On The Retirement of Rashard Mendenhall

On one hand, I appreciate Rashard Mendenhall’s moderately thoughtful blog post about his retirement. His decision to eschew making the announcement a grotesque spectacle with a press conference, followed by an awkward media blitz, is a very welcome change of pace.

[Click here to read his entire blog post on the Huffington Post]

On the other hand, if he had scheduled a press conference to make the announcement, would anyone have even bothered to show up?

After all, Mendenhall couldn’t even make his mark with the historically ground game-obsessed Pittsburgh Steelers, who selected him No. 23 overall in the 2008 NFL Draft. Despite averaging over 1,000 yards per season from 2009-2011, there was no attempt made to re-sign him in 2013.

The Arizona Cardinals had absolutely no interest in retaining his services for the upcoming season, and it’s hard to imagine teams would be lining up for an injury-prone running back bust who thinks Osama bin Laden got a raw deal and 9/11 was probably an inside job.

To his credit, Mendenhall did acknowledge that some people—maybe even *most* people—would be thinking along those lines. Which displayed a level of self-awareness that many other athletes in similar positions lack entirely.

Taking Mendenhall at his word, his retirement is partially about a man who has accomplished…enough…in a game he never cared that much about to begin with. But it’s more about him being victimized by bullies on the internet and the impact “haters” had on his career.

His claim that he feels as though he’s “done it all” isn’t particularly believable on its own. In trying to have it both ways, Mendenhall does himself no favors.

If the 26-year-old Mendenhall had cited preserving his health as the dominating factor, rather than an added bonus, perhaps his two trips to the Super Bowl—in which he contributed nothing—and the fact that he’s “met some really cool people” along the way might count for more.

But when it gets right down to it, Rashard Mendenhall’s retirement is about the many injustices he believes Rashard Mendenhall has faced over the course of his career. It certainly has nothing to do with all of his supposed accomplishments.

Mendenhall claims that his “very calm demeanor” and interests in dance, art and literature have made him a target on Twitter. A target of those who see his “apparent lack of interest in sporting events” as evidence that he doesn’t “love the game of football.”

Said Mendenhall on his retirement, “The truth is, I don’t really think my walking away is that big of deal. [sic] For me it’s saying, ‘Football was pretty cool, but I don’t want to play anymore. I want to travel the world and write!’”

So he’s mad about people who don’t think he loves football, and responding by retiring in his mid-20s and pretending like he never really cared to begin with? It’s that disconnected logic that undercuts Mendenhall’s entire attempt to take the high road.

The bulk of his blog post is dedicated to the many injustices done to him by anonymous online haters. Mendenhall even blamed these nameless, faceless critics for hurting his family and negatively impacting his professional career.

As if anyone in the NFL needed to consult Twitter to find out that Mendenhall was a subpar football player—watching a little game tape would more than suffice. The truth is, the only things ever said on Twitter that seriously impacted his career weren’t said by “haters,” but by Mendenhall himself.

[Example 1, Example 2]

Mendenhall wants his retirement to be seen as a bold athlete going out on his own terms. In reality, it’s simply the desperate attempt of a mediocre athlete with a victim mentality to write his own ending before someone else wrote it for him.