I do a lot of media work, I've been investing and I'm involved with real estate. It's totally different from what I had been doing but I find it challenging and fun. To be honest, I really don't miss the track. I pretty well accomplished what I set out to do and it was time to move on.
You've got to respect your body and know the time to transition to what's next. A lot of athletes cannot transition. They don't have nothing to do after.
I will find out what the normal life is like. I will be a coach. I have achieved everything I could achieve in gymnastics.
I was a gymnast my whole life. I mean, I'd go to Starbucks and people would be like, 'Are you going to the next Olympics?' And when I'd say no, they'd literally look sad. So it was very hard for me to get excited about anything else. I thought that I had to do gymnastics forever.
The closer I get to retirement, the more I feel it will be a huge change, a shock, because athletics has been the core of my whole life. I know I'll miss the feeling of running fast, the adrenaline rush, and hearing the crowd cheering me on.
I am not thinking about life after football, but I know it will be another life, another world.
The greatest challenge I think is adjusting to not playing baseball. The reason for that is I had to come out of baseball and come into the business world, not being a college graduate, not being educated to come into the business world the way I should have.
I am thinking more and more about what I want to and can do after my days as an active athlete. Thoughts like family and marriage also cross my mind more and more often.
If I leave this sport, I think life will stop.
It took a few years before I realized there was life after football.
My dad emphasized athletics. My mom did as well, but my mom was really hard on the academic end of things and always stressed, 'Hey, you've got to have the grades, you've got to be prepared for life outside of sports.'
You can't do sports for the rest of your life; I don't care how good you are. You can be the best ever, but it's still going to go away.
I've accomplished everything a person can accomplish on a basketball court, but I never thought about the future when I was younger. I never made plans for the next stage in my life.
When I was 23 years old, I had just finished my wrestling career. I was top 12 in the nation in the NCAA. And I was top 12 in the state in California.
Honestly speaking, I was not really interested in a managerial job when my playing career ended.
I got hurt my senior year of college. I ended up breaking my fifth metatarsal after I pulled out of the Draft. That was a good experience for me to kind of find myself, figure out a plan for post-basketball because obviously it doesn't last forever.
The longer and longer I played in the NFL, I kind of said, 'Well, I'm not going to go out and get a 9 to 5 job at any point soon, so what can I do?' So I started hosting radio and TV shows while I was still playing.
I came out of my professional athlete career with a 450 credit score, no money in the bank to show for it, but I had an Ivy League degree. So I put that Dartmouth degree to good use and got a job on Wall Street. I hated it but used the time to make connections and become financially literate.
