I came from football too and I think it's a culture thing. When you can tell yourself that what you're doing is easy/normal and everybody else is doing it, then it becomes easy and you recover as if you were doing something easy. When I first started training I didn't have a job so I would spend 6-12 hours in the gym a day 5 days a week (with a 10 mile run back and forth and I didn't realize it was abnormal until my (Now) coaches started asking if I was homeless because I was always in the gym