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Last year, an article in a major sports magazine listed the best jobs for the outdoor sportsperson. It included obvious types of athletic employment: forest ranger, lifeguard, whitewater raft guide, commercial fisherman, skiing instructor. Even personal trainer was noted, although I would guess that only a small portion of their day is spent outside the gym.
I read this piece with great interest, not only because my own career as a professional athlete was winding down, but also because most of my athletic peers were in some sort of employment transition. Indeed, we had spent many long bike rides discussing the perfect job for the serious athlete, assuming we weren’t employed as pro triathletes.
The problem with getting paid to do one sport very well is that you must do it better than very well: You have to kick ass 24/7. Make more than one mistake and there are 456 people lined up to take your coveted spot. For a professional athlete, there are no weekends. Saturdays and Sundays are the days you perform all the tricks that you have learned Monday through Friday. And the rest of the world comes to watch on their day off.
Nevertheless, I appreciated the lifestyle that comes with the pain and the pressure, which is why I was interested in maintaining that lifestyle during the second half of my life.
When you consider that many of us Baby Boomers will have several different careers in our lives, starting a new one at age 40 doesn’t seem too odd. But when your job skills include: running fast, hitting a three pointer under pressure, or hitting 101 RBIs last season, it’s a stretch to think you’ll sell more widgets or design better wazoos.
In any case, this column isn’t about where a pro athlete ends up when he or she is over the hill when everybody else is reaching the top. This is about finding the perfect job for an athlete, if it exists.
If I were searching for the perfect margarita, for instance, I would watch how Jimmy Buffett makes one. If I wanted to hear perfect singing, I might put on Nat King Cole or Frank Sinatra. Finding the perfect painting requires a trip to the Louvre in Paris. (Of course, when it comes to art, perfection is in the eye of the beholder, but indulge me for a moment—we’re talking about a job here. Not Picasso.)
Maybe I should change my approach, I thought, by looking at how some of my sports friends pay the rent. My first case study was a guy who heads the marketing division of a large sporting goods manufacturer. He’s in charge of deciding which athletes receive sponsorship and which receives the standard rejection form letter, which begins with, “Dear Champion: We’d love to help you but...” What a great gig, I thought, playing King for a Day, doling out running shoes, warm up suits, and logoed T-shirts like worms to baby birds. Unfortunately, my friend didn’t agree. The constant pressure to produce brand awareness coupled with the never-ending groveling of sponsorship requests made his job “just a cog in a big wheel.”
Scratch that one.
I considered another friend who works as a commercial scuba diver, diving on offshore oil rigs and large ships in need of repair. “How cool is that bro?” I asked. “You must see all sorts of fish and underwater plant life.” Wrong again. I was corrected. “I’m just a welder who works in the cold, fluid darkness of an aquatic shop.”
I asked a physical education teacher. The three best things about this job? June, July, and August, he replied.
I spoke with a friend who makes bike wheels. “I started this company because I like bikes. Now I don’t have time to ride anymore.”
I interviewed an acquaintance who owns a sports magazine. “Are you kidding? I write about what I wish I was doing.”
OK. I was getting the point. It was time for a different approach. I called a buddy who is a commercial airline pilot and always seems to have days off. “Hey dude,” I asked, “How would you rate your job for athletic participation?”
He said, “Oh man, it rocks. I only work 10 days a month, and when I do I can sit up in the cockpit and rest my legs from the previous day’s workout.” Now we’re talking.
- Trust-Funder: Train all day, race on the weekends, pick up your check every other Friday.
- Early Retiree: Take the pension at 50 and reduce your overhead. (Same as Trust-Funder only
with less mileage.)
- Part-Time Student: Mooch off your parents as long as possible. Take one class to keep them
guessing.
- Firefighter: Lots of time off. Kind of like working at a frat house if you get the right
station.
- Navy SEAL: No need to work out on your days off. The whole job is a race of some type.
- Lottery Winner: Hardest part is deciding who your “real” friends are.
- Pro Surfer: Well, duh!
- Novelist/Screenwriter: No need to really sell anything. You are always “dangerously
close”
to hitting it big. Sleeping in your car makes you tough.
- Prostitute: Days off for training. Good money. Fringe benefits. Need an alias job title
though.
- Game Show Competitor: Same as above though socially less
acceptable.
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