Too many of my high school and college teammates have ended up with what can only be described as PTSD, posttraumatic stress disorder. People might say, “PTSD, that’s a crazy term to use for somebody who plays a sport and doesn’t make the NFL.” But for those top high school players, this sport is their identity, their culture, and their personhood. In college there is no preparation for what will happen to you, how it will feel when you’re done, when you don’t make the NFL or are just hanging on by a thread. Then the trauma hits you like a truck.
I’ve seen what we should recognize as PTSD in a lot of players. Recently, I was talking to some of my friends now out of the game, and the discussions were about depression; about feeling like they’ve let down their families; about a loss of identity; about fears of CTE; about wanting to see a therapist but being ashamed; and, most of all, about how they wish they’d gone into this sport with their eyes wide open. One of my friends said, “Man, I went to a psychologist because I couldn’t figure out why I was so depressed, because this word, depression, is never said in a locker room. Your coaches never warn you that could happen. You never hear it.” His therapist was the one who suggested he had a form of PTSD, and now I can’t get that out of my head. I thought PTSD was something that soldiers got in wars, but I learned that it can result from any trauma or pain—not just mental or emotional pain, but as a reaction to physical pain. In football and boxing and MMA—and think about Brian Price when I say this—you develop what could be described as pain addiction. In college you are immersed in this really intense environment, with a regular amount of high-impact physical pain, and then, if you don’t make the pros, that kind of physical expression just disappears. One of my friends, who just retired from the NFL, told me he’s been having violent outbursts. Not in the sense of hurting people, but he’ll be enraged for no reason and doesn’t know why it’s happening, which is scarier than knowing. He wonders if it’s CTE, because his college had no concussion protocols, or if he has a pain addiction, or if he is just lost. He just doesn’t know. It reminds me of a story I once heard, about a former player whose wife found him running again and again into the garage door because he missed the pain.
I think PTSD in players also results from a loss of identity. Little by little we conform to what our coach wants, what the program wants, what the academic advisor wants us to study so we stay on the field, and bit by bit, chip by chip, we lose the foundation of who we are. We get stuck in a character. Then it’s all over, and the PTSD becomes a sports version of postpartum depression. I’ve been talking to players who want to tell their stories as a warning to parents, a public service announcement so parents don’t put their kids through the football pipeline. The problem is that parents have sacrificed so much and put in so much energy to get their kids to the NCAA level that the prospect of not making it becomes unthinkable.
A friend said to me, “Bro, I would just cry sometimes.” I know this person as a tough defensive lineman, and he was in tears. In football, it’s rare to really know what the other dudes are going through, because you’re friends but nobody wants to be seen as an emotional wreck. I felt so sad, and all I could say was, “Damn. I never knew.” We talked and realized that it’s not just a problem with college football; it starts when we’re young, when our parents push us in sports but don’t let us grow as individuals. We’re just walking around for years with no idea who we are. The same friend told me, “I’m thirty-two years old, bro, and I don’t know what the fuck I like to eat.”
If all you’ve known is this violent sport, you don’t know how to shut it off—because you don’t know what it is that needs to be shut off. It could be related to CTE, or depression, or just having a massive hole in your life because you thought you had one future but it’s not there anymore. It’s PTSD. It’s people stuck in an identity that no longer exists. They don’t know how to love themselves because they don’t know who they are.
And there is no incentive or reason for the NCAA to try to help, because they are out for the buck and they don’t take prisoners. Fans of college sports need to know this. I hear people say, “I’m an Aggie!” or “I’m a Georgia Bulldog.” Fine, but are you still a Bulldog when it comes to the lives of the people under the helmet? Are you a Bulldog when the teenagers you cheered for don’t make it in the pros? When they’re running through glass just to feel alive?
I’m sure that some fans care, but I know that the NCAA does not. We all know it. Ask most NFL and NBA players and they’ll tell you with the cameras off that the NCAA is a gangster operation, a shakedown, and a system that works for everyone except for the so-called student-athletes. The main revenue-producing college sports are football and basketball. The
