Validus Group recently received plenty of press for its proposed venture (together with investment bank Piper Jaffray) to develop a $1.1 billion dollar pipeline of 33 new assisted living/memory care communities geared towards former NFL players. With over 18,000 former NFL alumni in the country and nearly one-third of them likely to develop some memory impairment, that’s a healthy chunk of the NFL population who may need Alzheimer’s or dementia care. Validus’ plan is to open a community in cities with high concentrations of NFL alumni. While some cities will certainly have higher concentrations of NFL alumni than others, if just a couple of former players move into one of these communities in, say, Buffalo, that could be a very powerful selling point to other non-former players in the area. We’ll have to wait and see how these communities fill up, but the first just broke ground in Ocoee, Florida (outside of Orlando), which will have capacity for 158 residents, large for any assisted living/memory care community. Perhaps that triumphant declaration at the end of a game, “I’m going to Disney World!” is true.