He does live in Florida. Not that I’ve ever had to deal with this kind of thing, but I would think that with his assets and his income, he should be able to make some agreements with his creditors. No question he’s blown a lot of money regardless.
This “Sports Illustrated” story from a few years ago says 78% of former NFL players go broke or have serious money problems within two years of retiring and 60% of NBA players have them within five years.http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1153364/index.htm
“Former players” may be a little misleading because you could be a reserve for a year, make minimum salary and still be counted with a 15 year superstar.
I remember one of the Dallas Cowboys front office people from the Tom Landry era (Gil Brandt?) once writing that they brought in financial advisers to educate young players on how to invest wisely. Inevitably the players weren’t interested in blue chip stocks or corporate bonds or treasury bills, they wanted to know about high risk, high yield investments.
They had an interview the other day with Blue Jays pitcher Darren Oliver, who’s in his 40s and still pitching; he has teammates who were in diapers when he started his major league career. They asked him what advice he gives younger players… and the first thing he wanted to talk about was how to handle your money. “You have the learn how to say no,” he said, with the look of a man who knows how to say no.
Someone who is ill equipped to handle money is going to blow it, no matter how much he has, because the carrying costs of the stuff you can guy with the money will drain your cash flow. A $15 million house and $250,000 cars cost a fortune to OWN; your obligations aren’t gone just beause you bought them. And athletes are targeted by just about every schmoe who knows then for money here and money there to start a restaurant, a business, a clothing brand, blah blah blah. If you can’t say no, pretty soon all the money’s gone and you still have to pay the property tax for your $15 million crib.
The other danger is that athletes often get ambitious and start businesses with their money, not knowing how risky that is. Deuce McAllister lost all his money trying to get a Nissan dealership going. Rollie Fingers got into a bunch of businesses, all failures.
Whether you’re paid $100,000, $1 million or $10 million is irrelevant because if you don’t know what you’re doing, the shit you’ll buy will consume it all. (Baseball player Jack Clark managed to go broke while he was still playing, in the middle of a multi-million dollar contract.) I mean, if you think about it, you probably know people making, say, $40,000 who have trouble keeping up with the bills… but to most people in the world $40,000 is an astounding sum of money and it must be inconcievable to them that someone with that kind of scratch could be in financial trouble. To the world’s poor, a $20-an-hour job is like being Warren Sapp.
Those are highly competitive people who live for the big play, the big score, on the field/court – so, they also want the big plays and big scores off the field or court. Playing it safe and settling for “good enough” is not in their temperament in the game, and isn’t in their temperament in life, either. But, unlike the highly competitive guy training to be a lawyer or banker, that athlete has risen under one very different outlook, that of being one bad step away from a career-ending injury or just 10 years away from rookies showing up who are stronger, faster, better. So you have a lot of them who want to make it big, fast, and stay big, and can’t really bring themselves to think of what happens when they’re no longer big. The lawyer/banker meanwhile gets trained to look forward to a lifetime career, to make tradeoffs between short and long term success metrics, and to assume a progression of roles.
Hah, I think giving players the benefit of the doubt in them investing with more risk is generous. The jump in risk usually isn’t from bonds to stocks, or even safe stocks to risky stocks… it’s from investing in securities to opening up their own record label, car wash, restaurant, etc.
I believe that they WANT to have a career after football, they just have no idea how. 250 pairs of shoes is not a big deal. Sinking in millions so your sister can have her own hair store is.
They probably see that Magic Johnson’s got a bunch of movie theaters and car washes and want to follow that route when in reality, it’s a risky risky thing to endeavor.
Off-topic, but this reminds me of one of the classic NFL Films sound-bites.
And I second what **RickJay **said. Ironically, if Sapp has a child that’s over the age of, say, 16, I’d much more readily trust that teenager to handle a million dollars than Warren himself: growing up with (or at least around) money is almost a prerequisite for being able to handle it as an adult. Doesn’t even have to be a lot of money, probably.
Shouldn’t this also be seen as yet another indictment of the sham of a college education that these “student” athletes receive?
He’s a 40-year-old man. How is it Miami’s fault if he’s handled his finances poorly?
Indicia that he didn’t get much of an education at Miami. Four years of college and he lacks a basic understanding of personal finances? Seems that the least they could do for his mostly free labour is give him a remedial course in finance.
Why is always someone else’s fault? Ugh.
It’s his fault.
And the Pro Teams generally don’t toss you to the wolves. You have access to financial management and a network of successful millionaires around you every day.
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Whatever. Miami has had a thoroughly corrupt athletics program for a very long time, but it has jack shit to do with Sapp failing to handle his own money.
According to Sports Illustrated who did a piece on bankrupt athletes:, 78% of NFL players go bankrupt or nearly broke just two years into retirement, according to Sports Illustrated. Among NBA veterans, 60% fall into the same predicament after five years.
And after five years… wow…
Replace Miami with any other college then. Some basic courses for his mostly free labour would help all concerned. If nothing else, it is in the school’s interest to deflect as much attention as possible away from the educational aspect of their programs.
Whatever though right?
Scholarship much?
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I’m not sure how much a basic finance course is going to help someone who gets an NFL or NBA contract, and as a reminder, only a small fraction of college athletes become professionals. Anyway, like someone else said, the players associations already provide financial advice and that kind of thing. It’s unfortunate these guys go broke, but it’s not surprising. They get large amounts of money at a young age, spend it like it’s going to last forever, and then it ends fairly quickly. Sapp’s actually an exception to that and he still apparently did a bad job with his money.
I know people who weren’t athletes who graduated from good schools who aren’t any better at personal finance than Warren Sapp is.
You can give allthe courses you want to some 19-year-old kid, and it’s nto going to sink in. I was given all the financial advice I could have asked for when I was a kid and I still ran up credit card bills and stupid shit like that. I learned the hard way (not as hard as some, thank God.) College students don’t think long term.
Not really. My university didn’t teach me anything about managing my personal finances*, and I imagine that’s the case for most graduates – anyone who wasn’t loaded up with business/accounting classes. I actually think it would be nice if colleges did teach that sort of thing to everyone (Weeks 1-12: Let’s Talk About Compound Interest; Weeks 13-15: Everything Else), but in reality money management is not part of anyone’s core curriculum.
If this said anything about big NCAA football programs, it would be about how much schools are willing to lower admissions standards for athletes. (But, even then, I wouldn’t go very far in this direction.)
- –> Unless, that is, the bank would be willing to accept a 20 page essay on Rousseau in lieu of payment. I should really check on that.
The story got that item garbled. It’s supposed to be “Large Nude women, painting.” They’re almost done with his living room, and they’ve started priming the garage. But they’re going to want to get paid.
It’s too bad Sapp got munsoned, but it could be worse. His own name could be synonymous with… oh, wait.
He didn’t keep his head on a swivel. Gotta keep your head on a swivel.