If you're a Black man who played in the NFL in the late 1980s and you're now nearing retirement age, you're more likely than your white teammates and opponents to struggle walking and taking a bath, concentrating and remembering things, making ends meet and avoiding arrest or jail time.
On the whole, many aspects of your life are significantly worse than those of not only the white men you played with or against, but also most Black men your age who never played pro football.
That's the conclusion drawn from the ESPN/KFF Survey of 1988 NFL Players, which sought to interview the more than 1,500 players who played at least one game in the 1988 season. More than a third responded, answering questions about their physical and mental health, finances and general life outcomes. Fifty percent identified as Black, 43% as white, a breakdown that closely matched the demographics of the league in 1988.
Despite the fame and relative fortune that came to these men for reaching the pinnacle of their profession, Black players still couldn't overcome what experts describe as systemic racism that results in disparate health and social outcomes.
"When people live with racism, even when you have more money and more education and more privilege, you still have greater biological and physiological indicators of chronic stress," said Dr. Gail Christopher, executive director of the National Collaborative for Health Equity, a nonprofit organization focused on addressing racial inequalities in health.
"So here these football players are experiencing income privilege, the fame, all those things that you'd think should make outcomes better. And they don't."
Among the most significant disparities from the survey:
About 7 in 10 of Black players said they suffer from some sort of disability, including difficulty climbing stairs, getting dressed or hearing, compared with about half the white players.
Twice as many Black players as white players (60% vs. 30%) said they had trouble concentrating or making decisions because of a physical, mental or emotional condition. And more than twice as many said confusion or memory loss impacted their daily activities.
About one-fifth of Black players said they had been diagnosed with some form of dementia, compared with just 9% of white players.
Black players were two times more likely than white players to report being lonely, and nearly 1½ times more likely to report being depressed or anxious in the past 12 months.
Black players were nearly three times as likely as white players to say they had a debt that is past due or that they're unable to pay.
About a third of Black players have been arrested or detained by police since they stopped playing professional football, compared with only 16% of white players.
The findings echo the results of previous studies that have shown disparities in life and medical outcomes between Black and white people, including a KFF study in 2024 that examined how and why Black men and women fare worse than white people across most health-care experiences.
"It's completely representative of the entire population," said University of Texas professor John Hoberman, a social and cultural historian who has researched medical history and race for more than 20 years and is the author of "BLACK & BLUE: The Origins and Consequences of Medical Racism." "Every failure, every inferior status that you mentioned in the data that you collected is simply represented."
Christopher said research shows Black people are often more reticent to seek medical care because there are fewer Black doctors.
"There is a real hesitation on the part of people of color to subject themselves [to white doctors]," Christopher said. "Particularly if you think of the psyche of a football player. He's been at the top of the heap most of his life, or at least when he was playing, and then to go into a medical clinical setting and basically it doesn't honor him, doesn't respect him. And he views himself perhaps at risk at the hands of this physician. It makes sense. And so he just won't go."
The ESPN/KFF survey results also show the challenges Black players had getting steady employment after football and the varied earning power in their second careers. Eighty percent of the white players described having an easy or somewhat easy time getting consistent work after football, compared with just over half the Black players.
And 40% of Black players said they earned less than $90,000 annually, compared with just 16% of white players. Conversely, 42% of white players earned $200,000 or more, compared with just 19% of Black players. Still, income was one of the few categories in which Black players fared better than Black men their age.
Nearly three times as many Black players (34% versus 13% of white players) said they currently have a debt that's past due or that they're unable to play. Black players were also four times more likely to have fallen behind on their rent or mortgage and more than twice as likely to have trouble paying their medical bills in the past 12 months.
And nearly twice as many Black players (31% versus 16% of white players) said that in the past three years they thought they might need mental health services or medication but didn't get either. Black players also were nearly two times as likely as white players to say that playing professional football had a negative impact on their mental health (41% versus 23% of white players).
Ernest Gibson, a Black defensive back who played in the NFL from 1984 to 1989, including five seasons with the Patriots, said he wasn't surprised by the significant racial disparities and thinks he benefited considerably from having two parents who were educators.
"I think you have to start with the socioeconomic demographic where these players come from," Gibson said. "And I think you have to tie that into education as well. ... It's not anything different than if you're looking at a cross-section of the whole country. Where is the economic wealth?"
Keith Browner was a linebacker in the NFL for five seasons, from 1984 to 1988. Like Gibson, he said he wasn't surprised by the different outcomes by race, noting that many Black players come from more challenged backgrounds.
"It's just society for us," said Browner, who is also Black and added that he thought his white teammates and opponents often had better agents to help them plan for the future. "A lot of Black players come from single-mom families and big families. Everybody uses the money, and then that's why you end up broke -- trying to take care of everybody and not thinking of yourself in the end."
Interactions with the law also were disproportionate among the former players. Thirty-four percent of the Black players said they had been arrested or detained by police at least once since they stopped playing professional football, and more than 1 in 5 said they had spent at least one night in jail. On the other hand, only 16% of white players had been arrested or detained, and about 1 in 10 had spent a night behind bars.
According to a separate KFF survey on racism, discrimination and health, 33% of Black men ages 55-75 reported they had been held in jail or prison for one night or longer, compared with 21% of white men in the same age group.
"It helps to be white, and that's the principle here," Hoberman said. "It always helps to be white, whether you're a medical patient, whether you're a citizen, whether you're applying for a loan, whether you're trying to get your kid an education. Across the board."
The ESPN/KFF survey also showed that Black former NFL players have fared worse in many categories than Black men within their current age group of 55-75. White players also were worse off in many categories than white men their age who never played football. (Comparisons to men of a similar age are based on data from large federal health surveys or other KFF surveys.)
In some cases, the differences were dramatic. For example, 60% of Black players said they had difficulty concentrating, remembering or making decisions, compared with just 9% of Black men their age who didn't play in the NFL. Sixty-five percent of Black players said their memory loss or confusion had been getting worse in the past year, compared with just 17% of Black men their age.
The Black players also were significantly more likely to report being diagnosed with dementia than other Black men.
Nearly half the Black players said they had trouble walking or climbing stairs, compared with just 17% of Black men in the general population. The players were nearly twice as likely to have arthritis and nearly three times as likely to be in pain most days than Black men their age.
Hoberman was initially surprised by the differences but then said, "When you think about it, the guy who spent a life as an insurance agent didn't get the crap knocked out of him for X number of years."