Constant relocation takes its toll on NFL wives
Photo: Simon Bruty/SIBY GRANT COHN SI.comPosted: Fri Sep. 4, 2015In cities across the NFL, the demanding rituals of relocation are well-known to the families of players and coaches: contact the realtors, study the school systems, pick a community, find the new doctors, handle the kids’ emotions, shed an old life and start afresh. The teams help, but inevitably much of the burden falls to the wives and girlfriends and significant others. They’re the ones whose work every day allows Sundays to remain paramount for the pros.For the past two years, George Warhop has coached the offensive line of the Buccaneers. He and his family—his wife, Lori; son, Jacob; and daughter, Olivia—are settled and happy. Jacob, 17, is an aspiring artist who works mostly with pencil and charcoal. Olivia, 19, will be a freshman at Elon (N.C.) University in the fall and plans to double-major in business and marketing. But six years ago things were different for this family. They weren’t just difficult; they were touch and go.In May 2009, seven months after George was fired as the 49ers’ offensive line coach and three months after he took the same job with the Browns, Olivia started feeling pain in her left leg. George couldn’t help—he’d already relocated from Northern California to Ohio—so Lori contacted the 49ers’ trainer, Jeff Ferguson. He got Olivia immediately into Stanford Hospital, where a large tumor was discovered in her tibia.The pathology report indicated a benign growth, so the Warhops were stunned when, 10 days later, Olivia’s doctor rushed into the examining room as her stitches were being checked and announced that he had diagnosed a potentially fatal bone cancer. “You can’t move to Cleveland,” he told Lori. “Olivia has to stay here and have tests. You’ll be lucky if we don’t have to amputate.”But Lori knew what was best for her family: She moved the kids to Ohio. Trainers and team doctors from the Browns connected Olivia with the Cleveland Clinic where Olivia received an eventual diagnosis of MyroFibrosarcoma, an extremely rare form of bone cancer. But her leg didn’t need to be amputated, and after a six-hour tibia resection, followed by a six-day hospital stay, followed by wheelchairs, crutches, rehab, three bone grafts, two plates along her tibia and 13 screws, she was declared cancer-free one year after the initial diagnosis. The summer Olivia was in the hospital, Lori spent every day with her. George, while coaching two-a-days, went to his daughter’s room at night and slept in a chair by her bed. The Warhops’ harrowing story is not typical of NFL families, but parts of it are all too familiar. “Everybody thinks the football life is so glamorous,” says Lori. “But there are people in the trenches who do a lot of the hard work. For the team, it’s the coaches, the equipment guys, the trainers. For the [players], it’s the girlfriends, the wives.”
