SEATTLE — Chances are, you’ve never heard of Thailand Pierce. And you almost certainly would have missed his recent announcement, such as it was, that he was retiring from professional football. He made that known simply by changing the profile on his Instagram: “Retired Professional Athlete” is the first line of his bio at @tpierce1991.
Pierce, 31, has existed on football’s periphery over the past decade, scratching out a living one small paycheck at a time, clawing his way to just about every corner of the country in search of a new team. He went to high school near Dayton, Ohio, and played junior-college ball in Arizona. He settled in Texas, moved to North Carolina for a bit, and now might go see a friend about a job in Wyoming.
Broke and unable to afford rent, he was homeless for a short time in Phoenix, then bounced around from one tryout to the next in the Arena Football League. A 6-foot-1, 195-pound defensive back, he has played for the Topeka Tropics, the Billings Outlaws, the Texas Revolution, working day jobs here and there to make ends meet, and joining every flag-football team that would have him because he loved the game so much.
