If ever there were a San Diego Charger whose postcareer success has matched his years spent on the field, it’s the great Ron Mix. Mix’s glory years came in the 1960s, when the Chargers were in the American Football League. Back in the day, Mix was listed at 6’ 4” and 250 pounds, known as a weight lifter long before football players commonly pumped iron, and nicknamed the “Intellectual Assassin.” On the field, he achieved something that’s never been equaled: in ten seasons, he had two holding calls against him. Off the field, he blazed a trail by becoming one of the few players to earn a law degree — he graduated from the University of San Diego law school in 1969 — and one of the very few who got the degree during his career, not after he hung up his cleats.

Today, at 71, Mix still practices — law, that is, not football. From new offices in Mission Valley, Mix displays only one football memento: high up on a bookcase is his white helmet, emblazoned with the yellow bolt and his number, 74, on the side. It’s safe inside a plastic box, not only heralding an illustrious career, which got him elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979, but also reminding us that there is life after sport.

Mix says that too many athletes today have “dismal postcareer lives.” There’s a touch of anger if not frustration in his voice. He calls their troubles “startling, sad, pathetic, and outrageous.” He’s speaking of the rise in bankruptcies, marital infidelities, and divorces, as well as legal and personal screwups, the sordidness exposed by our gotcha media. The names in the circus of ex-football clowns are legend: Lawrence Taylor, Ryan Leaf, O.J. Simpson.

How much has changed since his playing days? Nothing and everything. In the 1960s, Mix tells me, athletes prepared for life after football. Unlike today’s players, they worked in the off-season, usually “part-time for a company and setting the foundation to build a career. Or they attended school.” It was, he says, “commonly accepted” that you’d be moving on. Back then, the money was good, “more than the average person made. But we probably spent more too.” After retirement, Mix says, even those who’d saved their money had only enough to live on for a year. Eventually, everyone needed a job.

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