The average NFL career is about three years long. Your average football player is 28 years old when he's forced into retirement. He has no marketable skills, his knees are shot, and his brain is probably damaged, and the thing he's been doing his whole life, the thing that gives his life meaning and value, the thing he's been told he can do better than anyone else—well, he can't do that thing anymore. That part of his life is over; what is he going to do now? Within two years of retirement 78 percent of NFL players are in bankruptcy or close to it.

http://www.themorningnews.org/post/wild-card-weekend