Corps de l’article

Of the various team sports played across the globe American football poses the greatest physical and (possibly) psychological risks to its participants. A game based on speed, strength and physical domination over others is an occupation with a very high injury rate and short careers. National Football League (NFL) players have an average career of 3.1 years (p. x). Injuries to their bodies and their brain resulting from numerous concussions provide them with a post football life of pain, reliance on medical prescriptions and ‘illegal’ drugs, weight problems, family break-ups, difficulties in finding second career employment, mental disorders, depression and suicide. Despite the high income players may earn, Robert Turner quotes a 2009 report in Sports Illustrated that within two years of retirement, 78 per cent of players are bankrupt or in financial hardship due to joblessness or divorce (p. 2).

Robert Turner is a former player with stints in the now defunct United States Football League, the Canadian Football League and the NFL. When he was cut from the NFL, he faced the dilemma of not knowing what he would do next. He sees this problem as being common to all players. Their identities are all linked to being footballers. Once this comes to an end— invariably as the result of an injury or a fitter or less injured younger player who can be employed for less—, players find themselves in a state of limbo and, if they are not careful or smart enough, long term decline into misery. Turner turned to education, obtained a PhD in sociology, which focused on sport and is a sport’s scholar. Much of this book draws on his PhD.

Not for Long examines the career path of American football players from Pop Warner youth leagues, through high school, college, professional leagues such as the NFL and the transition to retirement. Turner sees this career path as an integrated whole and an example of what he describes as the sports-industrial complex. Turner’s object is: « […] to explore how the sports-industrial complex in its operation as a totalizing institution contributed to athletes’ socialization and to Black male marginalization […] an elite group of mostly White wealthy men […] exert almost total control over the bodies and social fortunes of professional football players—approximately 70% of whom are Black […] the immense profit and control accrued by a few powerful individuals, combined with the willingness of players to suppress their desires and identities in order to share in the bounty, create such a momentum that, as the wheel spins, it regularly jettisons players, sending them spinning off into the ether.” (p. xiv).

A totalizing institution is where “all aspects of life are conducted in the same location and under a single authority and members daily activities are carried out in the immediate company of others” (p. 71). Prisons and the military are examples of totalizing institutions. College and possibly school football (Turner provides limited information on the latter) constitutes a sports’ example of a totalizing institution. At college, all aspects of a so called student’s life are controlled to maximise their ability to perform on the football field. Their hours of work are such that they have little time to attend class or study, they do Mickey Mouse courses, have academic (sic) advisors who ensure that they do not waste time performing academic functions, have limited interaction with other students, and even though their playing generates billions of dollars for their respective colleges, are forbidden by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) from being paid, because they receive scholarships which provide them with a pretended education, with many players leaving college without a degree. At college, players are indoctrinated to sacrifice themselves, their health and education, for the welfare of the team by coaches, many of whom are on multi-million dollar contracts.[1]

Turner sees similar processes playing themselves out in the NFL. Drawing on the work of the pioneering African American athlete and sociologist Harry Edwards[2], he sees labour relations in the NFL in terms of old White men dominating a predominantly Black young workforce (p. 123-124). He situates these issues in terms of a discourse of Black Nationalism.

Besides examining different steps along players’ career paths, Turner also has chapters on the historical evolution of the NFL and its engagement with and/or neutralizing the impact of the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act and the trajectory of collective bargaining in the NFL with a brief examination of the 2011 deal negotiated between the NFL and the National Football League Players’ Association (NFLPA). Turner sees the NFLPA having limited power and is generally critical of its achievements on behalf of players. Schiavone provides an alternative analysis of the NFLPA and collective bargaining in football.[3] These two chapters appear in the latter stages of the book. They could have appeared earlier in that they essentially provide contextual material for the main body of Turner’s narrative.

While Turner provides more than useful insights in unpacking the career of American footballers, his account suffers two related problems. The first is that much of his information is dated and seems to draw too much on his earlier PhD. Second, he has not engaged with how to break down and counter the totalizing institution that is football. Turner interviewed many current and past players in conducting his ethnographic based research. In discussing different stages of the career path, Turner draws on interviews he conducted more than a dozen years ago. This is not necessarily a problem. When he produces data, in the form of numbers concerning the income of the NFL, average income of players and so on, this information is many years out of date. It is difficult to understand why such information was not updated.

In reading between the lines of Turner’s account, football is an activity conducted by dictatorial coaches, at all levels. Turner provides an account of a training camp for schoolboys conducted by himself and a fellow past player. While Turner was addressing the group, one of them said something to a fellow student. Turner’s colleague gave the boy a solid tongue lashing spiced with expletives. The boy having been humiliated by an older, bigger man never turned up to the camp again (p. 56-57). Maybe the schoolboy attended the camp for social rather than sporting reasons. The way in which schoolboy football is conducted, the behaviour of coaches is an area that required further examination in developing an understanding of the beginnings of the totalizing institution that is football. Policies may need to be developed and enforced to ensure that the rights of schoolboy athletes are respected and they are not subject to being yelled at and abused by coaches looking to climb the greasy pole that is football coaching.

Turner points to how the lives of college players are controlled by coaches to the extent that they have no time for themselves. The NCAA has a rule that athletes cannot indulge in football related activities for more than 20 hours during the football season and eight hours in the off season. Coaches get around this by holding so-called voluntary training which, in fact, translates into mandatory practice. Turner reports that college players, on average, spend 44.8 hours a week practicing, playing or training (p. 83). A possible way to overcome this problem is for the NCAA to institute a rule that there cannot be any training or football related functions before 1 PM. This would enable athletes to sleep a few extra hours, attend class and engage in study and participate in other aspects of campus life. Such a rule should be strictly enforced with coaches and/or their assistants who break this rule being substantially fined, with repeat offences involving suspension and dismissal.

Turner is also unaware of the enhanced role of the NFLPA in devoting resources to the welfare of both past and present players. A quick dip into its website reveals that it has rules, which govern the activities of player agents and financial advisors, that in 2013 it established a Trust that provides a wide range of benefits for members, and in 2016 established another program to provide all former players with medical and other benefits.[4] A provision in the 2011 Collective Bargaining Agreement funds Trust payments and there are other provisions in the collective agreement, which fund a wide variety of welfare programs for retired players.[5]

Turner focuses on the problems of Black players in a White-dominated league and society more broadly. What is surprising is that he has made no mention of the furore that was created when Colin Kaepernick took the knee (refused to stand) during the playing of the national anthem in a pre-season game in 2016.[6] He was protesting over the discriminatory treatment of Blacks in America. He subsequently filed a collusion case against the NFL as no club was prepared to employ him. The issue was settled in February 2019 with Kaepernick receiving an undisclosed payment (which the rumour mill suggests was US $60 million).[7]

Turner saw himself as following the pioneering work of Harry Edwards. Edwards saw the plight of the Black athlete and racism in America in systemic, structural terms; it was endemic to America. In the final chapter, Turner asks the question of whether he would let his son play football. He provides a Neoliberal answer. He says yes, as he would be able to guide him through the pitfalls, which he has examined in the book. It is doubtful if this would include medical and issues associated with concussion and mental health. The more general point is how many young Americans, whether they are Black, White or from overseas such as the Pacific Islands, have a father who has played professionally, obtained a PhD, and who conducts research into football and its laments? The ultimate weakness of Not for Long is that Turner has not invested any thought into breaking down the totalizing institution that is American football and the dramatic and devastating impact it has on players which his research revealed and he himself experienced.