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[Lucky Forward]

When you're rich, you have the money to fight off deadly and crippling diseases. The most notable example of course being Miracle Johnson. NFL players are notoriously unhealthy, but they have money.

Nope.

Why NFL Players Really Go Bankrupt

It seems impossible for multimillionaire athletes to go broke. However, Sports Illustrated found that after two years of retirement, 78 percent of NFL players are bankrupt or under financial stress. How can that be possible?

There are many contributing factors to the suddenly wealthy becoming suddenly living hand-to-mouth again. Horrific spending habits, bad investments, generosity and child support can put the wealthiest athlete into the poor house.

 

[GameGuru59]

Who says there has to be. It isn't enough that due to low entry of cost kids can pick up a b-ball and play on the street whenever they want? It's that ease of access that ultimately means more than any number of tailgates.



You can't call it a 'juggernaut' if it's not in the top tier, the most or 2nd most dominant professional league. Baseball was more popular. Boxing was king. The big turning point was television and the late 50s.

I would argue that the ability of fans to "consume" the sport is most important- not the ease of playing it. NASCAR is extremely popular, it has the least ease of access of all sports besides maybe F1 (another example of a sport that doesn't appeal to American tastes). What makes football consumeable can mean many things, but it involves tailgating, the outdoors nature of the game, and football's natural appeal to the medium of television. You'll discount it, but I think the main thing that makes footballl so popular on TV is its ability to generate cliffhangers for commercial breaks. That, and as I said before, its easy to identify momentum swings in both football and basketball. All this makes football consumable as a piece of visual entertainment.

You mentioned baseball and boxing. It's possible baseball and boxing were more interesting when the main way to consume them was through radio. Personally, I find those sports more exciting when heard through the radio (at least I imagine so for boxing by listening to old radio broadcasts of the sport). Footballl needed television to illustrate the drama and strategy involved with the sport- evidenced by the now routine practice of play telestrating. Its natural that its popularity would rise with the introduction of TV.

By juggernaut, I mean unstoppable. While football wasn't nearly as popular as baseball and boxing in the first half of the 20th century, its foundation was just as sound as baseball's, and much more solid than boxing's. It just needed a decent league to support it, and a better way to broadcast its excitement.

 

[Nikodemos]

Nope.

Why NFL Players Really Go Bankrupt

It seems impossible for multimillionaire athletes to go broke. However, Sports Illustrated found that after two years of retirement, 78 percent of NFL players are bankrupt or under financial stress. How can that be possible?

There are many contributing factors to the suddenly wealthy becoming suddenly living hand-to-mouth again. Horrific spending habits, bad investments, generosity and child support can put the wealthiest athlete into the poor house.

Which is thoroughly unsurprising. Brain damage can cause a person to make some really bad personal/financial choices.

 

[demon]

I don't follow football but I watched that League of Denial documentary last night and it's pretty damning. No wonder the NFL's been compared to the tobacco industry here, they have their heads up their asses about the problem. Are there any stats showing a drop in kids playing tackle football lately?

 

[rambis]

Why all the talk of banning? Who would even initiate that? I could see HS level or maybe even college.

But in a country where we allow blood sports, how is brain damage from contact sports considered the line to cross. Its a volunteer league, people know full well what football entails. As long as there are people to pay for it, people will play it. Heck im pretty sure if you talk to the average player that they would have something to say about how much the NFL is already "softening" the league with all of the newer safety rules.

Which is thoroughly unsurprising. Brain damage can cause a person to make some really bad personal/financial choices.

I would think more often a lack of any kind of personal financial managment skills is more to blame. A great amount of players come from impoverished areas. Combined with the fact of the low average salary and shortish careers, its easy to see how players might live a bit beyond their means without any fallback or security in place cor retirement.

 

[Draxal]

Which is thoroughly unsurprising. Brain damage can cause a person to make some really bad personal/financial choices.

This usually happens before the brain damage really hits them hard. It's more a result of their upbringing and the leaches associated with the sport.

High school players with collegiate prospects get handlers and that's where the problem starts.

 

[Nikodemos]

This usually happens before the brain damage really hits them hard. It's more a result of their upbringing and the leaches associated with the sport.

High school players with collegiate prospects get handlers and that's where the problem starts.

What do you mean? It's obvious from the reports that, by the time they've been playing football for a decade-something (in their mid-late 20s, having started around 14-15), the damage has already affected their capability for clear thought.

 

[Lucky Forward]

This usually happens before the brain damage really hits them hard. It's more a result of their upbringing and the leaches associated with the sport.

High school players with collegiate prospects get handlers and that's where the problem starts.

I've heard of newly drafted players who took out large loans against their future earnings to buy shit like jewelry, before they even played a down in the NFL.

 

[Esch]

I don't follow football but I watched that League of Denial documentary last night and it's pretty damning. No wonder the NFL's been compared to the tobacco industry here, they have their heads up their asses about the problem. Are there any stats showing a drop in kids playing tackle football lately?

http://m.espn.go.com/general/story?storyId=9970532&src=desktop

 

[Draxal]

What do you mean? It's obvious from the reports that, by the time they've been playing football for a decade-something (in their mid-late 20s, having started around 14-15), the damage has already affected their capability for clear thought.

The manic depressions associated with CTE usually happens post career. Their brain damage is no doubt impacting their decisions during the career, but these players are constantly under assault from their friends, family, and investors from high school age.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sports/da...mith-s-battles-with-his-family-over-money.ece

Tyron Smith is an extreme example but

Last October, John Schorsch — Smith’s Dallas-based attorney at the time — said Smith’s “mom and/or the stepdad threatened the physical well-being of Tyron and the life of his girlfriend.” Smith filed a protective order against his parents last summer to keep them from having any contact with him. The order also prohibits contact from Smith’s parents through his siblings.
During training camp last year in Oxnard, Calif., one of Smith’s brothers whom he said he hadn’t talked to “in a long time” showed up and had to be removed from the facility.

 

[SolidSnakex]

Which is thoroughly unsurprising. Brain damage can cause a person to make some really bad personal/financial choices.

“By the time they have been retired for two years, 78% of former NFL players have gone bankrupt or are under financial stress” and “60% of former NBA players have gone broke within five years of retirement.”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timmaurer/2012/10/05/mo-money-mo-problems-espn-goes-broke/

It's a being rich thing moreso than a brain damage thing. Antoine Walker made over 100m throughout his playing career, yet he went broke. While bad investments in buildings was part of why he did go broke, another part of it was that he had 70 people that he was taking care of. Everyone wants a piece of you want once you get money. And none of those people are willing to tell you that you're doing something stupid because they don't want to have that stream cut off.

 

[Into]

At least they dont roll on the ground pretending to be injured.

They do the opposite, pretend not to be injured and then end up dying at a young age, and their brain ends up on a table in some cold laboratory.

 

[Parch]

The understanding of concussions has improved a lot over the last 20 years, and changes have been made to address it. Over the last 10 years equipment and rule changes have been made as well as treatment procedures and recovery to prevent re-occurrence.

How concussions are being handled now is significantly different so those numbers should show improvement. The accumulation of concussions before full recovery was the biggest problem. Back in the day they just had their "bell rung". Take a breather and get back in there. I imagine a lot of players from that study are victims of that old school treatment along with inferior equipment.

That's not happening anymore. It's never going to be completely fixed, but we all know banning contact sports is not going to happen. Using stats from a time when concussion treatment was non-existent isn't a fair comparison to what is being done now.

 

[alstein]

So many brain injuries for such a boring sport.... Imagine if they actually played for more then 5 minutes a game too.

You must not have watched FSU play last weekend. They thought they were playing ACC basketball not ACC football.

 

[Digital-Hero]

NFL goes Two-Hand Touch in 2075.

 

[Ninja Scooter]

The understanding of concussions has improved a lot over the last 20 years, and changes have been made to address it. Over the last 10 years equipment and rule changes have been made as well as treatment procedures and recovery to prevent re-occurrence.

How concussions are being handled now is significantly different so those numbers should show improvement. The accumulation of concussions before full recovery was the biggest problem. Back in the day they just had their "bell rung". Take a breather and get back in there. I imagine a lot of players from that study are victims of that old school treatment along with inferior equipment.

That's not happening anymore. It's never going to be completely fixed, but we all know banning contact sports is not going to happen. Using stats from a time when concussion treatment was non-existent isn't a fair comparison to what is being done now.

Fro hearing Chris Nowitzki tell it (he's been leading the charge on this for years) it's not just the concussions or "bell ringing" hits that are the issue though. A lot of the smaller, less noticed contact like what happens between lineman in the trenches over and over again, is just as dangerous. Guys like Junior Seau and Chris Henry, who had no documented concussions IIRC, suffered from it (Chris Henry being just 25 when he died). The nature of the game, even if you remove the big time highlight reel hits, is still very dangerous.

 

[BlastProcessing]

That's a really large percent. Is there a way to make the sport less risky for brain injuries?

Accelerometers in the helmets tracking impacts. External padding on the helmets. New rules about what can happen in practices. All could help. The problem is that external padding will look dorky so they won't go for it and accelerometers could definitively show the true extent of the problem, so they won't go for that either.

And the larger problem is that the NFL has backed itself into a corner where if they take drastic steps to solve the problem now they are tacitly admitting that their current stance that there is no problem would be refuted. They would open themselves up for a Billion dollar lawsuit.

It's a giant mess.