THEY HAD A RETIREMENT PARTY last week for Rulon Jones. Weber High School in Ogden, his alma mater, gave him a plaque and his old football jersey, with the number 75 and a smear or two of blood on it. They retired the number, too.
But no one had to help Jones to midfield for the halftime retirement ceremony. No one had to explain to him what they were doing, or where he was. He did not walk with a noticeable limp. He didn't have a cane, or a hearing aid.
At 6-foot-6 and 260 pounds, he looked like he could still suit up and play. Which, as a matter of fact, he could.
Jones is still a physical specimen. A sight to make quarterbacks quiver, to make offensive linemen want to either hold or take steroids. To look at him, he still looks like a scourge waiting to happen; like a football accident waiting to hit whoever's carrying the ball.
And, at 31, he is hardly at mandatory retirement age; not even for football players.
But after giving a clinic on How To Play Defensive End for most of nine seasons in the National Football League, all of them with the Denver Broncos, the pride of Weber High (and, after that, Utah State) decided to give another kind of clinic: How to Retire From the NFL.
Nobody asked Jones to retire. The Broncos didn't send him a notice that training camp would be in Tucson, and then convene in Denver. They didn't hint that he was over-the-hill. They didn't draft for his position. To the contrary. The club included a healthy incentive clause in his 1989 contract if and/or when he made the 45-man final roster.
Jones decided on his own that it was time. Offseason knee surgery hadn't worked out well, and, after looking at last season's films, he realized that if his knee couldn't be at his best, neither could he.
"I could see in the films that I was favoring my knee more than I would have liked," he says. "That restricted me quite a bit. My performance had dropped off. And the opportunity was there for me to get hurt. Whenever you favor something, you're really taking a higher risk.
"I didn't want to hang around and be one of the guys they talk about, the ones they say should have retired way back when. I'd been in the game long enough. That's not to say I couldn't have contributed this year. But I wouldn't have been as good as I had been in the past. I decided the time was right."
He walked away from the Broncos' training camp, away from at least another half-million dollars and his 10th NFL season.
So they tallied up the line on Rulon Jones in the NFL and it read:
Nine seasons, 129 games, 100 starts, including 126 in a row from 1981 through 1987; three safeties scored, one touchdown scored, 10 fumble recoveries, and 73.5 quarterback sacks. The 73.5 sacks represent the Broncos' franchise career record, and the 13.5 sacks he had in the 1986 season represent the Broncos' one-year record.
Also, two Pro Bowl appearances (1986, 1987), two NFC Championships (1986 and 1987), one NFC Defensive Player of the Year award (1986) and two Super Bowls (XXI and XXII).
Even Jones, who always had high standards, says, "the career exceeded my expectations."
Now it's over. And of course he misses it. He's only watched a part of one Broncos game this season, and that was more than he could take, so he shut off the TV.
He and his wife, Kathy, and their five children plan to run their own cattle ranch on 130 acres in Liberty, Utah, above Ogden. Jones also has started plans to build an athletic club in Ogden, on 12th and Washington, with racquetball, basketball, swimming, weight rooms and aerobics. "All of it," he says.
That should help keep him active in his retirement.
"I've been lucky. Very lucky," he says. "I'm leaving the game in good health, and with money in the bank. I think that's happening to ballplayers more now. It's changed in just the last four or five years. As I look back to guys retiring when I came into the league, they didn't have the luxury of what I'm doing. Those guys, they had to immediately go to work just to pay the mortgage. The salary scale has really risen."
It could rise a lot more, in the next 10 years. But that's of no concern to Rulon Jones. "We can make it," he says, smiling as he says it. This is one contented retiree. No boss. No hassles. No blindside blocks. As for his career, it's all over but the relishing; that, and the realization that he didn't go out on a stretcher. That he didn't buy the farm. The NFL did.