Retirement

Waiting on Bret Favre to retire each year was never fun. Especially the two too long offseasons that he kept the Minneosota Vikings waiting. Not knowing who is going to be under center a week into training camp is never fun. It's no fun for fans. It's certainly no fun for Tarvaris Jackson, Sage Rosenfels, Brad Childress, Darrell Bevel, Matt Birk, John Sullivan. The list goes on. Listening to any football player speak of retirement shows that it's no snap decision. Sometimes health makes the decision for the player. Sterling Sharpe, Merrill Hoge, Al Toon, Steve Young basically had retirement handed to them. They may not have liked it but common sense made retirement a fairly easy decision. Concussions may be the most difficult in that physically the football player feels tip top. The real issues are harder to see. Harder to feel. Using the head rather than the heart likely leads to the right decision of hanging 'em up.

LaDanian Tomlinson retires at the age of 33. He seems to have made an easy decision. He seems to be at peace with it. Still, it took him until recently to make the decision. It likely wasn't as easy as he now makes it sound. Jim Brown, Barry Sanders and Robert Smith all retired before they hit 30. Perhaps the decision to retire is relatively easier for a running back. Even with the incredible increase in passing runners get thrashed. They run out of gas earlier than most positions. For every player like Tomlinson that makes his own decision there's a dozen like linebacker Ben Leber that has it made for them. They are still fairly young. They still feel like they can play. 32 NFL teams look at him a bit differently. The decision to retire ends up being made by someone other than the player. Leber was a very good linebacker. He was a terrific football player for the Vikings for five years. Never blessed with a great deal of speed maybe the NFL decision makers saw a different linebacker when he lost some of it. Both Tomlinson and Leber will likely have an easy move into the media side of football. Good thing. Retired football players are too young to retire.

I can understand some of the waffling that Favre did every offseason of his last few seasons. Some people had too much fun joking about his indecision to try to understand it. It's always easy to quit football immediately after a season. Especially a season that ends earlier than expected. The decision to retire in January or February is so much easier than it is in the summer. As the weather gets hot so to does the desire to pick up that football. Favre's last handful of offseasons were so easy to predict. It's also easy to understand how hard the decision to retire is for him and so many other football players. For too many, it's all they know. It's hard to give up something that you love. 33, even 43, seems too young to have to give up anything. Especially when the love and the passion is still there.