Once the cheering stops: The life of a retired pro-athlete

Retired athletes, regardless of their sport, have difficulty assimilating to the world of being a "normal person" when the fans stop noticing and the checks stop being written.  This is a difficult transition that most are not prepared for and it can happen for many reasons. Losing something as quickly as earning it is a whirlwind process that people are devastatingly effected by. This is the case far too often with athletes and the money they earn, the friends they have, and the status they hold in society. 

           The money is lost so easily because many of them don't know how to handle it. Poor investments due to false pitches, having to have bigger and better than other players, family coming into their lives who were not there for the first 20ish years are all factors of how this money goes so quickly, and this is the first time they may have ever even gotten a paycheck. This is the basis on which they learn to handle money, and that leads to retired athletes both upset for not knowing in the first place, but also gives them a foundation of how to handle money in the future. Unfortunately, future funding is not what they're looking forward to when they get drafted and the whole system is a paradox. Gary Penn said this in the article about Olympic athletes stating, "My biggest fear is that they only focus on the Olympics goals and don't think about what comes after. When they do, it's too late." There is generally no clarity in the mindset of a young player other than to be the best athlete they can be, this takes focus away from being the best person they can be, and is a large factor of broke retirees.

The emotional toll that this takes on athletes is enough to drive some to depression. This is mostly due to the fact that when others stop seeing them as having a cash value, the relationships they thought they had end up crumbling. Friends, financial advisers, spouses, and even parents, stop giving attention to these athletes in a lot of cases. This hugely affects people's psyche and can cause a downward spiral when players have no job and no one to love them when they're coming down from this high of holding superstar status, when they need it most.
Unlike the world of Hollywood where actors and actresses may be remembered decades beyond their time, major sports players can be forgotten even before the next season starts. Going from having fans that would pay hundreds or thousands for the opportunity to meet you, to being addressed as, "Hey you were that one guy," gives players a complex of no longer being significant to anyone's lives.

I'd never even thought about the issues that a lot of players end up facing before this. After reading these articles and viewing the documentary it is easier to see how and why athletes end up losing all of their money. I never took into consideration the masses of people that would clog an athlete's mindset, like family coming out of the woodwork and people looking at the athletes as dollar signs. Before going into this assignment I would get sick about the amount of athletes that go pro only to end up broke, partially because I am one of those students paying for their degree through loans and scholarships, and it seems like a huge waste of money that could be spent so much more beneficially in this world. I've never been in the military but I do have people close to me that have and the comparison made of literally being taken out of one mindset of being an all star one day and being dropped into a stay-at-home-body the next, I can imagine would be similar. I've been told, and I'm sure people just know, that it's the same for our troops. They're fighting to stay alive one day, and then expected to come home and have a mentality that everything is fine on the next. There's no way to transition from one to the next without preparing people for how difficult it will be.

Costas, Bob. After Olympic Athletes Retire, What's next for Them? Digital image. NBC News. Associated Press, 25 Sept. 2012. Web.