Front Burner - How Andrew Luck's retirement might shape the NFL's future

Episode Date: August 28, 2019

Over the weekend, star NFL quarterback Andrew Luck retired at the prime age of 29, citing his many injuries as the reason. The past few years have seen revelations about the physical toll NFL players face, including CTE and other potential brain injuries. Today on Front Burner, Globe & Mail sports columnist Cathal Kelly joins us to discuss how this shock retirement might shape pro football, and whether the sport is viable in the future.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. So over the weekend, there was a pre-season NFL game between the Indianapolis Colts and the Chicago Bears. And the Colts' star quarterback, Andrew Luck, he was sitting on the sidelines, which was kind of weird. But partway into the game, it became very clear why. Fans started getting updates on their phones.

Andrew Luck was about to announce his retirement. And they let him have it. Andrew Luck is only 29 years old. Last season was the best of his career. He could play another 10 years if he wanted and if his body held up. By retiring a week before the start of the NFL season, he's leaving over $60 million on the table. That's just from his current contract. He could potentially be walking away from hundreds of millions in future contracts.

His choice can tell us a lot about the NFL today and the pressure that we put on pro athletes. We're going to talk about all this and more with Gahal Kelly, sports columnist with the Globe and Mail. I'm Jamie Poisson. This is FrontBurner. Gahal, good day to you. Thank you for joining us. Lovely to be here. So Andrew Luck, theoretically, I suppose, has a lot of years left to make a lot of money. We are talking like hundreds of millions of dollars here. So why is he retiring?

Well, Andrew Luck said it was a bit of a shock announcement two weeks from the NFL season starting. So he's put his team into a bit of a bind. Hello. This certainly isn't how I envisioned this or planned this. But he's been battling an injury that has been described as a high ankle sprain. He's had shoulder problems in the past. He's a bit of a different cat. Always has been. I've been stuck in this process. I haven't been able to live the life I want to live. Taking the joy out of this game.

It seems like what he is is exhausted, mentally exhausted by the NFL. And he said what he doesn't want to do anymore is rehab. He said to himself after his last serious injury that if he had to go through a long rehab again, he would quit. And that's what he's done. And it's been unceasing, unrelenting, both in season and off season.

And I felt stuck in it. And the only way I see out is to no longer play football. Tell me why he's a bit of a different cat. Well, this is a guy, he's had a bit of a different upbringing than most NFL players in the sense his father was an NFL quarterback and a very successful sports executive. Quick timing pattern as they go to the end zone. It's a touchdown for the Oilers to Drew Hill. Very well thrown by Oliver Luck. executive. Oliver Locke will be the next commissioner and CEO of the XFL, leaving his

executive role with the NCAA. He lived abroad in many places, so had more of an itinerant childhood than most of these guys are used to. And so has a different outlook on life. He has a degree from Stanford. Most guys in his position don't bother getting the degree. In my mind, I was like, all right, I'm going to go to college for four years. That's how it's going to be. He's an avid reader. My friends, family, and teammates often ask me for suggestions of books to read. I decided to start a book club, and no surprise, it's called the Andrew Luck Book Club.

So this is a thoughtful person, and thoughtfulness, I don't think, is good for a professional athlete. I want to get into that with you in a second. But first, these injuries that he has, the high ankle sprain, the shoulder injury, are these normal injuries in the NFL? Absolutely. Like every NFL player, I think, at the end of their career will tell you that certainly in the last few years, they played constantly injured. These are guys that are hooking themselves up to IVs five days a week to fight pain, who need pills to go to sleep, pills to get up. When you stand next to these guys, which I've done a few times,

you cannot appreciate on television how big they are and how fast they're moving. And when you are at field level, regardless of the padding, what they're doing is superhuman. Really, people should not be able to do it. And the idea that they to do it. And the idea that they can do it for 10 or 15 years is mind-boggling. There's been a lot of talk about this possibly being Gronk's last game ever. I'm not going to lie and sit here and say every week is the best. Not at all. I mean, you go up, you go down. Try to imagine getting hit all the time

and trying to be where you want to be every day in life. It's tough. It's difficult. and trying to be where you want to be every day in life. It's tough. It's difficult. Rob Gronkowski, the Patriots' all-pro tight end, has announced his retirement Sunday after a nine-year NFL career. You mentioned that thoughtfulness in the NFL isn't necessarily a good thing. Or in any sports league. Unpack that for me. What I mean by that is that an athlete has to be,

I think to get to the level of a professional athlete, you have to be singularly driven and a purpose-built machine. So you don't take a lot of time to stop and think about what you do, why you do it. I think that's anathema to what they do. Because once you start thinking about what they do, once they themselves start thinking, they begin to ask themselves questions. Why do I put myself through this? Especially in a league like the NFL and maybe also the NHL where there's huge punishment on the body. It's a bit of a warrior ethos and that does not lend itself

well to a lot of self-reflection. I want to talk about some of the reaction to Andrew Luck's decision. So there's been some backlash. The Colts fans, as I mentioned at the top of the show, they booed him. I'd be lying if I didn't say I heard the reaction. Yeah, it hurt. I'll be honest. It hurt. Tell me why you think they did that. Well, first of all, you know, there's a reaction to the reaction. So the reaction is very much in the moment.

It's a bizarre scenario in which Andrew Luck, who's still injured, is on the sidelines during this preseason game in his sweatpants. And the news comes out while he's there during the game. So people are getting this news on their phones. Breaking news here on CBS Sports HQ, and it is shocking news. We've got some stuff to try and wrap our brains around here. Andrew Luck making a play no one saw coming. And if you're a big fan of the team, you paid a lot of money for those tickets. You're just learning that your team that was a Super Bowl favorite has gone from that to a team that's

absolutely no chance of making the postseason. Also, you don't understand what's happening. And I think the way I put it in a column I wrote about it is that what he's saying to them, these people, this kid is living their dream. They think to them, this is the greatest thing that could ever happen to you, to be a star NFL quarterback. And what he's saying to you is like, I've done it. And now I think this is bogus. This is just a thing that I've done. It's not necessarily who I am. Exactly. And people don't want to hear that. And I don't think you would have got the same reaction if people had had a day or two to absorb it. But I do think surprise was part of the factor. I am a huge Andrew Luck fan, always have been, but this I cannot defend or justify. No scenario where retirement is defensible to do this to his teammates, organization, fans, and the NFL two weeks before the season is just not right.

I love the guy, but this will haunt him. A guy with 18 surgeries in the NFL, and he goes, it's just a lower leg injury. It will heal. Just give it a chance if it doesn't walk away from it this year. What do you make of that? Well, I think you have to parse that statement. I can agree with the part, not agree necessarily. I'm not going to tell Andrew Luck what to do. I think a lot of people take an issue with the two weeks before the season part. So had he done this four months ago, the team has a chance to go out and get another quarterback. Now they really don't. It's slim pickings. All the good guys are gone. So yeah, the two weeks, I think, rankles people.

If you were going to do this, why don't you do it in May? Right. I mean, if the guy doesn't want to play football, he shouldn't be playing football. I don't think any football team wants a guy out there who doesn't want to be there because you can't perform at the highest level. As a member of this team and because of how I feel,

I know that I am unable to pour my heart and soul into this position, which would not only sell myself short, but the team in the end as well. You know, a job is a job. Each one of us has a right to quit our job. Right. And to be fair, and correct me if you think I'm wrong here, there does seem to be far more support for Andrew Lux. So I'm thinking about some of the biggest names in football,

Tom Brady. You know, it's his life. Everyone has the right to choose what they want to do. You know, guys retire at different times. Some at the end of the season. I've seen a lot of guys retire before the season gets going. And this is just one of those examples. Troy Aikman, Steve Young, all of these guys have said that they support Luck's decision. They're basically saying this is his life. Absolutely true. And I think that's, I think there is a high awareness there that that's the thing you have to say. That you don't want to be caught saying something else.

I'm sure, you know, I'm not sure, but I feel fairly positive. Were you to ask these guys in a quiet moment in a bar, they would tell you something very different. Oh, interesting. I mean, Tom Brady's not exactly known for saying anything controversial. No, absolutely not. And Tom Brady is the living proof of the opposite. I mean, Tom Brady has been through the same injury problems. And Tom Brady got hit right on the knee.

He got hit right on the knee. And as F-42 is still playing. So obviously it's a different theory on how you would work your life this way. The idea that either these guys believe this or that this is the right thing to say. Do you think that we would have heard this 10 years ago in the NFL uh no I think and certainly 20 not at all like he would have been killed like when Barry Sanders who's arguably the greatest running back of all time quit football though he didn't put it exactly this way he simply had tired of football statement now

from Sanders and it went like this my desire to exit the game is greater than my desire to remain in it. I have searched my heart through and through and feel comfortable with this decision. He wasn't destroyed exactly, but people couldn't understand why he would do it. No one gave him the benefit of the doubt. They thought he'd quit on his team. A few of us were in the locker room earlier,

and it was kind of a shock type of thing where you break up with a girlfriend or something, and you just can't believe anything. Maybe in a couple weeks we'll work things out and that's what I may be overly optimistic but hopefully he'll come back in a couple weeks after he misses football for a little while. And it's interesting when Barry Sanders retired he was only 31 years old. Very close in age to Andrew Luck. I think a lot of guys in the NFL to be honest I mean sports has a bizarre conversation now where you know I have the privilege of talking to people off the record about things. And there is what people will say in public.

And then there is the actual thing they think. And there is a widening gulf between those two things on a lot of subjects. Okay. Especially on social media, I would imagine. On social media, of course, that's all curated. And the smart ones aren't on it. So do you think then that all of these comments from these players signify the game changing or no? I do think like if you say things out loud enough and people hear them, it does change. It certainly will change it for 15 and 16 year old players who are looking at this. I think that the danger for the NFL, if Andrew Luck is a one-off and he is,

they're able to, as they have to some level, paint him as a bit of a lovable oddball. Right. Then that's fine. Like Andrew Luck can quit and that doesn't change football. However, if you were to get two, three, four other quarterbacks in their prime, like Andrew Luck, the most valuable commodity in all of sport is a great starting quarterback. You cannot find them. There's only about seven or eight of them alive.

If a bunch of them were to start doing it, then it becomes an existential problem. And I think the conversation would change. You know, you just mentioned that the NFL is like essentially trying to paint Andrew Luck as this eccentric guy, this one-off. Do you think that is true? Do you think he is an anomaly, a one-off? I think he probably is. I think because it is so unusual to do it the way he did it to walk away from all that money i think there was enormous pressure it's like a military outfit there's enormous

pressure from player to player to stay i think a lot of guys also would have done that thing about that you heard the criticisms of that i can't do this to my teammates and i'm going to push through they've been pushing through pain their whole lives, and I think they will drive them to ridiculous outer limits. So yeah, I think it probably is, but if there is another, like, I don't know who it would be. Andrew Luck is one of the 10 biggest names in the NFL. I don't know who that player would be, but if a second one was to happen in short order, that would signal something really troubling for the NFL and really interesting about the future of football. But I suspect not. We're talking about Andrew Luck here, but I do wonder, there has been a lot more awareness about the NFL and health issues in the NFL,

particularly concussions and CTE. There was that big study in 2017 that examined 111 brains, 110 of which had progressive degenerative brain disease. Over the weekend, I watched an interview on 60 Minutes with former player Tim Green, who now is ALS, and he, along with experts, attribute that to the game. He says he lost track of the number of concussions he suffered playing football. He stopped counting after 10. I used my head on every play. Every play, every snap.

It was like throwing myself headfirst into a concrete wall. Has all this awareness changed who might play this sport in the future? Oh, absolutely. I think that there is already, you know, in its early days, but research suggesting that football is beginning to dive in the grassroots up because so many parents won't put their kids into it. I mean, that was not a conversation anybody had 20 years ago.

What we do find, interestingly, is the places it's dying out first, of course, are middle class and upper class districts. It's not hurting in places like Alabama and Arkansas and Florida and Texas, the traditional hotbeds of football talent, because football there is a way out. Football there is community. Football there is a way to become somebody there is community. Football there is the way to become somebody important in a way that if you're born a child of lawyers, you're thinking probably I'm going to go to law school or whatever it is you're going to do. I'm going to have this

whole life. But you've got, I think, a generation, generations of American kids who think my time is now. I got to 15 to 25 to make my mark. And that what happens after 25, I'm not even sure. And I do think there will always be a ready supply of young people who are willing to put their bodies extreme risk for the chance of getting what Andrew Luck got. Do you think it's fair to say, though, that as we move forward, we're going to see this greater and greater cleavage between classes? Well, we already see it in the NFL. The vast majority of NFL players are from underprivileged backgrounds. That's not changing. But that's back to the gladiators. That's all sports. I mean,

it's the upper classes watching the lower classes beat the hell out of each other. That's what sports is. Do you think there's a scenario in which the NFL tries to make football safer? Can you even make football safer? Well, I think you could do a few easy things that would make football a lot safer. You could take away the face masks, which would stop people from hitting each other with their heads. You could reduce the padding, which I think gives players a sense of invulnerability. I think there's small things you could do that would reduce, but also you risk from their perspective, changing the game. Maybe it's not as exciting. They won't change the game until they're bleeding money. Always comes back to money, hey?

It always, of course. I know I'm asking you to like essentially take out a crystal ball here. Oh yeah, I love that. I do love that. Because who knows? Yeah, you can say anything you want and we're like probably never going to hold you to it. Well, it's not like the internet is forever.

I'm going to forget about this conversation. No, I will not forget about this conversation. What does the NFL look like in 10 years and 20 years? Oh, I have like, I have deep and weird thoughts about all this stuff. I'd like to hear all of them. I think the future of sports is e-sports. I don't think humans will be playing sports really. Obviously humans will be involved in athletics, but what we think of as

mass consumption sports will not involve actual humans in 50 years. This is why I think we're seeing every professional sports outfit is in the midst of buying up those teams. The NBA partnered with the makers of its hit video game, NBA 2K, to form its own esports league. It's because they sense that that's the future. And anybody who's spent any time around a 7 or 8-year-old, the average 7 or 8-year-old today, a lot of them aren't watching sports. What they watch is other people play video games on the internet. So I do think we're getting a generation. This will never go away. But it could become like boxing in the same way that people said boxing died.

Boxing hasn't died. Boxing just isn't what it was. It's not a monoculture. It's not part of our monoculture. Isn't it fair to say that boxing has been replaced by other things like ultimate fighting? It's true. But nothing has been as monolithic. Like, I mean, if we go back not that long ago, 70 years, I mean, the only two sports that really mattered,

three sports that really mattered in America were boxing, horse racing, and baseball. Baseball continues on, but for various reasons, boxing and horse racing fell by the wayside, not because people didn't want to see people beat each other up because boxing was horribly corrupt and they tired of it. The NFL, I don't think is ever, they peaked. Like I think they peaked about five years ago. I don't think it's ever going away. And why I think that is because it is, I don't know if you've ever been to a game in the Southern United States.

I, yeah, I have not. I don't watch a lot of football, although Ballers is one of my favorite television shows. I find The Rock very charming, very charming man. But sorry, what do you do? Like if you go to, I went a couple of years ago as a fan, like with a couple of buddies to Tuscaloosa to watch the University of Alabama play. And it is like nothing you've ever seen. I have been to World Cup finals. I have been to every sort of conceivable Olympics.

Nothing can compare to game day in Tuscaloosa when Alabama is playing LSU. It is, can't even, I don't have the words. Is everybody there is on the streets in red going crazy. It's a huge rivalry and it's all here in Tuscaloosa. Time, roll! And that's about community. That's not about sports. And when you're saying to people, we want to get rid of football because we're hurting a bunch of people.

And people say, well, yeah, we agree. We don't want to see people hurt. But what are we going to do on Saturdays? This is the fabric of our entire community. Yeah. So that's not going on. Gahal Kelly, thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

This is great. Okay, so an update on our episode yesterday about the fires in the Amazon rainforest. The international community, as we talked about, offered Brazil $20 million in aid to help fight the fires. Canada kicked in an extra $15 million. On Tuesday, though, Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro said that he will only consider accepting the money if French President Emmanuel Macron apologizes to him. This all comes amid a very public spat between Bolsonaro and Macron that's been building for a while now. Last week, the French president threatened to block a free trade agreement with Brazil, saying Bolsonaro lied to him about his commitments to the environment. Then over the weekend, Bolsonaro appeared to mock the appearance of Macron's wife on Facebook. And while this war

of words between the two leaders continues, President Donald Trump has also chimed in. On Tuesday, he tweeted his support for Bolsonaro and how he's, quote, working very hard on the Amazon fires and in all respects, doing a great job for the people of Brazil. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks for listening to FrontBurner and see you tomorrow.