When the Cheering Stops

Athletic Management
18.3 April/May 2006

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For many student-athletes, transitioning from school and sports to the working world can be overwhelming. A new program at the University of Missouri is helping them look beyond their last day of competition, even as freshmen.

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When University of Missouri student-athletes talk about their plans after college, I like to bring up the story of a pretty good football player who's an alumnus. After college, he signed with the Cleveland Browns. He did okay, earning a living and getting a taste of the big time. Then he was cut. He signed with the then-St. Louis Cardinals, played for one year, and was cut again.

While at Missouri, he had thought only of football and left well short of a degree and without any practical career experience. After the NFL, he was in and out of jobs, which included the night shift at UPS and cleaning up at a meatpacking plant. He worked as a hotel bellhop and realized that in just six months he'd gone from being a guest to carrying other people's bags. It was honorable work, but not what he'd imagined. He was directionless, broke, and despondent over the realization he'd wasted a golden opportunity to prepare himself for the world after sports. I know him well. He's my husband.

Adrian McBride's story is not unusual. Within five years of their last game, more than three-quarters of former NFL players are bankrupt, divorced, or both. And those are only the ones who make the pros. As a college gymnast, I knew there was no pro circuit in which to make a living, but that didn't stop me from putting all my energies into the sport I loved. I was as unprepared for life in the real world as any NFL-dreaming running back.

That's why at Missouri, our life skills staff has begun placing a special emphasis on helping student-athletes make the transition to their post-competition lives. Through Life After Sports, the not-for-profit organization Adrian and I founded, we help student-athletes with career coaching, the psychological issues of post-sports transition, and job placement.

We recognize the special circumstances in which today's NCAA Division I athletes live. Whereas many non-athlete students can afford to change their minds—a frequently quoted statistic says the average American undergraduate switches majors three times before earning a bachelor's degree—that's not a luxury afforded athletes. The NCAA's academic progression requirements force them to pick a major and stick with it.

In addition, an athlete's full schedule of classes, labs, study table, practice, film, and strength and conditioning workouts leaves little extra time to gain meaningful on-the-job experience. Even the classic summer internship is unrealistic for many student-athletes, who have off-season workout plans to follow and classes to take in order to keep up with eligibility demands.

We believe we've developed a structure to help student-athletes make the transition. Through close monitoring, long-range planning, and classes in career skills, we help student-athletes get ready for the truly big game: life after sports.

Promoting Participation

Although we can help a last-semester senior and even an athlete who has left the university, the ideal time to start preparing for the after-sports transition is freshman year, when possibilities are endless. When we can, we introduce ourselves and our activities to student-athletes during recruiting visits. We also visit with each team in preseason practice to give a three-minute snapshot of the workshops, mini-courses, and one-on-one counseling we offer.

Participation in the Life After Sports program is voluntary, so getting student-athletes to take part is a major hurdle. The issues run the gamut. The dream of playing professionally becomes an assumption among some athletes. More common is the problem that to a 17- or 18-year-old freshman, four or five years down the road might as well be a million years away. Most student-athletes at this level were stars in their hometowns and high schools, with someone always there to escort them to the next stage. They don't realize that no one is going to step in and help them beat the system when their playing days end. We constantly drive home the message that they will be responsible for their life after sports and need to start preparing now.

We also stress that we don't want to crush anyone's professional-sports dreams. Instead, we want the transition to be a rewarding time of self-discovery and opportunity - like college itself. Even if it's viewed as a back-up for when a pro career is over, a plan can help athletes relax, concentrate on their sport, and perform better.

We enlist others to reinforce this message. We keep coaches updated on our activities so that they can promote our events and talk about career planning. Coaches are generally amenable, we've found, and are happy to have outside help in this regard. They also see this extra attention to student-athletes' lives as an added recruiting edge, even if only with parents.

While getting coaches on board is key, we promote the program to everyone in the athletic department. The more coaches, administrators, athletic trainers, strength and conditioning staff members, and academic coordinators who buy into the Life After Sports program, the more the student-athletes will hear about it. We inform the staff through one-on-one meetings, copies of e-mails sent to student-athletes announcing workshops and other activities, and an e-newsletter we're developing with the help of student-athletes in Missouri's journalism school. Our goal is to ensure that student-athletes will hear about planning their after-sports life from all angles, not just from Adrian and me.

We correspond with parents so that they're kept informed and can add their own messages of encouragement. As soon as Adrian meets with student-athletes, he sends their parents a letter along with a Life After Sports brochure to let them know who we are and why we are here. We try to keep parents involved in what we are doing and enlist their help in reminding their children to think seriously about career development.

It also helps that our staff maintains a flexible schedule. Adrian, our academic coordinators, and I meet student-athletes late in the evening if necessary. And we provide different times for workshops through the year so that if an athlete can't make one in the fall, he or she can attend in the spring.

Another key tool in getting athletes to participate in our program is testimonials from former Mizzou athletes. We maintain lists of former athletes in each sport, and with the help of coaches, keep track of who might have a good story to share. Some of the most effective talks are by recent alumni who played on teams with current athletes. And they needn't have sad stories of their own. Tales of hard times offered by unprepared colleagues on a pro team seem to get young athletes' attention as well as first-person accounts. We also seek out former student-athletes who've moved to fields current athletes are interested in. Their visits both encourage students to make plans and show how networking is done.

To schedule these talks, we work with team coaches. Some like to conduct them at a weekly meeting, some want them to happen at the end of a practice, and others prefer a completely separate time outside of practice. It depends on the coach as well as the former student-athletes' availability. Flexibility on our end is the key.

Start Frosh

Once we've gotten their attention, we try to meet each athlete one-on-one and start creating a plan with concrete steps and milestones for each academic year. Ideally, freshman year sets the stage for developing good habits and starting a self-examination, while sophomore year is when student-athletes learn what they do well and begin sampling specific academic and career fields.

Some athletes know exactly what they want to do after college, and our job is to help them find ways to explore the field and gain some experience. Many, though, have no idea what they want to do after sports, and our task is to help them discover their interests and build trusting relationships so they feel free to discuss their aspirations and fears. Sometimes, we also need to broaden their horizons and expose them to what the university and the world has to offer. The key is to plant the seed that they can - and need to - start exploring right away. By starting with freshmen, we can get a feel for what they want to do and get them involved in field interviews and job shadowing opportunities so they are not clueless by their senior year.

A useful tool to get started is one of the many interest assessments on the market. We use the Discover computer-based guidance system from ACT, the not-for-profit organization that administers the college-entrance exam of the same name. Discover asks students their likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses, and guides them through fields that might suit them. It outlines typical ways to start a career path, which in college means particular academic majors and work-experience options. The software stores a portfolio of this information for each student, and academic advisers can log in to get updates on each student-athlete's progress.

For example, if a student tells his academic coordinator he's interested in teaching, but the coordinator sees from the Discover portfolio that making a lot of money is a high priority, too, he or she can ask whether teaching is really the student's dream. If someone wants to go into finance, is she really a numbers person, or is it because that's where her boyfriend is headed?

Working with athletes in their freshman and sophomore years allows us to help them pick majors. We remind them that some majors require specific courses offered at times that conflict with team schedules, and that entry into some fields is extremely difficult without on-the-job experience that can be hard for student-athletes to obtain. Sports journalism, for instance, may seem like a great fit for many athletes, but landing a job takes published clips or broadcast tapes, commodities hard for rigidly scheduled athletes to acquire. Our job isn't to direct athletes away from their academic interests, but to make sure they make informed choices.

We also start early helping them develop good habits in time management. Because our student-athletes don't have much free time to explore potential careers, we teach them to make the most of what is available. For example, the first few weeks after a sport season ends usually offer time for student-athletes to do other things. Yes, take some time to decompress, we tell them, but don't let the downtime get out of control. Fit in what you can, when you can.

The Junior Jump

The focus becomes sharper in junior year, as student-athletes attend career workshops, draft resumes, join student chapters of professional associations, find experience-building opportunities, get letters of recommendation, and practice interviewing. They also continue to reassess their interests and abilities, and we try to be a little more aggressive in getting them involved.

Once a year we have a career fair geared specifically to student-athletes that takes place late in the evening and is co-sponsored by the athletic department and Life After Sports. This is in addition to career fairs held by the university for the general student population, which are helpful but often end at 5 p.m. - too early for student-athletes who have afternoon practice.

We also help athletes find job-experience opportunities and internships with companies that understand the time-crunched needs of intercollegiate athletes and are willing to be flexible. If an athlete can spare only a couple hours a day twice a week, we find companies willing to accommodate that. For summer internships, athletes may have to work early in the morning to mid-afternoon, for example, or take off during the middle of the day. We make contact with companies agreeable to such accommodations.

This is where we have to go beyond traditional placement. We've sometimes initiated contacts by looking at who's advertising in our sports arenas. These companies often like to help the team and are willing to be flexible. Many have managers who are ex-athletes, some of whom played here. We just need to be sure they understand NCAA compliance rules and aren't, for example, paying athletes more than they'd pay others to do a certain job. These contacts build useful experience that helps graduating student-athletes find permanent positions.

The junior year is when we also start explaining the psychological side of the sports-to-career switch. We talk a lot about turning the student-athlete experience into a positive for entering the career world. We remind them that most student-athletes are highly coachable, and with that trait alone, they can transfer the skills they have learned on their team to any business. Succeeding at college-level athletics is proof they are willing to arrive early, stay late, get involved in extra training, and make sacrifices to learn a new trade, as they did with their sport. They are disciplined, determined, focused, have had to overcome obstacles and multi-task, and we emphasize that they can apply these qualities to real life. If nothing else, this reminder can build tremendous confidence at a time when it's really needed.

Senior Sensation

In the senior year, it's all about fine-tuning, preparing the self-sales pitch, and targeting specific employers. Like many life skills programs, we offer workshops on writing effective resumes and practice job interviews. But we go further.

Many student-athletes have not been exposed to the customs and unstated expectations of the professional world that the rest of us take for granted. So we bring in a faculty member from the university's hospitality-management program who has been trained at the Washington School of Protocol. He provides a workshop on everything from how to shake hands to when to rise from a table. We've also brought in leading retailers for sessions on dressing professionally. We know this is needed: Recently, a female student-athlete who was otherwise highly prepared arrived for an interview dressed as if she were headed to a night club. We can tell her to dress conservatively, but the message has more impact coming from someone in the field.

Another well-prepared student-athlete seemed poised to get an offer in a dream job with a major company in Missouri. She'd done everything right, and it looked to us as if she were a shoo-in. But the company ran a credit check, and she didn't get the job. Since then, we've had a representative from a major Kansas City financial-planning company give a talk on personal finance. In addition to savings and investing, he covered basic financial issues such as establishing and maintaining good credit, planning for buying a house, and even mundane matters like avoiding unpaid parking tickets.

We also stress keeping an open, exploration-oriented mind to student-athletes and encourage them to think about what kind of career might fit them well. Recently, a female soccer student-athlete came to us facing graduation with no useful job experience and only a vague idea that she wanted to work in either fashion or sports marketing.

We talked about her personality and needs, including the geographic areas where she'd like to settle. Seeing her outgoing, people-oriented personality, we suggested sales and encouraged her to interview with an apparel company that has a competitive, results-oriented atmosphere we felt could be a good match. She aced the interview and was offered a position at a very strong starting salary.

Once we've gotten a company on board, we ask them to keep us informed of job openings to see if we have someone else who'd be a good fit. At other times, we do the leg work to locate companies that are hiring in a particular field. Once graduates are placed with a company, we try to stay in touch and track their careers. It's all about staying connected.

We top off our program with a senior transition workshop. Modeled after a session the Canadian Olympic Committee offers its athletes at the end of an Olympic year, it's designed to deal with the emotional and practical challenges of leaving competition. Peers, ex-athletes, and experts discuss topics such as time management, developing outside interests, and nutrition. We emphasize sharing and networking to help newly minted ex-athletes know that they're not in this alone. We have participants exchange e-mail addresses, cell phone numbers, and permanent addresses.

This senior session is ideal for helping athletes confront the intense emotions they're experiencing. I believe that everyone transitions differently, because we're all individuals. Adrian and I are great examples of that. We both struggled during this time of transition. I never thought I would "go pro" and knew gymnastics was coming to an end, yet it was still as difficult for me as it was for Adrian, if not more so. My sport was very demanding of my time from a very young age and I never developed any other hobbies or interests. So when gymnastics ended, I was left looking for something to fill that void of passion and interest.

Adrian had had time to play some other sports and develop more interests. He, on the other hand, thought he would play pro for many years. When that didn't happen, he was left dealing with perceived failure and all the issues tied to that. Along with explaining to our athletes that these emotions are natural and common, we give them tips on how to handle this aspect of the transition. We also offer a sympathetic ear if they need to talk to someone. And if they need further professional assistance, we will connect them with specialists, including psychologists or nutrition counselors.

Recognize the Transition

Our goal in the Life After Sports program is not to replace existing student-development services, but to enhance them. Our dream is that someday every school will have a head career coach, a transition coach, and a placement coach. We hope to replicate our system, starting with other members of the Big 12 Conference, and then elsewhere.

But some of our ideas can already be reproduced in an existing life skills and career-development program. The key is recognizing that the transition from intercollegiate athletics is different from the nonathlete's transition and needs to start early.

My father-in-law was a career military man, and Adrian has sometimes compared his dad's transition to civilian life to what a student-athlete goes through. In both cases, a person leaves a way of life that operates under its own rules, traditions, and expectations to be suddenly thrust into a new world without the familiar supports and structure. The key for those of us who care about these young people is to understand the tremendous change they're going through and to help them get ready. That's how we help student-athletes get a good start and eventually win at the game known as life.