Tisdale's Teachings

Wayman Tisdale is someone every NFL player – as well as professional athletes in any sport – should emulate. Tisdale passed away last week at age 44 after a two-year battle with cancer, succumbing to the deadly disease with a positive outlook and an omnipresent smile filling the room even in his darkest days. Tisdale should be remembered and revered for several reasons, perhaps the most impressive being that he achieved great success in two careers, athletics and music.

I met Tisdale only briefly when I worked for David Falk representing NBA players.  Tisdale was good friends with our client Patrick Ewing, who introduced me to him. I immediately found myself in a better mood. Tisdale was polite, down to earth and full of warmth and friendship for a young attorney, someone he didn’t know and who could do nothing to advance his career.

Tisdale was successful as a workmanlike NBA player, averaging 15.3 points a game in 12 seasons, doing the dirty work in a game dominated by SportsCenter highlight moments.

After basketball, Tisdale not only became a jazz musician but was a very good one, recording eight CDs, some to critical acclaim. He even recorded a recent CD, “Rebound,” that drew inspiration from his cancer battle, with guest appearances by Dave Koz and Toby Keith. 

As a jazz aficionado myself – and a very poor jazz pianist – I found myself asking a friend who knew a lot about jazz (and very little about the NBA) about the music I was hearing on the stereo one day. My friend replied that it was Wayman Tisdale.

“The basketball player?” I asked.

My friend gave me a look of disgust. “No, the bass player.” In truth, Tisdale was both.

If there is one piece of advice I’ve given to dozens of football players in my years as an agent or as a front office employee, it’s this: Professional football is just a head start on life; do not count on it to carry you through until retirement. The NFL class of 2010 is now entering the work force. A tiny percentage of that group will play professional football and a tiny percentage will last more than a year or two before joining their peers in the workplace, already behind them in experience beyond football.

The players who can retire off the income they make playing football is a larger number than in past generations, but an extremely small number nonetheless. Professional football simply gives players a head start – one year, two, five, 10 if they’re extremely fortunate – before they find the path in life that will earn them financial security and career satisfaction. Having seen hundreds of players come and go in the sport, I’ve had a front-row seat on the dashing of hopes and dreams of players who worked tirelessly to make football more than a blip on their career radar. To most, it is just that.

With all the talk of Brett Favre coming out of retirement again, the reality is that 99 percent of players do not get to retire; their teams retire them. Even recent superstars such as Derrick Brooks, Marvin Harrison, Rodney Harrison, Chris McAlister, Deuce McAllister, Shaun Alexander and Warrick Dunn would love to un-retire as Brett might do; they just don’t appear to have anyone interested in un-retiring them. And, although that group is probably financially secure for a long while, the vast majority of NFL players who involuntarily “retire” are not.

If I had to pick an athlete whom I admire most, dead or alive, very high on that list would be Arthur Ashe. Part of the reason is that I grew up a tennis player and went to his tennis academies in Washington, D.C., as a young boy, becoming star struck when he walked onto the court one day. Many years later, working for ProServ, I was assigned to work on the schedule of, yes, Arthur Ashe. Every time I called Ashe to talk about his commitments, I was red-faced. I was actually talking to my idol! 

Ashe was so much more than a tennis player. He was a spokesman for many causes, some of which were not popular but were, in his mind, the right thing to do. I will never forget a conversation I had with him one day where we were going over his commitments for the next week – mostly business and political, few tennis-related – and I heard some commotion in the background. I asked if he wanted to talk later; he responded that it was no big deal, just some people around him.

As it turned out, these people were doctors and nurses taking his blood and working on his illnesses. Weeks later, Ashe passed away from AIDS, having received a contaminated blood sample in a transfusion during heart-bypass surgery. He had never mentioned the illness to me or anyone else he knew. He was only concerned with people he thought had “real problems.” Ashe was all about selflessness, dignity, grace and working for the greater good. His world-class tennis career -- having won Wimbledon and having once been the top-ranked player in the world -- was just a precursor to something bigger.

I’m not suggesting that Tisdale, being a musician following basketball, was in that class. But he was an accomplished musician, not an athlete who made a run at recording a rap album or two during or after his career. 

Football is a fleeting career. The average life span of an NFL player is a bit over three years, but that average is skewed due to players who play into their 30s. The sport spits out terminations on its waiver wire every day, flooding the market with players who may or may not get another shot. Hopefully, many in this group will find other careers.

In these times more than ever, they need to be prepared to do something else when the music stops. And it will. Sooner than anyone thinks.

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