; he even went so far as to publish in his party's newspaper that Jews and persons of color shouldn't be allowed to compete. Although Hitler "cleaned up" the games after many nations threatened to boycott the games, removing the anti-semitic propaganda he had condoned throughout Berlin, there was still considerable debate among many nations about whether or not the Nazi Games were a "safe" competition. Turkish athletes refused to be formally introduced to Hitler, the Spanish government opted instead to host its own Olympiad (which was a failure), and even the United States considered requesting a boycott. However, it was determined that "the Olympic Games should not reflect political views, but rather should be a contest of the greatest athletes." Meanwhile, many African-American communities supported participation in the games, and for good reason: in the event of African-American victories, athletes would be undermining aryan supremacy. 

In the case of the Nazi Games, sports were being used as a vehicle for propaganda, one of Sage and Eitzen's 5 political uses of sport. One one hand, Hitler and the rest of Nazi Germany were using the games to promote their political views on a global spectrum. But not all propaganda is negative: countries that didn't boycott the games, such as the United States, aired the Olympics on national television so that everyone could watch US citizens "defeat" the proverbial bad guys. In contrast to Hitler's shameless self-promotion, the US used propaganda to create a sense of national unity.

Asserting that sports are devoid of all political interference is a ballsy claim, and one that holds very little ground when the history of sports are brought into consideration. As evidenced by the 1936 Olympic Games, sometimes sports are the most effective method to spread a message of power-- if that's not political, I don't know what is. 

London Calling: The Globalization of the NFL

Wembley Stadium: Future of the NFL?

In honor of Peyton Manning and his "Omaha!" battle cry in games, flights from anywhere in the country to Omaha are $48 in honor of Super Bowl XLVIII. On the surface level, this seems trivial, and maybe it is, since the entire premise of the airline deal is to increase the number of passengers flying to Nebraska. But at the same time, this deal, and the national excitement spurred by Peyton Manning is the epitome of the football culture in the United States-- in January and February, suddenly everyone is wearing apparel emblazoned with their team's logo, even if their team isn't one of the final two competing for a giant Super Bowl ring. There's a sense of national pride around the Super Bowl that isn't nearly as prevalent with any other sports. There's a camaraderie that spreads across the United States like wildfire when it comes to football, and it very much has become a source of national identity. This is why when the NFL discusses plans for expanding the enterprise "across the Pond," it's certainly a source of controversy.

When it comes to capital, it's not hard to see why the NFL is looking to globalize: if the international expansion works well, from a business standpoint, it's brilliant. At the end of the day, the NFL is a billion dollar business, so when they make plans for expansion, it's not about the fans or the nationalism associated with the game, it's all about generating maximum revenue, and evidently, London seems like a place to do that.

London is, theoretically, the perfect city to host an NFL team. It's a big city, easily accessed, and already equip with Wembley Stadium, which is a stadium used for World Cup qualifying matches and rugby matches, but is largely dormant in the fall and winter-- perfect for football season. 

But like most large corporate decisions, the idea of an NFL team in London is not without a dark side. Globalization is a funny term, because the cross-continental migration of American Football is not a global phenomenon, but rather the Americanization of European countries. I imagine that if the English National Rugby Association were to plant one of their teams in the United States, because it's not culturally relevant, it wouldn't generate the anticipated capital, and this is absolutely mirrored in the UK NFL. Football culture is an American phenomenon; it's just not relevant enough in the UK to generate enough capital to be worth all of the risks. 

It's not unnecessary to point out that NFL stands for National Football League-- if it moves across the pond, will the most familiar brand in sports marketing have to change its entire identity?

Sociogenesis of Rowing

When I tell people in Colorado that I'm on the crew team, I'm more often than not greeted with blank stares. So I say, "You know… rowing?" I demonstrate a little arms away stroke in hopes that I can provide some kind of visual. More blank stares. I say, "You know, like in the Olympics!" Most people get it then, some people go on looking at me like I'm speaking in an entirely different language, which half the time, I might as well be. I often end up resorting to the most basic illustration of rowing that I can think of: "Have you seen the movie The Social Network? Yeah, the hot twins." Despite the apparent unpopularity of rowing in a landlocked state like Colorado, the sport has been extremely prevalent historically. 

In ancient Egypt, Rome and Greece, boats were used to transport goods or wage war, which meant that more often than not, the rowers were in fact slaves or prisoners who weren't rowing out of love of the sport, but pure obligation (I like to remind my coach of this when a piece feels particularly difficult). However, the origin of rowing as a sport has its roots firmly planted on the shores of the River Thames. The first rowing race was five miles long and took place on the Thames in 1716 (Academia Remigum), but the first 8+ boat race (the race that defined rowing as a sport) didn't occur until 1829. It was raced between Oxford and Cambridge universities, and remains perhaps the most intense rowing rivalry: there's a reason the annual dual is referred to not as "a boat race" but The Boat Race.

The Boat Race as we know it today was started by Charles Merivale, a student at Cambridge, challenging one of his friends at Oxford to a little race in 1829. By 1836, The Boat Race had become an annual tradition, with the losing team challenging the winner to a rematch each year. Though initially, races were between two (or more) boats who started roughly at the same spot and tried to reach a decided finishing point first, the way regattas are conducted has shifted substantially, likely due to the efficacy of The Boat Race.

Early rowing uniform

CU Women's Crew at Nationals (Modern rowing uniform)

Now, fall races are typically known as head races, where all boats line up according to bow number and start one at a time, with around a 10 second (though sometimes more, sometimes less) staggered start. In races with this structure, each crew is racing against the clock in hopes of being the team with the best time. These are usually longer races, ranging from about 3k to 10k, depending on the course. They follow the course of the river, so the coxswain tries to steer the shortest course possible amid curves and bridges. In the spring, races are much more standardized: 2000 meters, sprint style. All boats line up in stake boats to ensure that everyone's bows are exactly aligned and-much like in track and field- athletes are told to sit at attention, then a gun goes off, and it's a mad dash to the finish line. Courses for 2k races are typically marked with a different color of buoy each 500m, and failure to keep your crew in their respective lane results in penalties of 10 seconds added to your crew's overall time are in order. 

Rowing was typically regarded as a men's sport, but once women were allowed to join, their modern and aerodynamic uniforms consisted of bloomers and puffy sleeves-- it was all about remaining conservative (and stylish, evidently), while the equipment used in the sport was all made of wood, so very heavy and likely not much fun. Now, both men's and women's crew teams wear spandex bottoms, and, depending on the team, either a team tank top (tucked in), or just a full spandex unisuit, or uni (or sausage casing-- nothing is more unflattering than the seams that JL thinks are necessary to stitch horizontally across the butt). Equipment now is made of carbon fiber, since the more lightweight it is, the faster the boat is able to go. 

CU Women's Crew out on the Boulder Res

The Olympic Games have been a huge proponent in the spread of rowing on a global spectrum: the United States, Great Britain, Canada and New Zealand all have very competitive national teams, but countries like Slovenia, Poland and Croatia are also known to show up and compete. Rowing has become a global phenomenon, which is partially due to the fact that it's a genuinely fascinating sport, but also-- speculatively-- due to the colonizing powers of England.

Though the sport is beautiful and popular in places with lots of access to water (the UK, the East and West Coasts of the United States, not Colorado), for land locked locales, a major challenge rowing faces is its accessibility, and with that, the retention rates. If I could be on the water every day, I'm sure I would be a much more driven rower than being on the water for four months and the erg studio for the remaining eight. Another problem with rowing is its inherent exclusivity. A nice boat runs around fifty thousand dollars (and a decent one for racing is at least thirty), so the stigma of rowing as a sport for upper class, white, old money Boston families certainly does hold water (pun intended).

Sport in the Ancient World

The methods of sport and its cultural importance has shifted substantially since Ancient Greece or Rome, but yet the expectations have stayed fairly consistent. In both Ancient Greece and Rome, victorious athletes were hailed as objects of envy and desire, which is an idea that (though admittedly toned down) is still fundamentally practiced; successful athletes attain a level of celebrity just because they're really good at what they do.
When the first Olympic Games were played in Greece in 776 BC, value was placed on sprinting; in fact, that was the only event. As the Games evolved, other track and field events, like discus throw and triple jump, began to be used. In Ancient Greece, much like in professional sports today, being an athlete was considered a "lucrative and respectable" position, and the winners of the Olympic Games were hailed as sons of gods. Any freeborn Greek was allowed to participate in the Games, and they were played naked to illustrate the fundamental unimportance of class or affluence in competition. Unlike athletic events today, however, Greek sport was all about underlying religious connotations. The men who participated in the games were viewed as the physical manifestations of "perfect human specimens," i.e.: the gods.
In Ancient Rome, the gladiators were often slaves or prisoners, forced not only to train vigorously, but also to eat a high energy diet so they could keep up their pique physical shape. The demographics of the gladiators as compared to the spectators in the colosseum serves to create a very different atmosphere for Roman sport than Grecian sport; instead of having an equalizing religious theme, Roman sport was almost purely for entertainment purposes. It relied on physical contact, and every time a gladiator stepped into the arena, he had a 1 in 6 chance of dying. The focus of Roman sport was more for spectacle than anything else; athletes were praised for their fighting skills, but aside from that, they held very little significant cultural value.

Sport, Society & Me

I've described myself as an athlete for as long as I can remember, dabbling in everything from running to soccer to basketball, before finally settling on rowing. The way I encountered crew was entirely accidental: before I moved into my dorm freshman year of college, my mother told me that my college experience would be significantly better if I joined a team of some sort, because then I'd have a group of friends with shared common interests from the very get-go. Naturally I, eighteen and headstrong, totally blew off everything she said. At first.

Three days into the semester, I realized that I wasn't meeting people who I actively wanted to spend time with, and rebelling against my parents wasn't nearly as fun once I didn't live with them anymore. On that third day of college, a boy came up to me and introduced himself. He said his name was Matt, and he told me that he was on the University of Colorado Crew Team. Both of my parents rowed in college, so I knew enough about crew to know that when he said the team could always use "girls like me," he meant that the team needed coxswains. I was a varsity athlete in high school, and I had just spent a month backpacking the Colorado Trail-- I was most certainly not coxswain material. And so I attended an informational meeting about joining the rowing team-- with the intention to row-- just to prove to this random boy who didn't even matter that there's no such thing as a "girl like me."

On the first day of water practice, I was terrified. Somehow, in my determination to be a serious rower, I had forgotten that the boat would be unset, that every tiny wake from the coaches launch would give me terrifying visions of me pitching over the side of the boat and into the Boulder Reservoir. Somehow, despite this fear, something clicked that first morning. 

The role that my sport plays in my life is starring one, fundamentally important to why I am the way I am; most of my close friends are the girls that I see at five o' clock every morning, sweaty and miserable but still somehow clinging on to a mutual idea that somewhere deep down, this is a fun thing to be doing. But the role rowing plays in my life isn't exclusively defined by the people with whom I associate; rowing has transformed and defined my college experience. Waking up at 5 am isn't part of a typical college experience, and neither is spending spring break doing two-a-day practices in glamorous locales like Nachitoches, Louisiana. But also the team atmosphere gives me something to wake up for. When I don't have practice, it's really hard for me to wake up for my 9 am classes, but somehow I can get up at 5 am every single day for practice. This comes down to accountability and determination, both of which are values prized in athletes, starting at a very early age and becoming more prominent as the proverbial playing field gets more globalized.

Sport, when in a cooperative environment, plays a very positive role in a person because it instills values that are beneficial in everyday life. Dedication, determination, commitment and problem solving can all be taught through sports, but are also fundamentally important in the workplace or academics. However, the increase in prevalence of sports in US culture is presenting a paradigm shift; instead of valuing occupations in fields like education or health professions, society at large has started investing immense amounts of time and capital into enterprises-- like sports-- that are virtually useless for anything aside from entertainment value. Athletes are put on these pedestals that elevate their status from athlete to celebrity to idol; as expressed in Eitzen's chapter on the duality of sport, the Super Bowl is a physical manifestation of "the highest Sabbath in American religion, the annual consecration of corporate culture…" (Eitzen, 3). Though operating in hyperbole, the intention of this statement is blatantly clear. Society at large invests a lot of stock into the sports culture in America, so much that it becomes barely short of a religious experience. This sentiment, extreme though it may be, serves to illustrate just how elevated the status of not just athletes, but their associates (coaches, team owners, etc) have become in society. Being from North Carolina and obnoxiously aware of ACC basketball, I think Coach K of the Duke Blue Devils is a perfect example of this: he's just a basketball coach. But somewhere along the line, his many successes turned him into an icon, the proverbial symbol of a culture much larger than himself.

The Sport Ethic

At its most basic level, the Sport Ethic according to Hughes and Coakley is the culmination of the rules (both written rules and anticipated norms within the sport) that athletes adhere to in the pursuit of their best possible performance. On page 310, Hughes and Coakley outline the four dimensions of Sports Ethic, or the fundamental underlying expectations that are associated with participating in athletics. The first of these is that being an athlete involves making sacrifices. In order to perform to one's full potential, they are expected to prioritize their sport and performance above petty vices and habits that aren't beneficial towards meeting their goals. 

Hughes and Coakley assert that the second dimension of Sports Ethic is that being an athlete "involves striving for distinction" (310). In a competitive atmosphere, it becomes of the essence for a person to strive to stand out, but this is also where the problem of "overconforming" comes into play. It's the norm for an athlete to go above and beyond to prove themselves, so much that it becomes an expectation. Instead, then, of being praised for their progress, the paradigm shifts to an accusatory tone when the expectation of overconforming isn't being met. Instead of giving positive affirmations to the athletes who make the necessary sacrifices and go the proverbial extra mile, coaches resort to ragging on athletes who are demonstrating a "lack" in any of the four dimensions; lack of hustle becomes lack of effort, which then becomes lack of caring-- a sentiment which can then be boiled down into a fundamental lack of dedication (311).

Being a dedicated athlete is defined by the third and fourth dimensions of Sports Ethic, which are accepting risks and playing through pain, and refusing to accept limits in the pursuit of possibility. Athletes conform to these four beliefs not out of sheer determination, but for an array of external reasons. On page 313, Hughes and Coakley explain that inter-athlete bonds reaffirm a sense of fraternity within the athletes. This is important because it creates a world for the athlete where their identity is congruent with a group identity; they become part of a whole. As expressed on page 312, "As self identification becomes lodged within sport, a person is increasingly susceptible to control that is grounded in the sport and sport groups." Essentially, what that means is that as a person's self-perception transitions into "the self as athlete," there is an internal desire to confirm this self at every given opportunity. 

I'm not a professional athlete, nor will I ever be, but reading this article, I was shocked by how applicable the four dimensions of the Sport Ethic were to my life (and my team). I row on the varsity women's crew team, and every day, we are expected to make sacrifices (five am practices equal sacrificed sleep, erging every day is a sacrifice of comfort, as well as a tiny piece of my soul), be competitive enough to distinguish ourselves as a standout member of the team and deserving of a given seat in the boat. Every morning, I have to refuse to accept limits. Every day. I'm five feet tall, and I decided on the first day of my freshman year that I did not want to be a coxswain (which means that every practice is a battle for me). My size is a huge limitation when it comes to a sport like rowing, but I made the decision to just be "good" without any qualifiers ("good for my size"). And frankly, I don't think Hughes and Coakley's assertion of an athlete "Accepting risks and playing through the pain" (311) will ever be fully understood by anyone who hasn't pulled a 2k.