Once the cheering stops: The life of a retired pro-athlete

Professional sports are extremely competitive and can be life changing not only for the athletes but the people around them as well. Being drafted into the NFL or NBA at age 21 or 22 is an extreme life change. Being 21, I couldn’t imagine depositing a check for $500,000 into my bank account. One thing I found shocking was that on top of being paid tens of millions of dollars, most of the athletes aren’t educated in finances; this is a disaster waiting to happen.  After two years of retirement, around 78% of NFL players have gone bankrupt or are under financial stress (30 for 30). How is that even possible when they’re contracts are worth millions of dollars?

These athlete are not just competitive on the field or court, they compete with one another at the clubs, restaurants and other business deals. They spend thousands of dollars each night at the clubs. One former athlete spent $57,000 on one dinner (30 for 30). The problem isn’t what they do after retirement; it’s what they do when they first sign their contract. Buying five cars, five houses, spending millions on jewelry and making horrible investment decisions digs them into a financial hole right off the bat. An NFL player will play professional football for ten years if he’s lucky. That means that by the age of 33 he has already hit retirement. What is he supposed to do financially for 50 more years?

Once these athletes have hit retirement, they’ve got some serious shit they need to deal with. They’re wives divorce them within a couple years; they need to pay child support (some athletes had ten kids with up to eight different women). Now they’re not getting paid and they have to pay their ex-wives child support every month. This type of lifestyle is the perfect recipe for disaster. On top of that, these ex-professional athletes have to deal with injuries and surgeries. Professional football is one of the most physical professional sports played. Knee surgeries, back surgeries, shoulder surgeries etc. all financially affect them. These injuries then lead to self-medicating; the type of self-medicating that can get you arrested and thrown in jail with a few felonies. It’s a horrible thing to see someone have such a positive start to a career blow it all because of a lack of self-control.

Before watching the video and reading the articles, I had no idea how bad professional athletes handled their money. Obviously not every single retired athlete ends up like this, but a majority of them do. I think it would be extremely helpful for universities to make finance classes mandatory for their athletes before graduating. Not only will it benefit the athlete, but later down the road the universities may benefit too.