Dr. Robert W. Turner broke his neck playing college football, yet still played professionally for four years.

Turner and Fresno State Football coach Jeff Tedford were teammates for two years while playing for the Calgary Stampeders in the Canadian Football League.

Realizing that injuries were piling up and he was mainly on the fringes of the NFL, Turner retired as an athlete and later earned a Ph.D. in sociology. He is now an assistant professor at the George Washington University School of Medicine.

Turner recently published “Not for Long: The Life and Career of the NFL Athlete.” Published in July by the Oxford University Press, “Not for Long” focuses on the lives and careers of athletes trying to make it in a league with high injury rates and without guaranteed contracts, examining how the structure of the league interacts with the experience of players.

Turner will discuss “When the Game is Over: Life After Football” at 7 p.m. Monday, Oct. 29, at the Peters Education Center. The talk will be followed by a panel discussion featuring three former Fresno State football players who played professionally in the NFL: Cameron Worrell, Sam Williams, and Kevin Jordan.

The event is co-sponsored by the departments of Sociology, Public Health and Kinesiology, along with Club Red, an organization for Fresno State student-athlete alumni.

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