My curiosity of the day comes thanks to a cheesy Icy-Hot commercial starring Mia Hamm and Shaquille O’Neal. I’m mystified why a quadzillionaire like Shaq would feel any need or desire to make a dumb commercial for a B-level corporation like Icy-Hot. I felt the same thing about Troy Aikman, back in the day, when he did commercials (here in Texas anyway) for Acme Brick.
So the question is, while a second-tier celeb-athlete might see some valuable income by endorsing a local car dealer or what have you, what’s the value to a superstar with a multimillion-dollar salary in doing cheesy ads? I can’t imagine it’s just for the exposure - Acme Brick exposure isn’t the kind that I would covet. Do they need the money? Or just can’t turn it down?
Taxes and fees for agents and managers can eat up nearly half of a $3 million salary, so if you have some time in the off-season to shoot some commercials and make a few extra bucks, why not? Given the chance to try some low-stress acting, I’d go for it just for the experience, and making contacts in the entertainment industry might lead to post-career acting/sportscasting gigs (as well as more endorsements), which might be the only way for an ex-athlete (unless he has the business and political acumen of a Ken Dryden) to keep making serious dough.
Jesus - how much acumen does it take to realize that you probably have at most 10 years at 3 million dollars, and to just freaking live on 50-60K a year and save the rest. I think in my entire life of working from age 15 - 65 I won’t see 1 million, let alone what they blow on cheap flashy garbage in a year or 2 …
Athletes are not in it just for the love of the game. If they were, they could play as amateurs. They like being famous. So, when somebody offers to pay them to play to the camera without getting bashed around on the court or field, it’s a natural fit. There’s a generation or two that doesn’t remember that George Foreman was a boxer. Shaq and Mia have never been marketed worth a damn, anyway. They should get new agents.
> . . . just freaking live on 50-60K a year and save the rest . . .
How many people in any career field at all who make millions a year live on $60,000 a year? Look at all the social pressures there are to spend money more closely in line with what you make. The majority of the people who play major team sports in the U.S. make a little more than $500,000 a year and only play for about four years. It takes a lot of resistance of social pressures to even live on $200,000 a year for those four years and bank the rest. At the end of that time you will have maybe a million dollars in the bank, even if you managed to do a few endorsements for some extra money. (I’m subtracting some for taxes and agent fees.) Nearly all the non-superstars have to start a second career after their time as a player. Even the superstars, who if they are very lucky will average $5,000,000 per year over fifteen years, will have great social pressures to spend most of their money. Most of them hire money managers who make sure that they invest their money well so that they have a reasonably large amount to live on for the rest of their lives, but some of them don’t.
He’s a reserve with the Miami PD - he made the news some months back for helping out with an arrest - and apparently he’s also an honorary U.S. Deputy Marshall.