[PDF] Is There Life After Football eBook

Author : James A Holstein
Publisher : NYU Press
Page : 360 pages
File Size : 15,54 MB
Release : 2014-12-26
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1479843008

GET BOOK

2016 Best Book Award, North American Society for the Sociology of Sport A human face on the realities of professional football, from the challenges players face after leaving the NFL to the factors that can enable them to continue to find success Is There Life After Football? draws upon the experiences of hundreds of former players as they describe their lives playing the sport and after their football days are over. The “bubble”-like conditions of privilege that NFL players experience while playing, often leave players unprepared for the real world once they retire and must manage their own lives. The book also reveals the difficulties affecting former NFL players in retirement: social isolation, financial concerns, inadequate career planning, psychological challenges, and physical injuries. From players who make reckless and unsustainable financial investments during their very few high-earning years, to players who struggle to form personal and professional relationships outside of football, the stories in the book put a very human face on the realities of professional football. George Koonce Jr., a former NFL player himself, weaves in his own story throughout, explaining the challenges he encountered and decisions that helped him succeed after leaving the sport. Ultimately, Is There Life After Football? concludes that, despite the challenges players face, it is possible for players to find success after leaving the NFL if they have the right support, education, and awareness of what might await them.

Author : James A. Holstein
Publisher : NYU Press
Page : 332 pages
File Size : 50,77 MB
Release : 2016-08-02
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1479868302

GET BOOK

"Draws upon the experiences of hundreds of former players as they describe their lives after their football days are over. It also incorporates stories about their playing careers, even before entering the NFL, to provide context for understanding their current situations. The authors begin with an analysis of the 'bubble'-like conditions of privilege that NFL players experience while playing, conditions that often leave players unprepared for the real world once they retire and must manage their own lives. The book also examines the key issues affecting former NFL players in retirement: social isolation, financial concerns, inadequate career planning, psychological challenges, and physical injuries"--Amazon.com.

Author : Gay Culverhouse
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 229 pages
File Size : 42,9 MB
Release : 2021-10-07
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 1538145839

GET BOOK

A heartfelt account of the difficulties football players face after they leave the NFL. The NFL is the nation’s most popular sport, but the athletes who make the league rich suffer greatly once they step off the field. In When the Cheering Stops: Life after the NFL, players open up about the adversities they face after retirement. Long after the lights have dimmed on their playing days, NFL players face emotional distress, physical injuries, and cognitive decline, often suffering on their own. Personal interviews with former players reveal that many struggle with finances, finding a second career, addiction, depression, and violence. While success stories are also shared, the unfortunate truth is that there are far more players left hurt and broken after retirement. Written by former Tampa Bay Buccaneers president and founder of the Retired Player Assistance program Gay Culverhouse, this book provides a unique inside perspective on the NFL and the long-term physical and emotional toll playing in the league takes on the players who make it great.

Author : Jeffrey Marx
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 176 pages
File Size : 48,72 MB
Release : 2007-11-01
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 1416584811

GET BOOK

The bestselling inspirational book in which the author reunites with a childhood football hero, now a minister and coach, and witnesses a revelatory demonstration of the true meaning of manhood—Season of Life is a book that “should be required reading for every high school student in America and every parent as well” (Carl Lewis, Olympic champion). Joe Ehrmann, a former NFL football star and volunteer coach for the Gilman high school football team, teaches his players the keys to successful defense: penetrate, pursue, punish, love. Love? A former captain of the Baltimore Colts and now an ordained minister, Ehrmann is serious about the game of football but even more serious about the purpose of life. Season of Life is his inspirational story as told by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Jeffrey Marx, who was a ballboy for the Colts when he first met Ehrmann. Ehrmann now devotes his life to teaching young men a whole new meaning of masculinity. He teaches the boys at Gilman the precepts of his Building Men for Others program: Being a man means emphasizing relationships and having a cause bigger than yourself. It means accepting responsibility and leading courageously. It means that empathy, integrity, and living a life of service to others are more important than points on a scoreboard. Decades after he first met Ehrmann, Jeffrey Marx renewed their friendship and watched his childhood hero putting his principles into action. While chronicling a season with the Gilman Greyhounds, Marx witnessed the most extraordinary sports program he’d ever seen, where players say “I love you” to each other and coaches profess their love for their players. Off the field Marx sat with Ehrmann and absorbed life lessons that led him to reexamine his own unresolved relationship with his father. Season of Life is a book about what it means to be a man of substance and impact. It is a moving story that will resonate with athletes, coaches, parents—anyone struggling to make the right choices in life.

Author : Mark Fainaru-Wada
Publisher : Crown
Page : 457 pages
File Size : 43,64 MB
Release : 2014-08-26
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 0770437567

GET BOOK

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The story of how the NFL, over a period of nearly two decades, denied and sought to cover up mounting evidence of the connection between football and brain damage “League of Denial may turn out to be the most influential sports-related book of our time.”—The Boston Globe “Professional football players do not sustain frequent repetitive blows to the brain on a regular basis.” So concluded the National Football League in a December 2005 scientific paper on concussions in America’s most popular sport. That judgment, implausible even to a casual fan, also contradicted the opinion of a growing cadre of neuroscientists who worked in vain to convince the NFL that it was facing a deadly new scourge: a chronic brain disease that was driving an alarming number of players—including some of the all-time greats—to madness. In League of Denial, award-winning ESPN investigative reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru tell the story of a public health crisis that emerged from the playing fields of our twenty-first-century pastime. Everyone knows that football is violent and dangerous. But what the players who built the NFL into a $10 billion industry didn’t know—and what the league sought to shield from them—is that no amount of padding could protect the human brain from the force generated by modern football, that the very essence of the game could be exposing these players to brain damage. In a fast-paced narrative that moves between the NFL trenches, America’s research labs, and the boardrooms where the NFL went to war against science, League of Denial examines how the league used its power and resources to attack independent scientists and elevate its own flawed research—a campaign with echoes of Big Tobacco’s fight to deny the connection between smoking and lung cancer. It chronicles the tragic fates of players like Hall of Fame Pittsburgh Steelers center Mike Webster, who was so disturbed at the time of his death he fantasized about shooting NFL executives, and former San Diego Chargers great Junior Seau, whose diseased brain became the target of an unseemly scientific battle between researchers and the NFL. Based on exclusive interviews, previously undisclosed documents, and private emails, this is the story of what the NFL knew and when it knew it—questions at the heart of a crisis that threatens football, from the highest levels all the way down to Pop Warner.

Author : Simon Cooper
Publisher :
Page : 204 pages
File Size : 14,23 MB
Release : 2009-12
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781449058012

GET BOOK

"This is the story of a young man who becomes immotionally disturbed with life after his parent's divorce at the age of seven. In life we take for granted the importance of a giving our kids a stable home that gives them a great balance of discipline and love. This story shows how the consequences of parents splitting up can have an affect on children who turn into young men and then adults. Simon Cooper substituted his family with the football casuals of Manchester City's Young Guvnors. This is deeper than your average hooligan story, as the book takes you into his soul and heart as he speaks openly about his drug addiction and the dark paths it led him down. Football For Life opens up to us in depth of how powerful the game can become in our society, the writing is powerfully done so we can all relate to the struggle threw Simon's eyes. From the Madchester rave days to the journey of parenthood and marriage every thing is explored in detail and depth. If you were a teenager or football casual in the rave days of house music you will not be able to put this book down. "

Author : Dawn Knight
Publisher : Red Lightning Books
Page : 300 pages
File Size : 25,45 MB
Release : 2019-07-01
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 1684350689

GET BOOK

As the first African American player to be drafted by the NFL and the first African American to play quarterback, George Taliaferro was a trailblazer whose athletic prowess earned him accolades throughout his football career. Instrumental in leading Indiana University to an undefeated season and undisputed Big Ten championship in 1945, Taliaferro was a star when many major universities had no black players on their rosters and others were stacking black players behind white starters. George Taliaferro would later rack up impressive statistics while playing professionally for the New York Yanks, Dallas Texans, Baltimore Colts, and Philadelphia Eagles. His athletic prowess did little to prevent him from facing segregation and discrimination on a daily basis, but his popularity as an athlete also gave him a platform. Playing professionally gave Taliaferro more opportunity to use football to fight oppression and to interact with other important trailblazers, like Joe Louis, Nat King Cole, Muhammad Ali, and Congressman John Lewis. Race and Football in America tells Taliaferro's story and profiles the experiences of other athletes of color who were recognized for their athleticism yet oppressed for their skin color, as they fought (and continue to fight) for equal rights and opportunities. Together these stories provide an insightful portrait of race in America.

Author : Robert W. Turner II
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 289 pages
File Size : 18,4 MB
Release : 2018-07-06
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 0190872853

GET BOOK

The NFL is the most popular professional sports league in the United States. Its athletes receive multimillion-dollar contracts and almost endless media attention. The league's most important game, the Super Bowl, is practically a national holiday. Making it to the NFL, however, is not about the promised land of fame and fortune. Robert W. Turner II draws on his personal experience as a former professional football player as well as interviews with more than 140 current and former NFL players to reveal what it means to be an athlete in the NFL and explain why so many players struggle with life after football. Without guaranteed contracts, the majority of players are forced out of the league after a few seasons. Over three-quarters of retirees experience bankruptcy or financial ruin, two-thirds live with chronic pain, and too many find themselves on the wrong side of the law. Robert W. Turner II argues that the fall from grace of so many players is no accident. The NFL, he contends, powerfully determines their experiences in and out of the league. The labor agreement provides little job security and few health and retirement benefits, and the owners refuse to share power with the players, making change difficult. And the process of becoming an elite football player--from high school to college and through the pros--leaves athletes with few marketable skills and little preparation for their first Sunday off the field. With compassion and objectivity, Not for Long reveals the life and mind of high school, college, and NFL athletes, shedding light on what might best help players transition successfully out of the sport.

Author : Ray Lucas
Publisher : Triumph Books
Page : 265 pages
File Size : 46,45 MB
Release : 2014-09-01
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1623689171

GET BOOK

In Under Pressure, Ray Lucas provides fans with a timely, uncensored look at pro football's play-at-all-costs culture. Overcoming questions about his size and skills as a quarterback, Lucas persevered and went on to play seven seasons in the NFL. His professional football career, however, came to a sudden end at age 30, when a neck injury caused him to collapse on the sideline during training camp. Instructed by NFL doctors that surgery wasn't an option, Lucas turned to painkillers for relief, but as his tolerance for medication escalated and his NFL insurance coverage expired, he began to plan his suicide. Just days before he planned to take his life, Lucas was put in touch with a group of doctors who agreed to perform neck surgery free of charge. In this tell-all, Lucas shares how—in a league without guaranteed contracts and careers that average just a few seasons long—players in the training room are perceived to lack the toughness necessary to succeed on the field. He discusses how this prevailing attitude leads to widespread abuse of painkillers and leaves many former players unable to lead a normal life once their playing career ends while also sharing details on how he overcame his drug addiction and turned his own life around.

Author : Tim Green
Publisher : HarperCollins
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 47,8 MB
Release : 2021-09-14
Category : Juvenile Fiction
ISBN : 0062486136

GET BOOK

**INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER** From New York Times bestselling author and former NFL player Tim Green comes a gripping, deeply personal standalone football novel about a star middle school quarterback faced with a life-changing decision after his dad is diagnosed with ALS. Perfect for fans of Mike Lupica! With two all-star college football players for brothers and a former Atlanta Falcons defensive lineman for a father, it is only natural for sixth-grade quarterback Benjamin Redd to follow in their footsteps. However, after his dad receives a heartbreaking ALS diagnosis—connected to all those hard hits and tackles he took on the field—Ben’s mom becomes more determined than ever to get Ben to quit football. Ben isn’t playing just for himself though. This might be his dad’s last chance to coach. And his teammates need a quarterback that can lead them to the championships. But as Ben watches the heavy toll ALS takes on his dad’s body, he begins to question if this should be his final season after all.