DEAR NFL and NBA

( An open letter to the leagues in light of the pit of financial misery so many players find themselves in after retirement)

I recently watched the Oscar-winning Animated Short executive produced by Kobe Bryant.  It was a brilliant visual rendering of a poem he composed to announce his retirement from the game of basketball. Existentially it gives mere mortals a glimpse at what transcendent athletes meditated on in adolescence before reaching the stratospheric heights of sports superstardom. One line in the film gave me pause and insight into what undergirds the palpable passion of so many who vicariously and actually make a living as a professional athlete.

Kobe said, “From the moment I started rolling my dad’s tube socks; I would shoot an imaginary game winning shot in the Great Western Forum.  I knew one thing was real,… I fell in love with you.  A love so deep I gave you my all; from my mind and body, to my spirit and soul.” This quote more than likely encapsulates the sentiment of the legion of men who have given everything for the mathematically improbable opportunity to catch, throw, run, tackle, kick a football; or dribble, pass, rebound, shoot and dunk a basketball in the two most-watched sports leagues in America.

The average salary during the 2017-2018 NBA season is $5,919,628 with a range of $34,682,550 for Steph Curry to $17,224 for Jerrel Eddie.  If we multiply the average annual salary by the 565 contracts signed during the year, the total compensation for the league’s players comes out to $ 3,344,589,820!!  The actual median salary for the league was $2,441,400 according to the website BasketballReference.com. Statista.com states that the average player’s salary in the NFL was 2.53 million dollars. If we use the metric of a 53 man roster and 32 teams, the total player compensation from the league was $4,290,880,000.

I realize I am grossly oversimplifying the actual income of players that range from undrafted free agents to eminent hall of famers but for the sake of illustration and deconstruction of a widely known trope about athletes and their rags-to-riches back to rags, allow me to not let this devolve into an esoteric legal document with obtuse language. The NFL just recently completed its commodity review- more formerly known as the Combine. These invite-only aspirants of the league showed up for the football underwear Olympics with visions of fame and fortune dancing in their heads.

They were vetted psychologically and physically before the owners begin their backroom negotiations for a futures contract that carries as much inherent risk as any investment available within the free market. The NFL draft day has become must-see television as star college players (still read- commodities) finally get the chance to reap the benefits decoupled from the fraudulent amateurism model that allows college universities and the NCAA to harvest billions of dollars from the exploits of these “student-athletes” – a farcical term when you apply it to the one-and-done model of NCAA basketball prodigies.

This is where my discourse takes a tangential turn.  Bo Diddley said, “You can get ripped off easier by a dude with a pen than you can a dude with a gun.”  NFL contracts are laced with stipulations, clauses, and incentives that make the possibility of earning the full value of a contract sketchy. While first round picks (the golden children) are warranting as much as 50 percent of their contract being guaranteed (the NBA guarantees all of their contracts), after the endorphin rush, family hugs and lifelong realization of a dream, this fairytale seems to disproportionately turn into a Shakespearean tragedy when it comes to the long-term financial future of far too many of these celebrated athletes.

Let’s look at this from a socioeconomic standpoint.  The vast majority of the players drafted into the NBA and NFL have NEVER seen the kind of money they are endowed with in their late teens and early twenties.  I like to refer to sports compensation as the inversion of regular folks.  Sports contracts are front-loaded pensions.  Not only that, the distribution is multiples of what most highly educated professionals will make over a robust career. Herein lies the conundrum in a riddle wrapped in an enigma.  The average 19-22 year old has at best a modicum of understanding about instant riches. Nnamdi Asomugha, an eleven-year veteran of the league, majored in finance at UC Berkeley and still felt he wasn’t prepared to protect his money as a professional athlete.

Dave Ramsey says, “When it comes to money, you will only move at the speed of your understanding.” Even though the league has a mandatory seminar on financial guidance, at a cursory glance their directives, recommendations have been an abysmal failure.  The issue of culpability would be difficult because we are not talking about the guardianship of minors. NFL players’ income is ostensibly a matter of public record. Similar to the reservations some lottery winners have about having their names disclosed; this spectacle of crowning achievement in hoop and gridiron dreams comes with an astonishing dissonance financially. Professional sports have been seen by far too many as the launching pad to change the trajectory of kids who grew up in crime-infested or financially distressed environments.  The NFL and NBA as Beulah land or Canaan has ended up being an oasis in the desert with statistically mass casualties economically.

A Sports Illustrated feature in 2009 cites a terrifying statistic for both sports.  By the time NBA players have been retired for two years, 78 percent have gone bankrupt or are under financial stress because of joblessness and divorce. Within 5 years of retirement, 60 percent are BROKE.  The NFL statistics are just as grim.  Five years after retirement, 78 percent of former players have gone bankrupt or are under financial distress because of joblessness (football has defined their very existence) or divorce.  We can compound this egregious statistic by adding the ominous possibility of CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) being a part of their future medical history-a diagnosis tantamount to a progressive diminution of cognition and physical impairment.  A recent article by ESPN chronicles the angst of Chris Bosh, often cited as an erudite player, as he struggles to transition into the unfamiliar tapestry of diminished fame and the cold turkey withdrawals from the opiate of acceptance, recognition and adulation that professional sports brings.  He opines that “I have millions of dollars and I don’t know finance!” Even more transparently he admits that he sees guys spending all of their money trying to capture all of the trappings that went with their time in the league- a never ending search for that feeling that you once had, and it can cost you.”

The question, which seems rhetorical, is how can this well documented cycle of athletes blowing through 100 million dollars in salary get shuttered? Between the parasitic relationships, the egregious financial advice from credible and shady advisors, the pull and expectation of family and friends and the almost expected ostentatious displays of wealth and conspicuous consumption that accompany riches, this dark prologue that follows the Horatio Alger beginning of most of these athletes can no longer just be a cautionary tale.