Early withdrawals

Hey, what do I know. Maybe I'd have stopped writing for newspapers at 36 if someone had put me on TV and paid me goo-gobs of lettuce to wear a tie and express Deep Thoughts like, "Ya know, Greeny, defense wins championships a lot more often than you think."

This of course is a fantastical notion, since I have a face made for city-wide blackouts. Lord knows how much circulation it cost my employers over the years because they unwisely ran my picture with my columns.

But enough with tangents. 

This is not about me but about 36-year-old Sean McVay, who just became the youngest head coach ever to win a Super Bowl. He's getting married this summer. And so, in the immediate flush of victory, he made vague sounds about maybe/possibly/kinda-sorta retiring as an NFL coach.

Retiring.

At 36.

Speculation is that, yes, he indeed has a cushy TV job lined up if he decides to go this route, so there ya go. It's no great leap to see a future that involves him doing the professional babble thing for awhile, then coming back to a sideline when, as they say, he's tanned, rested and ready.

But still: He's 36.

Which gets you thinking about what coaching or playing in the NFL is actually like, financially rewarding though it may be. On the same night McVay sounded like a guy who wasn't raring to win another six or seven Lombardi trophies, his incomparable pass rusher, Aaron Donald, was on another part of the field, hinting he might walk away himself.

Aaron Donald is 30.

Which back in the day meant a guy with Donald's abundant skills might only be halfway through his playing days. Of course, then those back-in-the-days started turning up either dead or with dementia by the time they were 50. Or finding it impossible to get through a day without painkillers and/or a cane.

Football players love their game like few athletes, but their game does not love them back.  In exchange for a player's unconditional devotion, it knocks him down, stomps him senseless, almost literally tears him limb from limb. It leaves him a physical wreck and, in the cruelest instances, leaves him unable to even remember playing the damn game.

And coaches?

There's a toll to bear, too, but it's different. It manifests itself in the way it remorselessly gobbles up every second of every day, muscling aside everything else in life: Holidays, kids' birthdays, wedding anniversaries, marital bonds. Absence is the coin it demands, just as physical dissolution is the coin it demands of players.

Today's players -- who love the game, too, but not nearly as myopically -- bear far fewer illusions about this. It's why more and more of them are getting in, making their money, and getting out at 30 or before. 

The rub-some-dirt-on-it crowd sneered when Andrew Luck abruptly retired at 29, but none of them ever got hit the way Luck did, repeatedly. The suspicion is most of those who said he didn't love football enough, or wasn't tough enough, would be curled up in a ball weeping after they got hit the way Luck was as a matter of course.

So Luck got out, because he recognized that football could never give him back what it was taking away. And Aaron Donald, who's now got his ring and his ticket to Canton punched, thought about it, too. Because what else can the game give him but grief from here on out?

As for Sean McVay ...

Well. He said what he said for the same reason. He may be too young to remember the way the game once left Hall of Fame coach Dick Vermeil a trembling wreck, forcing him to flee it for a time. But he no doubt would understand completely.

Retiring at 36? Or 30? Or 29?

You might think it sounds crazy. But football is not banking. 

There are no penalties for early withdrawals. Only rewards.