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Friday, February 18, 2011

Divorce and the Pro Athlete

One of the cool things about writing this blog is that reading sports websites now constitutes research.   Yep, reading SI, PFT, ESPN, and all those other sites is now "work."   As I am sitting here tonight with a gin and tonic in hand, doing research for future posts, I ran across a rather scary statistic.  

The divorce rate for pro athletes ranges from 60 - 80%.  

That is all major sports:  NFL, NHL, NBA and MLB. 

The divorce rate for the average population is 50%.    This means if those numbers are accurate, athletes divorce at a significantly higher rate than the average public.  

Even more frightening is that there is anecdotal evidence that most pro athletes divorce within a year or two of retiring (really retiring for good, no come backs).    That means when the crowds and the adulation go away, so does the marriage.

There are many reasons for the demise of a marriage.   I would like to think that athletes divorce for the same reasons the rest of the population does.   Reasons like, incompatibility, domestic violence, money, affairs, just not wanting to be married anymore.   But that number tells me more is at work here when it comes to a pro athlete's marriage ending.  

Whatever the reason though, pro athlete or not, the goal of the divorce remains the same.   Preparing two people to go forward into their new unmarried lives.  

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