The NFL Exodus and Echoes of Rebellions Past

At the young age of 24, after a tremendous rookie season and with just over $1 million in career earnings, 49ers linebacker Chris Borland is retiring. "I just honestly want to do what's best for my health," Borland told ESPN's Outside The Lines late Monday night. "From what I've researched and what I've experienced, I don't think it's worth the risk."

Borland is now the fourth player this offseason to unexpectedly retire, joining fellow 49ers linebacker Patrick Willis (age 30), Steelers linebacker Jason Worilds (27), and Titans quarterback Jake Locker (26). Look back to since 2013 and the list grows to include running back Rashard Mendenhall (26), wide receiver Sidney Rice (27) and offensive lineman John Moffitt (27).

This exodus from the NFL seems like something new—but go back in time and it echoes an earlier exodus during the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1969, Cardinals linebacker Dave Meggyesy retired following his age 29 season and was a vocal opponent of the NFL. "Face it, football is an archaic ethos, it's passé. It's a game for yahoos," Meggyesy told a Philadelphia reporter in 1969. The next year, he released an autobiography, Out of Their League, in which he revealed the depth of the depravity within football, from the high school level through the NCAA ranks on to the professional game. He talked about the violent racism and sexism within the sport; about the drugs he was fed by coaches and trainers in both college and the NFL; and about—sound familiar?—his concerns over his health.

Meggyesy was the loudest, but he was quickly joined by more young players who were finished with the NFL lifestyle. Meggyesy's Cardinals teammate, 27-year-old offensive lineman Rick Sortun, retired following the 1969 season. An avowed Marxist, Sortun said, "I couldn't stay true to my beliefs and stay in football. I was using the game as a six-months' moneymaker so I could have the freedom to do what I wanted in the other six months. But I didn't really enjoy the game. I was part of a system I felt was wrong. I was prostituting myself, and after a while it became unbearable."

Before the 1970 season, 26-year-old Raider Chip Oliver retired despite looking primed to take over as one of the club's starting linebackers after starting 16 out of 28 games in his first two NFL seasons. Oliver was found working at an organic foods restaurant and living with a commune called One World Family in San Francisco. When True Magazine caught up with Oliver in 1971, his finances had been reduced to pocket change. But he was clearly happier. "I was tired of being just another slab of meat," Oliver told True's Paul Zimmerman, "because that's all pro football players are. I weighed two-hundred and twenty pounds. What did I need all that weight for? I feel great now."

And then, in the spring of 1971, 27-year-old Jets running back George Sauer, Jr. retired. Sauer was a second-generation NFL player, and his father coached at Baylor and Navy before becoming general manager with the New England Patriots. Sauer was truly a child of the NFL, but after six seasons—including two All-Pro campaigns in 1967 and 1968 and one of the best all-time receiving performances in the 1969 Super Bowl—he became one of its most vicious critics. Sauer complained about football's "chauvinistic authority" and told the New York Times, "for me, playing football got to be like being in jail."

Despite the explosive growth of the NFL in the 45 years since Meggyesy, Sortun, Oliver, and Sauer walked away from the game, there are striking similarities between the league they walked away from and the league Borland and his peers are leaving behind. The 1968 season was the start of a player safety crisis from the high school level up, as 36 players died and 30 were permanently paralyzed, which led to a campaign against "spearing" and other forms of leading with the head reminiscent of today's Heads Up Football initiative. Stories of rampant racism in the professional game, particularly on Meggyesy and Sortun's Cardinals, showed the Civil Rights movement applied just as much to football as it did to the rest of American society. Players were starting to rebel against the drug cocktails fed to them by team trainers and the restrictive attitudes of hardass coaches.

All of these issues can be found in today's game. The NFL is finally being forced to reconcile with its expansive concussion issue, as the hard shell helmet technology developed in response to the 1968 on-field deaths no longer can be seen as a solution to the game's inherent violence. A group of former players sued over the league's vast painkiller use last year, and a number of recently retired players, including Nate Jackson and Kyle Turley, are speaking up about the unhealthy amounts of medication shot into players' bodies. And finally, the athlete as activist saw a revival in 2014, as the St. Louis Rams' "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" protest and the "I Can't Breathe" shirts worn by scores of NBA players have made sports a battleground for the movement once again.

Football is at a crossroads, to be sure. The hypnotic hold the game has had on American sports fans is starting to break, as the pain and suffering it leaves behind becomes too great to ignore. But this is not a new situation for football. As Bengals coach Paul Brown told True, "We've had people come and go in the past. It's just that they didn't get the notoriety these guys are getting now. Then, nobody sat down and wrote books. You always get the fringe type of guy leaving, but they're a small segment of the pro football population. They're quickly forgotten. Pro football goes on."

Perhaps that is the biggest difference this time. Borland's departure from the game has been met almost unanimously with support and acceptance from the American sports media, something that would have been unthinkable 45 years ago. Meggyesy, Sortun, and Oliver in particular were treated as freaks and weirdos, players who just didn't have enough love for the game, players who didn't have what it took to make it in the NFL's tough environment. This tone no longer dominates—it is too inhumane in a post-CTE world. And as the bodies pile up, it becomes harder and harder to justify the existence of football, much less the NFL's status as national pastime and multi-billion dollar entertainment industry.

This is a start. Every time another Chris Borland says it isn't worth it, it forces us to ask ourselves the same question, and more and more of us are saying no. But football has survived similar crises in the past. The football marketing machine is still one of the world's most effective and most gigantic. Parents and coaches stand ready and willing to buy into the latest false safety solution from helmet manufacturers and whatever fresh stunt is being concocted by some of the country's most creative and depraved entrepreneurs.

But most importantly, people still love football, and it's going to take more than a few young men walking away from the game to change that. As it loses more and more young men like Borland, it is clearly in for a fight. But as Paul Brown said, "Whatever it takes, pro football goes on." And until pro football is fully dead and buried, there is no reason to believe anything different.