ArticlesArticle
How careers have changed
Two in five 19th-century ballplayers never got a second season. NBA rookies are the youngest they've ever been, and 1,034 NFL careers began and ended in the 1987 strike. Rookie age, career length and retirement age, decade by decade.
By Austin · October 17, 2026
How old is a rookie, how long does he last, and how old is he when it ends? We followed every career in five sports from its first season to its last and grouped them by the decade they began. A few things have barely moved in a century. Others have changed a lot.
| Sport | Rookie age, first decade | Rookie age, 2020s | Average career | 10+ seasons |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Baseball | 22.5 (1870s) | 25.1 | 5.7 seasons (2000s) | 21.1% |
| Basketball | 25.6 (1940s) | 22.3 | 6.5 seasons (2000s) | 30.4% |
| Football | 22.9 (1970s) | 23.4 | 4.9 seasons (2000s) | 13.3% |
| Hockey | 22.4 (1960s) | 22.4 | 6.2 seasons (2000s) | 26.3% |
| Soccer | 21.2 (1960s) | 20.7 | 4.2 seasons (2000s) | 12.6% |
Baseball
Nineteenth-century baseball chewed through players. Teams folded, leagues came and went, and about two in five players who debuted before 1930 never got a second season. Careers grew longer through the middle of the 20th century and peaked with the players who arrived in the 1980s. Debuts have come later lately: today's rookies spend longer in college and the minor leagues first.
Age at the start and the end
How long careers lasted
| Debuts | Players | Rookie age | Seasons | Only one | 10+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1870s | 450 | 22.5 | 4.2 | 39.6% | 13.1% |
| 1880s | 939 | 22.9 | 3.8 | 41.5% | 11.7% |
| 1890s | 813 | 23.5 | 3.9 | 44.9% | 13% |
| 1900s | 1,084 | 24.2 | 4 | 38.4% | 11.7% |
| 1910s | 1,547 | 23.1 | 3.9 | 41.6% | 10.7% |
| 1920s | 1,206 | 24.3 | 4.3 | 37.4% | 14.6% |
| 1930s | 1,038 | 24.1 | 4.9 | 28.7% | 17.5% |
| 1940s | 1,168 | 24.9 | 4.6 | 30.3% | 15.2% |
| 1950s | 1,070 | 24.5 | 5.7 | 25.1% | 22.8% |
| 1960s | 1,251 | 23.2 | 6.6 | 17.5% | 26.7% |
| 1970s | 1,316 | 23.4 | 6.7 | 17.4% | 29% |
| 1980s | 1,458 | 24.1 | 6.9 | 14.6% | 28.9% |
| 1990s | 1,879 | 24.5 | 6.3 | 17.8% | 26.7% |
| 2000s | 2,076 | 24.7 | 5.7 | 17.2% | 21.1% |
| 2010s | 2,394 | 24.8 | not yet | – | – |
| 2020s | 1,793 | 25.1 | not yet | – | – |
Basketball
The first pro basketball players were older. Many had served in the Second World War, and the typical rookie of the late 1940s was nearly 26. Almost half of them lasted a single season as the young league's teams folded around them. Since the 1990s, a career has averaged six and a half seasons, and today's rookies are the youngest yet.
Age at the start and the end
How long careers lasted
| Debuts | Players | Rookie age | Seasons | Only one | 10+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1940s | 413 | 25.6 | 2.5 | 48.4% | 3.1% |
| 1950s | 281 | 23.4 | 3.7 | 41.3% | 10.7% |
| 1960s | 315 | 23 | 5.3 | 28.6% | 22.9% |
| 1970s | 572 | 23 | 5.1 | 26.4% | 19.4% |
| 1980s | 661 | 23.1 | 6.1 | 25% | 29.2% |
| 1990s | 666 | 23.2 | 6.5 | 20.3% | 31.1% |
| 2000s | 686 | 22.8 | 6.5 | 18.4% | 30.4% |
| 2010s | 889 | 22.8 | not yet | – | – |
| 2020s | 616 | 22.3 | not yet | – | – |
Football
Football careers are the shortest of the four American leagues, and the 1980s were the shortest of all because of one season. During the 1987 players' strike, teams played three games with replacement players, and for most of them that was their entire NFL career: 1,034 players in our records played only in 1987.
Age at the start and the end
How long careers lasted
| Debuts | Players | Rookie age | Seasons | Only one | 10+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1970s | 2,455 | 22.9 | 5.1 | 21.5% | 15.2% |
| 1980s | 4,068 | 23.3 | 4.2 | 37.6% | 12.3% |
| 1990s | 3,404 | 23.3 | 5.2 | 21% | 17.2% |
| 2000s | 3,834 | 23.3 | 4.9 | 21.9% | 13.3% |
| 2010s | 4,636 | 23.2 | not yet | – | – |
| 2020s | 2,932 | 23.4 | not yet | – | – |
Hockey
Hockey's rookies got younger through the 1980s, the era of teenage stars like Mario Lemieux and Steve Yzerman, then older again as more players arrived from Europe and U.S. colleges. The players who debuted in the 1980s also had the longest careers: one in three lasted ten seasons or more.
Age at the start and the end
How long careers lasted
| Debuts | Players | Rookie age | Seasons | Only one | 10+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1960s | 137 | 22.4 | 5.7 | 17.5% | 21.9% |
| 1970s | 999 | 21.9 | 5.8 | 19.7% | 22.5% |
| 1980s | 1,185 | 21.5 | 7.3 | 17.3% | 32.7% |
| 1990s | 1,246 | 22.6 | 7 | 15% | 31.3% |
| 2000s | 1,374 | 22.7 | 6.2 | 18.9% | 26.3% |
| 2010s | 1,448 | 22.4 | not yet | – | – |
| 2020s | 838 | 22.4 | not yet | – | – |
Soccer
In soccer we can only count the seasons a player spent in Europe's top five leagues, so a career here ends when a player leaves them: for a lower division, another country or retirement. Players arrive young, at about 21, and that hasn't changed in sixty years. What has changed is where they go next: the 2000s generation left the big five younger than ever.
Age at the start and the end
How long careers lasted
| Debuts | Players | Rookie age | Seasons | Only one | 10+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1960s | 2,065 | 21.2 | 4.6 | 27.2% | 14.1% |
| 1970s | 3,402 | 20.7 | 4.7 | 27.5% | 14.9% |
| 1980s | 3,750 | 20.9 | 4.6 | 30% | 14.9% |
| 1990s | 4,671 | 21.2 | 4.6 | 28.2% | 14.4% |
| 2000s | 5,562 | 20.7 | 4.2 | 31.7% | 12.6% |
| 2010s | 4,489 | 20.9 | not yet | – | – |
| 2020s | 2,762 | 20.7 | not yet | – | – |
What hasn’t changed
The age a career ends barely moves. In every sport and nearly every decade, the typical player has played his last game by about 30, and in football by 27. The stars who play into their late 30s are memorable because they are rare. For what a long career looks like season by season, see when careers peak, and for the longest of all, the longest one-club careers.
How we counted
A career runs from a player’s first regular-season game in our records to his last, and a season counts if he played in it. Ages are taken on one date each season (June 30 in baseball, September 1 in football, February 1 in basketball and hockey, January 1 in soccer) and the figure shown is the median. A decade’s career lengths and final ages appear once at least 95% of its players have finished, because the longest careers end last; the 2010s aren’t there yet (“not yet” in the tables). Careers that may have begun before our records do (the first season of our football, hockey and soccer data, and soccer players arriving with a newly promoted club) are left out, and so are birth dates that would make a player impossibly young or old. A football season counts if the player was on a team that year, not just in training camp or on the practice squad.
About the data
Rosters come from the data behind Teammate Chain: every major-league baseball season since 1871, the NBA since 1946-47, the NFL since 1970, the NHL since 1967-68 and Europe’s top five soccer leagues since 1963-64. Our baseball records include the 19th-century major leagues, among them the American Association, the Union Association, the Players’ League and the Federal League. Spot a mistake? Let us know.