Free Is There Life After Football? by James A. Holstein, Richard S. Jones, Jr. George E. Koonce

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
    Above all, we thank the NFL players and former players who talked to us about their football lives. They are a genuinely impressive and interesting cast of characters.
    The book also reflects the generous input of friends, colleagues, and students who talked football with us over the course of the project. At Marquette University our friend and chair, Roberta Coles, encouraged our efforts and, despite her Chicago roots, became a Packers fan along the way. We also thank our colleagues and students in the Department of Social and Cultural Sciences, and across the university: Jimmy Butler, Junior Cadougan, Louise Cainkar, John Cotton, Alexandra Crampton, Deb Crane, Tom Ford, Steve Franzoi, Beth Godbee, Angie Harris, Kim Salas Harris, Heather Hlavka, Ed Inderreiden, Gale Miller, Matt Mitten, Dawne Moon, Sameena Mulla, Paul Nollette, David Nowacek, Alex Peete, Jane Peterson, Adrienne Ridgeway, Ryan Seebruck, Olga Semukhina, Meghan Stroshine, John Su, Nick Szczech, Darren Wheelock, Marcia Williams, and Amelia Zurcher. Our appreciation also extends to those outside the university: Jun Ayukawa, Mitch Berbrier, Nancy Berns, Susan Chase, Jeffrey Chin, Suzy Clarkson Holstein, Chris Corey, Dana Ellingson, Bob Emerson, Kerry Ferris, Jessie Garcia, Scott Harris, Ray Hinojosa, Doni Loseke, Kathe Lowney, Linda Permaul, Nad Permaul, Jack Spencer, the Rev. Arthur Webb, Jr., Joseph E. Williams, and Pansy Yee.
    Special thanks go to Joel Best, who encouraged us to venture outside the staid academic realm and masterfully showed us the way. Jim Holstein took a hiatus from his career-long collaboration with Jay Gubrium to work on this project, and thanks Jay for the space and support. His work always bears Jay’s intellectual imprint.
    Ilene Kalish, our editor at NYU Press, has been enthusiastic and demanding from the start. Her insight, expertise, and professionalismare evident throughout. Thanks for the superb guidance that’s made the book so much better. We definitely appreciate everything the rest of the staff at NYU Press did to bring the project to fruition, especially Caelyn Cobb, Dan Geist, and Dorothea Halliday.
    Finally we thank the anonymous reviewers of the manuscript for their helpful insights and suggestions.
Note to the Reader
    George Koonce plays a unique role in this book: he is both an author and the subject of many sections of the text. To distinguish his subject and author voices, we have italicized all direct quotations from Koonce, as they have been elicited through interviews. Thus, his subject voice is always in italics. Many of the interviews for the book were conducted with promises of confidentiality. Pseudonyms for players and teams were used in these instances. Consequently, some of the names of players quoted in the book cannot be found in NFL records. Player interviews from public media are attributed to actual sources and the names in these are authentic.

INTRODUCTION
“IT’S ALL OVER!”
    â€œGeorge, don’t you realize, that’s it!”
    She said it with love and compassion, but Tunisia, my wife, was telling me that my NFL career was over. I didn’t want to hear it
.
    I asked her, “Why the hell would you say some shit like that?”
    â€œGeorge, you’re done,” she repeated. “It’s all over!”
    I didn’t talk to her for a couple of weeks. That’s when I started going to the beach and spending three or four days by myself. I would say, “Tunisia, I’m going to the beach on Thursday. I’ll be back on Monday,” and she would say, “Really? OK.” And the beach was about two hours away. I was pissed off, hurt, angry, depressed. I just wanted to get out of there. I didn’t really want to be around people who were asking me, “George have you talked to anybody, have any teams given you a call?” I didn’t have an answer. Well, I had the answer, but I didn’t want to tell people. I was