Jerome Bettis: Here's Why NFL Stars Are Quitting Young

The recent trend of NFL players retiring early is an understandable result of increased awareness around the mental and physical toll football takes on players. In decades past, long-term injury was seen as a necessary price of admission for those few lucky enough to make it to the pros. Now, a Hall of Famer is working to teach players that they do have more control over the game's consequences to their bodies.

"I was at the end of my rope from a physical standpoint," former Steelers running back Jerome Bettis told me in an interview earlier this week. "I couldn't do the things I could do when I was younger. Football is ultimately a young man's sport." Bettis, who retired at the age of 33 in 2006 after winning a Super Bowl, is today raising awareness about ways to treat injuries, maintaining that it isn't necessarily a given that athletes must live their post-retirement life in chronic pain.