Search Results for: Sports Illustrated

After retiring from the NFL, a large percentage football players find adjusting to real life a struggle:

Terrell Owens hasn’t officially retired yet, and he already has blown the $80 million he earned during his career. Warren Sapp recently filed for bankruptcy. Former first-round picks Michael Bennett and William Joseph currently face federal charges of tax fraud and identity theft. Not every player falls into these traps, but a 2009 Sports Illustrated study said that 78 percent of NFL retirees have ‘gone bankrupt or are under financial stress because of joblessness or divorce’ within two years of their careers ending. ‘You’re talking about an identity crisis,’ said NFL vice president of player engagement and former Pro Bowl cornerback Troy Vincent. ‘Every athlete has to face the same question when they’re done: “Who am I?”’

“Life After NFL a Challenge for Many.” — Jeffri Chadiha, ESPN

More from ESPN

Life After NFL a Challenge for Many

Longreads Pick

After retiring from the NFL, a large percentage football players find adjusting to real life a struggle:

“Terrell Owens hasn’t officially retired yet, and he already has blown the $80 million he earned during his career. Warren Sapp recently filed for bankruptcy. Former first-round picks Michael Bennett and William Joseph currently face federal charges of tax fraud and identity theft. Not every player falls into these traps, but a 2009 Sports Illustrated study said that 78 percent of NFL retirees have ‘gone bankrupt or are under financial stress because of joblessness or divorce’ within two years of their careers ending. ‘You’re talking about an identity crisis,’ said NFL vice president of player engagement and former Pro Bowl cornerback Troy Vincent. ‘Every athlete has to face the same question when they’re done: “Who am I?”‘”

Source: ESPN
Published: May 31, 2012
Length: 10 minutes (2,647 words)

[Not single-page] Ten years after Ken Caminiti became the first prominent Major League Baseball player to confess to steroid use, a look at four players whose lives and careers were forever changed:

The 1994 Fort Myers Miracle, a Class A affiliate of the Minnesota Twins, included four pitchers of similar attributes. They each threw righthanded, with average velocity, and were either 23 or 24 years old and had been drafted out of four-year colleges in no higher than the fourth round. All would become good friends as they shared the torturous bus rides and even worse food through multiple rungs on the minor league ladder. All clutched the little boy’s dream of becoming a big leaguer. Only one of them made it. Only one of them used steroids. Only one of them considered taking his own life. Only one of them harbors enormous regret. The big leaguer, the juicer, the near suicide and the shamed are one and the same.

“To Cheat or Not to Cheat.” — Tom Verducci, Sports Illustrated

More from Sports Illustrated

Two of the world’s best tennis players meet for a match 1912, just weeks after they both survived the Titanic disaster: 

Now consider a scenario in which two of the survivors were dashing, world-class athletes in the same sport, destined to face off against each other many times. The hype surrounding those matches would be immeasurable. After their playing careers, the two men would be bracketed together—the Ralph Branca and Bobby Thomson of the sea—perhaps cowriting a book, then hitting the speaking circuit.

A century ago the culture was different. Look-at-me sensibilities were considered gauche. Many passengers lucky enough to have ended up on the Carpathia struggled with what today would be diagnosed as post—traumatic stress disorder. This was especially true for the men, whose survival was seen by some as evidence of cowardice.

“Unsinkable.” — L. Jon Wertheim, Sports Illustrated

See more from Wertheim

A former Major League Baseball No. 1 draft pick battles alcoholism. He’s now in jail, charged with three felonies: 

In a sport where alcohol plays such a massive part in all social settings—on the same day Bush was arrested, Boston reliever Bobby Jenks, another player with alleged alcohol issues, was charged with a hit-and-run DUI as well—there was a great story in Bush’s continued sobriety, one to tell when he finally arrived in the big leagues. Like Josh Hamilton, another former top overall pick who struggled with addiction, Bush’s successes were redemptive, even inspiring to addicts who fight to stay clean for even a day or a week. During a two-hour conversation last spring, Bush detailed the goriest times of his life, the lowest of lows, sure that talking about them would prevent their recurrence.

‘If you want to hear the whole story, I can give it to you,’ he said. ‘It might take a while.’

“The Tragic Fall of Matt Bush.” — Jeff Passan, Yahoo! Sports

Previously: “How Lenny Dykstra Got Nailed.” — David Epstein, Sports Illustrated

How the former baseball star went from unlikely business success to financial ruin—and now sentenced to three years in prison:

Even after his financial and legal troubles came to public light, Dykstra refused to give up the trappings of the gilded life. He continued to fly on private planes, and the charges that landed him in prison—many details of which have not been previously reported—stemmed from his apparently insatiable appetite for flashy cars, some of which he obtained using falsified financial documents. “He had to have all of these trappings to prove to himself he was as good as he thought he was,” L.A. County Deputy DA Alex Karkanen told SI after Monday’s sentencing.

In the unreleased documentary, filmed after his bankruptcy filing, the former Met and Phillie explains the importance of a private plane to his contentedness. “I said, O.K., I know I’ll be happy when I buy my own Gulfstream,” says Dykstra, reflecting on the plane he purchased in 2007. “But I got down to the end of the nose, I looked back and I said, O.K., happy, come on, come on. So it’s not about the Gulfstream. But it is about the Gulfstream. Meaning it just wasn’t as good a Gulfstream as I wanted.”

“How Lenny Dykstra Got Nailed.” — David Epstein, Sports Illustrated

See also: “Going…Going…Gone.” — Gabriel Sherman, GQ, April 1, 2009

Photo: Danny Moloshok, Reuters files

Top 5 #Longreads of the Week: Sports Illustrated, Bloomberg Businessweek, Reuters, Popular Science, City Pages Minneapolis, a fiction pick, plus a guest pick from Jason Boog.

High school hockey player Jack Jablonski was left paralyzed after a hit during a game—leading Minnesota to get tougher on rules, and leading families to rethink hockey’s risks:

“I forgot to tell you,” he says. Something in his voice is strange. He looks at me. Cade and Raye are both staring at me now. Peter touches my hand.

“Jack Jablonski broke his neck last night.”

Jack Jablonski—known as Jabby to his friends and the kids like Cade who grew up skating with him on the lakes around our homes—is not the first boy to break his neck playing this game. But he is the first one whom we who have kids still in Minneapolis youth and high school hockey programs have watched grow up.

“The Way We Play the Game.” — Karen Schneider, Sports Illustrated

See also: “A Boy Learns to Brawl.” — John Branch, The New York Times, Dec. 3, 2011

A Michigan high school basketball player hits the game-winning shot. Moments later he collapses from cardiac arrest and dies:

After the autopsy, when the doctor found white blossoms of scar tissue on Wes Leonard’s heart, he guessed they had been secretly building there for several months. That would mean Wes’s heart was slowly breaking throughout the Fennville Blackhawks’ 2010—11 regular season, when he led them in scoring and the team won 20 games without a loss.

It would mean his heart was already moving toward electrical meltdown in December, when he scored 26 on Decatur with that big left shoulder clearing a path to the hoop. It would mean his heart swelled and weakened all through January (25 against Hopkins, 33 against Martin) even as it pumped enough blood to fill at least 10 swimming pools.

“The Legacy of Wes Leonard.” — Thomas Lake, Sports Illustrated

More from Sports Illustrated: “The Forgotten Hero.” — Tim Layden, Nov. 7, 2011

Photo: artbystevejohnson/Flickr

A trip to John Madden’s man cave, and whether sports video games can ever be described as “art”:

Clearly, the way sports games are played, and the way Madden in particular is played, is ripe for some massive paradigm shift. Why doesn’t the quarterback position feel as visceral and pinpointy as firing a rifle in a first-person shooter? Could you make the experience of being an offensive lineman as interesting as anything on the ball? Why, for that matter, is running the ball such an isometric experience? When I put these and other questions to the Madden team in Florida, many of them smiled.

“Kickoff: ‘Madden NFL’ and the Future of Video Game Sports.” — Tom Bissell, Grantland

See also: “Hey, Wait a Minute! I Want to Talk.” — Sarah Pileggi, Sports Illustrated, Sept. 1, 1983