To retire or not to retire? This certainly seems to be the question for many professional athletes these days.
Brett Favre has struggled with the question for at least three years now and still doesn’t seem to have found a good answer.
Since I currently work in the retirement business, I have some additional insight to add on the Brett Favre saga and the retirement of athletes in general.
In the business world, both the company and the employee have a lot of say as to when an employee’s retirement will occur. In addition to a minimum retirement age, companies also often provide additional pension benefits to employees who retire younger. This is done often when companies want to shift their workforce to a younger population.
However, in the NFL, and other professional sports, the teams don’t provide the pension benefit to the players. Rather, it is the league itself that handles that. Therefore, the team can really offer no incentive for a player to leave while on good terms with the team.
Teams can release or trade players, move them down on the depth chart, or occasionally restructure their contract. But as we are seeing with the Green Bay Packers, these moves can come off disrespectfully to a player that has shown the team great loyalty.
I believe the Packers are truly in a tough spot, but are handling the situation as well as they can. They certainly owe a lot to Brett Favre for all the success he has brought to them and their fans, but they also feel the need to move on. They feel Aaron Rodgers can be a great quarterback and that he needs to start playing a significant role on their team.
If they were a business, the Packers could just offer Favre extra money upon retirement to leave now. Even though their intentions would be clear, it would certainly show no disrespect to the superstar.
But the NFL is the business that controls Favre’s retirement account, and Roger Goodell is certainly not going to pick up the tab for Green Bay on this one.
The retirement issue for professional sports is further different from business because players retire so much younger. It is much more difficult for them to visualize their pension since it is still many years away.
4 comments Last one added 11 months ago — Leave a Comment
James Fatari 11 months ago
nice article...now lets get one thing clear while Brett Favre has a right to come back to the team his shown loyalty to over and over the years, he should not hold the same team @ ranson every offseason claiming he's retiring and then just before another season starts he says he wants to play for one more year, he should just go home period no ifs or buts...the team moved on & so should Brett Favre..its like a r/ship you cant keep breaking up with someone only to say you want them back when they start to move on with their life....So Brett Favre MOVE ON
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Brett Lissenden 11 months ago
I absolutely agree. He's making it very hard on the Packers to be loyal to him.
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Buckeyes Fan in Happy Valley 11 months ago
Great article Brett, its interesting that you really broke down how both parties look at it....Is it so crazy to suggest each team should have a separate cap for this type of situation...5 million on the side for buyouts/retirements?
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Brett Lissenden 11 months ago
Its definitely worth considering. It certainly seems like there are better ways of handling things.
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