Football is an exciting sport, but it has its dark side. Yet another controversy surrounding the potential risks of playing professional football is brewing after some alarming data has come to light: A new study has revealed that the vast majority of retired NFL players look weird in suits.
Wow. You have to ask yourself if a game is worth this.
A damning study by Rutgers University has found that a troubling percentage of former football players struggle in retirement to not look absolutely insane in suits, whether it’s massive ex-linemen sporting jackets so constricting that they look like they’re going to explode, or muscular ex-tight ends in distractingly bright seersucker get-ups with incredibly wide purple ties that resemble something a clown might wear. On the field, these men were leaders and role models who performed at the highest level, yet, tragically, after retiring, many appear awkward and out of their element, donning outrageous, ill-fitting teal suits that somehow make them look both gigantic and tiny at the same time—pitiful shadows of the dominant forces they once were in their playing days, seemingly unequipped to function off the field.
The study, which compared a group of retired NFL players in suits to a group of similarly aged men in suits who didn’t play professional football, found that the men in the NFL group were over 50 times more likely to look downright bizarre in formalwear, demonstrating a strong predisposition towards wearing suits that appear baggy in some parts and comically tight in others, not unlike standing in front of a funhouse mirror. The disturbing results have already prompted many to deem this a crisis, one that must be met with aggressive reforms by the NFL for the sake of its players’ welfare.
“When players enter the league, they’re focused on playing football—they’re not thinking at all about how strange and off-putting they might appear in a suit 15 or 20 years down the line,” said the NFL Players Association in a statement. “There’s clearly a strong need for young players to be educated on the risks of having a refrigerator-sized body and wearing slim, tailored garments—it’s just not at all compatible, like trying to stuff a cinder block into a tube sock. We are calling on the league to provide the necessary resources to address this urgent issue so that players no longer go through their post-playing days in wildly patterned, absurdly proportioned garments that make them look like they’re playing dress-up with a bunch of clothes from their grandpa’s closet.”
The statement went on to confirm that the NFLPA will also be pursuing a nine-figure settlement from the league to fund new wardrobes for retired players so that they are no longer jarringly distracting to look at whenever they appear on a sports talk show or at an alumni charity event.
Good for them. These players deserve better.
Will this study turn off NFL fans enough to change the channel to a new sport? Unlikely, as NFL fans didn’t need a study to tell them that retired NFL players look super weird in suits. But hopefully the study will be a catalyst for at least some sort of change, whether it be from the league or even just a clothing brand that develops a line of suits specifically tailored to accommodate former players’ hulking mutant bodies. Whatever the case, here’s hoping that former players get the help they need.
