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Factors Impacting the Retirement Experience of Professional Football Players

Professional athletes are at unique risk for difficulties during retirement due to factors such as early retirement age, identity change, and financial instability. Due to factors such as the high physicality of the sport, majority minority presence, and large public viewership of football, retired NFL players are especially at a higher risk for negative retirement experiences. A review of the available published literature on retirement of NFL players revealed the six most impactful factors in shaping football playersâ retirement experience, primary identity, health, retirement decision, meaningful post-employment activity, financial status, and available support resources. Eight case studies of former players, four Caucasian and four African-American, were conducted to analyze the role these factors played in the playersâ retirement experiences. Out of the six factors, health, available support resources, and financial status were the most salient contributors to the quality retirement experiences they had. From this, it was concluded that changes in the current NFL system are needed to better protect playersâ physical and mental health and to prepare them for retirement in terms of financial planning courses and networking workshops.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-03232016-112909
Date23 March 2016
CreatorsLocher, Julianne Marie
ContributorsKenneth T MacLeish, Hector F Myers
PublisherVANDERBILT
Source SetsVanderbilt University Theses
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-03232016-112909/
Rightsunrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report.

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