Thirteen retirees sit around tables discussing their next business ventures. They swap stories about the good old days, when money was pouring in and life came easy.
They’re sharply dressed men, asking questions about how the business world has changed during a seminar designed to teach them how to make money after retirement. Use Twitter to reach clients? They don’t tweet. But perhaps they will start.
These men aren’t your typical retirees. They aren’t gray-haired Traditionalists, a generation whose members are eligible for AARP and senior-citizen discounts. To the contrary, they’re young and healthy.
They are former NFL players, some of whose careers ended almost as quickly as they began, and others whose moment in the sun had passed.
“They’re in a great business world, where they make enormous amounts of money, have adoration from fans and are seen by millions of people on TV,” says Tommy Karam, a sports marketing director at LSU. “Now they’re your everyday good person. That transition is dramatic, and, if you’re not careful, the drop can be dangerous.”
Last month, LSU reached out to former Tigers whose NFL careers have ended in hopes of teaching them how to brand themselves and transition successfully into a different line of work.
Karam helped developed the workshop, called “Personal Branding for Athletes: Transitioning from the NFL to Your Next Career,” with the intention of offering it twice a year and expanding into other professional sports leagues.
These players have devoted much of their lives to reaching the professional level. But, with the average career of an NFL player just 3.3 years, more emphasis needs to be placed on life after football.
“They should be thinking about it,” says Eddie Kennison, who played wide receiver for the Tigers from 1993-95, was an All-Southeastern Conference pick in 1995 and was a first-round draft choice by the St. Louis Rams in 1996. “When I first got in, I didn’t think about retirement. The checks were rolling in and I thought this was how it was going to be for the rest of my life. I later find out that that’s not the case.”
Kennison, a Lake Charles native, played three seasons with the Rams, one season with the New Orleans Saints, one season with the Chicago Bears, one-half season with the Denver Broncos and six-and-a-half seasons with the Kansas City Chiefs before re-signing with the Rams in 2008. He played just three games before being released, and he retired earlier this month.
“It’s time to retire,” he says. “I’m not hurt, I’m not beat up, but I’m 37, and 37 is like 107 in dog years in the National Football League.”
Kennison tested the entrepreneurial waters before leaving the NFL. He owns several businesses with his wife, including a restaurant, a telecommunications company and a wine club. He wanted to attend the seminar to learn how to optimize his businesses.
“If you sit still, everything will pass you by,” he says.
Kennison’s professional longevity made him one of the lucky ones. By contrast, Trev Faulk, who played linebacker for LSU from 1999-2001, had a career that stalled early.
Faulk, a Lafayette native, spent the 2002 season as an undrafted free agent with the Broncos. He spent the 2003 preseason with the Arizona Cardinals and the postseason as an inactive member of the Rams’ practice squad. He played in 2004 and 2005 for the Rams before being waived in 2006. The New Orleans Saints released him during training camp in 2007 as he attempted to recover from a back injury.
“It’s been a shock,” Faulk says. “I was planning on still playing right now. I was hoping I could play till I was 30 and then transition, but it’s happened a lot sooner than I thought it would.”
Since his release, he opened a small restaurant and a grocery store in Lafayette. Both ventures failed.
“The most irresponsible thing I’ve done with my money was invest in two businesses I wasn’t passionate about,” he says.
The three-day workshop featured speakers with expertise in business and sports. Among the topics were using the NFL brand to the players’ advantage, using social media to create buzz, and learning the basics of starting a business, client development and sponsorships.
Joe Cullen, a defensive line coach for the Jacksonville Jaguars, discussed ways of dealing with public scrutiny and image crises. Cullen previously served in the same capacity for the Detroit Lions, when in 2006 he was arrested twice for alcohol-related incidents.
“Sometimes you get knocked down. You can lie there and keep getting run over and be dead,” he said. “Or you can pick yourself up and keep moving forward.”
Bill Hochstetler, a financial adviser for Edward Jones, talked about the ability to sell skills learned in the NFL to companies with which the former players would like to work.
Running, passing, catching, tackling or kicking might be irrelevant in most workplaces, but athletes acquire other marketable qualities along the way. For example, Hochstetler says, they learned discipline, self-motivation, to perform under pressure and to work as a team to reach a common goal.
“How would you like to be an 18- or 19-year-old young man playing in front of 92,000 screaming LSU fans,” he says, “playing a team like Alabama or Florida, while remembering all your assignments? … These are things they can use to transfer into their next professional life cycle.”
The workshop was free to the players and funded through donations to the E.J. Ourso College of Business’ Stephenson Entrepreneurial Institute. So what does LSU get out of the program? Prestige, Karam says.
“It’s great for the LSU athletic brand,” he says. “The intent is to help these players whose LSU careers and NFL careers are over.”
The program is open to all NFL athletes, Karam says, but seats will always be open for former LSU players who went on to play professionally. And why not? The Tigers had more than 40 players on NFL rosters during the 2009 season, and they have sent more than 250 players to the league.
Chris Henry, the NFL’s vice president of player development, says the league has been working with groups to try to transition players into careers after they are no longer able to play. The average career of an NFL player lasts slightly more than three seasons, but they must reach four years in order to qualify for any retirement or pension plans offered by the league.
“They’re taught to be warriors and gladiators, to be tough and strong,” Henry says. “They think that they’re going to beat the odds. And on some level, it’s important for them to believe that in order to be successful. But in reality, they all can’t be Brett Favre.”
