We’re not hostage to the time we live in, but we certainly feel its sway, one way or another. Today, several young players have walked away from the NFL because of knowledge we now have about brain injuries (though even the league itself suspected it long ago). But there was a time during the Vietnam War when some left the game for political reasons. Dave Meggyesy probably did so most loudly, but Raider Chip Oliver likewise went all in, joining the One World Family commune and devoting himself to vegetarianism and peace, refusing a professional football contract he felt was being taxed to fund the war. From a 1970 Sports Illustrated:

“Out of it” now describes former Oakland Linebacker Chip Oliver—well out of it, that is. Last January he joined a commune in Larkspur, Calif., so you can figure, if you want to, that it’s costing him $25,000 a year to scrub down the commune’s nonprofit, health-food restaurant tables. He figures that a fifth of that money just “went down the drain in Vietnam—now Cambodia,” and says, “That’s one reason I quit. The only way not to pay taxes is not to make money.” There are other reasons. “It’s a silly game they’re playing,” he says of the pros. “I’m going to miss playing football—the actual football part of it—but I’d look up at the people in the stadium and realize I wasn’t helping them. I wasn’t helping anybody. All we’re doing in pro football is entertaining these people and…they need to do their own creative thing.” A vegetarian diet, periodic fasting and yoga have cut Chip’s weight down to a tough 180 pounds from his playing weight of 230; he has cut his worldly possessions down to a few old clothes and an Instamatic camera. He is a happy man. “Even my mother likes me better this way,” he says. “So does my father [a retired Army sergeant], but he’s afraid to admit it. He doesn’t like me associating with these ‘Communists.’ “•