Save Your Nicholls [Part 1/3]

Roy Turner and Terry Nicholl jump at their opportunities. Some players don't.

All right lad, here’s a blueprint on what NOT to do…

Dinner with your wife at the Scotch and Sirloin, followed by drinks with your girlfriend at The Hatch Cover. Fur coats. Expensive cars. Luxury vacations in the tropics that you can’t afford. Sign an autograph or two, but don’t let the fans get too close. Breeze into training five minutes late and leave five minutes early. Only visit the office to pick up your check or negotiate your next contract. Spend, spend, spend. Live in the moment. 

In the graphic novel version of the real-life Wichita Wings, the above worrisome text would have appeared above Wichita Wings coach Roy Turner’s head in a story about his worst nightmare when signing a new player.

Plenty of professional athletes have taken that shortsighted path. But the future is coming for every pro. Too many don’t see it until it socks them in the face. Others learn from the failure of their teammates.

“There were guys I looked at and thought, ‘maybe one less hour at the bar would be productive,’” said Bill Kentling, Wichita Wings general manager from 1980 to 1986.

In the Major Indoor Soccer League of the 1980s, a star player with a long career might have been able to live la vida loca and get away with it in the long term…but only with the best of luck. Realistically, even those stars making a half-million a year had to cast a more-than-occasional glance at their savings account to avoid post-athletics trouble.

“Nobody ever thinks it’s going to come to an end until someone tells them so, or they realize, physically, they can’t do it anymore. Very few players I’ve been involved with have planned beyond playing days,” said Roy Turner, longtime head coach of the Wings.

The MISL paid well, low- to mid-six figures in current dollars, which brought players galore from Europe, ready to cash in. But when a player came to the end of his career and hadn’t prepared for retirement, they would be forced to take all kinds of jobs you might never expect, Turner said. It wasn’t unusual to see former professional footballers in England tending bar or driving a cab.

“They were used to the guy being a superstar and are used to that income. Then all of a sudden, the wives are finding out, ‘What’s next?’ and families are breaking up,” Turner said.

Former Wichita Wings midfielder Terry Nicholl believes much of the shortsighted, right-now thinking among athletes reflects the nature of the professional game.

“There’s a reason why a lot of players don’t look too far ahead. You are like a salesman when you play. You’ve got to put a performance in. But it’s all about, ‘What have you done for me lately?’ You could have a great game and then a bad game, and then they are saying, ‘You’d better shape up,’” Nicholl said.

A small city like Wichita, where the Wings were wildly popular, offered potentially lucrative job prospects to players interested in pursuing a career after they hung up their cleats.

“Several of them had opportunities with people who were successful in this community who were willing to give them a chance. If they hadn’t been a player, they wouldn’t have had that chance. I’d say it’s a very small percentage that take advantage of that,” Turner said.

Former player Joe Howarth parlayed his soccer success into a career in finance with a Wings sponsor. Terry Nicholl used his Wings experience to start his own small business. Roy Turner himself would use the connections from his days with the Wings to build a wildly successful pro golf tournament on the Korn Ferry PGA Tour. He had always been the kind of guy that would jump at opportunity.

In the 1960s, an offer from the legendary Lamar Hunt prompted Turner to leave the reserve squad on England’s Everton franchise, say goodbye to his beloved Beatles (yes, he had met them in person), and trade in his Liverpudlian working-class flat cap for a 10-gallon cowboy hat with the Tornado, the North American Soccer League franchise that played in the shadow of the sunbaked skyscrapers of Dallas.

After his 131^st game, Turner earned the nickname “Iron Man of the NASL” and broke the league record for most consecutive games played. As his career began to wane, he did what most athletes didn’t: he thought ahead.

The sport was littered with examples of struggling former players. After Wings star Jeff Bourne had a career-ending injury, he was forced to work retail back in England. Bourne’s teammate, the lovable Scotsman Ian Anderson, struggled with alcohol and died suddenly at age 54. Multiple marriages failed once careers ended and the checks stopped coming.

Turner planned ahead. He took on the responsibility of director of community relations in the latter days of his playing career. Together with coach Al Miller, Turner would hit the asphalt in Texas, selling the game of soccer to children. But Turner wanted to take that experience and apply it to a team of his own.

When his knees finally gave out in 1978, Turner parleyed that experience into a head coaching job in Wichita, where a new indoor soccer franchise in the fledgling MISL was taking shape. Just as his association with Lamar Hunt bore fruit, working for Pizza Hut co-founder and Wings owner Frank Carney would help propel his career forward in Wichita.

“They were obviously great people and very few people can put them on their resume,” Turner said.

(To Be Continued)

Next week: Part 2 of “Save Your Nicholls”